Last week was filled with festivities, times of glee and sorrow, hearing ourselves get fatter, mesmorized focus on football and "A Christmas Story", and connecting with friends from high school that have undoubtedly become more arrogant and monster-faced since 7th grade. It is a time of year when people who actually have jobs set aside time to be even more lazy and take more time off work to hang and, with no question, eat whatever they want because it's the holidays and will get that shiny new gym membership after the first of the year (which by the way, if you go to the gym in Jaunary, expect to be pissed off by the people that don't know what the hell they're doing and take up two treadmills. Yes, two).

The free time of these non-working dimwits can be nice because I get to see some of my friends that I don't get to see that often. Ger, who has been previously introduced in this blog as my "partner whom I share a serrogate mother with", was in town and wanted to meet up. I met with Ger and Fouella at Mayfair on the 24th (HIS idea, not mine. Btw Mayfair blows around Xmas shopping time). We sat down, and immediately Ger ran to the bathroom. He returns with a confused and humble look on his face. I asked him what the problem was, maybe a false alarm or a splash-up incident. He cleared his throat, adjusted his belt, and asked, "So, are there diapers that you can flush?"

Silence. My thought: 'The guy I'm with just left a diaper in the men's bathroom.' Hurry, think of something!

I answered, "Uh, hey! I got a new watch last week. It's awesome! Want to see it?"

My tangent did nothing.

He said, "No, I want to get to the bottom of this. There's a pair of diapers in the toliet and someone tried to flush it down."

I didn't know what to say. Why would I have the answer to this? First I thought they were his diapers. Now he's claiming they're "someone else's." I struggled to find the right thing to say. Who would know something like that? Wikipedia would! I'll suggest that. Wait, he'll never fall for that. Well, lets try. Besides, he's kind of a dumbass anyways.

"Try Wikipedia. They always have the right answers."

He sits and starts typing.

He said, "Nope, Wikipedia doesn't know anything about disposable diapers."

He ACTUALLY looked it up. I need new friends.

Fouella was lightly laughing in the corner, typing away on her medical forms and munching on a cookie. The cookie looked delicious, crumbling all over the table and making their way to my fingers. We both looked at eachother with a Lion's wit for carnivous activity, and blurted out at the same time, "We need to eat soon!" She said, "Jinx!"

I replied, "Get the fuck outta here with that middle school shit. So you wear diapers too?"

No answer. Immediately started packing her stuff up.

I need new friends.

On our arrival at the Cheescake Factory, Fouella was commenting on her hunger for any food. She said, "I'm soooooo hungry! I've realized lately that anything I put in my mouth doesn't want to come out."

Ger winked at me.

AWKWARD.

My appetite was limited to water and bread. Maybe we shouldn't eat out together anymore.

Or go anywhere in public together anymore.

Sigh...weirdos.

.

I have previously mentioned my friend who had the colon blow in his cabinet. I don't recall giving him a nickname, and even if I did, it wasn't cool enough to remember. I'd like to call this friend "The Painter." He became aware of his first appearance on this blog and wasn't the happiest little woman. I attempted to make an effortless apology, trying to abide by certain friend laws that exist. I then thought, "Hey, there's a warning on the website main page. What the hell am I apologizing for?" I received many death threatening texts, middle finger smoke signals, and gay porn videos from "The Painter," is his attempt to notify me that "he means business." I realized his seriousness, digested it, and discarded it. He, like others, watch what they do or say around me in fear of a revisit to my website. Well, 'The Painter" forgot about it and striked again.

A couple weeks ago, I realized I needed a haircut badly. People say that I looked like one of these idiots, which the hairstyle may be comparable. But I refuse to believe I'm as stupid and lame as they are. Try to convince me. Ain't happening, friend. My hair looked more like this guy. Seriously.

So I arrived at "The Painter's" friend's house, ready to get a haircut and get this mullet under wraps. It got to the point where I could only wear hats when going out in public because my mullet would make all my decisions for me unless I had it covered up. "The Painter's" friend (let's call her Scissor Sister) had me sit down in the kitchen on a stool used for kids potty training and a garbage bag on my body. We have met before, and had various small talk about her job and such. She went on to tell me that she recently had a client come in with his girlfriend to get a trim. He seemed the penis-less type, not making any decisions about anything in his relationship or his life. It was the girlfriend's choice to get his haircut at the same spa that she does. So being the Mustang Sally that he was, agreed to do so.

