Day 33: The Pittsburgh Trip

Blokes and Hos,

As I type this I am currently borderline-functional and probably still drunk. I went to Pittsburgh, bent the town over the sink in the bathroom of a shady dive, and did blow off its ass while I pounded it like John Henry working on the railroad. While I still have some coherent thoughts I thought I would relay some of the shenanigans that transpired.

Participants: Me, Farjar, Rebecky, Nerv, and Ten-inch (though, in point of fact, Nerv also sports a decameter meatwhistle. He's just not as famous for it)

Tuesday Night:

3:00 PM: Checking into the hotel lobby. Only remarkable because we had to give the front desk chick more info than if we were filling out adoption papers for a Romanian baby. I declare loudly that, if the cubs do not win, I will be defecating profusely throughout the lobby and elevators.

3:25: We have hit our pre-game bar and ordered beers and Jack Daniels. I have not eaten at all, and can tell from the first sip that the night could end rough.

3:29: Second round ordered

3:40: Third round. (yes, rounds are both beers and JD)

When we left this bar to go to the game, we were treated to the crabbiest cabby in Pittsburgh. I complained about her driving and Farjar advised her often to "slow down" and "watch out" Cabbie was not amused.

We take our seats, I'm drunk, we order lots more beers throughout the game. Luckily, unlike my trip to Busch stadium, they are still serving very inebriated Cub fans.

At different points during the game I announce loudly that the Pittsburgh umps are gay, that predictions for rain tomorrow are gay, that warm beer is gay, Nerv is gay, and that since Rebecky's shirt is not a Cubs shirt then it is, in fact, gay.

Kyle takes a now-famous picture of the scoreboard at the very instant that Ted Lilly gives up the losing homer to the Pittsburgh Punching Bags.

We go out after the game to the bars around the stadium, but none of them are very busy. The stadium itself was only about 1/4 full, which is gay considering what a great ballpark it is, so strangely enough most of the people out and about are Cubs fans. We RULE. At the first bar we stop at we decide to up our already prodigious drunkery with some shots (tequila, of course). Then we ordered more Jack and alternated between smoking/drinking outside and drinking/arguingwithstrangers inside. Unlike most nights where I am belligerently drunk I didn't almost get beat up. I think. I did however try and pull my quarters trick but was so drunk that not only could I not pull it off but I didn't even remember trying the next day.

[the quarters trick is where I lay out 5 quarters on the bar, don't look while someone touches just one, then feel the heat signature from their fingers to tell which quarter they touched. Normally, pretty bad ass. Tuesday night, not so much.]


Apparently the lameness of Pittsburgh spreads beyond their baseball team to their bars, because all of the bars right around the stadium were closing or closed before midnight. We were not pleased, but for some reason the JD+drunkenness that normally pushes me into the realm of assholery didn't happen and I remained mostly docile. Except when Ten-inch ordered a pizza that tasted like dust, moldy basement, and tree sap.

Ten-inch: "I don't know... I like it allright."
Nerv: "Yeah, it's not bad."
Me: "Are you retarded? This tastes like a load from bigfoot's dick."

I would tell you what happened from then until the next morning, but I don't remember much. I DO know that I did not, in fact, poop in the lobby.

Wednesday

Most of Wednesday was spent recovering and doing very foul things to the hotel toilet, but we had our game faces back on around 5PM or so. Well, technically, it happened accidentally. I was going with Farjar to find cigarettes (apparently there are no gas stations in Pittsburgh- all the cars must run on coal) and the store that we were directed to was inexplicably closed. Twenty feet away however was a sign outside of a dive bar that said "$1 drafts during happy hour"

Farjar: ::looks at watch, looks up at me::
Me: "Is it...?"
Farjar: ::nods::
Me: "Well... I AM thirsty..."
Farjar: ::nods, heads into bar::

Luckily, not only did they have $1 drafts, but they had an old school cigarette machine. We slammed down some drafts for a bit and met a lady who claimed to be an event planner for the Heinz museum. At this point I would like to elucidate you on the relative merits of my friends. Nerv is a guy who will never say never, never back down from a cold beer, and has put up with my constant hassling for almost a decade- all with good humor. Ten-inch, however, is a logistical master who can accomplish complex and confusing tasks that may require ingenuity with ease. Since I was away from the hotel and not technically game-ready, but I didn't want to stop drinking delicious cold beer, I made the following call:

Me: "Ten-inch. I need you to grab my Jersey, the tickets, the giant Cub fist, Farjar's shirt- and not the one from yesterday-, and grab a hotel key. Then round up Nerv and head downstairs to meet Rebecky. Give her the hotel key so she can park, wait for her, then go to a bar called Crystal with your drinking face on."
Ten-inch: "Gotcha."

Five minutes later, there they are. Man I love that.

