Beer Pong and Jersey Girls

I kicked off my NYC summer this weekend like any other red-blooded New Yorker that doesn’t have the scratch to go to The Hamptons...I went to the Jersey Shore. A friend of a friend was having his annual Memorial Weekend BBQ at his family’s place in Belmar and I decided to attend as I usually do when I’m in the tri-state area for the first weekend of the summer.

If you know anyone that’s 18-34 years old from New Jersey then you probably know by now that beer pong is the official game of the Garden State. I’m dead serious, they take this shit seriously in Jersey. A guy at the party was actually bragging that he has a “regulation” nine foot table and “official” beer pong plastic cups complete with his own logo, which he uses for his annual 32-team beer pong tournament (coming later this summer...stay tuned because I’m going).

When I asked if I needed to bring anything to the party, my friend told to bring ping pong balls (an integral part of any house party in New Jersey). Five minutes later I get a call back from him because he forgot to tell me to “get the ping pong balls with three stars on them.” I wish I was joking about this...like there’s a fucking difference from brand to brand of ping pong balls. These are the things that guys in New Jersey worry about, getting the right ping pong balls and having logoed plastic cups for their annual beer pong tournament. And they wonder why Jersey gets a bad rap.

After a long afternoon of beer pong accompanied by the music of Bruce Springsteen (a.k.a Jersey Jesus) and Bon Jovi - it wouldn’t be a weekend on the shore if you didn’t hear “Living on a Prayer” at least ten times - my buddies and I head out to Bar Anticipation (“Bar A” if you’re a local). Which begs the question, “what exactly are you anticipating?” Maybe the results of your next STD test after you hook up with one of the Jersey whores at this bar? Or maybe you're anticipating the moment when the slut you’re talking to pauses for a millisecond before rattling off another five run-on sentences about her pathetic central New Jersey existence. Whatever it might be, after about an hour at this place I was reminded why I only go to the shore about once a year.

So here I am, a good 20 beers into the evening talking to a girl from “fuck-if-I-know” New Jersey and wanting to shoot myself in the face. This girl is a spot-on ringer for the quintessential “Jersey slut.” She’s rocking the pink glossy lipstick and caked on purple eye shadow with three piercings in each ear (two studs and the obligatory overly-large hoop earring) look. As if this isn’t enough, she’s got a green bikini top on under a black shoulderless shirt that has these silver, washer-like holes in them, which have left some interesting tan lines from a full day in the sun. The best part of our conversation was when she started telling me about all the “white trash” that was at the bar she was at earlier in the evening. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.

I know you’re thinking “easy half points,” and you’re right, but instead of starting off my summer with a half-point Jersey slut lay-up (see the NYC Hook-Up Fantasy Game post), I decided to bow out of the conversation and grab a few slices before passing out in the back of my SUV (as the floors of my friend’s house were already packed with random passed out people).

As the early morning sun shone through my tinted windows on Sunday morning, I couldn’t help but think how much happier I was waking up next to my duffle bag than that make-up beast with the nasally Jersey accent I was talking to the night before. Why do I ever leave Manhattan?

Note to Self

Thirsty Thursday's in Hoboken are a bad idea. Yeah, I mean right now I'm feeling no pain whatsoever, but that might have something to do with the eight Stellas, two So-Co and lime shots and Irish Car Bomb I just had. But who’s to say?

Sidebar: I really miss Miss Kitty’s in the ‘Boken...that place was great. I think I pulled more tail there than Patrick Ewing at the Gold Club. OK, maybe not that much, but you get the point.

So why am I not taking a cab home? That’s a great question. I think it’s a combination of the fact that I’m a masocist and that I love riding the trains. No seriously, if you’ve read my other blogs, then you know I can’t get enough of the interesting people I see on the subway and trains in NYC. Like Liza Minnelli needs to start off her day with a vodka martini, I need the trains to help spawn my creativity. Where else in the world do you have a legitimate chance of seeing a transvestite, a bum, a Rabi, a guy that looks like Albert Einstein and another guy that looks like an able-bodied Stephen Hawking all in the same subway car? And yes, this actually happened to me once and I have a picture to prove it.