The girlfriend was in the other room getting the toe jam from her feet removed when scissor sister was cutting his hair. After she realized that he was, in fact, WHIPPED, she suggested he get a rat tail. She told me that she asked as a joke to see what he would say. A lot of normal people would've laughed and made another joke about it, but this guy asked, "Can I braid it?"

She answered, "Of course. You're getting a rat tail."

So, he got one.

She's amazing.

I laughed for a quite a while. Unfortunately, my laughing was rudely interrupted when "The Painter" walked in the room. It wasn't disrupted like someone opening the bathroom door while you're taking a dump, but more like seeing a guy's tighty whiteys with train tracks. Tighy whiteys are funny and ridiculous already, but the train tracks stop me in my already amused tracks and takes me to the Grand Central Station of hilarity.

He walks in wearing a costume. His halloween costume. From this year.

It's November. Late November.

It was Max from the movie and book, "Where the Wild Things Are." His costume was very clever and original (at least from the costumes that most of my friends had: normal guy, this IS my costume, lawyer on vacation, themself, a dick, etc...). Nonetheless, I was shocked to see him wearing it near the end of November. I simply laughed out loud (literally LOL) when I realized everything that was happening in that small little kitchen. I asked, "Why are you wearing your Halloween costume?"

He answered, "Dude, it's comfortable. Plus I want to get my money's worth on it. It was over $100."

Scissor sister chimed in and said, "That's not the first time he's worn it recently. He was wearing it last week too. He also has no pants on while wearing the costume."

Scissor sister. perfect.

I laughed even harder, stopping the scissors from cutting off my ridiculous mullet. He stood there unamused, and waited for my laughter to die down. He waited a while.

He then started talking about random things: t.v. dinners, why aluminum CAN go in the microwave, how to successfully hide in the woods in the Max costume, etc... He acted as if everything was peachy normal, but I couldn't get away from the fact that he was wearing a costume in front of me. This is a grown man wearing this, and long after Halloween at that. I couldn't take him seriously. Niether could scissor sister. We asked him to leave the room so we could finish the haircut.

Later on that week I ran into his roommate, told him about my experience, and he said, "Man, he was wearing that shit yesterday."

You know how there are certain number of times a day people smile and laugh? Well I laughed enough for a century.

Thanks Painter. I know you'll be back.

I forgot to mention a couple things from my venture to the sunny state. Although the trip was 2 weeks ago and far out of my mind, these couple incidences kept haunting me to be used in a semi-amusing way. It's like having a dream every night about a 3 legged dog who only eats banana peels and will take down any monkey who trys to steal them. You've never had that dream? Sucks for you then because it's an awesome dream.

My friend and I were standing in line to ride on the Toy Story Extravaganza. My stomach was still doing cartwheels from the Aerosmith ride (which was a blend of Fast and the Furious meets To Wong Foo (reason being they play "Dude looks like a lady" on the ride in your ears with treble-heavy speakers)). We waited for an extremely long time, toes frozen from wearing sandals with ice picks shooting out from the air conditioning ducts. I looked in front of us (because that's what you do in line) and saw a child who wouldn't stop moving and clearly had a taste of the white powdery stuff in Dad's sportcoat.

"Dad, is that powdered sugar candy in your jacket?"

"No, son. It's nose candy. Don't worry about it."

And like any kid told to "forget about it," he went after it.

So the kid is jumping around in place, talking to the railing like it's a not-so-imaginary-friend, and screeching like a drunken cockatoo who has no direction in life. I thought nothing of the spazstic ball of unchained energy, but my friend leaned over and said, "Yo, is that kid making you nervous? He's making me nervous."

I answered, "No, my friend. Lions and bear traps make me nervous, not unsupervised coked up kids. Man up, dude."

He was silent the rest of the time. What did I say?

On the next ride we waited even longer. One of my friend's co-workers joined us, and I was informed before he arrived that he only wears thong underwear. Evidently he called them "banana hangers" and it made for a gut wrenching image. He walked up and introduced himself, and all I could do was put on my x-ray glasses and look at his pants region. It was so wrong, but I've never been introduced to someone that wore thongs on daily basis. Did he wake up one day and say, "I'm over these loose boxers. I'm moving on to thongs."  He wasn't in the best shape, so rollerblading along the ocean front in a pair of shoestrings was probably not happening. It must've been a comfort thing, and I decided not to ask any questions or strike up any conversation with him in fear of them being brought up.

