Dating Commandments and Lesser-Known Drinking Holidays

I was thinking today about the different balances men have to strike. If women are stuck between Madonna and Whore, then men are always trapped somewhere from Warrior to Minstrel.

When I wear my Harley-Davidson boots and don’t slouch, I can reach about 5’11” and change. Add in 160 pounds, glasses, and cheeks that make girls want to pinch them and I’m far from an imposing figure. So it’s impossible, or at very least, improbable for me to act like a warrior. I’m roughly as physically imposing and intimidating as Calista Flockhart.

I’ve made peace with that. And I know that plenty of women out there are looking for a creative, intelligent, compassionate guy…or at least THINK they are.

I’ve decided that no one really knows what the hell they want. That’s why I don’t make lists of what I’m looking for in a girl.

I was speaking to someone today who’s led a very goal oriented life: looking for the right school, the right program, the right job, the right partner, the right house and so on. But now, having gotten all that, they’re not happy—and they’re running out of accomplishments to aim for. And after speaking for a while with them, you just get the sense that something’s going to give. Sort of like O.J.’s marriage.

Years of dating and experience with the opposite sex have led me to develop guidelines about what doesn’t work. Things like:

• Girls who get drunk and sucker punch my friend’s fiancé.
• Girls who decide to spend $3,000 a month on blow, Ritalin, and X.
• Girls who passive aggressively maintain lists of my faults to spit back during arguments.
• Girls who decide blow dumb, skinny rednecks and think I won’t find out

You know, just some basic guidelines of what I’ve found hasn’t worked in the past. It’s sort of like the ten dating commandments. Thou shalt not date girls who gargle with hillbilly semen behindest thine back! Now that’s catchy.

In all seriousness, though, I think it’s much better to be open to whatever comes by. Or at least, not be so intent on what you think you’re looking for that you miss something great right in front of your nose.

St. Patrick’s Day is upon us again. Let me ask a serious question: Are we, as a culture, really that desperate for another drinking holiday? I mean, between this, Cinco de Mayo, Fat Tuesday, Marti Gras, and all the rest of these ridiculous little binge-fests that we create, are we really fooling anyone? Have we reached the point in our society where we can’t drink just because we want to? No one really knows what the fuck St. Patrick’s Day is celebrating anyway, aside from some half-assed salute to Irish Homosexual parades. That’s why I like to pick random days to enter bars and bellow, “Give me five shots! It’s a holiday, bitches!”

To which someone will invariably go, “Really? What’s the occasion?”

My answers depend on my mood:

• Guy Faulk’s Day
• St. Swithin’s Day
• National “Venereal Disease-Free” Day (beware of people who don’t drink on this holiday)
• Canadian Independence Day
• Australian Thanksgiving
• That crazy Mexican Dead-Person’s Christmas

It’s amazing how many people will suddenly decide that it would be the gravest of insults not to honor the struggle of our slow speaking, mild-mannered Mountie neighbors to the north by getting absolutely falling over drunk.

The Long Distance Dating Formula

My friend has composed an ingenious system of ranking how beautiful a woman is. We call it the beer scale. The idea is to measure how many beers it would take in order for you to sleep with a girl or for her to sleep with you. Thus, an ugly girl would be 5 beers and an attractive girl would be negative 5 beers.

A while ago, I wrote that there is a direct relationship between how hot a girl is and how long distance a relationship a man is willing to tolerate. However, I realized that I wasn’t fully taking into account ability in bed.In order to come up with a worth-while formula, however, we need to first come up with an accurate measurement for a woman’s bedroom abilities. I submit that we divide the bedroom portion into four distinct portions, each deserving of a grade between 1 and 25.

• Foreplay: how well does she rev your engine and make you want her?
• Oral: does she have a silver tongue?
• The Main Event: No real explanation needed here…
• Creativity: can she get both legs behind her head? Extra points are awarded for “nailing the dismount.”

Now that we have our ranking systems, I am proud to submit the first ever “Long Distance Dating” formula:

So let’s try an example. Say you’re dating a blazing hot girl, with decent foreplay skills, no experience in oral, great in bed, and moderately creative. Then she ups and moves 200 hundred miles away. Should you break up with her?

