Drunken Bowling -or- The Time Peter Ran for Troy City Council

Back in the college days at good ol' RPI, our group of friends had a tradition on Saturday nights called "Drunken Bowling". Now I'm sure that we didn't invent anything new, as many before us must have been able to come up with the brilliant idea of getting drunk and then bowling. However, it was still fun to see what kinds of havoc you could wreak at the bowling alley when you're totally intoxicated. Especially when this alley is in downtown Troy, NY.

Drunken Bowling or "D 'n' B" as we also affectionately called it, would typically begin at about 9 or 10 at the bowling alley bar. You see, the actual bowling alley promotion was that starting at midnight on Saturday, you pay like $7 and then you get shoes and unlimited games until about 3am. They kill all the main lighting and fire up the laser lights and the disco balls and the loud rock music. It was that kind of cosmic party bowling for people who really could give a rat's ass about their scores.

We would spend a couple of hours in the bar getting ourselves all liquored up and ready to bowl come midnight. Depending on our mood and motiviation, sometimes we would stay at the bar all night and forget to bowl... which is pretty sad since the bar has giant windows which look down upon the alleys. So it's pretty hard to forget where you are and why you're there. Typically, we would pass the time by playing drinking games or cracking the door to either the men's or women's bathroom and screaming "Happy Birthday!" (More on this later.. maybe). Drinking games would usually involve a rousing game of "I Never" or "3-Man" or simply playing pop-a-shot basketball in the corner of the bar.

Editor's Note: If you haven't played "I Never", it's the game that gives you a great opportunity to discover which states your friends hooked up with other people at what time and in how many ways. People would say something like "I never have hooked up with two people on the same day" and then anybody who had done that exact deed would have to drink. If the statement was so obscure that nobody had done it, the person who said it would have to drink. Since I used to like to drink and be a smart-ass at the same time, I would say stuff like "I've never spanked an Amish man"... because I had never spanked an Amish man, and typically no one else had either.

Okay, so about this Happy Birthday thing (why don't I just tell you what that's all about?), there was one time we were there to celebrate our friend Heather's 22nd birthday. We came down to the lanes with a big banner that happened to say "Happy 22nd Birthday Heather!" and hung it up in the bar where we proceeded to drink under it for a couple of hours. Well, one of the "guests" didn't realize it was a birthday party until he was leaving at the end of the "bar portion" of the evening. He looks at the sign that's been hanging there all night and says calmly, "I didn't know it was Heather's birthday." I should also point out that he was from southern California. With the birthday girl in the bathroom, he decides to run over, open the door, and shout "Happy Birthday Heather!". We were all dumbfounded. Drunk, and yet still dumbfounded. We of course then decided that it was funny to do to other people all the time. People I know still f***ing do it to me.

Well, when midnight rolled around, we'd get our shoes and our lanes and begin the task of entering our names into the electronic scoreboard. This was typically the highlight of the night as we would compete to see who could give who the most family-unfriendly nickname of the night. One of our female friends got the handle "One million served", while another got saddled with "Pledge F*cker". "Bent Choad" and "Amtrak Blowjob" also got some repeated play. So, you can imagine when a strike was bowled, how hilarious it was to look up at the scoreboard and see "Strike Pledge F*cker Strike!" flashing on it. It's amazing we didn't get kicked out.

As the games wore on and the drinks kept coming, our skills rapidly diminished. It didn't stop us from doing all sorts of trick shots that would end up two lanes over, clanking off the pin sweeper, and rolling halfway back down the alley. It's always fun to have to explain to the guy behind the counter that you need to get your ball back because you were being stupid.

Towards the end of the night they would hold a raffle based on tickets you obtained when you paid for your shoes. You could win all sorts of shirts and key chains with beer logos on them. Since we made up most of the clientele, we would usually rack up pretty well on the prizes. I think I still have 2 or 3 Twisted Sheila's Tequila or Honey Brown tee-shirts somewhere in a box in my basement.

