Fast Track Prototype

WTF Weekend: Going The Way of the Turkey

The entire week consisted of drinking, eating and sleeping. In that order from greatest consumption to least consumption. It actually started a weekend early. Our friends and I had the annual Thanksgiving/Christmas party where the pot luck table was so full, I almost felt like I didn’t have to bring food. For once we had somewhat of an alcohol shortage, well good alcohol and was left with crappy wine and weird vodka ice tea mixtures. I know, chick shit written all over it. However I’m not one to turn down alcohol so despite my dislike for very sugary alcoholic drinks I pulled up my panties and drank.

The hardest part about drinking at any Thanksgiving dinner is balancing the space in your stomach for food and alcohol. If you’re too full you can’t drink a lot. At the same time, if you eat too much it also takes a lot more alcohol to get to you. So it’s either you don’t eat and get drunk fast, or you do eat and drink a lot. There seems to be no happy middle ground. Go big or go home.

Tuesday my roommates and I started what will hopefully be a tradition of us going out for the holidays before we depart for our own with our families. We hit up Karaoke Bleu and managed to wax three bottles of vodka, sing songs we can’t remember and ended up eating meals that pretty much greeted us in burps the next morning. Despite the two times we shall never speak of, Bleu never fails.

I spent my Thanksgiving with my roommate’s family – always a riot. We ended up broiling catfish, eating oysters, turkey and pig and still managed to knock back mega sized bottles of Grey Goose and sing obnoxiously on a magic mic with still more time and space to burn soju shots at the end of the night.

Saturday an old buddy of mine was having his annual potluck and in good old Mexican fashion it was a night of beers, tequila and a whole lot of laughs. I think between the three of us, us being my friend’s sisters and myself, we went through more than half the giant Costco sized bottle of Patron ourselves. I counted at least 7 shots. This is not including the Crown and Cokes and Fat Tires. I had to keep my spinning head from coming off the neck and forced myself to drink what I believe was about 72 oz. of water so that I wouldn’t have the massive hangover I was expecting to have in the morning.

No hangover. Cue mariachi music.

Tags: Holiday, Thanksgiving, WTF Weekend

WTF Weekend: That Was So Last Halloween and Buttonwillow Santa Barbara

The biosuits I was picking up for our costumes were used. Kinda scary. On one hand, I highly doubt they would sell anything that is still contaminated, but the thought that this suit was once possibly exposed to killer chemicals and infectious diseases did cross my mind. If I grow an extra pair of testicles, I’ll let you know. Hell, I’ll put it on Youtube.

We were the Anti-Swine Flu Team, complete with biosuits, goggles and vials of Swine Flu Vaccine aka 100 proof vodka with syringes to apply the “shots.” It was totally a hit – when we weren’t “OMG GHOSTBUSTERS” or “LOLBEASTIEBOYS.”

Emosweater and I decided to hit up Vegas on Sunday for a turnaround and catch up with the others. When we hit state line we grabbed a sixer and downed three beers a piece before we hit the strip so by the time we got to the hotel room we were nice and saucy. Kids don’t try this at home, or anywhere else for that matter.

Lavo was cool, despite the fact that I spent most of my time outside when I finally did go in and join the group groove, I had a blast, up until Fez showed up. Now I don’t know if he was spinning or just hanging out with the DJ but he kept getting on the mic every fuckin 20 seconds to say something. Dude, stop interrupting the song, just let the music play, you’re fuckin annoying. Guess he wasn’t doing much acting on that 70’s show after all.

We hit up Drais afterward, greased the cigar girl a few bucks for free passes for the ladies, got a gander at Optimus Prime and that giant fuzzy Cheshire Cat Looking guy from Where the Wild Things Are in a costume brawl when Michael Jackson showed up and kicked their asses. Then it was a parade of gay men and dancing moonrakers, when Emosweater and I decided it was time to go home or die driving there in a losing battle to slumber.

* * *

This passed weekend Emosweater and I decided it would be fun to catch up with Sketch after his Santa Barbara Half Marathon. It’s got that coastal town feeling to it, like San Deigo, which is something we should have kept in mind when we stopped at Buttonwillow to eat at Carl’s and realized we were way off course. Two and a half hours to be exact. 5 North, straight shot, I didn’t question it. In my mind it sounded right, but we probably would have ended up a few miles outside of San Jose before we realized if we didn’t stop to eat. Without sounding too existential it really was more about the journey and getting outside of LA city limits for a change of pace, which we succeeded in doing, but the downside to it was, well, Santa Barbara just felt like Orange County or San Diego. Granted we were probably setting ourselves up for the local easy stop or the tourist trap setting on Main Street – I mean that would be like us directing folks to Old Town Pasadena or 3rd Street Promenade. These are the places you hang out at when you’re not 21, from out of town or just point all the non-cool people to when you need to send them to some generic place to do stuff.