-10 (57) + 400 < 0
-170 < 0

Conclusion: stick with that girl! In fact, we can definitively see that that girl is worth sticking with if she moves up to 285 miles away. I really don’t know how men functioned before the advent of this formula. I’ll be sending this to the patent office next week. I fully expect this to replace Einstein’s relativity theory as the single most important equation of all time.

A few side notes about what an evil person I am. (Note: I recently discovered that a small segment of the population suffers from a condition known as “Sarcasm Interpretation Deficiency. People with SID can’t tell when I’m making a joke, so they write me angry messages at 4 A.M., accusing me of not having a soul. For their convenience, paragraphs in red are meant as sarcastic, tongue in cheek comments.)

As I was writing this, a friend of mine came up behind me. I asked for his assistance in thinking of one last category in ranking bedroom performance and he said, “How about the way you two interact afterwards.”

I stared at him blankly for a second and said, “Why would a man care about what a woman does after sex? I just assumed that 2 minutes afterwards you’re already driving home again.”

In the words of Dave Attell, “It’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t escape.”

My friend responded, “Well, you know some times relationships require brief intervals of speech between the two parties involved.”

“Relationships? The most speaking I’ve ever had to give on the subject is, ‘Whoa, honey. I think that by sleeping with me, I may have inadvertently given you the wrong impression.’”

The Palisades Mall: Death Star Of Suburbia

A few years back they opened a monstrosity of a mall not far from my house: four floors, an ice-rink, and enough sweat-shop quality merchandise to make Indonesia the powerhouse that it is today. Seriously, the tag of every item of clothing that comes out of that place should read, “Made lovingly at gun point by starving 10-year-olds.”

The place is perhaps the largest man-made disaster since Star Jones. In searching desperately for a location, they finally decided on a place 6 miles up the road from the other mall, and in the middle of a swamp. I kid you not: the west side of the mall is literally sinking each year. It’s as if God, looking down, has finally taken an interest in thwarting the ever-expanding evils of Rockland County.

In staying with the “worst location ever” theme, there is a large section of land in the middle of the acres upon acres of parking lot that is not paved. “Why?” you ask. “What could be more important than building a decadent monument to consumerism and poor taste?” It seems that there was a small interest that would not sell their land: a veteran’s cemetery.

At this point, you have to wonder what the fuck the builders were thinking. It’s like they were trying to build a mall based on all the horror movies they’d ever seen.

So, the mall is sinking, located in a stinking swamp, a stone’s throw from the old mall, all while violating the memories of a group of dead veterans. As far as first impressions go, that’s a tough one to overcome. It’s like breaking the ice with your girlfriend’s parents by professing your love of necrophilia.

The inside is giant, ugly, tough to navigate and about as dry as Barbara Bush’s snatch. Migrant, Arizona dust farmers have an easier time staying hydrated than anyone who spends 20 minutes in that hell-hole. I heard they used it as a training ground for troops about to be shipped to Iraq on how to survive desert environments.

One time I was shopping there with a group of friends. We had been there for about three hours and I refused, out of principle, to buy any beverages from the vending stores in the mall. I figured as long as I was supporting evil anyway, I might as well try to minimize it. By the end of the three hours I could barely open my eyes. Each blink was accompanied by a sound that I’d associate with tearing duct-tape off the roof of a shanty. I was pretty sure that I was going to drop dead at any second.

So we all went to a local diner. We sat down at a booth that had a large pitcher of water. However, there were no glasses in sight. Finally, in my last effort before I crumbled into a mound of dust and blew away on the next gust of wind, I grabbed the pitcher and proceeded to drain half of it without taking a breath. When I came up for air I noticed two things:

1. Water had a far more bleach-like after-taste than I remembered.
2. The bus-boy was looking at me as if he discovered me violating the corpse of a week-dead goat

I placed the pitcher back on the table, and, without saying a word, he took it, dropped a dirty rag in it, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

At my age, walking through the mall is an experience that leaves me feeling dirtier than the urinal in a Bangkok whore-house. At some point in time, (long after I had turned too old to take advantage of it, I might add), it somehow became standard practice for barely pubescent girls to dress in clothing that would make a transsexual street-walker blush.

