todd

another thing about last night. to understand why it's special, you have to understand our landlord todd. we've seen him trying to do yard work drunk at 2am. he works in his dad's chiropractic clinic, and he lives in the house next door. when something breaks, he has to call his aged dad to come over and fix it. he's super nice and has a ponytail and a bulldog named otis. we've never seen todd smoke, and he never talks about it, but clearly the man smokes a lot of pot. he's the definition of the lovable fuckup stoner. well, frank said he talked to the taller of the two no-makeout girls from my last post. she said she lives two doors down (on the other side of todd). hey, she's our neighbor! so they swapped todd stories. she knows otis. we've seen him drunk. she has smoked with todd. mother of god, she smoked with our landlord. wait for it...wait for it...boner!

so she told frank to stop by anytime. i think we should bring a present. any suggestions? what kind of gift says "be our friends"?

knobstacle course

This blog is turning into all weekend recaps all the time. Meh. Last night we threw a party. They've been in a steady decline for the past year or so, culminating in our all-time biggest failure party in december, at which we (a) lost money (b) broke an amp, a speaker, and my cd player (c) had several things stolen (d) didn't have any fun. Last night's party was way better, and here's how I know: pretty strangers were (a) flashing (b) dancing in their bras (c) not stealing anything. Two tall girls almost made out, but at the last minute they ended up being sisters. Dan and his friends came to visit from Carbondale, and I introduced him to a hot girl with mad piercings and a boyfriend, and then they made out. Hot Sara(h?) did her usual bit of walking around the party absently, accepting shots and making friends with dozens of unworthy hipsters, leaving a trail of boners. Her boyfriend is gonna have a heart attack at 30. The papers will say it was drugs, but we'll know better, you and me.

A waste pipe blew a hole in the morning, and we spent the rest of the day getting the landlord to fix it and cleaning up the gross dishwater that covered our basement floor. I soaked it up with a bag of sackcrete. So to get to the kegs you had to pass through a concrete-and-dishwater moat. When we throw a party we cover the living room in plastic, and we close off the rest of the house so all you can get to is the living room, the basement, and a bathroom, so you can track concrete wherever you want. Student patrol showed up and gave Bert a written warning that we were too loud. They must have a stack of those sheets in the pockets of their reflective vests. Da-da-da student patrooool! No cops though.

I did a great job of inviting people, and they did a great job of showing up. Yes, right down to the last three girls I've slept with. ohhhhhh. Trouble. Hateful ex had nasty words for me and is still here (go away). Haven't-called-her-since-we-had-sex showed up (because i called her finally) and we had a hug and i was supposed to find her and her friends free cups and i failed and got drunk. And current girl stuck with me the whole night and was blissfully unaware of the others. British Matt calls a night like that a "knobstacle course", and I made it through. Neeta came despite having thrown up earlier and talked about how much tension it caused to make out with her roommates. Phil hears this as if it were explicit instructions: "if you get me drunk and give me a hot stranger, I'll make out with her (and you)." i told her the two girls not making out were sisters, and she didn't see why that should stop them. neeta doesn't have sisters, which explains how she could be serious about something like that. but jesus, still, the very suggestion.

rambling post, hope you enjoyed, i'm going running.

goodnight dirtballs

BLOOMINGTON, IL - another weekend recap! mine's good because i'm the only one ballsy enough to give you dirt (read: be indiscreet). more on that later. friday night ended with an anti-climactic run-in with the saddest soul in urbana: Backpack. this is the kid who pretended to drink turpentine at our last party and made off with a dewalt drill, possibly two shitty speakers, and bert's copy of 1984 i had sitting next to the toilet (in his backpack. ere go, nickname). my two months of tracking him down led nowhere, and natalie spots him at a random party in the hippiest party i've ever had the pleasure of ruining. i got in his face for an hour, took his money ($6 is all i get for a $250 drill and a book i was in the middle of), and left when caroline asked me to leave. no drill, no ass-kicking, no restitution, no apology; just a pathetic snot-nosed hippie and a strange lesson about victimization and the futility of revenge....uncomfortable silence....saturday!

laura's birthday was great. i debated at the store whether to bring merlot or cabernet sauvignon, and whether to get the big bottle so everyone could have some, or to get the smaller one because big bottles look so cheap. from that moment it just got classier. melissa was too drunk to say hi. she slapped my ass and dipped into the bathroom with laura to tell secrets. we spent the walk to the bar scheming how to get her into *****'s *****, **** **** **** ***, with an occasional warning that i wasn't being smooth enough. the men spent the night in man fashion, buying rounds for each other, making friends with another group of guys over our mutual determination to save the president from french terrorists, armed only with giant plastic guns and a jack and coke. those crafty french snuck at least 200 special ops ninjas onto air force one, but they were no match for me and ed. k didn't look comfortable until he found a stool next to a doorway, a seasoned doorman who might never readjust to civilian life. then we let a bear mauling a woman on tv (in slow motion! three times!) distract us from our offensive linemen duties. a third-string safety found a hole and got his hands on our quarterback. this was the sack of his career. we didn't even give him a hard time. we were so stunned by his skater shoes, sagging pants with red bvd's, jack-the-pumpkin-king beanie, and no kidding absent front teeth that all we could do was record it on cell phone cameras. none of us are sure how we let him take her home. anyway, ***** has herpes and syphillis now thanks to us. cheers!