Unfortunately tonight I’m sharing a subway car with a slightly overweight Mexican dude in a wife beater that has no idea which direction the train is heading. “Hey buddy, read the fucking sign.” I swear to god he’s asked the train conductor if he’s going in the right direction twice in the last five minutes. I guarantee you he’s as drunk as I am right now...but who isn’t bombed riding the fucking PATH train at 1:34AM on a Thursday night. It’s going to be a painful morning tomorrow. Jesus, I need help.

NYC Hook-Up Fantasy Game

The weather might not be reflective of it, but summer is upon us and we all know what that means. That’s right sports fans, the three sacred months between Memorial Day and Labor Day mark the official hook-up season in the NYC area. Like cockroaches scurrying out of the crevasses of the subway after a train has past, when Memorial Day weekend arrives the women in this city seem to wake up from their winter hibernation and start wearing less and drinking more. This, of course, leads to copious amounts of fornication and good times are had by all.

Getting laid in this city during that 100 day time frame is like playing dodge ball against first-graders, it’s still fun, but there’s really no challenge in it. I’m convinced that even the cabbies in this city get laid during the summer (think about that, the next time it’s 3:55 AM and you’re considering taking the chubby bar skank you’ve been talking to for the last hour home for a spin...just go to Ben’s Pizza and call it a night instead man, your stomach and your pride will thank me for it in the morning).

So feeling as if hooking up in the summer becomes less of an art form and more of a right of passage, I’ve come up with a hook-up game to make things a little more interesting. For all of you NFL football junkies that are dying because it’s a good three months before your fantasy football draft, this one’s for you. Get your buddies together this weekend, crack some beers and set your own ground rules. Here are some of my proposed “house rules” to get you started. (Note to all of my female and gay male readers: sorry these rules don’t apply to you...you could get laid on the subway if you felt like it, but please feel free to keep reading)

Setting the Stage:
• Season starts on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and ends the Monday night of Labor Day (roughly 100 days)
• Leagues can consist of two to ten “Players”
• Scoring is on the honor system, so only allow “Players” in the league that you trust
• Prizes can vary, but I would suggest a winner-take-all pot with a $100 entry fee per “Player” and some kind of golden penis trophy(might be a good touch). I’d also suggest some form of “prize” for the person that finishes in last place; this keeps the game interesting for all involved throughout the summer...something humiliating like wearing a dress out with the buddies on a Saturday night.
• The definition of “hooking-up” needs to be clearly defined before the game can begin, as you can imagine the endless number of grey-area cases (e.g. does “just the tip” count, etc.)
• Hook-ups can only be counted once. This means if the girl you hook-up with becomes your booty call or girlfriend, you're done...so act accordingly.
• Unlike Major League Baseball, the use of performance enhancing drugs is strictly forbidden. This consists of drugs that might be personally taken or given to others. I might have a sick mind, but I’m not a rapist.

Scoring System:
• Any single girl hook-up (+1 point)
• If she has natural red hair or if she’s Asian (+2 points)
• Bar waitress (+2 points)
• If she’s married (+3 points)
• If she’s a bride-to-be at her bachelorette party (+4 points)
• Female bartender - the holy grail of the bar hook-up (+5 points)

Bonuses and half points:
• If another Player in your league has already hooked up with her that season (+half the points from the system above)
• Threesomes, or two hook-ups at the same time (+3 bonus points from the system above)
• If she’s over 40 years of age or more than 7 years your senior (half the points above - younger guy factor...or old desperate factor)
• If she’s more than 7 years your junior...and of course no younger than 18 (+2 bonus points from the system above)
• If you’re at a bar or met her at a bar in Connecticut (double the points from the system above) - prudes
• If you’re at a bar or met her at a bar in New Jersey (half the points from the system above) - this should be self-explanatory
• If she’s Puerto Rican (+half the points from above)

The “Player” with the most points at the end of the season wins. Easy as that. Have fun, remember to wear your jims, and be careful out there. Happy gaming fellas.