Tiny tank-tops that say “dirty, cum-craving skank” and tight little ass-pants that say, “I want you to rape me in a dumpster behind a bar” are apparently the height of fashion. After spending 20 minutes walking through the mall you suddenly develop an overwhelming empathy for pedophiles. Girls who can’t be a day over 13 are dressed like they moonlight as strippers. It’s enough to make any man say, “sweet statutory!”

However, if Star Wars taught us nothing else, it’s that all evil things have a single, tiny, flaw in their design. And just like the Death Star, I’ve discovered the mall’s one fatal weakness.

I was walking on the fourth floor one day, looking at the thong riding up on the ass of a 10 year old girl, when I felt the entire floor vibrate. I stopped and retraced my steps. Sure enough, when I reached the same spot again and set my foot down, the entire floor shook. In light of everything the mall had inflicted on me, my community, and the memories of a group of veterans whose grave now overlooks a Cheesecake Factory, I think my next action was duly measured and justified. I immediately began jumping up and down.

In the span of about 15 seconds I was surrounded by three mall cops. It would seem I was not the first to discover the one spot with which to rid the County of this eye-sore. I doubt I’ll be the last. What I will say is that if you ever hear tell of a rag-tag group of rebels assembled to make a plucky counter-attack to forever free Rockland of evil, you’ll know who was behind it.

May the Force be with us.

Jealousy

Jealousy is a strange thing. I’ve only ever been jealous of one girl that I dated…but then again, it was the only time it was justified.

I was dating a girl who lived about 40 minutes away and we had been having some problems—little arguments, nothing out of the ordinary. But one morning I woke up, sat bolt upright and I just KNEW she was cheating on me. It was like some weird silent alarm. “Somewhere, another man has trespassed on the cootch that I own!”

To this day, I’ll never be able to explain that one moment of clarity or psychic enlightenment. Maybe it was a bunch of clues I’d picked up subconsciously—or maybe I should start playing the lottery. Whatever the case, the jig was up.

Even at my jealous worst, I wasn’t that bad. I called her up and asked her what she had done the night before, if there was anything she wanted to tell me, or how she thought our relationship was going. She denied everything.

Little did she know that I had inside sources, mutual acquaintances, and that she had the mental quickness of a bag of rocks. Great ass, great at arguing, but no brains behind it. I started asking what she did nights and who with, then matching them up to my sources. She failed every time this kid “Andy” she knew was involved.

That was pretty much enough for me, but the fact that he avoided me like the plague and never made eye-contact with me when I was around was the final kicker.

I broke up with her pretty much right after that, and it was one of the few times in my life that I seriously contemplated violence. I’m no weight lifter. I’m about 160 pounds soaking wet, and not an inch over 5’10”. Still, there was little doubt in my mind that I could have beaten this kid into a pulp. I was lean—he was scrawny. It was the only time that I sort of understood a certain psychotic girl I dated briefly who cold-cocked my friend’s fiancé.

I finally decided against it. There was nothing really stopping me from rolling down there with a crew and beating him like a minority suspect, but I realized that I wasn’t really mad at him. I was really just pissed that my ex had lied to me and I had no real good way to direct my anger back at her...until I got drunk a few weeks later and left a passive aggressive away message. Besides, he was going to find out soon enough what kind of a woman he had gotten involved with.

It’d be best if everyone came around to this point of view. Why get mad at the other man if your girl runs off? Your girl was the one who cheated! Guy number two was just an available cock. And really, that’s all some girls need. Temptations are everywhere—it’d be like beating up a butcher when your girl got fat. The butcher was just offering the meat; your girl was the one who couldn’t turn down the extra sausage.

College Sports: The Most Crooked Sport This Side Of Foxy-Boxing

March Madness is on us once more and all I have to say is “Fuck College Sports.” Really. College sports are SO wrong on SO many levels. I refuse to attend or watch college games on principle. Let’s start with the least deplorable bit of this disgusting past-time and work our way up.

