It looked like a crayon vomited on a canvas in geometrical shapes.  But I digress…  One of my girlfriend’s friends came over and remarked at how awful the painting looked and wondered aloud why the fuck we would ever put something so ugly up at the house.  Then she continued on-and-on moving from insulting the painting to insulting the painter, concluding by asking, “Who the fuck is Jurgen Peters????”  I would not stand for someone insulting my interior decorating style so I replied “Maybe YOU are fucking Jurgen Peters.”  She was not to happy with this assertion.  This back-and-forth marked the beginning of a vicious campaign she and I had against each other where would we not call each other anything but Jurgen.  She had me in her phone as Jurgen, I would get everyone else to call her that etc .  I pains me to say this but eventually she won the battle.  I gave up and everyone was calling my Jurgen including my girlfriend.  I couldn’t stand for this, so I did the only thing that I could, name the cat Jurgen.  There can’t be 2 Jurgen’s, right?”  **end sidenote**  Looking back at it, he was with me throughout my San Diego experience and was woven into the fabric of my life since I had moved from Chicago.  He has sat in the laps of all of the girls I had dated over the years and been slinking around in background of pictures of every party I had thrown.  He was loyal and unlike every other cat I have encountered.  He was always down to chill and he was never a pain in the ass.  In short, he took care of me and I took care of him.

That leads up to when I had decided that I wanted to take a new job opportunity in Sydney.  I made the decision not to take him with me because of the 6 month quarantine that would be required before I could take possession of him in Sydney.  I thought that would have been a form of abuse.  I wanted him with me.  I knew with all of the newness Sydney would bring me it would be great to have some familiarity with Jurgen there.  I couldn’t do that to him though.  I’m sure that they take great care of the animals in quarantine but it would have been prison for him and I didn’t want to put him through that, even though I really would have liked to have him out here with me.  Instead, I left him with a close friend in San Diego who just happens to be the person that I declared was “Jurgen Peters” 8 years earlier.

Flash forward to last night when I got a text from her husband asking me to call right away.  I knew that there was something wrong.  I either thought something terrible happened with my friend or my cat.  It turned out to be the latter.  Jurgen apparently had a degenerative heart disease that was a ticking time bomb inside him since he was born.  He had an embolism that pretty much paralyzed the back half of his body.  I spoke with my friends, they said it was bad.  I then spoke to the vet and she said the humane thing to do was to put him down.  After that I talked to my friend a bit told her to take the vet’s advice and hung up the phone.  I was very upset.  Things don’t usually bother me, I am always on an even keel, but this impacted me.  Jurgen represented San Diego and my life there and to have him taken away from me was jarring.

My friend is gone now.  There is something about endings that impacts everyone differently.  Sometimes an ending is unwanted, it leaves us wanting more or feeling like things are still unfinished.  Sometimes an ending is all we are looking forward too and we anticipate with every fiber of our being.  In any case, we are faced with a series of endings throughout life.  Everything we do and experience is an ending in itself, each second ticks away, never to be attained again.  This is not something to be sad about.  Each second that we move forward is a second of potential that is taken away, however, for every second of potential that is exhausted there is a second of experience put in its place.  His death has had me thinking the past 24 hours about my experiences, not just with him, but in San Diego as a whole.  I am thankful for that time, the circumstances and people that led me to that path in life.  I  am still sad, because this type of ending is never pleasant but that sadness is tempered by the experiences that will occupy the space of that loss from now on.

This is not meant to be some sappy “live life to its fullest” type monologue, fuck that.  I have already written about my thoughts on the notion that “everything happens for a reason“.  There may be no grand “reason” but everything does happen, and when we as humans perceive that something has ended we should look back with gratitude on our experiences rather than with disappointment at the loss of potentiality.  I will be flying back to San Diego in 2 weeks and instead of seeing my friend I will be spreading his ashes.  I am not mad that he is gone, I am thankful that I had him and for all of the people who knew him and in turn, me.

Wow… that was a little more intense than I expected for a cat eulogy, I guess I am a pussy.  Anyways, I will end on a glorifying note for Jurgen’s sake.  Here is some footage that I recorded the day before I left San Diego as proof that Jurgen is the most talented cat this planet has ever seen.

I miss you, buddy!