My friend felt the opposite and said, "So, Richard, you wear your little g-string to the beach today?"

Richard answered, "They're not g-strings. They're thongs, bitch."

This was Mr. Banana Hanger acting tough and correcting my friend on his obvious mistake. It was apparent that he was passionate about his underwear, and he wasn't ashamed to show it.

By showing I mean SHOWING. Pants slid down. A string appeared. Eyes widened as big as bananas.

I turned around, put the phone up to my ear and acted like I was on it and laughed obnoxiously. I then gagged, and continued to laugh.

Gag. Laugh, Gag. Laugh.

GAG.

In this land of shit weather and bone breaking wind chill, I try to stay out of the house as much as possible. Hibernating is such a cliche, and those that do it end up gaining hella weight and rotting in their own feces surrounded by empty bags of Cheetos with chocolate syrup as a beverage to wash down all the frosting-dipped sweettarts that have been corrupting their already yellow decayed teeth. So those of you that say you will be hibernating this winter and not leaving the house will not be hanging with me. But then again there are those that shouldn't leave the house ever. In the fine words of 2Pac, "Its a dirty game y'all. Y'all got ta be careful about who you fuck with and who you don't fuck with cause the shit get wild y'all.. Keep your mind on your riches, baby, keep your mind on your riches." Well said.

I was walking to Whole Foods to get some whole foods (wordplay!) with one of my roommates. To keep our minds off the cold and mouths from freezing shut, we talked and told some stories. Well actually he was doing most of the talking and I went ahead and let my mouth shut indefinitely so I wouldn't have to answer. He told me about a girl he used to date that was a yoga instructor. He mentioned before that she was obsessed with yoga, and would never stop talking about it. He continued and said she came over one night to hang out and drink some wine, watch some football, and eventually get naked for him. This is how he highlighted the story:

"Dude, so she came over, ready to drink some wine. All of sudden I realized all the wine was gone and I only had one glass. The bitch drank all my wine. I was pissed! Then, in the middle of the living room, she went down to her underwear and started doing yoga in front of me! I didn't know what to do. I was helpless. I had to maintain eye contact to not reveal how annoyed I was and I couldn't leave because she was describing each stupid little move that she was doing. What would you have done?"

I answered, "MMM HMF MFFMH."

Translation: "That's going in my blog." He was none the wiser.

I ran into a friend at a bar that I haven't seen in a while. We started having small talk: his job, living situation, girl problems, lack of deodorant at the time, how he's obsessed with Mariah Carey (wordplay!), his theory on the world's toilet paper shortage, etc. Somehow, the conversation of public urination came up. I know we have all done it (girls, you too. You dirty girls). He went on to tell me that he got busted by some cops while pissing on the side of a building. The way he described them sounded like the cops from my favorite movie of all time, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. They told him to clean up the piss with his own fleece and they would let him go. It was a no-brainer for him, gladly cleaning it up and throwing the soiled goods into his trunk.

The next morning, hungover as shit, he went to his car and put the fleece on. Not having any sense of smell that day because of the lack of brain in his brain, he wore it around for most of the day. He said he realized it around midday. He asked if I've ever done anything like that.

I answered, "Let's take a shot!"

And like a clean slate he replied, "Ok! So good to see you!"

A world with clean slates, piss fleeces, yoga instructors, and 2Pac. 

I want to go to there.

On the last leg of my trip to the sunny state of Florida, the weather finally cleared up and reached 85 and hot as shit on the same day as the giant snowstorm back here in Milwaukee. I was quite amused when I heard this news, but suddenly yearned for freezing temperatures and frozen boogers after experiencing some low-brow imbeciles with a gung-ho attitude for life without intelligence. The mentality down in Orlando is wishy-washy at best, and a "set-it-and-forget-it" state of mind is on constant duty. My attention to detail was rocket science for these bozos, and I have full intentions of telling you all about them.

We went to a club called Chillers the night before my departure. It was across the street from Paris Hilton's old club, and the crowd didn't disappoint with short shorts on women that SHOULD NOT be wearing them and highwaters paired with penny loafers on men that SHOULD be wearing pocket protectors. Little to my knowledge at the time, these were the folks that were innovators for fashion in the southeast. I decided to take my glasses off for a blurry, more blissful visual experience.