First, I don’t understand why people would WANT to watch college sports. Are there not enough pro-sports out there to satisfy your need for pointless competition? If that’s the case, I’ll give you three to one that you haven’t seen a woman naked in years. College Basketball is even worse because they do it while NBA is in full swing. If you’re into basketball, why would you want to watch semi-pro over professionals? It’s like banging Margaret Thatcher when Selma Hyack is naked, oiled and spread eagle on your bed. Where are we going with this next? Retarded, Paraplegic French-Women’s Softball?

Second, I have no idea why anyone would root for a college team. How many dumb rednecks are into Duke or Georgetown, but never even open an admissions booklet? Seriously, spend that energy and attend some of your kid’s little league games. If you attended one of these schools, how can you be anything pissed off at these student athletes?

Let me explain something: I graduated from college and I had to bust my ass and accrue a sizable debt to do it. These “student athletes” are an embarrassment. I’ve watched post game interviews, ok.

“We juz…you know pulled together for coach. And I know’d da lor’ juz wanted uz to win cuz we done ex’cuted fundamentals.”

Is this the image you want projected to the world about the kind of graduates your school produces? These kids

1. Don’t know dick
2. Don’t pay dick
3. Don’t do dick

I would be PISSED OFF that a kid, who doesn’t have to meet GPA and SAT minimums, attend classes, or apply for financial aid was getting a degree similar to the one I sweated, crammed and bankrupted myself for. He can put the ball through a hoop. Big fucking deal. Remind me again why this is something that makes one deserving of a free-pass?

And don’t give me that “school spirit” bullshit. Your school is mercilessly fucking you for any and all funds they can squeeze out of your parents. My student loan officer is one late payment away from breaking my knees with a crowbar behind a bar. There are Siberian Prison camps that showed more compassion than I received at my school (that was aimed at New Paltz where, thankfully, I spent one hellish semester before transferring. FUCK SUNY NEW PALTZ!). You want my school spirit, here you go: if I see you walking down the street with a sweatshirt from my university, I will make an effort not to swerve up onto the sidewalk and grind your face into the pavement with my front tire. Yay, Blue Devils!

Lastly, I detest the sheer dishonesty of it. I understand that the world is corrupt. But the corruption displayed in college sports is the kind that is so blatant that it makes you want to riot. Every 30 seconds, some portion of the following cycle is publicized:

1. A school is busted and/or fined for a news story where it’s revealed that some of their athletes had people taking their tests for them, received cash, committed crimes that where covered up by the university.
2. The School expresses shock, outrage and disbelief. The coach is promptly fired.
3. 1 year later the same coach is hired by another school and the cycle begins again.

Basically, what each one of these schools is saying is:

"We don’t care about academics, morality, or even the pretense of honesty. If you attend this school and you’re not an “athlete,” fuck you. You’re a third class citizen. All we care about is you paying your tuition or, for you females, providing a place to deposit precious Student Athlete-semen."

I would have far more respect for these schools if they stopped with the pretense that these kids were students. In fact, I might even be able to stomach the whole event if I thought that these academic instuitions were displaying a portion of the integrity and excellence they're always claiming to stand for. These kids are not there to learn and we all know they’re getting paid. Just because you’re giving scholarships to idiots, doesn’t mean everyone else is one. Then again, judging from March Madness ratings, maybe we are.

Public Humiliation: The CVS-Guide To Safe Sex

I needed to buy condoms so I stopped by the drugstore near my house, a few months back. I went in and, since I’d been there a few times before, went down the “Family Planning” isle to make my selection. However, when I reached my destination, I found something new: the condoms were now locked away behind glass. I was a bit deterred, but I marched up to the front to talk to one of the employees.

I was standing on line, in front of a mom and two kids, roughly 8 and 6 years old. Behind them were a father and his son of about 7. I like kids. I get along with them, so I shot them a smile and even stuck my tongue out at one of them. They giggled and the mom smiled at me. When my turn in line came, I explained my need for protection to the chick behind the counter. She promptly got on the intercom and announced:

“Manager, to the front. A customer wants to buy condoms. Manager to the front.”