So before this blog shifts from being about a guy in San Diego to about a guy who lives in Sydney I wanted to give “America’s Finest City” a proper sendoff.  What better way to say goodbye to San Diego than a hastily put together Ultraparadoxical San Diego City Awards Spectacular!  So without further ado:

Best Tijuana Moment – Crappin’ in the Sports Book

Tijuana is just a stones throw from San Diego and I used to frequent the sports gambling facilities that were located right across the border.  I DID frequent them, that is, until I saw a guy get a rifle full of rock salt in the back steps from the door of the bar I was at.  That incident combined with the news stories of police chiefs getting beheaded and piles of dead bodies being found kinda turned me off the the whole Mexico thing.  Before I stopped going though, something magical happened… one of my friends needed to take a shit while we were across the border.  Thanks you Jesus!  Pure comedy… he went into a road side shop, the lady told him to take a hike… he went into McDonald’s, the guy at the counter told him it was for paying customers only (he had no time to stand in line).  As a last resort we went to the sports book (where we gambled) and he rolled the dice on the toilets there.  Now, I have been in that bathroom, it is exactly what you would think of if I told you to imagine a shitty Tijuana bathroom.  Apparently there is no time to clean the Tijuana bathrooms after cleaning all the ones right across the border.  He ended up getting his business done but I am sure there was some hovering involved of or a roll and a half of Mexican TP laid down to block the seat.  He left disgusted, but relieved and probably infected with 8 different kinds of Syphilis.

Stupidest News Moment

There is no hesitation, NONE, when she gets that gobbler in her hand to immediately assuming the position.  The best part of that clip is the reaction of the guys.  They thought they were just signing up to do a quick bit on turkey calls then the hot blond decides to perform fellatio on national TV… classic.

Best Natural Disaster – 2003 wildfires

When I say best, I actually mean the worst.  I was at a friend’s wedding in Arizona when I got a call from my roommate asking me what things I should take out of the house so they don’t get burnt to a crisp when the wildfires swept through out neighborhood.  My girlfriend and I left the wedding then she decided that the drive home was a great time to dump me, which came as a total shock seeing as we had just moved from Chicago to San Diego a few months before.  Wait, it gets better.  During the stone cold silence where I was contemplating the scorched wasteland my house mixed with the anguish of just getting dumped I was pulled over by a cop in Yuma, Arizona who slapped me with a $600 dollar speeding ticket.  After a windy path through 6 foot high walls of flame and a surreal ash-blown landscape (which i chronicled in a short story) we finally arrived back home to my shitfaced roommates in the hot tub, disaster averted… good times.

Best Event – Street Scenes

This was like Kwanzaa, Christmas, Halloween and Flag Day all rolled into one.  Street Scenes was a summer concert in the heart of downtown San Diego with a ton of cool bands.  Apparently the concert promoters were not too good at paying their bills as Street Scene never happened this year.  When I found out that this event was canceled it was like finding out Santa Claus isn’t real all over again.  By far it was most disappointing news I have heard all of 2010… and that’s why the terrorist hate us.

Most Valuable Hobo (MVH) – The Street Crapping Lady

This award goes to the lady who I happened to see on my way to work who was in the middle of taking a shit on the sidewalk.  She saw me out of the corner of her eye and proceed to duck-walk with her pants down to finish up her deuce on the curb.  Now that is a conscientious hobo!

Two of the “best of” headings center on crapping… does that make me immature?  Hopefully people are into poop jokes in Australia or I may be in trouble…

Most of my friends were meeting at the bar beforehand and took taxis to the Sports Arena but I had some things to do before the game so I had to meet them at the venue.  I knew I couldn’t go in to this event stone cold sober though.  We didn’t have much time until the game started so we ended up passing around a bottle of vodka in the parking lot of Ralph’s before we made our was to the game (don’t judge me, I challenge you to find a more apropos way to prepare for an LFL game than to chug strawberry vodka out of the bottle).  A few swigs later we were on our way to buy tickets.

We had a mixed group of guys and girls but for the most part the crowd was mostly guys, some of which were sporting some Seduction logo apparel.  At what point in life is it OK to wear fan apparel from a lingerie football league?  Wearing a Seduction t-shirt would fall somewhere in between a fishnet tank-top and a Michigan Wolverines t-shirt on the “improbability-of-me-wearing-it-O-meter”.  The “people watching” was excellent but at that point I was ready to get into the game, I paid 20 bucks for the ticket and walked into the arena, not knowing what to expect.

