I'm finally home

I made Indian friends last night (Saturday night). I don't know why, but I never feel right in a place until I have Indian friends. Yeah, my ex-gf was Indian, but I think that was more a symptom than a cause, if you know what I mean (speaking of India the country).

I met a bunch of people down at a beach called Golden Garden. It's a family place in the day, but it's a drunken bonfire once the sun goes down. Me likey.

I cut my foot wide open on a rock. That sucked. Still does. But at least I brought back half a frickin' tree for the fire. I even had a cheering section going. The tide came in while I was getting the wood, so my path was blocked by, well, the ocean. I sucked it up and hauled the wood over a pile of rocks (hence the injury). The fire was bright and warm. Girls I didn't know were impressed. It was totally worth it.

My plan for Mother's Day, after calling my Mom and telling her how much I love her of course, is to go to the store, get all the fixins', and make a ginormous batch of my trademark sangria, and go hang out at a park in the sun. Football, anyone? My Seattle friends have yet to enjoy my sangria too. Awesome, because I was just waiting for a blue sky, sunny day -- just like this, to make it.

That's all I got for now. I'll leave you with what I wrote in the aftermath of the Drive By Truckers debacle (...mutter, mutter...). This is unedited, so take it for what it's worth. Y'all oughtta get a laugh out of it anyway.

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I don't believe there are occasions for which a Hawaiian shirt is not called for. I think Hawaiian shirts are the height of fashion. Weddings, Christmas dinner, funerals, you name it, I'll wear a Hawaiian shirt to it.

That was my thinking as I began my big night out. I've been salivating over these Drive By Truckers tickets for weeks now. I don't know why. I'm not a huge fan of the band, though I do enjoy them. I was just pumped to be going to a show. Plus, it was a prime occasion for the wearing of the Hawaiian shirt. I'm halfway convinced that I make plans just so I can shame everyone else with the magnificence of my shirt(s).

I have about 5 of them, and I usually go for a mid to low-tier one, but this was a special event. It called for the best. I wanted the Hawaiian shirt that made everyone else jealous. I wanted nothing but the finest. The big kahuna, if you will.

If I weren't a worthless piece of garbage, I'd be using Wordpress instead of blogger, and I could post a picture of it for you. Instead you'll just have to look at this and imagine it wrapped around the chestal/torso region of one big hunk of The Seattle Scribe. The yellow one. But the leaves are blue. And the fabric is of high quality. It's really nice, I got it in Naples, FL. God, strike me dead now for not switching to Wordpress earlier.

But wait! I know what you're going to say. "The Seattle Scribe, aren't all Hawaiian shirts just totally awesome?" No, dear reader. Not by a long shot. It takes a skilled eye and a trained style to not only pick out, but to wear well, a Hawaiian shirt.

A Hawaiian shirt is not just the classiest piece of attire you can wear, it's also a responsibility. You have to know how to be Hawaiian shirt guy. If Hawaiian shirt guy isn't spreading joy, who will? Dipshit over there in the sweatervest? Please. No one's inspired by a sweater. He's just happy his girlfriend let him out to play. She probably picked out his outfit. You know Hawaiian shirt guy's girlfriend doesn't pick out his clothes.

A Hawaiian shirt is an open invitation for everyone else to come over and be sociable. Not everyone can be Hawaiian shirt guy. We know this. It's what keeps us special, so we make no bones about it. But nothing irritates me more than a jerk in a Hawaiian shirt. So if you're feeling antisocial, don't wear it.

And if you're buttoning your Hawaiian shirt all the way up, you're missing the point completely, and I am a miserable failure at explaining who Hawaiian shirt guy is supposed to be.


Ahem. But I digress. The night begins...

Showered up and thusly attired, I embarked on my long journey to ... The Bar across the street. I met up with BrewKiller, my new buddy. Guess where I met him? Hint: it wasn't at the museum. The man, he can kill some brew. Usually ones I paid for.

Sufficiently pre-sauced, we cabbed it to the show. Son Volt was already on and the place seemed empty. We wondered if southern rock was going to make it in the Pacific Northwest. We had nothing to worry about. The place was packed soon enough, too packed.

There was no where to stand, and the bouncer kept yelling at us to get off the stairs. I understand they're a business and they want to sell as many tickets as possible, but they really ought to limit the number of people just a bit. Down about 100 from however many people were there last night would give just enough room to actually move around.