The highlight of the evening, or the downfall depending on who you talk to, was when Emosweater was totally violated by some drunk guy, so much that I totally panicked for a few seconds. My instinct was to grab his hand and drag him out of there or step in between the two to break up space, but it was Emosweater and not some girl and it was a guy that was hitting on him and it was – it was so strange. Either I was frightened by it, or caught in some eerie fascination of what was unfolding. Then at Madison’s, some chola threw some shit at the bartender right next to us and things almost went gansta. I guess the excitement really fired up this random drunk guy, who went on a freak-everyone-at-the-bar-air-humping-spree. Of course Emosweater was the first to be accosted. It was so his night.

The drive home initially was rough, we went through three or four cycles of getting drunk and sobering up that day – with drinking starting at 4 pm, which is really taxing on the body we discovered, but after a few shakes of Monster and doing the ABC’s of name that boob, we made it home.

My favorite: Dirigibles and chesticles. How I never heard of chesticles I’ll never understand. Pure genius.

Tags: half marathons, Halloween, Holiday, Santa Barbara, WTF Weekend

Small Talk: Do You Dress Up For Halloween?

“So what are you dressing up as for Halloween?”

I never have an answer to that question. Halloween was never something I really ever prepared for. When I was a kid maybe, but most of it was due to the fact that my sister loved it and when she went to get costumes, I just kinda followed along. My costumes were almost always last minute and slapped together.

There was one treacherous year where my Luke Skywalker X-Wing Fighter Pilot costume was mutilated by my dad (he totally had the best interests in mind) when he tried to alter my costume. The eye holes were hurting my eyes, it was one of those really flimsy plastic masks you get for a few bucks in a box made from trash bags, so when he tried to cut the eye holes to make them more comfortable, he made huge holes. It looked liked shocked expression Luke Skywalker and to further try to fix it, for some odd reason my dad took a red marks-a-lot marker and made eyelashes. Oh dad, I totally knew he meant well and was trying to help, actually I’m laughing thinking about it right now, but that was probably one of the worst costume moments ever, because at the school I went to, when you’re in Kindergarten, they parade you around all the classrooms for all the other kids to see. I was the Asian kid with red eyelashes Luke Skywalker.

The other time Halloween was sad for me was when I couldn’t fit into this dinosaur costume I wanted really bad because I was fat.

So gobs of candy and bad costumes aside, Halloween has always been whatever for me. I just follow along, go to parties and see where the night takes me. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had some great nights, the year I was a samurai ronin comes to mind but that can go both ways when you consider I sobered up mid coital with the blind referee, not that it was bad or good, but because it was that moment where you say to yourself, “holy shit, how did I get here?”

So, awkward Halloween moments notwithstanding, how do you feel about Halloween? Do you dress up? Do you go all out? Or do you prefer to stay home and pass out candy? What is Halloween for you?

Tags: Halloween, Holiday, Small Talk

Memorial Day 2009 Recovery Day

When most were out at the beach, at BBQ’s or some sort of festive event, I was at home nursing a hangover. I wish I could don my ninja mask and parade around town saying my red sash of awesome fury left a wake of party wreckage during the course of the weekend – but I’d be totally lying if I did. In fact, I only drank for a few hours before I was done in by the cursed magician of mixing maelstrom malice. He conjured up a storm so fierce in my head that my chant to summon him is now indexed in the tome of forbidden spells.

When I said with much excitement, “I want to wake up with a hangover!” It was merely to express that I wished to drink plenty, not actually wake up with a hangover.

I spent most of the weekend with my family. Fishing in the desert, I know, it sounds funny. Wait til you hear that it was a body of salt water in the middle of the desert, no where near an ocean. I know. Mind boggling. Break the bubble, lr2California. Thanks.

So when Saturday rolled around and I kissed my baby girl goodbye, always a tough moment for me, having to leave my niece, I raced back home to the west side in hopes to catch a surprise party. Not that the people were so important or that this was some crazy party, no I just felt like I had to dip my feet into some sort of party before the weekend went belly up. My sister and I had a few beers earlier that day, 7:43 am to be exact, earliest beer so far. Keep in mind we were awake since 3 am and our sense of time was warped. I missed the “surprise” but the party it turned out just started. I slammed 3 Sam Adams, 3 Heinekens and an ethnic Romanian shot, probably distilled from their grandmothers basement. I was scared at first, because, well, it was definitely some gnarly shit in description, but when I shot it down, it wasn’t bad at all. I’ve had worse. Note: Crazy Banana Filipino Shit. Without even realizing it, I had fast tracked myself. My face glowing red, not from the alcohol, but from the heat of the place and with the embarrassingly lovely Romanian women complimenting my hair, I began my downward spiral into drunkenness.

Add to the fact that after we left the party for an after party at Wokano, fuck the door girl by the way, couldn’t even look out for a fellow Korean, I recall having 2 Vodka Redbulls and 2 Vodka Sodas. I’m sure there were more. So you can imagine when I woke up the next morning grumbling to myself that I should have eaten before going to sleep only to open the fridge door and be flashbacked by the to-go cartons from Norm’s that it was some kinda sloppy night.

So I spent all day nursing a monster headache.

I didn’t have a weekend like Sketch678 where I cruised art shows, patio parties and beach BBQ’s. No, I was being lame and in pain.

Tags: Holiday, Memorial Day