The porn-detail-guy that I mentioned previously (let's call him Quart) walked up to me and asked, "Yo, you want to meet my friend outside? He's pretty cool."

I replied, "Why is he cool? Does he work with y'all or something?"

He answered, "Dude, he's got a lot of porn. A LOT."

I didn't know what to say. Did I give this guy an inkling that I gave a shit about his porn collection? Enough to meet his friend so we could what? Trade porns and see what the other doesn't have and needs? Did I give Quart some revelation that I had a collection of my own?

Hell no. My theory is that in his crazy, porn induced mind, he fabricated his own story that I was as sick as he was.

I walked away abruptly and avoided him the rest of the evening.

Guess who was passed out on the sidewalk again? If you can't figure this one out, then move to Florida. You'll fit right in,

My friend who I came to visit (let's call him Jay) had scratched his eye the first night that I arrived and was having trouble seeing. He wore a patch around, and had prescription eyedrops to heal the sloth faced eyeball. His pain was unbearable, and I offered suggestions of pain meds, icy hot on his eyelid, a cockmeat sandwich, and other remedies that have worked for people in the past. None of these were up to par, so Jay's roommate said, "Hey, put a teabag on your eye. It'll make you feel better."

A teabag? Really?

I heard this from across the room.

Too easy.

We went to Cheesecake Factory before my departure and the super big mall they have with stores like Burberry, Liposuction clinic for teens, and Everything Flannel! We sat down next to two old couples that were living down here now for retirement. I tried not to eavesdrop on their dull knife conversation, but I managed to pick up on some general information:

1) A spoon can apparently be as useful as a knife

2) Retirement homes don't give out knives, hence the spoon skills

3) Why have the bar mush up your food with a blender when you can bring your own Magic Bullet? A heavy debate between the couples

4) Christmas sweaters are hard to find in Orlando

5) Cheesecake Factory does not carry Prune juice. A sensitive subject at the table.

I only picked up on these because they were talking loudly without their hearing aids in. I continued to pick up on random topics of theirs until I heard one of the men say "So, is there more than one hole in there?"

Dirty. So dirty.

I plugged my right ear to drown out whatever disgusting sex talk the old, boney, wrinkley geriatric crowd was about to have. I was hungover as shit and didn't want to vomituss all over them.

I was the first one on the plane.

I will return, but just not anytime soon. I need to recooperate.

I have visited Orlando many times in the past. Most of the time it was for work, but I have had a chance to enjoy myself in this beautiful sunshine state. Going to I-Drive to see all the second hand souvenir shops, sandy beaches next to sewage factories, traffic lights estimating a 7 minute wait time, hyper color shirts and accessories, and a collection of bad drivers swerving New Jersey style all over the road with no courtesy for the other vehicles around them. In spite of all this debaucery, the southeast region does have some funny shit about it.

I arrived at my friend's house here in Orlando the other day with a winter jacket and hat on (yes, I was the weird guy in the airport). Steaming armpits from the sweltering heat, I managed to rock some shorts and a sleeveless tee to fit right in with the touristy pack of curly headed fucks that live down here.

I met some of his friend's, one in particular who was interesting in a "slow-down-traffic-but-forget-about-it-after-you-drive-away" sort of way. He was rambling on about movies, and I mentioned that I like to copy movies from Netflix (thanks Netflix!) and send them back the same day I get them. He went on to tell me how he gets his movies, that he has over 2 TB of movies and shows and a lot of them are simply for collection purposes. I made a game out of it, asking him what he had and whatnot. He happened to have everything I asked. I then refered to some of my friends back home and said, "Yeah, I have guys that collect porn just to have it part of their sacred library."

He replied, "Dude, I have The Bang Brothers, all 9 movies, Ass and Titties 12, Rim Pacific Tongue Jobbers (the Immaculate Collection), etc...

He then went into detail about every video.

DETAIL.

I'm talking time of day he watches them kind of detail.

AWKWARD.

Later, after going to the club, I found him face down on the sidewalk sleeping. I helped him up, but stayed clear of his hands. I don't know where they've been and wasn't trying to find out.

Weirdo.

