Purple. It was a sea of purple.

Our Team in Training running jerseys were purple. And that’s what I was looking at. Thousands of people running the San Diego Marathon, flowing up a hill that disappeared into the early morning mist, in a sea of purple.

I thought I knew why I was running the marathon with Team in Training. I thought it was my way to meet people, take home memories and help out a great cause. But here I was, staring out into a sea of purple thinking to myself, this is why I’m here.

I was part of changing the world.

Over one billion dollars.

Man v. Bar isn’t going to make one billion dollars, but that’s how much Team in Training has raised for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

You’re going to come to Man v. Bar, have a blast, meet all kinds of new people and walk away with a memory you’ll recall one day and you’ll smile to yourself and think, “That was a riot.”

But what you probably won’t remember, probably won’t recall or even notice was that when you were with us crawling from Ye Olde King’s Head all the way to Monsoon, amidst all the shots, pints, laughs and hilariously good times, you were part of a movement to make something happen. You were part of changing the world.

Over the last 30 years, Team in Training tripled the survival rate for leukemia and blood cancers from 10% to 42%

Imagine, that in the next 30 years, the survival rate at 100%.

You were part of changing the world.

Our Santa Monica Pub Crawl is back! For the third time in a row now, following the tradition of “So You Think You Can Drink” and “America’s Best Pub Crawl” we proud to present:

To prepare everyone for the upcoming crawl here are some important tips to follow before crawl day.

Top 10 Pub Crawl Mistakes

Remember, if this is your first Pub Crawl, whether you’re an alcoholic or a lightweight, you should focus on completing the event and not on how many drinks you get. For many of you, this will be an incredible personal milestone. Remember to show up early, and stay late!

1. Not resting the day before.
I’ve already broken this rule, staying up late to do this, but we hope you got some rest. Get your mind off the pub crawl. We know you’re nervous about the big event because there’s so much alcohol. You’ve been training all year. You got this!

2. Eating too much the night before.
Don’t overload on pasta! You don’t want to be in the restroom during the pub crawl. The party may move to another bar while you’re in there!

3. Trying new equipment/food/drink on race day.
Nothing worse than finding that the new beer you’re trying gives you gas, that new shot gives you a migrane, those new jeans chafe, or that new drink makes you sick to your stomach.

4. Going out too fast.
The #1 biggest mistake. Don’t let the adrenaline take over. If you take too much alcohol early on, it can take a long time to recover. No sense getting to bar 2 really fast then struggling for another 2.

5. Not taking your walk breaks early.
If you trained with walk breaks, take them from the start and regularly. You’re going to be excited, so use your mental discipline. Walk around the bar, and meet people!

6. Drinking too much/too little.
Drink as much as you can in an hour. JUST KIDDING. You know your limits. We want to see you at the end. Fill up at the bar and keep tabs on how much you’re drinking.

7. Not maintaining proper form.
Don’t slump over when you’re drunk. Don’t pass out, or else we’ll pose behind you and take pictures.

8. Getting down on yourself if you start to hurt.
You will hurt at some point. Expect it, and know you’ve put the time in to get through it. It’s ok to admit that you’re weak sauce.

9. NOT Drinking with a stranger.
We encourage that you meet new people! There will be a lot of people at the event you don’t know. Feel free to introduce yourself. There is at MOST 3 degrees of separation of the people there. We’ve invited nothing but wonderful people.

10. Forgetting to enjoy the day!
Have fun! Remember why you’re here! To have fun!

Beer Pong can help discover cures for blood cancers!

With beers in arms, we’ll combine forces with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and take the fight against blood cancers to their doorsteps.

South
Santa Monica
Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010
4-7 pm

It gets better. By contributing $10 to the war effort, you’ll earn yourself a mark of honor granting you access to an opportunity drawing and these bar specials:

$3 Domestic Drafts
$10 Domestic Pitchers
½ off Wings, Fries and Nachos!

Take up arms for an all out beer pong assault.

$15 for solo players
$25 for 2 player teams

• You get a pitcher of beer for your first game
• Earn a mark of honor to enter into an opportunity drawing and access to bar specials
• The satisfaction of knowing you made an active contribution to supply the front lines in the war against blood cancers.

This is just the beginning, troops! Let’s start off the season with a bang. With Team in Training and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, let’s show cancer no mercy. Be strong in your stride and march towards victory!

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My tongue keeps running over the serrated edges of my newly chipped tooth from last night. It’s not so bad, you can’t really see it when I talk or smile, but if you look closely, you’ll see a tiny snag. My tongue swears it’s the size of a Giza pyramid hanging upside down geofront style. Like I could sink my teeth into a piece of meat and great white the mother fucker off it’s hook. I have to keep telling myself it’s tiny. My tongue keeps running across it. Why do we hate ourselves so much that we keep picking at the things that hurt?