See, this is why I'll never be a politician: I completely forget how one aspect of my life impacts another. Ten seconds ago, I was just a goofy looking kid making harmless fun with the children in line with me. Now, I was a sexual deviant, trying to lure middle-schoolers into my basement with promises of toys and candy. I mean, from the looks I was getting, it was clear the parents thought I was planning on using the condoms on one of their kids.

The manager finally arrived (Which was good, because I was fairly certain that the mom was outside jotting down my plate number and calling the cops), bearing a key ring and we walked back to the “Family Planning” section. He opened up the precious items and then proceeded to stand over my shoulder and watch me make my selection.

This latest development was something that totally blindsided me. There’s an unspoken rule that govern men when it comes to buying pornography or condoms: take what looks good and get the fuck out. When a man spends TOO much time deciding which condom or movie or magazine really suits his needs, it’s disturbing. I however, was suddenly struck by indecision.

Normally, I’d buy whatever the hell first looked ok. Now, however, I was worrying about what the store manager would think of my selections. It’s dumb, I know. What the hell did I care if the guy thought I was a freak or a deviant? He was just some loser CVS manager!

“Lubricated? Too boring. Ribbed? What, I’m not good enough on my own? Flavored? Am I saying that I can’t convince my girl to go down on me without flavors? Glow-In-The-Dark? Would that mean I’m too uptight to have sex without the light off?”

On a side note, do women really care what kind of condom a guy uses? Isn't a dick still just a dick, no matter how you dress it up? Until I hear otherwise, I think we can just assume that the condom enhancements have gone too far. I actually own a pair of "Whiskey-Flavored" condoms. They're from Scotland, naturally. When I saw those, all I could think was, "Wow, how bad does cock taste that women prefer the taste of grain alcohol?"

Finally, I just grabbed a box my “usual” (if anyone wants to know, please send a headshot, personal measurements and a list of turn-ons to my email address) and started up towards the front. I stopped after a pace or so and turned back towards the manager.

“Why’d you guys start locking them up?” I asked.

“People kept stealing them. We figure that they were too embarrassed to buy them.”

“Oh, right." I said. "This is MUCH better.”

Dinner Is Served

One of the key differences between men and women is this: women like good sex. Men like ANY sex. I knew a few girls who, through years of bad sex and incompetent lovers, had almost completely been turned off to sex.

I met a girl at a concert once. She was tall, had a great body and a very pretty face. I flirted a bit with her, but I noticed an almost sexless aura that she gave off. It was just something about the way she spoke or the way she moved you could just tell: she was not very sexual.

Despite that, I persevered. I’m nothing if not determined. I had been speaking to her for perhaps a week when I said, “You know, you’ve never had really great sex. I don’t care what you say about your old boyfriends or hook-ups, I can tell just by talking to you that you’ve never had GREAT sex.”

She protested, but I didn’t back off. I asked her about her last boyfriend.

“He was a virgin”
Strike one.
“He didn’t really have any other experience with women.”
Strike two.
“He wasn’t really into foreplay”
You’re outta here, buddy.

This poor girl had been with the same bad lay for over a year, proof that men are far too insecure about their performances in bed. If a man can go a year without giving a girl and orgasm and she still sticks with him, there’s nothing that he can do in bed that will make her leave him. Seriously, that to me is more reprehensible than the girls you see on the internet blowing horses. Because in that scenario, at least you know the horse is enjoying itself.

At any rate, my attempted seduction was made doubly hard by her ex. Not only was she really hot, she had completely forgotten what adequate sex was. Let me tell you: if I have to argue a case before the Supreme Court, I will never again be as persuasive. If I ever have to talk a jumper down from a ledge, I’ll never be as soothing and as inspiring of trust. I shit you not, by the time I was done working this girl, I could have gotten her to agree to a threesome involving herself, her mother, and some sort of water creature.