At 3am-ish (and it varied from week to week), they would kick us out, forcing us to go to our next establishment: "I Love New York Pizza". This was a great pizza joint in downtown Troy that was open until around 5 in the morning. It was nestled between a couple of Troy's "finer" dance clubs and it was the only place we knew of that you could walk into and say "1 hot cheese/cold cheese please" and they'd know what the hell you were talking about. They would take some of their cheese pizza that had been sitting there on the counter, throw an ample handful of grated cheese on the top of it, and throw it in the oven for a minute. And I don't know if it was the alcohol or what, but at that exact moment, it was the most delicious thing in the world. My arteries harden just thinking about it.

As there was very little seating there, we would do what everybody else would do, stand outside and eat it on the street corner. The corner was usually packed too, as people from the clubs would pop over and grab something to eat. It was a pretty cool atmosphere down there.

At one point, our friend Peter started shaking people's hands as they were leaving the restaurant and saying "Hello, I'm Peter such-and-such, and I'm running for Troy city council". Awesome, just awesome. I don't know that anybody believed him, but they were probably all drunk too, so all bets are off. Either way, it was hilarious.

It's 3am, I must be lonely

Once in a while here at work, we have to test the software we write out on the actual system that it will eventually be running on, and that system is locked behind closed doors and you have to sign up for time to use it. Well, last week I signed up for a number of shifts out in the "lab" and waited with baited breath last Thursday morning to see what shifts I had been assigned. Turns out, I got no love.

Three midnight to 6am shifts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Ugh.

Oh well, I guess I'll make the best of it. I'll kill myself trying to stay awake, but I'll get some good work done and enjoy some nice quiet time.

So on Monday, I work a full day till about 5:30, come home, eat, and take a nap for about 3 hours. My wonderful wife Cindy had been out running around while I was taking my nap, putting together an "overnight survival kit" to bring in with me. It wasn't until I hopped in my car at quarter to midnight that I saw the kit sitting on the passenger's seat. I couldn't wait to open it up and see what was inside.

First of all, there were about 10 to 12 DVD's in there that I could watch on the PC with the DVD player. This is key, because in the absence of any live person talking to you to keep you awake at oh, ass-o-clock in the morning, you need the movies to provide a little background noise. There were many good ones to choose from... I picked "The Ladies Man" (severely underrated), "Zoolander" (probably accurately rated), and "Van Wilder" (one of my personal favorites after "Old School").

Secondly, there was enough food in there for me to actually live in the lab for a week. I'm not kidding. All sorts of yummy snacks from Poppycock (that's right, I said it) to Bugles to Milano cookies, a couple of different chocolate bars, Pop Tarts, Ritz cracker sandwiches, chocolate-covered pretzels, Jolt caffeine-laden gum (2 kinds), Vivarin, Tums, Excederin, Immodium... all sorts of good stuff. I was ready for bear.

So I get to the lab, unlock it, drop my stuff down, and get to work. I put on "The Ladies Man". Let me tell you, testing your software is fantastic when you've got Tim Meadows saying stuff in the background like "It sounds like you have a case of homo-unerectus, which means that your wang is huge-i-fied not by a woman, but by a man". Can't help but crack up when that comes on.

I'm snacking on Bugles, making good progress when the first movie ends. Now I'm so spoiled that when I leave the immediate area of the PC, I pause it because I don't want to miss any good lines. I put Zoolander on. That "walk-off" between Zoolander and Hansel is hilarious. "Stay out of this Billy Zane!" Priceless.

At this point, after the snacks I've powered down, and the 3 Coca-Colas I've chugged to stay awake, I really have to use the men's room. Problem is, lab procedure dictates that I have to put everything away and lock it back up when nobody is present. Which of course is a huge pain because I'm coming back in like 5 minutes to set things back up the way they were when I left. Oh well, at 3am I don't have the luxury of having anybody hold it open for me while I duck out.