That’s actually not true.  I was expecting some spindly looking women prancing around the field playing touch football not trying to break their nails.  I was expecting to laugh at them the way I laugh at the WNBA.  My expectations were wrong.  These chicks were ass-kickers.  They were still “hot” in the classical sense but some of them were built like brick shit houses.  They must recruit athletes right out of college soccer and volleyball programs because pretty much every girl on the field was in better shape than I am.  They ran plays, hit each other and had a fierce competitiveness and hatred for the opposing team that I have not seen since the NBA in the mid-eighties.  They all wanted to win and not just that, they wanted to embarrass their opponent.  Granted, I did make asshole comments like “that quarterback throws like a girl” and “they’re playing like a bunch of Nancies out there” until the girls in the group told me to shut the fuck up, but despite my comments I was genuinely impressed.  This is not to say that this is going to replace the NFL anytime soon but as far as women’s sports goes this is by far the most watchable (and not just because there is a slim chance that one of their titties may pop out).

This made me think of all the possibilities if there were actually a legitimate women’s football league.  For example, instead of seeing an injury report with something like this: Adrian Peterson (ankle) we could see something like this: Amber Scott (implant) or this: Sally Swanson (womb).  Would every chick on the team end up syncing up menstrual cycles with the rest of their teammates?  Would the gambling community be able to get that information and shift the spread a few points whenever a team had collective PMS?  I need answers.

For most of the game I was near the back of the stands with my drunken friends but right before they started the second half we meandered down right near the sidelines.  Little did I know that the arena was similar to Dante’s levels of hell, getting creepier and creepier as I headed nearer the field.  I immediately felt gross even being around the dudes that were sitting that close to the action.  There was a scumbag in a filthy Tommy Bahama t-shirt tucked into stonewashed jeans with no belt that was especially sketchy to my right.  He watched the women stretch midfield with a lascivious glare that would make a pedophile blush.  That wasn’t even the worst of it.  To my left was a husband and wife that had taken their preteen daughters to the game.  Any parent that would take their kids to one of there games should be imprisoned for child endangerment on the spot.  Most of the chicks on the field are a few bad decisions away from being strippers or escorts, it probably isn’t a great idea to have your kids watch them.  Just a thought.

The game ended up being a tight (haha) victory for San Diego, and as we were leaving I felt like it was a $20 well spent.  I would probably never go again but it was definitely a good way to piss away a Friday night.  Then it happened.  I glanced to the opposite side of the arena as one of the spectators chucked something towards midfield.  I squinted to see what the object was as it flipped and flopped through the air.  It landed with a thud onto the LFL logo.  I finally realized what it was, a huge flesh colored dildo.  It was a vieny bastard too, big as a baby’s arm.  I quickly alerted my friends to what was going on and we stared aghast as one of the attendants saw it and started lazily kicking it towards the opposite sideline.  As he arrived near the scorer’s table he was at an impasse.  He certainly didn’t want to touch this thing with his hands but he needed to get rid of it.  I think he had a “eureka” moment and in one quick motion he reached down and limply tossed it at the scorekeepers who had been laughing at him while he had kicked the phallus across the field.  Their smiles turned into a rictus of terror as they leaped out of the way.  The guy might as well have been throwing feces at them based on how they jumped.  It was a truly fantastic moment and I had the LFL and some asshole who decided it was a good idea to smuggle a fake cock into a football game to thank.

See the action for yourself if you don’t believe me.  Apparently they televise the games on MTV2, check it out…

Wet Willies: coming soon.  Fuck. Me.  This “bar” is in the same building as my apartment and although it is not directly under my domicile I will likely be walking by it every time I leave me place.  For the entire time I have lived downtown this has been an empty commercial space that used to be called “Visions” which was one of those creepy bars that’s clientele were mostly middle eastern guys with uni brows.  Now it is turning into a Chuckee-Cheese for retards, skanks and tourists.  I would much rather have filthy, meth-head bums milling around the front of my pad than the people who would think that it is a good idea to grab some drinks at “Wet Willies”.  This is going to be a disaster of epic proportions… why, sweet baby Jesus… why?  Oh, Wet Willies let me count the ways I hate you:

The Logo

Scroll back up and take a look at it again so we are on the same page.  Really?  A black fucking icy drink?  Who is the ad wizard who thought of that idea?  It looks like a heaping cup full of dirty slush siphoned off the side of the I-90 tollway.  Furthermore, the “W’s” in the name look like two pairs of droopy tits, which will likely match the physiques of the livestock that will be inhabiting this place. Then there is the tag line.  That slogan reeks of lazy douchebaggery.  Harvard is an institution.  Marriage is an institution.  Motherfucking-Wet-Goddamn-Willies is NOT AND INSTITUTION.  It seems as though they are trying to relocate a Florida (America’s wang) style white trash beach party to the heart of the Gaslamp District in San Diego.  The saddest thing is they will probably be successful thus lowering my faith in humanity one more rung.

The Website

Apparently I am a masochist because I Googled this place and went to their website.  My worst fears were realized.  After waiting 30 seconds for a shitty 1998 quality animation of a taxi clearing snow to complete (why the fuck is the taxi clearing snow????) I realized that this place is a misogynistic, alcoholic slushy shop.  Basically this tells me instead of seeing harmless hobos passed out in the empty vestibule I am going to be seeing fat chicks squeezed into tube tops 2 sizes too small gyrating on the dance floor to the latest abortion of a song by Lady Gaga.  Don’t forget about the creepers and bottom feeder guys that will likely enjoy this type of “institution”.  I am picturing three things 1 – pencil thin 90′s beards 2 – gold neck chains 3 – Ed Hardy clothing and tank-tops or a horrifying combination of both.

1:45 AM

If this place gets popular it will be a shit show when they dump these assholes back on the street.  Mixing 5 different colors of mixed fruity drinks is going to lead to one thing besides making a bad decision with the pig across the bar who had been eye fucking you over her hurricane all night.  That’s right, it leads to a rainbow of vomit all over my sidewalk (thanks KD).  I will be nostalgic for smelling a little bum piss on my walk to work when I am hopscotching between different shades of upchuck.  Yay.

I think I just broke my own record for most profanities in a post but I am legitimately annoyed by this development.  The only positive thing is that it will provide a ton of fodder for the blog and  I plan to make a National Geographic style trip there to witness firsthand this doucheco-system.

The scene of the worst date ever recorded...

I have been on many dates in my life.  Some good, some bad and some in between.  There is one night that is the current and probably will forever be the reigning champ for worst first date I have ever been on.  It all started innocently enough after I met this chick at the bar and we talked a few times on the phone and decided to go out to World Famous in Mission Beach for Taco Tuesday.  We did the usual chitchat about family and music and food and what we like to do in our free time and BLAH BLAH BLAH.  No sparks really flew but I can safely say we were enjoying ourselves and the date was going smoothly.

We came a bit later in the night so as we finished up our meal and I paid the bill the place was half full.  Our seat was close to one of the tinted windows which had a good view of the ocean during the day but was hard to see out of at night.  Just as we finished our drinks to leave this guy crept up, banged on the window and screamed “FUCK YOU – I’M GOING TO FUCKING KICK YOUR ASS” among other things in his 30 second expletive laced tirade.  I still remember the whites of his eyes bugging out of his head as he barked into the window standing about 3 feet from us.  We both were startled at first then we looked around the restaurant to see who he was yelling at.  A few of the other patrons noticed but quickly went back to their meals as the guy walked away from the window.  Confused, we both looked at each other wondering what the hell had just happened.

We shook it off and talked a bit more and were about 30 seconds from getting up and leaving. Then. it. happened.  I looked to my right and a 6+ foot black meth head came racing into the restaurant directly towards our table.  I was frozen and had no idea who this guy was or what he was going to do next.  He arrived at the foot of our table as the entire restaurant paused to stare at us to see what was going on.  It was at that point that I thought this guy was going to go Tyson on me but I was still too rattled to do anything.  He was seething mad – he looked Like Ray Lewis right before he shoots the gap trying to tackle a running back.  Well, his eyes looked like Ray Lewis but the rest of him was a different story.  He was covered in sand, dirt and who knows what else clothed only in a swim suit that looked like it had not been off of his body in at least 3 weeks.  He paused for a second and stared at my date.  “You can’t call me a nigger – you bitch!” he shouted and then he spit on her.  That’s right, he fired up a loogie that spattered all over her.  She was shocked – an alien could have landed on our table and done a break-dance routine and she would not have had a more surprised look on her face