I was trying to tell a story about something when I made an attempt to bite into my mug – for effect – and it wasn’t a tiny frosty mug, it was a liter. Add a few spikes and it’s a fuckin deadly weapon by ATF standards. So in my horribly coordinated state, instead of successfully biting into the mug to demonstrate the silliness of my story, I ended up colliding with the rim of the glass resulting in a very uncomfortable stun. I’m actually lucky I didn’t knock my tooth out or give myself an un-cosmetic chip. It’s bad enough I break out into whistling Pete at random times.

After downing two liters of Alaskan Amber, a few fries, a chicken strip, 3 peanuts and 3 lollipop chick cigs at Heroes, we made our way to Stubrick’s to cap the night. Stubrick’s by the way is right next to Slide Bar where the infamous too drunk to care to get her number story took place. Idiots.

Some guys who were playing pool gave us their game to finish so my friend and I went against Sketch by his lonesome. Keep in mind, all of us were pretty toasty at the time so we can pretty much sum up the game as the “longest pool game ever with 3 balls.” Luckily for us Sketch scratched and we won by default. Usually I hate winning like that, but victory is victory.

I could sprinkle in all the reasons why we initially went from West LA to downtown Fullerton, but it’s irrelevant. The important thing was that we showed moral support, we made a statement about people and friendship and the support system that we need as human beings.

I mean shit, fuck the drive, I chipped my gawd damn tooth!

We’ll be at Busby’s East tonight! Come in Costume!

5364 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 525-2615

This is definitely going to be a split weekend for us. Some of us will be in Vegas for the entire weekend while others like Emosweater and I will be in Vegas for a turnaround on Sunday/Monday. This is what we would call the Brave Poor Man’s Option.

Saturday will either be a day of rest or a day of soul & sleep slaughter. For All Hallows Eve, it sounds appropriate.

This week has been a bit nutty and will continue to be, so much that we had an email thread going around to list and prioritize what events were going on with which ones to take and which ones to ditch. Social event triage if you will.

I lucked out and had a friend go to USC to pick up race packets for me instead of cutting out at work to fight through the nightmare trek I heard it was in getting over there so I’m really grateful that I didn’t have to go. Nike+ is tonight and even though I know I’m going to have fun, this race has proven to be very inconvenient in all sorts of ways.

It was my friend’s birthday yesterday at the Melting Pot in Pasadena and although she really wanted me to go, I didn’t want to. Her social circle is so broken and blasted that even handling that crowd is a nightmare. To put it simply, she’s a really cool girl who happens to be ridiculously cute. She was recruited by the hot girl group AKA bitches from hell and got sucked into their life draining drama shit show. Her “friends” are simply obligatory social status totems carried around big events; they’re the hot girl group all the guys wanna fuck at the party or club, but they’re no where near good friends and would soon rather scratch each others’ eyes out and fake friend it up than actually be there for each other. It’s sick. Throw in my history with her and you have a recipe for some mother fuckin disaster. So I did what I had to do. I called in a big gun arm candy to play leverage. I know this all sounds cryptic and I apologize. Long story short: I called in my good looking female friend to play the “is-she-the-girlfriend-card” and toil mysterious magicks, while playing nice with the others so that I can be removed from the drama, have an alibi and escape plan and wean any thoughts of ulterior motives of me showing up alone. It’s all politics. I know, way too much drama and micromanaging for social circles, I swear to pieces I’ll explain these tidbits in detail one day in a book. But for now, just know that I have some really, complex people in my life.

Luckily for me, my recruitment is top notch and my right hand woman did it up so well she had the men up in full swoon and the girls asking questions about my relationship with her. She’s so perfect at this, “Oh, I dunno, we don’t talk about it much, but, ya know, it is what it is.” Beautiful. We used the El Rey and a showtime to ditch the party and ended up at Arizas. It was an awesome detour, we were hungry and could definitely eat. She snagged an al pastor quesadilla and I picked up an al pastor taco and a lengua taco – divine!

We met up with Sketch at The Room where I had just missed SoSuperSam spinning. Literally by like a minute according to Sketch. It was that damned parking, we must have spent 20 minutes looking for parking, I busted a seemingly illegal U right in front of a cop, totally thought I was toast as I looked right at him, but he just drove away – score! Then I spent some more time regretting not taking a spot that I thought wasn’t a spot but upon closer inspection, totally was a spot.