Now, because they have continuous air flow in order to keep the system cool, the lab makes a lot of wierd noises. And in the middle of the night when you hear something creaking or crackling or whatever, your neck whips around to see what it is. Usually it was nothing. One time I thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and jumped a little, but it turned out to be nothing. I thought I was hallucinating. Oh, and I also had the lights off in the place. It was basically being lit by several monitors that were spread throughout the room. No need to fool myself into thinking it was daylight out by putting lights on. Wouldn't want to do that. Plus the movies looked better in the dark, so I figured I'd run with it.

For the record, I was surprisingly sharp for an overnight shift. I made all sorts of progress and all of my tests were passing. It was turning out to be a banner night. At 4am, "Van Wilder" goes on. It's made by the same people who did "Animal House" and it sure has that same look and feel. It even has the guy who played Otter from "Animal House" as the father of the guy who's the lead character in this one. From start to finish, it's an outstanding movie. Between that and the Jolt bubble-gum, I'm able to make it to 6am, when the next crew arrives to take over.

So I guess I made it through the night. By 8am, the lack of sleep hit me like a ton of bricks. I was out of it. However, I still ended up sticking around till about noon to get some other stuff done. Groggily, I drove home, stopping once to vote in the local primary. That's always fun... good thing I had enough faculties to remember what I was there for. It's an an old-age home too.. I might have very well asked for a room to crash in.

Thankfully, I finished everything on Tuesday morning and didn't have to play out the rest of the midnight to 6 shifts. But man, between the movies and the hallucinations that was that one rockin' time!

Grandma's refrigerator and Schrodinger's cat

Here's a story for you about the kinds of things you have to deal with when helping clean out your grandmother's refrigerator. This may or may not hit home for some of you out there.

One weekend, my wife and I volunteered our weekend to go and watch over my grandmother so that my parents could get away on a guilt-free no-strings-attached vacation. As she is 92 years old (I think.. I can never remember) and has a hard time getting around her in-law apartment, my parents are concerned for her well-being whenever they leave her alone. So, as a service, we offer to come down and spend time with her, eat some meals with her, and help her out with any tasks that need to be completed.

One such task was the cleaning out of her refrigerator and freezer. That one fell to me. Although I suppose I shouldn't complain... my wife cleaned the bathroom, which was probably just as disgusting, but not nearly as funny as my task.

Now if you've ever poked around the refrigerator of somebody who was born around that time period, it's an eye-opening experience. They never throw anything out. I know that the depression-era mentality dictates you don't waste any food, but some of that post-dated stuff can kill you if you try it. Or at least grow legs and escape out of the fridge when you open the door.

To give you an idea of what I was dealing with, I found about 12 containers of sour cream. That's right 12. Many different brands and many different versions (plain, lite, etc), all with one thing in common: they were all well overdue... by at least 6 months.

Now, when I see something like that in my fridge, it goes right in the trash. What my grandmother does is open it up, taste it, and decide if it's still good or not. Ugh. So yeah, she was sampling year old sour cream, amongst other things. Much to my chagrin.

The winner of the "oldest item in the refrigerator" sweepstakes was a crock of butter from the month when I started college... 10 bleepin' years ago! So of course she takes it from me, opens it up to reveal the giant fissure which has worked it's way across and down through the hardened butter, swipes her finger across the top, tastes it, and says "That's still good!" Unbelievable.

My favorite policy was by far the theory of "if it's never been opened, it's still good". Like many of the sour cream containers which I begrudgingly put back in the fridge after she opened up the lid and saw that the foil cover was still securely in place. I later referred to this theory as the culinary equivalent of "Schrodinger's cat". You see, the theory was that if you locked a cat in a solid lead box with an ampule of cyanide, there was no way to determine if the cat was alive or dead inside without opening it. It was a paradox that stated that at that moment, before the box is opened and the answer is revealed, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Apparently, the same goes for sour cream. Because we refused to peel back the foil cover, the sour cream is allowed to be both good and moldy and disgusting at the same time.