OK – now I know what you are thinking – “Did you get up and kick this guys ass to defend your date’s honor?”  Abso-fucking-lutely NOT – I am not about to tussle with a cranked up meth-head for some girl after a first date.  My chivalry level is definitely lower than my self preservation level at that point in a relationship.  After a month – I probably get up and do something but after mediocre date #1 – no way.  The bouncers saw what was going to go down as soon as the guy came in and a couple moments after that fateful loogie left his lips they tossed him out of the bar and I was left with a spit covered date.  20 seconds went by in shocked silence until I said “I never knew that you were such a racist” with a completely straight face.  She didn’t laugh.  I gave her some tissue and my napkin and she dabbed herself off.  I still remember the little flecks of gross meth-head spittle clinging to her hair.

We walked to the car, drove back to her house and never called her again (don’t judge me).  The whole thing was just too traumatic to come back for a second date.  Ask yourself… could you kiss a chick that you saw drenched in hobo spit?  Didn’t think so.

I actually saw her a few months after the incident randomly out at the bar and we have seen each other a few times since and things were awkward at first but eventually everything was fine.  In fact she is trying to set me up with one of her friends… circle of life!

What is your worst first date story?

“Statutory Grape”

This really has to be seen to be believed.  I saw this car with its back end bumping and the tunes blasting at about 5:30 on Friday afternoon.  When does the thought of detailing your car with the term “Statutory Grape” sound like a good idea?  Picture this:  your daughter is waiting for her new boyfriend and she sees this purple monstrosity rolling down the street and starts squealing “he’s here… he’s here!”  Do you A – Tie up your daughter, duct tape her mouth and hope that the car drives by.  B – Meet your daughter’s new boyfriend in the driveway and get the lowdown on when the next “freaknik” is going to be held.  C – Give your daughter a $30 gift card to Applebee’s and send her on her way then go downstairs and hang yourself with a note pinned to yourself saying “I didn’t know how to raise my daughter”.  Your call… choose wisely. *sidenote* By the way, if you saw this vehicle, Googled it and came to my site, drop a note in the comments with a story on where you saw it.  It will be my way of giving back to the community. *end sidenote*

Various Hobos

My hobo ignoring skills have really made a resurgence lately.  San Diego is really the best town in the world if you are a hobo.  Nice weather, decent people and a great dumpster selection make San Diego a prime hobo location.  Unfortunately there is a vacant commercial space right below my building and a bunch of homeless people that congregate there at all hours.  If I were to give them money every time that I passed by I would need to take out a small business loan to support them.  Sometimes hobos can not be ignored though.  Case in point:  my friend from San Francisco recently told me that she came across a hobo blowing another hobo on her walk home from work.  As disturbing as that is it brings us to a more important question – Is there anything that would taste worse than hobo-cock?  I spurred me to develop a new taste scale that can be applied in any situation.  It is a simple 0-10 scale of the taste of an object ranging from o (hobo cock) to 10 (homemade German chocolate cake).  I really need to get a show on Food Network with this.

Me in my underpants

That’s right… in my extreme laziness and my multiple large windows that face a busy street have made me an exhibitionist  At this point I don’t really give a shit but if you are strolling along downtown San Diego you can probably get a great look of a lanky blog writer who is too lazy to close the blinds… what… no takers???  Fine – you suck anyways.

Any good sights and sounds lately in your neighborhood?

Aside from my drunkenness and towellessness, being downtown has been nothing but fantastic.  I can finally walk to the bars and restaurants that I most often go to and drunk driving will be down about 95%.  I should get a congratulatory letter from MADD for moving!  Another bonus that I did not realize until after I moved in was all of the interesting stuff I get to see while walking around downtown.  On my way to my car the first morning I overheard 2 bums talking.  One bum was trying to fish something out of the trash and the other stopped him short when he wanted his help and said “Hold on, I need to take a shit, then I will help you with that.”  Who said bums don’t have a schedule?  The next afternoon on my way back home I saw a guy wearing old school roller skates loading empty bottles into his 1970′s style cargo van.  It was magical, he even had the jewfro circa ’72.  He was like Rollegirl from “Boogie Nights” except 10 times as dirty and not hot at all.  Wait… he was actually NOTHING like Rollergirl but that’s beside the point.  He could have being the star of “Rollerhobo 2: Electric Bugaloo”… damn you cruel fate!   What I am getting at is that life just got a bit drunker and more interesting for me.  Good times…