The Room – Hollywood
1626 N Cahuenga Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90189
(323) 462-7196
theroom-hollywood.com

The venue is small but nice. The prices are stiff, but the pour is deep. The event we attended goes on once a month and according to the bartender, it’s usually dead on the weekdays. It’s located on Cahuenga two doors south from the Beauty Bar. The music last night was hip hop, urban funk/soul and the crowd was the same accordingly.

We ended the evening at the “Western” Denny’s. Jess joined us and we discussed meat eaters, Paranormal Activity and weird dreams to the backdrop of giant trannies, and boy-men who insisted on eating in nothing but their underoos. I didn’t crawl into bed until 4:30 this morning. Surprisingly, I’m ok – but ask me again in 3 hours.

We realize it’s Wednesday, but Adventure Tuesday typically ends on Wednesday morning. Sometimes spontaneous and random things happen on Tuesday night. There’s also a good chance that nothing happens. So last night?

A tear came to Emosweater’s eye when we decided we’d finally hit up Burbank for some fun. He insists that there’s plenty to do over there, we strongly disagree (I’m totally kidding). Our friend works out there so we all decided to watch Paranormal Activity at the AMC theaters in downtown Burbank since he wanted to watch it and we decided that trickling down to Arizas at the end is enough to warrant a trip out there.

All cards on the table, I’m a big bitch when it comes to scary movies. I did not want to watch this movie, but when the guys spoke of Ariza, I sacked up and told myself it was worth the food. Sketch came by to pick me up from my place on the Westside and we made our way to Burbank. Initially we were going to go to the Blue Room to snag $3 Bud Lights and maybe some cheap well scotch to wash down this tingle in my throat, but we were running a bit behind and we had already told our friend that we were gonna meet him at Barney’s, which is right next to the theater. Oh Blue Room, I’ll drink in your divey savvy another day.

Katie our lovely server who we scoffed at for dropping her serving tray – I know we’re such assholes, was a total sweetheart for putting up with our antics. After two pints and a shot of Bushmill’s we were toasty and headed to the movie.

Paranormal Activity

For a movie that was hyped up to be frightening and myself admittedly looking forward to the hype despite my cringing and face covering – the movie, well, let me put it this way: it was like having really shitty sex with what you thought was a hot girl. You’re thinking fuck yeah this girl is smoking hot, you’re turned on, it’s starting off a little slow, but it builds speed, she’s getting into it, you’re getting into it, she’s telling you she’s about to come and you’re all about it, you’re ready to meet her half way when you realize, she’s already done. You think, “WTF? That’s it?” Then you look down at her face and you realize, she’s not so hot anymore. That’s what the movie was like.

It was scary when it was scary, but the scary was too far and a few between with an ending leaving you abruptly wanting more.

After sitting and staring at the blank screen waiting for something to happen, we conceded that the movie was in fact over and laughed our way disappointingly back to our cars. We weren’t the only ones who felt that way, I’d say the whole theater was laughing along with us.

Thankfully the movie wasn’t the end of the evening. We drove down to Ariza for the best Mexican food this side of LA and indulged our irritated movie shakes away. We mingled with drunk hipster chicks, discussed the intricacies of the animal kingdom and I was one shoe throw away from knocking an ugly hipster chick in the head for her antagonistic dry laugh – although admittedly, she was warranted because I was being a smarty pants. I should have gotten that lengua taco.

We realize it’s Wednesday, but Adventure Tuesday typically ends on Wednesday morning. Sometimes spontaneous and random things happen on Tuesday night. There’s also a good chance that nothing happens. So last night?

The alarm was set to 2:30 am. My friend Jim said he’d be in town at around 3:30 am so I wanted to be ready to take off the moment he was in town. Given that it was early in the morning, I figured it wouldn’t take too long to get around town, CBS studios is by the Grove and the Grove is quite literally two streets from the house. We were going to get tickets for the Price is Right.

He didn’t show up until much later, so I wasn’t in line until about 6 in the morning. That left me with broken sleep throughout the night with my alarm going off in 20 minute intervals. We managed to get tickets and go through the entire process right up until actually going into the studio when I had to leave. Jim had to go deal with business and my keys were in his car and once I leave the premises, there’s no coming back. So much for rockin Plinko and winning the showcase.

I spent the day napping and working on projects when my Underage Girl text me. She’s not really underage, but it’s a very long story. She wanted to hang out and drink so when the evening struck she came over with a bottle of Makers, correction, a very fuckin large bottle of Makers, straight up Costco style and thought it would be a hoot to shoot down shots and shoot the shit.

Sketch filled me in on a birthday celebration going down at Rush Street so we hopped in the car 4 shots in and drove down to Downtown Culver City. I’m a man who understands his assets and my assets are my girls. Using their powers of seduction I send them out to flirt and skirt where we can score drinks and make nice. In the end, I get the girl, grab the money and run. Case in point, I didn’t pay for a thing last night.