So I determined that if I was going to really help my grandmother, I would have to do it on the QT. So when she was busy examining the contents of one container, I would stealthily be tossing stuff out with the other hand. I got caught a couple of times, at which point I had to convince her that I was 're-throwing out' stuff that I already had tossed in, thus staying one step ahead of my elderly grandmother... I'm so going to hell.

Well, by the time we got to working on the freezer, Cindy finished up in the bathroom. Now I had some help. Because what we saw in the freezer were boxes for frozen dinners that had the look and feel of boxes that were manufactured in the 1970s...early 1980s at the most conservative estimate. Cindy even exclaimed at one point, "I remember seeing that packaging around in the 70s!" Undaunted, grandma wanted to keep them. So we went to plan B:

"Look over there!"

Cindy would distract grandma by getting her to look off in some other direction while I would grab a handful of frozen items and toss them right in the garbage bag. There was no getting caught this time. Not with my fantastic accomplice by my side. Everything must go! Including stuff in that freezer that we could neither identify as being meat or bread. And 8 years worth of Thanksgiving turkey gizzards. Ahh, good times.

So anyways, thanks to our effort, my grandmother now has one fantastically clean fridge and freezer. And some sour cream that may not kill her.

The one about 2% and the NBA Jam challenge

Well, I have my first formal request. Hell, I was just happy to receive my first comment. Big days are ahead, I can feel it. Plus I have this cool counter now so I can see who's visiting my site. And to whoever from Northwestern University (or its server) is checking back often on the site, thanks for stopping by! And I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, but I've been busy as hell with work and the like. I really just need to punch out a whole bunch of these in one sitting when I'm not busy and then just dole them out over time. That would probably be for the best.

So anyways, this is a short story about a fella who hails by the name of "2%". Well truthfully, he didn't call himself that, my friend Marc and I did. But he damn well planted the seed when he made the mistake of telling us that he was only made up of 2% body fat. You see, that only flies when you look like you're made up of 2% body fat. Me, I'm more like 20%, but that's neither here nor there. At least I never went around touting it. This guy... we had no idea where he was coming from. To give you an idea of what this guy looked like, the other nickname that Marc came up with for him was "fireplug".

Anyways, it was another boring night in the dorms, so Marc and I decided to fire up NBA Jam in my room. If you don't remember this game, it's the one where your players run around with either big heads or big feet and simply cannot miss a shot. You could play 2 minute quarters and still score about 150 points. And then when you made 3 shots in row, the ball would catch fire, and then you most certainly wouldn't miss. So, Marc and I would usually team up and absolutely abuse the game console in a game of 2-on-2, even with it set on the most difficult setting.

So we were good. Real good.

And then "2%" stopped by. And made the mistake of challenging our awesomeness. By himself. Now, I really didn't know this guy. I think he lived in our dorm somewhere, but I don't remember. But I'm hospitable, and I invite him in. Because I love video games, I had a four-player tap hooked up to my Sega Genesis, so we could have all sorts of folks over to step right up and test their NBA Jam aptitude.

Minutes into the "contest", it's clear that he is no match for Marc and I. Which is okay.... I never expected anything different. Then he accuses us of cheating. You see, NBA Jam has cheat codes that give your players the ability to do ridiculous things, like make shots from under your own basket or dunk from half court. We were actually being nice. We hadn't been using the cheat codes. So he challenges us again. Big mistake.. nobody accuses us of cheating and gets away with it.

This time, without speaking, we both secretly enable the cheat codes. Now it's a bloodbath. Now it's funny.

To add to it, Marc starts taunting him.

"What's up 2%?"

"How ya like that 2%?"

"What's up fireplug?"

Now tears are streaming down my face. We're obliterating him and now we've moved on to trash talking. I can't do it though. I can't even talk. After the game is over, he drops the controller down and storms out.

I don't think we ever saw him again. At least I didn't.