When I finally got her into bed, I made a conscious decision. Generally, I do what I can to make sure the girl involved has a great time. This time, I went a step farther—I was ready to give up my body. Forget my own pleasure, I was going to give it my all, chaffing, cramps and latex burn be damned!

From then on, she was even hotter. She began flirting more, making more lewd comments, and on top of that seemed so much more happy and relaxed. Later, she told me that I had reawakened her interest in sex.

What can I say? I go where I’m needed.

Seriously though, it’s this type of shit that makes me despair for the state of gender relations. I don’t care how great you get along with eachother outside of the bedroom, when it gets to the point that either of you has no interest in sex, that’s a dysfunctional relationship. On one hand, I wish that men and women could talk about sex without being defensive and really work through their issues. On the other hand, I’m more than willing to revive the appetite of a girl who’s been fasting for time out of mind. Ladies, dinner is served.

Porn

As I’ve said before, there are few things more unnerving than people who are completely comfortable with porn. We’ve been raised our entire lives to believe that pornography is single-handedly responsible for blindness, hairy palms, deviancy, and moral decay. And most men have made peace with that. We’re content to be social pariahs in the privacy of our own basements. But when we emerge in public and have to interact with strangers who are really comfortable with this deviant sexual behavior, the whole experience is really unnerving. This is exactly why I dislike strip-clubs.

I’ve always been somewhat amused and bewildered by the comfort that men have watching or discussing porn with friends, however. Large groups of men tend towards bragging and homophobia, yet for some reason it's utterly acceptable to watch naked men engage in sodomy with a woman of doubtful enthousiasm and acting abilities. In fact, it's occationally a past-time that involves popcorn. Example:

Not long ago, I was planning on moving into a place with three of my friends. One of my more computer-literate pals was plotting on installing a server for the apartment, complete with a drive and files available to anyone on the network he’d set up.

The ears on another friend of mine perked up. “How much space are we talking about?”

“Ummm…Probably about 300 gigs.”

“Not good enough. I need like four of those. At least a terabyte of space dedicated completely to porn. I want to be the single largest supplier of porn on the east coast.”

This is the same kid who lost his porn collection after a hard-drive meltdown. To this day, he gets emotional when you bring the topic up. He acts as if he lost a child.

“Man, I know you had some good times with your old collection, but it’s gone now. It’s time to let go and move on with your life. Maybe stop the candle-light vigil and start to rebuild.”

“You don’t understand! No one understands! What we had was special. I’m not talking about this anymore!”

As comfortable as men are watching porn with their friends, there are a few rules that are absolutely non-negotiable. For example, you can watch, but don’t seem TOO interested. You can comment on what you see, even talk about another man’s hog, all while sharing a sofa with another man. But under no circumstances allow any part of your body or clothing to touch the guy sitting next to you.

I think that most women have made their peace with the fact that men possess pornography. I suspect that they’ve adopted a “as long as I don’t have to see it, I’ll pretend it doesn’t exist” attitude. Or maybe it’s more of a “boys and their toys” type of position, where they shake their heads and chuckle to themselves.

Personally, I find that my porno collection grows and shrinks, month to month, year to year. When I’m in a relationship where sex is plentiful, the collection dwindles. In those cold weeks of singles life, the collection expands. It’s like a measurement of my social life. I’d like to think that when I finally settle down with that perfect lady, I can forever delete my porn collection and finally clear about 70 gigs of space off my hard drive. Then again, from what I’ve heard of married life, it may be that I won’t really appreciate porn until I’m hitched.

There's Always Room For Jello-Shots!

I know what you’re all thinking: “Ehren, sure I like drinking, but isn’t there an easier way to ingest alcohol?” Well my friends, as luck would have it, there IS another way to get drunk. It came about like this:

One of my friends was having a party, so I went with him to the store to stock up. We wandered about the supermarket, picking up things that caught our eye: chips, dip, cards, and lots of Mardi gras beads. You know, to this day I’d really love to be there for the first transaction that went down in this way:

Man: Remove your top!
Busty Lass: I shall not!
Man: Show me your boobs!
Busty Lass: I, sir, am a lady of dignity, class and high breeding. That you think I would “show off my goodies” to you, an ill-mannered, drunken hooligan is an insult to women everywhere! Have we, the fair sex, toiled for so long in the name of equal treatment simply for me to debase myself for a perfect stranger in the midst of this common thoroughfare? Hang your head in shame, sirrah!
Man: I have shiny beads.
Busty Lass: Woooooo! Spring break! Fuck you, mom and dad! I’m gonna be on America’s Skankiest Cum-Dumpsters!