I love road trips.  They are all about doing many of the things that I love – bullshitting with friends, listening to music and napping.  I have been on many in my lifetime, some with family others with friends and even a few animals mixed in.  Each one has its own feel and there is always at least one memorable thing that happens.  In addition to that there are opportunities to see new places and meet new people… then make fun of them.  Ahhhhh the possibilities are endless with road trips – they are an affirmation that there are a ton of freaks all over the US and that I am glad that I live where I do.  If I was not employed at the salt mine I would love to take a few months and bounce around the US with some friends and see things in the remote corners of the country that usually remain hidden (and in some cases should remain hidden).  Almost every state I have visited or driven through has a memory -  lets take a ride down road trip memory lane state by state.

Illinois – “Where the fuck are my shoes?”

As a child I hated waking up just as much as I do now.  So picture this – I’m about 12 years old and my Dad and I are planning a trip to Peoria, IL to participate in a 5K race at Bradley University (where my brother went to college).  He woke me up at the butt-crack of dawn and herded my sleep deprived little body into the car and I was comatose in the passenger seat immediately.  After a couple hours of driving we stopped at a McDonald’s to get some food before the race and he prodded me awake.  “Get your shoes on” he said “we’re going to get some Mickey D’s”.  In my sleepy haze I scanned the floor of the car for my shoes… not there.  We looked more… nothing.  I was on the way to a race that I didn’t have any shoes for (did I mention I’m half Polish?)  My dad had a mini-meltdown in the car and he dragged me into McDonalds and I enjoyed my sausage mcmuffin in my socks.  At that point i realized I was worse than the barefooted shoeless yokels that inhabit most of Southern Illinois, because I should have known better.  After that embarrassment I still was without footwear on my way to the race.  As a last ditch effort we resorted to the only option that was open at 7AM on a Saturday in Eureka, IL – Woolworth.  My dad bought me a pair of those white Keds that were probably women’s shoes and certainly were not meant for running – but I did run and I finished only to set up one final humiliation.  We walked into Chili’s for lunch before we left and the girl that seated us had my exact same shoes on – Fuck my life.

Texas – “Where the fuck is the Cat?”

Later in life I moved from Chicago to San Diego with my girlfriend, our dog and our cat (and all of our earthly possessions) in a Jeep Cherokee and a U-haul trailer.  We stopped after our second day of travel in Amarillo, Texas.  Amarillo is such a weird city – it is basically an enlarged truck-stop with a few shitty houses scattered along the desolate arid landscape.  We were exhausted and unloaded our necessities in the hotel and immediately went to bed.  I vaguely remember my girlfriend getting up in the morning to let the dog out and coming back into bed.  We awoke the next morning and were getting ourselves together to hit the road until we realized we were missing something… the cat.  We tore apart the room searching but the cat was gone.  Altogether we delayed our exit for over four hours looking for her – to no avail.  In the end I reasoned with her that we would never find the cat and we should just go.  I lied and said that the cat would probably be picked up by some friendly people and taken into their home.  I knew though that cat was street pizza at best, coyote food at worst.  The name of the cat you ask?  Gypsy… go figure.

Pennsylvania – “Where the fuck is the piss?”

My family made a mistake in Pennsylvania that I will never make again – eating at a fast food restaurant that is actually connected to a gas station.  Sweet Baby Jesus never intended Taco bell meat and a beef jerky displays to be that close to each other.  As we were finishing our sumptuous psuedo-Mexican feast my Dad went to the restroom.  As he was coming back to our seat he pulled me aside and told me to check out the guy with the sign in the bathroom and read what the guy had written.  I was perplexed.  I was half thinking that I was going to see one of the creepy guys who hands out mints and axe body spray but my Dad did not prepare me for what I did see.  I turned the corner in the restroom and did one of those “I’m-not-looking-but-I-am-looking-to-read-your-fucked-up-sign” kind of glance over to his crudely written cardboard sign.  It read “CLEAN PISS $40″.  As I walked to the urinal I pondered why anyone would pay $40 for piss then I realized that he was selling to the truckers coming through for their drug tests.  What a statement for free market economics.  Where there is a need a market will form… wow… USA!  USA!  USA!