None of this would have been much of a problem if BK were a normal drunk. Don't get me wrong, I was clipping a healthy buzz at this point, but BK was trashed. He was becoming a problem. Now I'm all for forgiving drunken hi-jinks, but at some point you have to handle yourself as a man. Agree with it or not, you can't fucking smoke in the bar, and nobody wants to hear your goddamn harmonica at a concert where music is already playing, that's what those people are doing up there on that thing called a stage.

You want to know how the Drive By Truckers were? So would I. I never got to hear them because dipshit got tossed from the bar for being too drunk. The whole night I was snapping smokes out of his mouth before he could light them. When that wasn't working, he kept going outside to smoke every 5 minutes and then barging back into the crowd. At one point he tried to give me his jacket to hold for him? WTF? Do I look like your girlfriend? He asked the same bouncer four separate times if he could go outside to smoke and come back in. Four times, to the same guy. It's no wonder they finally wouldn't let him back in.

Now, ordinarily I would let him stew in his own juices outside and enjoy the show. Fuck him if he can't follow simple rules. But I went outside with him and then I was guilty by association. They weren't letting us back in. I'm still kind of pissed about it, but the place was so overcrowded anyway that I was kind of glad to be out of there. I saw about 30 seconds of the main show.

I'm not going to be a dick to him. He wasn't that drunk, he was just being a nuisance. But I doubt I'll be suggesting any more concert nights out with him.

So we went back to The Bar, which doesn't kick people out, and ended the night there. Not exactly what I had in mind. I won at some darts and cheated on my diet with some delicious, wonderful beer. Ho hum.

I'll give BK one thing though, he flat out insisted that we go to the hottub on the roof. That was a good call. Then he went home.

I wasn't tired at all. When I decide to get drunk and party, I'm usually all wound up and raring to go until the birds are chirping. So... I decided I would start writing about the night. Not exactly party-tastic, but I wasn't going to sleep. I threw some salmon on the barbie and started writing. I'll include below some of what I wrote, but keep in mind that I was drunk and pissed off about missing the show.

To put it in context, BK is from Texas, and he makes a big deal about how we have something in common, both being southerners. It's been 10 years since I lived below the Mason-Dixon line, and my family all moved out of WV, so I don't really feel very southern anymore, but whatever. The build up to the night was about how us southern boys were gonna go get drunk and listen to some southern rock. Yeah!

I thought he could hang. He said he could hang. He can't hang.

Please keep in mind that I do not stand by my blanket characterization of the entire state of Texas. Texas is a great place and I can say that with authority because I've never been there, but I got drunk with a guy from there, so...

Anyway, here we go, with a few eff words edited out:

I took my friend out for some drinks and a show, and the drunk bastard, he got so fucking drunk, he got us tossed from the goddamn show we went to in the first fucking place!

Drunk ass punk muthafucka. Texas is full of some bitch ass punks, I'll tell you what.

And this is why I don't write when I'm drunk. I tried to write about other things, but all of my stories kept morphing into how everyone from Texas sucks, and how Texans can't drink, and what a crappy place Texas is, etc...

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

BK was hardcore about the hottub. I had never been to my own rooftop hottub, so we went.

We had a splash fight. A *MEGA* splash fight. It was the splashfight to end all splashfights. I won, of course (I got you wetterer than you did!), but that's not the point. The point is, people from Texas can't fucking drink. I'm not causin' trouble, I'm just sayin' these Texas mofos are bitch ass punks is all.

And this is how pretty much everything I wrote came out like. If you're reading this and you're from Texas, it's nothing personal. I have nothing against Texas. I've never even been there. I was just pissed about the show. It was my own fault really. I should have just let him get booted and left him. Stupid amature drinkers.


Oh, and after all that, how was the Hawaiian shirt, you ask? It was aweome! I was the only one wearing a Hawaiian shirt in the entire building. Everybody else looked like douchebags. What's with the drab clothing Seattle? There are clothing items other than vests and jeans, you know. The next best dressed person there, including women, was from a gaggle of sweater-dorks, and he just looked like a well dressed tool.

I'm hardly one to be big on fashion. My friends would laugh at the notion of me giving fashion advice. I just don't see why everyone is so happy to go out in public looking like idiots (an ironic statement coming from a guy in a Hawaiian shirt, huh?). Don't you people have mirrors? I don't know who I'm talking to. No one from Seattle actually reads this.

There was another person who was the only guy wearing something: a guy in a cowboy hat. Before things took a turn for the worse, I ended up near him in the crowd and said hello. He's a pilot in the Navy. I don't know if you've ever known any pilots, but they kind of all act the same. Very deliberate. That's been my take anyway, but that may just be military pilots.

And that's that. I can't believe you read this far. How was your Tuesday?