The next day we went to a golf cart community called the Villages. It's for retired folks, and is actually a very nice place. They have 30 golf courses, 25 swimming pools, a whole bunch of restaurants, a local rub-and-tug, Starbucks, corners legal for prostitutes, and much more. It truly was a stage for the Truman Show. Being a large community, there were a lot people that worked there for all the businesses. Most of the people that worked there were older, but the odd thing about it was that all the older ladies were wearing low cut shirts. I'm talking low low low low low low. Reeboks with the straps type low. There was a cougar here and there, but most of them were old, wrinkley, and completely unattractive. I started to get the sweats from thinking about the Weiner's Circle, seeing that chocolate shake and fixating my virgin eyes onto that taboo mind-altering act. I started to imagine what these old, saggy, left out in the rain type funbags would feel like. It was such a wrong thought, so wrong. But for some reason, I couldn't stop staring. AGAIN. Wrinkles, spots, zero cleavage, dried up nipples, and crusty white stuff from super old, dry skin was all I saw. I looked away forcefully, walked out of the store, and bit my own tongue for punishment to myself for thinking and looking at all of that.

A blog-driven mind can be harmful at times.

Yes, this is one of them.

Weirdo. Me.

I take a trip to Chicago every other week to see some friends and drink massive amounts of alcohol. It's the way it always turns out, begging the good Lord for soberness, swearing off alcohol for good, throwing my half-eaten bar time food at windows, using all five senses to walk in a straight line, overtipping cabbies, undertipping rude Chicago bartenders, wearing as much Brewer's gear as possible, and getting mean looks from everyone in the damn city. I know I'm not liked in Chicago being a Brewer's fanatic and hanging out in Wrigleyville. But the fact of the matter is that I love pissing Chicago people off. You know how Michael Jordan was put on this Earth to play basketball and William Hung was put here to sing? Well, I believe I was put here to invade Chicago as often as I can and make my presence known down in that shit town.

So I arrived at my friend's house (let's call him Barbarsol) around 2pm. I was there to pick up some videos for djing, and since he is a full-time dj like myself, the middle of the afternoon was the perfect time. We sat down and started going through some videos, which I forgot to mention that he has every music video ever made. He literally told me that he has over 700GB of videos. Now with mp3's, there are about 250 songs per 1GB. 700 x 250 = 175,000. Videos are larger, but it's a pretty good idea that it's a lot of fucking videos. We were randomly going through all of them, from 80's to current stuff for a couple hours. His girlfriend came home, and decided to sit across from us at the table. The screen was facing away from her, so she could hear what we were watching but couldn't see. Barbarsol looked at me, and wrote on a piece of paper, "watch this." He lowered the volume all the way, and put on a porn with some hardcore action going on. I'm not going to get into detail, but it was raunchy, breakfast time type television.

We watched intently for several minutes, looking up every so often to make sure the girlfriend didn't try to peek over to see. She stood up, and immediately Babarsol switched to a Bryan Adams video from the mid-90's. She looked and asked, "What's with the video?"

Silence. Quick, think of something!

I replied, "He has every video!"

Sad, but that's all I could come up with. I mean, is there any good excuse for watching a Bryan Adams video? The Canadian superstar?

No, there isn't.

I left there with a whole lot of videos and proceeded to meet out with Ger. When we met, we decided to meet his other doctor friend for a few drinks. Now let me tell you, these two guys are pathologists. If you don't know what that is, then consider yourself lucky. It's the doctors that work with dead people, doing autopsy's and determining the cause of death. In other words, they are a unique bunch.

We met with Tim and sat down to chat at a loud Chicago bar.

1) Let's chat at a loud bar. Who picked it? Not me. The weird doctors.

I was being the polite, nice charming fellow that I am, asking about their job to make them feel like I gave a shit. There were no women working with them, they could work at a leisurely pace, took 2 hour lunch breaks, on Facebook constantly, and drank more coffee than anyone working with dead people should. They started telling me about all the hot women that would come into their unit.

2) Wait. Hot women? It's only dudes working there.

Oh shit. They're talking about dead hot women bodies.

I asked about this, curious why they would bring it up.

"So, you see a lot of hot women roll on in there?"

Ger replied, "Oh yeah, they're all naked too."

Tim interjected, "Yeah, some have huge boobies."

3) Using the phrase "huge boobies" when talking about a dead woman's rack. Awkward.

I asked, "Don't you cover them up?"

Tim said, "No, I grab them to see how they feel. All the boobies I want, right at my disposal. I grab 'em all the time."

My jaw dropped. Literally.

They both laughed, high-fiving and telling more stories on the subject.

I ordered more shots.

I got so drunk I couldn't find my car the next day for 40 minutes. Maybe next time I won't ask about their jobs.