Sadly the game Wednesday was rained out, which sucked. Two notable things happened:
1. When it stopped raining they sent out the grounds crew to get the field ready. Literally every one of these guys was alive during the civil war area and they had the worst equipment I've ever seen. They would take these wooden rake things and swirl the standing water in circles for a half hour. Why? No idea. After an hour and a half of this, they called the game. Wish they would have told us this sooner, as there are nicer places to keep your drunk going on $7 beers.
2. As I passed from our seating area to the concessions I would get heckled by this 15 year old pimply-faced kid and his loser-squad. "Hey, Hughes [I had a homemade jersey on that said "Hughes" with the number 720 to commemorate the great Cub radio announcer Pat Hughes] Cubs suck!" Or, "Hey again: Cubs still suck" or "Cubs suck- and 720's not even a real baseball number." I handled all of this with grace, and didn't say anything (surprising for me, I know) for at least 4 trips back and forth. Finally, on the last trip he said something again and I stopped and faced him. Here's what happened:

Me: I slowly drink a good half of my beer straight down and then make my "boy that's delicious!" face. Then I smack Rebecky on the ass [sorry about that]. "I have an ice cold delicious beer and a hot chick's ass; all you have are zits and a curfew. Pirates suck." Then, to his stunned silence, I turn around and walk back to my seats.

Childish? Maybe- but he started it.

After our rain-out, we head back to dive-bar because it had just our dive-y kind of feel. The bartender, Amy, was nice but we hassled her incessantly all night and steadfastly refused to call her anything but "Crystal", since that was the name of her aunt and the owner of the bar. I performed my quarter trick- a lot- and earned several rounds of free drinks from it and from a few other tricks I pull. One guy, "Hairplug", showed up and commenced into some general douchery, so we fucked with him off and on all night. For some unknown reason, Farjar had marked some of the quarters on the bar with a sharpie I had. That led to the following scenario:

Farjar: (interrupting me trying to insist to Hairplug that my heat-signature reading is for real and the result of years of practice) "Actually, he's even better than that. I bet if I throw these four quarters up in the air and catch them, Caleb can tell which one I touched.
Hairplug: "What? How could he know that?"
Farjar: "Just watch" He throws the quarters in the air, catches them, and holds them out to me. I pretend to consider, then pick one at random. "That's the one! Wow- too weird. How does he do it?"
Hairplug: "How do I know that was the one you picked?"
Farjar: Sees one of them has a Sharpie mark on it and holds it up. "See? I marked it so I'd know."
Hairplug guy actually thought this made sense. If you would have asked me beforehand whether I thought anyone really was that dumb, I would have told you no. I'm not right all the time I guess.

The last funny thing I remember happening is Farjar convincing "Crystal" that Nerv was a diabetic and that if he didn't get some nachos soon he would be risking a dangerous blood-sugar dip. Amazingly, she bought this (helped by Nerv's quick thinking and suddenly shaking hands) and talked the 18 year old cook to turn the kitchen back on and fire us up some nachos.

[As I read this, I have to change my assessment that I didn't almost get beat up. I did. When I was out smoking at the dive bar, this bulimic wine-drinking chick was out with me and flirting with me quite a bit. She was reading my palm and telling me things like "oh, I think this line means that you are quite ferocious in bed." Yeah, classy. I would have considered something, maybe, but she had black bulimia stains on her teeth (deal breaker). She begged me to show her the quarter trick back inside and when I did, her boyfriend at the bar stared daggers at me while sipping whiskey. Since he was obviously a fun-hating douchebag with his tie partly undone and a permenant scowl on his face, I didn't feel bad in the slightest and even hammed it up a little extra just for his benefit. As I told her funny stories and jokes, each peal of her puke-tainted laughter would send his eyes a shade darker. Luckily he was alone and I had some homies]

That pretty much sums up the trip, except for a few notes about Farjar and I fucking with Nerv.

1. Farjar steals- in plain sight- Nerv's ticket for the game then announces "okay everyone, make sure you have your ticket!" Nerv, sweating, furiously looks through his pockets and wallet for his ticket but all he can find is the stub from the first game. Wanting to save face, he claims that he "found it" and only later does Farjar let him know that he was the one who stole it. Nerv not amused.
2. On Thursday morning Farjar and I pile every blanket and pillow on top of a passed out Nerv without his knowledge. In a two bedroom suite with a pullout sofa and extra couch cushions, this is no small mountain of linen. Nerv not amused.
3. When Nerv is dropping a deuce in the hotel bathroom, Farjar turns off the light switch. Since the switch was on the outside of the bathroom instead of the inside, Nerv was not amused.

Surprisingly I didn't get beat up, kicked out of anywhere, or thrown in jail. I did, however, drink a can of warm Budlight on the carride from the airport to home. Stay classy, Pittsburgh.

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