NYCDG

"Don't Let Impotence Ruin Your Sex Life"

Riding the subway in New York City is always an adventure, you never know what kind of creatures you will encounter. If you ride the subway enough (as I’m sure most of you do), then you’ve no doubt seen the drunken, passed out guy with puke and/or shit all over him. Or what about the paranoid woman with the buggy eyes that keeps her purse so close to her chest that you’d think she’s breast feeding it? My personal favorite is the Bible-thumping crazy people that yell and scream in indecipherable accents about how we all need to repent before the world ends...next Tuesday. Does anyone else wonder how these people pay rent? What do they do when they are not preaching about the end of the world on the E train? Do all the Bible-thumpers know each other? Do they meet regularly to brainstorm about their message, so they are being consistent? Is there a Bible-thumpers union that has to negotiate with the “one-armed homeless guy” union over territorial rights on the subway lines? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Last night I had a moment of Subway Zen, actually it was more like subway irony, but Zen sounds much more catchy. So I’m on the train going to meet some friends out for a few drinks and there’s this guy sitting across from me. At first glance, he seems like your typical Johnny Cool Balls, bridge and tunnel asshole that just walked off the PATH train. You’ve seen this guy before. That guy with the slicked back hair, the striped button-up shirt that’s only half buttoned, and a look on his face like he’s too good for the subway, but he really needs to save the eight bucks he would be spending on cab fare so he can start the night off with a vodka-tonic before progressing to his typical $4 Bud Lights.

So there we are, Johnny Cool Balls and I trying not to violate the unspoken rules of the subway and make eye contact with each other, when I notice that the guy is wearing brown loafers, no socks and has his jeans rolled up a good three times. What?!? Who does this? Does he think that makes him look cool? Did he see an American Eagle advertisement last week with some dude rocking the rolled-up jeans, no sock-wearing loafers look while fishing in Montana or what?

My moment of irony, you might ask? The very next moment I notice that Johnny was sitting directly under an ad that read, “Don’t let impotence ruin your sex life.” I couldn’t help but think that impotence was the last thing this American Eagle-looking asshole had to worry about ruining his sex life.

My drunken, random thought for the day.

The Subway

The subway is the great equalizer. I'm looking around right now (it's 4:27 AM) at at all of these blue collar (read: poor) workers around me and guess who's standing? Yep, me. That's cool . I'm ok with standing while the salt of the earth sits down. Hell, they walked into the subway car before I did, so they have earned the right to sit. Seriously. I really don't mind.

In all other worlds, they are shining my shoes (while I sit), cleaning my toilets (where I sit), or doing other menial tasks which I don't even think about doing (as I sit on my cushy leather chair at work). My point is, and has always been, that the subway is the great equalizer. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, blue collar or white collar, toilet scrubber or toilet sitter, as long as you get on the damn train first, you get a seat.

The subway is a place where a school janitor can look a CEO straight in the eye and give him the "fuck you, buddy, I got here first" look. I think there's something poetic about that.

This is the Drunk Guy's World

Hello and welcome to my world...the Drunk Guy's World, that is. Am I an alcoholic you might ask? No, absolutely not. Alcoholics go to meetings. I, my friend, am a drunk. But then again, who isn't in this city? Who doesn't like to go out after work and blow off some steam over a few cocktails after The Man has spent the last 10 hours of the day winding them to tight that a nun's asshole would be jealous?

Alcohol is not an end unto itself, it's a means to an end . It's what the proletariat use to help them forget how bad their lives are and what the bourgeoisie use to remind them about the greatness of theirs. It's a social conduit that unites people from all walks of life and reminds us that "hey, we're all in this together, so fuck it, let's get bombed and enjoy each other. "

Since this is my very first blog, I think that I should probably set a few ground rules up-front:

Rule 1: Nothing is sacred. I'm not a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, an anarchist, an atheist, or any other -phobe, -ist, or -ism, you might think of. That said, I reserve the right to taunt, make fun of, or talk shit about any race, religion, or political view point I feel like. If you're easily offended, this blog is probably not for you.

Rule 2: I am who I want to be at any particular moment. I call this "The Drunk Guy's Golden Rule." You know what I'm talking about, sometimes you never know what you're going to become after you've had a few drinks. You can become the "happy drunk," the "angry drunk," the "overly touch-feely drunk," the "sad drunk," the "obnoxious drunk"...the list goes on and on. Being that I will most likely be writing some of these blogs after a night on the town, I reserve the right to take on any personality trait for any particular blog. You might also recognize this rule as one that women live by on a daily basis.

Rule 3: Lighten up, it's only life. Read my blog (often), enjoy it, take it with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila, but don't live your life vicariously through my (mis)adventures. Go out and experience it for yourself. Have a few (too many) drinks, pour one out for the homies, and most importantly, enjoy the ride.

Cheers,

NYC Drunk Guy