cell phones are the devil

i've come to the conclusion that i should no longer be allowed to enter The Whaler if i have my cell phone. neither should Nikki. the past few weeks we have been the drunk dialing/texting queens. not that we haven't had fun, and not that we've really done/said anything that terrible, but we've spent one too many mornings wondering "did i really say that?" and "i wonder if i actually spoke with (insert name here), or if i just left an obnoxiously drunk message..." it's gotten to the point where i thank baby Jesus that i have an unlimited text messaging plan.

last night Son came over and played a message he saved from last week after our Sharkeez fiasco, and i honestly thought i was going to die because i was laughing so hard that i couldn't breathe. the best part about it was earlier this week he told Nikki that she left the funniest message, and she was absolutely convinced that i was the one who called. but sure enough, it was her beautiful voice on Ricky's VM busting out Human League's "Don't You Want Me Baby", then transitioning into one of my own new personal favorites, "Jason Ricablanca Lives by the Sea" (sung to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon"). i only wish that she was home to hear it.

and then it's moments like that which lead me to believe that we should, in fact, keep on keepin' on. who would entertain the masses? who would bring smiles (possibly perplexed frowns) to our friends faces without a "get your ass to The Whaler or we'll hate you" call from us? how would you know that we were belligerently wasted if you didn't have record of a text message that we sent you? i may have just changed my own mind in the process of writing this entry. yup. i did. i'm pretty persuasive like that.

i say yes to drunk dialing. bring on the drunk texting. i for one don't want to live in a world with out "Jason Ricablanca Lives by the Sea". do you? i hope not...

a celebration fit for a queen. well, a karaoke queen, at least...

this past weekend was full of more karaoke than i care to remember. scratch that. this past weekend was full of more karaoke than i can remember, likely due to my belligerent nature at the end Sunday evening. yes, i am well aware that it was Katie's birthday and that i was more drunk than she - but for those of you who weren't there/don't remember Friday night due to your own belligerent nature, allow me to indulge you...

Friday we arrive at Brass Monkey Caffe, much to the delight of Miss D.Driscoll. a table right next to the mic has a nice "Reserved" sign for and we knew it would be a night of singing and all around madness. for sure it was the latter because of these reasons (and more):

1.) crowded does not even begin to convey how many people were shoved into that bar. thank the good lord we had the smarts to call ahead and reserve a table.
2.) a very large, frightening man (who definitely was Abumchuck's cousin - ugly cousin at that) would not leave Katie alone, and i'm pretty sure he slipped her a ketamine. he was terribly rude to the rest of us. for your viewing pleasure:
i could have taken him though...
3.) the birthday girl became very drunk VERY quickly (hence the above ketmine reference). so quickly in fact she puked her life away in one of the tiny stalls at Brass Monkey, and in a Nordstrom box that was in my car on the way home. just when i thought i had seen it all, she still had more to unload when we got back to the house. thank god i heart taking care of drunk people... and that i was sober.
4.) in the midst of the puking display and my feeble attempts to get every one out of the bar to head home, Dan decided he wasn't ready to go home. i made him look me in the eyes and swear it was ok to leave him there. he did. so i did. his new "friend" took him home the next morning. we know, Dan. we know. "nothing happened."
5.) Ricky introduced me to Moving 93.9, which many of your probably already knew about but i don't really listen to the radio. C&C Music Factory is the shit.

poor KBOMBS was not feeling so hot, to say the least, on Saturday. so we had a pretty mellow day in preparation for Sunday Funday.

and what a fun day it was (even though she claimed that she was still hung over from Friday). around 3:00pm we ventured down to my old stomping grounds for Katie's first Sharkeez experience. it was a game day, and a Sunday no less, so we knew that getting a table would be more than difficult. ironically two of the first people we saw when we walked in the door were Windi and Ursula. they had their claims already staked on a few bar stools and eventually Nikki and i worked our way in there as well, but it just wasn't flying. the birthday girl, Dave (Human) and Dani were still seatless and i know we're good - but "stealing" three more stools from people who clearly had been sitting there pounding screwdrivers since 11:00am? bottom line: we needed a table.

luckily (or not so luckily, depending on how you look at it) poor Windi and Ursula were being harassed by a nice fellow who affectionately refers to himself as "Biscuit".


Biscuit, anyone? no?


now what are the chances that i actually knew Biscuit? slim to none, but what do you know - Biscuit is friends with Jake G, who is friends with Jake Bierner, who you guessed it is one of my friends. Biscuit is now overflowing with joy and insists that we come sit at his table with him. and a few strategic scoots later, Biscuit's table becomes our table. sweet victory.