Seriously, at what point in our culture did the trade of beads for nudity and dignity become standard? Still, I guess I, as a man, should be happy that it came to this. All I know is that I’m not about to flash my testicles to girls for plastic jewlery.

At any rate, my friend and I at last came to stop in front of the Jello display. He was browsing through the various flavors, trying to find the perfect concoction to mix with alcohol when I called out his name.

“Greg!”
“What?” He drifted over.
“GREG!”
“What...” then he followed my eyes and there was a moment of silence.
“Greg, everyone always makes jello-shots…is there any reason we couldn’t make alcoholic pudding?”
"I don't know."
Another long pause before, in unison we said one word that would change house-parties forever: “Butterscotch.”

We combined the pudding ingredients along with Kailua and rum and proceeded to get absolutely hammered on the results. Basically, if you’re looking for a way to not only kill your liver, but send your cholesterol through the roof at the same time, we had the snack for you. Binging on it was the equivalent of living four days as wino on the streets of New York.

The whole experience was eye-opening for me. It made me wonder what other ways there were to get plastered. Perhaps my greatest moment was still to come. I was sitting (well, propped up, barely clinging to consciousness would be a better description) on the couch, licking the empty serving bowl when I yelled, “GREG!!!”

He stumbled in. “Yesh?” he stammered.

“Greg! Wherza pot-brownies you made lasht week?”

“Dunno…I think they’re gone. Shtop spinning, Ehren, ish not cool!”

“Greg…next time you make them, you should frost them with the alcoholic pudding.”

Long silence.

“Ehren, are you the devil?”

I’ve also been toying with the idea of an alcoholic ice cream. As soon as I figure out a way to get liquor to freeze, I’m going to make a fortune. I want to be clear here, I don’t mean liquor flavored ice cream—I mean get-you-so-drunk-you-fall-face-down-in-the-cone-and-drown-in-chocolate-sprinkles alcoholic ice cream. The way I see it, it’s the next natural progression from those Zima drinks that they serve now.

I’ve honestly never understood the purpose behind those things. They’re so loaded with sugar that you’re guaranteed to get sick. Not only that, I hear so many girls say, “I love them because you can’t taste the alcohol.” I don’t suppose these women ever considered that maybe tasting alcohol is a defense mechanism? Maybe if you don’t like the taste of alcohol after a few drinks, you shouldn’t be drinking that many in the first place. What are these girls doing? Seeing which one will get date-raped first? Then again, these are usually the same females wearing body glitter and pants with writing across the ass.

At this rate, we’ll be up to alcoholic I.V.s soon. Bartender, 300 CCs of Henessey, stat!

The Night I Lost My Casino Virginity.

Casinos are strange places. I really have no idea how they caught on, other than some fundamental joy people have in receiving pain.

The first time I ever went to a casino, I was 21. It was right at then end of a semester of college, and two of my friends were driving up to one of the Canadian casinos. “What the Hell?” I figured. “I’ll ride along, soak in the experience and maybe have a little fun.”

I’d played most card games a few times and I’d seen “Casino” and “Swingers.” That was pretty much the sum of my knowledge. Based on what I knew, I had formulated a plan for the evening:

1. Dress up like a high-roller
2. Lay $50 down on blackjack
3. Lose my $50
4. Have drink

Unfortunately, my friends had other plans. What is obvious to me now is that I went with the wrong crowd to have fun a casino. Allow me to elaborate.

Friend number one was a Puerto-Rican dude, with one eye, who drove a minivan and had an obsession with computer-science. He was also perhaps the most uncool kid I knew. And I don’t mean that with disrespect, because he’s sweet, smart and funny guy. But seriously, he made the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons look like John Shaft.