It was raining in appropriate drama fashion and with her all stumbly and fumbly, I opted not to go to Bigfoot West where the others headed. Instead, we ended up in a McDonald’s parking lot.

Time couldn’t have been any slower than it was yesterday. Watching the time tick at what seemed like half the pace of slower than slow was torturous. That uneasy, antsy, nervous energy that makes you shake your leg in unimpeded pedi-strokes makes the trek through the time shift of forever feel forlorn in unforgotten futility.

Fast Forward. Emosweater was standing by his car as mine pulled up, I lucked out and sniped a parking spot in the wonky plaza where Good Microbrew & Grill sat. All he had to do was make mention of $3 beers and flash me a photo of a burger with a halo of crispy fried cheese singing praises of wonderment to make me strong arm through that nasty 10/110/101 orgy of fat traffic and see for myself. My stomach was whimpering its fugliness that feeding time was due hours ago so there was high priority in me kicking its face in with a good old fashioned burger.

We were two of five and the hostess, who refused to seat us because the rest of the party wasn’t present suggested we romp a tiny table and musical chairs our way up and play table tango until the rest of the team arrived. The five of us were finally there to combine our lionbots and have a Voltron of a time.

Four rounds of mystery beers and an Exorcism Burger later we time lapsed the night time streets to El Prado where we indulged in playing guessing games with the bartender, let the ladies ladle wine and lounge in leisure while the men decided crafty beers and clinky cheers were standard fair for our nightly affairs.

With Ariza sitting in our stomachs and sobering up in parking lot parties the night time ne’rdowells did nothing but needfully bring time to its knees. Emosweater literally got shit on his pants from prancing too close to porta potties and a decision came my way that peeing between two cars is cover enough to make me go camouflage.

Congratulations this is our 100th post.

It’s Monday, it’s not exactly funday, you’re either back at work or you’re slaving away at something unfun partially due to the fact that you’re not awake yet or you just can’t get into the groove. WTF happened to the weekend and more importantly – WTF happened over the weekend?

It started Thursday when Emosweater declared to the world he needed a drink. Work had shackled his spirits down a bit so we invited him over to our place to imbibe a few beers and engage in merriment. I think my roommate was on the same wavelength because he and I came home with cases of quality beer and a shiny new bottle of Makers. It’s official: the economy is stabilizing, we have quality beer at the house. Goodbye recession beers.

One Fast Track and a Korean style tabletop barbecue dinner later, we were drunk off our asses and I awoke Friday morning on the couch. Natural alarm clock FTW; I still made it to work.

Friday was a struggle, but in true Office Champ form I kept all dizziness and queasiness to myself, complete with a smile and trudged through the day. I just wanted to get home so I can catch up on a tiny bit of R&R which was nerfed when a friend of mine showed up at the house insisting on getting something to eat. She’s a bit finicky with food so we walked around downtown Culver City when she decided Rush Street’s ambiance was enough to warrant a taste test. It’s a fancy pants sports bar. The food was ok but had some killer Happy Hour deals, $3 wells? Yes please. The place was packed however, a total date spot if you ask me. I started laughing when the server came by and lit the candle at our table. I’m not a date kinda guy so when I was trying to blow out the candle, my friend insisted that it stay on just to make me squirm. She enjoyed the fact that at anytime a friend of mine would walk in and “catch” me on a date. She was out to ruin my reputation. I guess it can’t be all that bad, she’s kinda cute and well, she paid for the food.

We managed to ninja parking validation from the movie theater (score!) and then picked up gelato affogato for dessert then headed out to Bigfoot West. I’d indulge in the details but the entire evening would sound like me describing a date and also a 101 on how to make other girls jealous, but that’s for another time. We hit up Bossanova at the end of the night for some late night eats and I was in bed by 4 am. For some unknown astrally torturous reason, I suck at sleeping in and was up at 7.

Saturday was literally spent watching TV all day and nodding off at every movie. I believe we went through the entire Aliens quadrilogy.

Sunday because of all the rest, Emosweater and I picked up coffee and donuts and had a work meeting. Unheard of if you ask me. It was 8 am on a Sunday completely of our own volition. We then went on to finish up chores and errands by 1 pm. Typically, we’re just getting up at this time. We picked up groceries to cook a late lunch – wow another “date,” bromance FTW, but lesson learned, American Supermarkets are not a substitute for Asian Supermarkets – then played catch up with a friend of ours who decided it would be fun to fill us in on her sexcapades of giant penises and exotic islands.

Granted it wasn’t the pool party, twestival, crazy DJ nightlife living that sketch was cruising with all weekend, but I’d say it was one of those weekends that was good for the soul.