Throughout the year I will be going state by state chronicling my more ridiculous road trip experiences… stay tuned!  Do you have any interesting road trip stories?

I went to a show this weekend and this is my story (actual names withheld to protect the innocent):

I was picked up from my house around 6 and we headed to pick up one more person before we went over to pregame at someone else’s house.  The friend that we picked up had to stop off at the weed store to pick up some drugs first (whhaaaa?)  Yes, in California there are stores that sell weed – I have always heard about this but I have never actually been to a dispensary and seen how easy it was.  People go in – look at the selection, take a few sniffs and with a doctors note it is all “legal”.  The same thing that people all over the US and even in California are in jail for is something that you can walk into a herbal store in San Diego and no one will hassle you.  This is incredibly cool and incredibly stupid all at the same time – can we just not legalize this shit already – what is the big deal?

Anyways, after that we met up with friends to hang out and pre-drink before the concert.  They lived in one of those apartment complexes that has the layout of a Guantanamo prison.  There was about 15 different buildings in no discernible order and even people who lived there did not seem to have a clear idea of how to navigate the maze of walkways and parking lots.  I half expected David Bowie to pop out “Labyrinth-style” and start making me solve some riddles.  He didn’t though and we finally got to the house and started getting wasted.  *sidenote* While we were drinking and hanging out I heard snippets from an episode of “Friends” that was on in the background.  What an abortion of a show – cliche joke after cliche joke and all the characters are such whiny losers.  I never liked “Friends” but it was excruciating watching it now.  It has aged horribly and I can’t believe those actors are multimillionaires based on that bullshit – it infuriates me.  Worst popular sitcom ever – I would rather watch “Dharma and Greg” while someone was kicking me in the nuts than a minute of “Friends” *end sidenote*

We hung out there for about an hour then we hopped in this chick’s car and hit the road for a ride that should have lasted no more than a few minutes.  If I was forced to choose a adjective for my ride to the concert it would be: “TERRIFYING”.  The concert was at RIMAC arena which is on the campus of UCSD and is fairly difficult to navigate even when you are clear-eyed.  In this case we were all wasted and in the car we had what my friend had picked up from the “drug store” and a few flasks we were going to sneak in – it was an open and shut case for any cop that wanted to pull us over.  We got lost and drove around campus as haphazardly as Tiger Woods after a few Ambien – at one point we passed a parked cop THREE times at the same intersection.  In any normal situation I think we would have gotten pulled over but later on it dawned on me why we were not.  UCSD’s student population is 90% Asian – I am sure that these cops are numb to seeing bone-headed drivers and people that should have no business being on the road.  Next time I want to curse someone who is DWA I am going to think back to this and bite my tongue.

We finally parked and headed into the concert.  Spoon, Phoenix and Vampire Weekend were playing.  We expected Vampire Weekend, then Spoon, then Phoenix as the headliner but we walked in and Phoenix was on… I was so bummed.  This was definitely the case of a concert schedule being set before people realized that Phoenix blew up.  Luckily we only missed a song or 2 and they were amazing, and blew the other bands away. We stayed until Spoon wrapped up and then we took off – this time our driver was sober.

Apparently she was not sober enough to get not get wrapped up in the Siren’s song of Denny’s and we convinced her to stop there before we came back to my place.  Denny’s and other restaurants of its ilk are a curious mix of meth-heads, stoners, drunks and degenerates.  Add that to the vaguely filthy decor and a wait staff that is precipitously close to a suicide, murder suicide or mass-murder suicide and you have a fantastic family drunk eatery!  The table next to us was so blown out that I don’t think they said one word to each other their entire meal.  I destroyed my Lumberjack Slam and we headed back to my house for some Green Tea Ginger Ale and Jameson (my new favorite drink – lets call it a “Ginger Ninja”).  After hanging out for a bit the Charlie Brown Christmas CD happened to come up on my Itunes play-list and we listened to the entire disc and even kind of jammed out to it at one point.  I have changed my sobriety calibration to drunk – then wasted – then shitfaced – and the final level of “Charlie Brown Christmas Wasted”.  Please adhere to these levels from now on.  I passed out after my friends left at about 3AM thus putting a bookend on the night and another fantastic concert trip.

Do you have any good concert stories?