i spent the rest of the weekend with sambo, but not before checking out this pierce brosnan lookalike's friend's party. we got there just in time to see the place clearing out. one of the "hosts" was showing us the door by sticking his tongue out and miming how he would masturbate on us if we didn't get out fast enough. shoo had just enough time to capture the experience by taking a picture of the stolen heineken banner with holes cut in it to allow for the mounting of $10 speakers. instant mtv grind dance party. i understand guys: it's not rape if you earned it by throwing the krunkest party ever.

thank you ISU, for making me feel as decent and wholesome as the potato salad at a st. alfonsus pot luck.

are you there god? it's me, phillip. step the fuck off my brother.

Got a call from turd-face brother Sam last night. He left me a message last month that was thirty seconds of him pissing. That's the kind of phone call I like - the kind that at worst makes me want to beat him up. The last night kind is the kind I don't like - the kind where he has good news.

Sam called to tell me that he's seriously talking about marrying his girl Libby. It's not the first time. Before I met her I used to yell at him when he'd talk about shit like that. Then she charmed the shit out of me and Mom convinced him to have a little patience with the marriage stuff, so we were cool. Now he tells me he talked to Libby's pastor (he says the guy's sort of a father figure to her). He told the guy, "I wanna marry Libby, but we're probably gonna wait 2 1/2 years." The pastor responds, "No way, if God wants you to get married, don't wait. Do it as soon as you can!" And then he whips out a notebook and starts calculating how soon they can do it. And from this discussion, Sam's again talking about putting off school a trimester to get married to the girl he's only been dating two months.

I know part of the problem is I hate marriage and I hate evangelists because of how close I came to both. But even if I'd been a heathen from birth, it would be hard to see my brother get mixed up in all this stuff. Having religion is a good thing, and Sam needs it more than anybody. But he's trusting and he believes if a pastor tells him to do something, that pastor heard it directly from God, like the blues brothers. And just between you and me, I think Sam's rushing into marriage for the sex. For serious, he's not having any more sex before marriage. Not even kissing, not even groping. Not even cuddling. So he's actually trying to get married sooner for all the sex. Creepy.

So while I'm trying to understand the most basic notions of decency and modesty (and why everyone seems to think they're so goddamn great. really, i just don't understand), Sam has totally switched sides on me. He's even encouraging me to try abstinence. As if! Why can't there be a religion that encourages you to be honest with your many sexual partners, call them the next day, use a condom and birth control, and keep a well-trimmed bush? Why does Jesus have to say that the only way to deal with sex is to not have any?

happy ash wensday

Mardi Gras has come and gone, and I didn't get flashed even once. For those of you who didn't flash: now is the time for dignity and restraint, not last week.

Mardi Gras was like Christmas, like Melissa said. Ed and I begged for a rubber chicken from every float. Instead we got beads from guys who felt sorry for us. Mostly they were throwing at Jessie and missed. Someone hit me in the face with penis beads and Jessie caught them. I was fine with not getting the beads, but spare me the fleischpeitsche to the face. My friends wanted to see the French Quarter, so we went on Saturday night after endymian, and it was the lamest, grossest, most crowded college-y thing I've ever seen. Add to that the sad lack of breasts, and you can understand why I liked the parades so much better. The parades promised me beads and high school cheerleaders (if they're wearing short skirts and doing dances that involve shaking something, somehow it feels acceptable to take their picture and flirt with them) and the parades delivered in spades. Plus I got some dubloons from the KKK. Who knew?!

Thanks, NOLA, for the great time. You made me feel a lot better about people. Somehow you make it OK to drink on the streets and in front of little kids. I didn't have a problem with that to begin with, but the North is more uptight. And speaking of uptight, somehow I was in the middle of the biggest titfest in the world, and I didn't see any flesh. Weird, right? But I don't blame New Orleans. The big easy wanted to show me. It showed me on new year's. I was just in the wrong places at the wrong times.

But Illinois, it was your responsibility to pick up the slack on Fat Tuesday. We went to the normal hangouts (Murphys), where everyone was decked out in three sets of beads and a coat. We brought a dozen of the lame beads from the parades and easily topped the rest of the bar. But the best I got was "I think the beads are tops, but I'm not gonna show you my tits for them" from some british girl. Maybe you thought you were slutty when you got dressed tonight, but I just proved you wrong. Mikey's new fun girlfriend wanted to take our beads to the slutty bars and make some deals, but instead we went to the after-party for the Wilco show. Great decision. That involved one guy in eye makeup who looked like he worked sound for someone who knew someone important and wanted you to know it, and a hundred kids in matching t-shirts who'd worked the show. We got one girl to work up the courage to flash Natalie (in a corner so nobody else could see) for beads, and to hear her do it you'd think she just had her first orgy with farm animals.

Purple is the color of sexual frustration, and I saw a whole town decked out in it last night.