Biscuit took a liking to our Katie Lu, as you can see from the photo above, but even more funny was that Biscuit's friend took a liking to our Dave. i feel it important to mention that Biscuit's friend happended to be male. bought Dave a shot, kept giving him eyes... it was weird. i don't think Dave gave him a fair chance, though.

a few Fishbowls and a few pitchers left us feeling pretty good (except for Danielle who was lying in the car and Katie who still wasn't drinking much. lame.) so i guess what i'm saying is that Nikki, Dave and i were all feeling pretty darn good. long story short, Chicago won, Indianapolis won and i was about ready to throw up (due to football, not my drinking habit - yet), so we took off.

what did we do when we got home, you ask? we drank of course! for some reason i thought it would be a good idea to drink more and even smoke a little. 8:00pm rolled around and we were ready to go out again. destination: karaoke Sunday at the Whaler.

our crew had significantly grown by this point. PA had randomly stumbled to the house (after i randomly bumped into him at Sharkeez) with Rawley, Dan & Nolan were done celebrating the Chicago victory, and even Matty made the six block trek to celebrate a bit more. Katie started drinking, i kept drinking, and the night becomes fuzzy after that. allegedly, i was so retarded before we left that i couldn't even sing anymore - i just talked through entire songs. and not even reading the lyrics, i actually was just rambling nonsense and screaming "happy birthday, Katie!" into the microphone. but even still, we all had too much fun.


(note: i apologize for my extreme tardiness in the finishing and posting of this entry. sue me.)

near death experience

if it wasn't bad enough that i was trying to recover from Martha Luther King Day festivities, i'm pretty sure i almost died today.

some how 2:00pm rolled around and i realize that i haven't eaten anything yet. one fell swoop, hunger hit me like a freight train. nothing in the house seemed to satiate my famine, so i set out on a mission. the destination of my mission was unclear, but one thing was crystal - i need to eat.

i'm cruising down Washington. i pass Frankie and Johnny's and am inevitably heading to In-N-Out for a grilled cheese when dizziness erupts in my head like a beer that's been left in the freezer too long. instead of hunger pains shooting through my body, i now feel nauseous and, well, terrible to put it plainly. for sure i'm not even going to make it the extra 5 or 6 blocks to In-N-Out. i make a very illegal, erratic U-turn and speed toward home. "do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars," i say to myself. "for the love of whatever God i don't believe in, please let me make it home."

i pull onto Fleet Street, park like an asshole and run straight to my bed. lying down doesn't seem to help. i still feel like i'm going to vomit and the dizziness i experienced earlier has progressed to horrible shooting pains throughout my head. the silence that is my room isn't helping much, either, so i turn on my tv hoping a little background noise will calm my senses. no such luck. instead, an awful soap opera is on and all any of the characters on the show seem to do is scream; be it a high pitched i'm on a roller coaster having the time of my life scream, or the i know you're cheating on me come out of your lover's closet so i can slap you across the face kind of scream, they were screaming like there was no tomorrow. and at that moment in time, i really felt like there was no tomorrow.

lucky for me, i see Nikki walking down the hall so i scream (politely) for her to get me Advil. at this point Danielle has heard all of the commotion and she and Dave the dog are now in my room (bed for that matter) assessing my condition. Nikki, being the darling that she is, not only gets me Advil but makes me a sandwich. Danielle swears i have a fever and i am now wondering why i've never made a will because my head is about to fall off. i eat my sandwich, but still feel like i was thrown around in a hurricane.

an undisclosed amount of time later, i some how for who knows what reason end up at Starbucks. i order my usual and with one sip am almost instantly rejuvenated. that's right folks, i was going through caffeine withdrawals. i (inadvertently) tried to quit coffee today. really, i was just super busy with work and never made it out the door to Starbucks (or even to the kitchen to make coffee or put any sort of victuals in my body.)

so the morals of the story are, i can (a) never quit coffee and (b) never start doing heroin.