Friend number two was a six foot, female socialist who lived on a spiritualist commune. She was a very strange mixture of hippie and red-neck, because she was born and raised in a small town outside of Buffalo, NY. As a result, she had never actually SEEN a hippie, before college, and had sort of made up her own opinion of what they were. So she ate venison steaks, listened to Ani DeFranco, grew long hair, but drove a pick-up truck. I’m not really sure where the socialism came from…My guess is that she knew that people were protesting something in 60s, but never really figured out what. So just picked a random movement ending in “ism.”

So my friends came to pick me up and let me tell you, I looked like a million bucks: Black suit, black button-down shirt, black tie, black fedora, pulled down at an angle, silver tie-clip and cuff-links. It looked like I was three drinks and a bottle of cologne away from giving someone a dead fish wrapped in a newspaper.

My friend’s battered minivan rolled to a stop, and I opened the door and looked at my friends. Hippie girl was wearing a gortex hunting coat and jeans. The Puerto-Rican kid was wearing sweatpants and a ripped hoodie. It was like they had been picking through the trash all night and had decided to find threads appropriate for drinking the day away in dumpster behind a liquor shop.

“What the hell? How come you guys didn’t dress up?”

“Why bother? We’re just going to the casino and back.”

“You’re right. In fact, why bother with basic hygiene? Eventually, you’re just going to get dirty again.”

So we rolled into the casino that evening and I tried to salvage my optimism for the night. I was young, looked good, was prepared to lose some money, have drinks and maybe meet a cocktail waitress and tell her that I was "the guy behind the guy behind the guy." If you don’t know what that line means, for God’s sake, go rent “Swingers.”

Plus, I had a posse with me. However, little known fact: your posse loses credibility when they wear sweatpants and drive a minivan. My friends instantly found the nearest change machine and converted all their money, along with their remaining dignity, into tokens. I was trying to re-enact the high life of 1970s legalized gambling and they were intent on blending in with the group of seniors on a field trip from the retirement castle. What was next on the list for them? Prune juice and high-stakes shuffleboard?

Let me explain something to you: No one really has good odds when they walk into a casino. The whole purpose of the place is to make profit, so they’re not going to set up any games where you REALLY have a good chance of winning money—at least not THEIR money. If you sit down at poker, you’re going after the money of other players. But every other game is set up to be unfair. That shouldn’t be a shock to anyone. But the biggest scam of all is the slot machines. If you sit down to play the slots, you’re better off listening to Lewis Black’s plan for an evening in Vegas:

“Convert $500 to quarters, go your room, empty the quarters out on the bed and stare at them for a long time. Why? Because you’re never going to see them again. Then go into the bathroom and one by one, flush the quarters down the toilet. And the nice part about that is every once in a while the toilet will back up and you’ll feel like a WINNER!”

As unfair as the other games maybe, the slot machines are the only spot in the casino that NEVER have a losing day for a joint. Dice tables might get hot, someone could hit it big playing baccarat, but slots NEVER lose. BECAUSE THEY’RE LITTERALLY PROGRAMED TO NOT PAY OUT.

Needless to say, my evening did NOT go well. I lost my $50, got a drink and then had to wait around for 4 hours while my friends flushed their money away, playing nickel slots. My casino virginity had been taken and, figuratively, I was lying in a corner weeping, while scrubbing desperately at the dried semen and shame that was dripping down my pants legs.

A different group of friends and I are going to visit the Borgata in Atlantic City tomorrow. They’re a lot more socially graceful, a whole lot better dressed, and generally a lot of fun, but stepping back from the whole thrill of going, I have a difficult time of figuring out WHY people love to go. Because I know, the plan for everyone is to have some drinks and lose $300 at poker. The weirdest part is we’re going down to celebrate someone’s birthday. It’s a really strange present when rather than give anything, you take the birthday boy to a location where they’re more or less guaranteed to lose, everyone knows it, and everyone still wants to go anyway. Men are bizarre.