¡prospero ano nuevo!

two thousand seven: so far, so good - which obviously isn't saying much seeing that it's only the second day, but FSC kicked it off with a bang so let's hope the good times keep rolling. (my birthday is in two days. clearly the good times will continue to roll...)

for those of you who were in a paper bag, i spent NYE in Punta Banda with 20+/- of my closest and not-so-closest-but-we-partied-just-like-we-were-closest friends. Danielle, Nikki, Chad, Dave the dog and i headed down to Mexico on Saturday with Katie & Co. close in tow. upon arrival it was apparent that our rental looked like a mental institution and/or that an old lady had died in the house, and possibly still remained in one of the many creepy closets. i thought a shower would calm my senses, but i was foolishly mistaken. clearly the joke was on me, because there was no hot water. none. so i was standing in a cold, Mexican shower with my flip flops on because no amount of money would ever convince me that it was ok to be standing there barefoot, crying. it was sad. i was scared.

thank the good lord that we had some friends in another house not too far away, so we piled back in the cars and headed over to drink our sorrows away. seeing them was definitely a morale booster, as we had spent our last Mexican rendezvous for Danielle's birthday with some of them. my first and last tequila shot went down smoothly and i was finally at ease. (don't worry, i said first and last tequila shot. obviously a copious amount of shots were thrown back after that point, but give me credit - i learned a little something from La Fonda. ixnay the equilatay.)

night one drew to a close, so Danielle and i proceeded back to our shack for some unforeseen reason and slept in the death bed. we then reeked of death and campfire. it was awful - or awesome, depending on how you look at it. so long story short about the haunted house: we had a sober moment of clarity and vowed never to go back. the other house(s) were spacious enough to accommodate us all, and thankfully people were nice enough to share beds. those Hollyweird kids saved our lives.

but i digress... back to the mayhem.

Chad brought enough weed for the Sovereign Military Order Of Malta's army, but unfortunately they couldn't make it down so that left us to burn through it. my Sunday started with four people passing three joints around the fire pit leaving me pretty freaking stoned. so i did the only thing i could do - drank beer. the rest of the day was filled with more drinking, more smoking and for sure frolicking on the beach. Eric introduced us to the fabulous game of Viking Kubb, which we now don't know how we lived with out. (FYI: in search of purchasing our own Kubb set on the world wide web, i stumbled across the fact that the annual World Championship is held on Gotland. those interested in trying out for the team inquire within.) drinking dreidel , Sudoku challenge, and losing at poker were also some of the reasons why i was pretty drunk and had to nap before midnight rolled around.

champagne flowed freely when the clock struck twelve and madness ensued. i honestly haven't laughed as hard as i did that night in a long time, which is saying a lot because i'll pretty much laugh at anything. we had a great group of people and i'd like to think that we all had the best time.

Mexican highlights (in no particular order):

- Mike slept wearing a sleep mask. it said something on it, which at the moment i can't remember for the life of me. to make myself giggle, i'll say it said "take me to sleepy town".
- Reed showed off his sick dance moves. Reed's mom had some sick moves of her own...
- the PIMP cup.
- Cody Cody Slutz tried to talk Elek "off the ledge" when in fact he was unquestionably the deciding factor that pushed him back over.
- Nikki and Nick made out - even if it was "in jest"(so they said...) - in front of everyone.
- the little girl who was vacationing next door was doing snow angels in the sand - face down.
- we partied with Benicio del Toro. (not really, but you would have thought he was Benicio del Toro, too, if you were drunk/stoned/in the dark.)
- Nick threw up. Mike took pictures of Nick throwing up. Eric stood in the shower watching while Mike took pictures of Nick throwing up.
- Elek some how became "Papa Elek", and Danielle and i found much glee running around saying "Papa Elek! Papa Elek!" in an Irish/Scottish accent.
- Godfrey flew a borderline gay kite.
- Eric thought he was going to be murdered.

resolutions i've made because of this trip to Mexico:

1.) i need to "Jump Around" more.
not only was it just good old fashioned fun, but for some reason Danielle and i were sore the next morning. jumping was the only physical exertion from either of us the entire trip (unless walking from one end of the Kubb court to the other counts. yeah, didn't think so...), so in short, we clearly don't jump enough.
2.) i'd like to find a giant fake marlin to hang above our fireplace.
i may even possibly sponge paint the wall an awful orange color just like Nana did. (possibly is the key word.)
3.) i hope to take many more trips to Mexico.
or just take more trips with friends. best case scenario: more trips to Mexico with friends.
4.) i'm going to try and get as many people as humanly possible to start using "Mexican" as an adjective.
it's really quite effective. for example, Danielle cut her foot and it was bleeding a little. if she would have simply said "i have a cut" i would have felt bad, but not that bad. but the fact that she said "i have a Mexican cut" really got my attention. also see my multiple uses of Mexican as an adjective above. it works. you will like it - maybe even love it.

in closing, thanks to (Papa) Elek, Cody and crew for feeding us and giving us a place to stay. and i'd also like to give a very special thanks to Nick because every now and then i catch myself busting out a "in the morning when i rise" - and it's golden.