I Know What Roger Murtagh Was Talking About...

This past week has seen me in various situations better suited for 23 year old me, rather than 30 year old me. It started last Thursday when my friend and fellow comedian Ryan Conner and I went to see a mutual friend's play. We had been warned by our friend that the play was going to be bad, but this warning proved grossly inaccurate. It was worse than bad, which meant that Ryan and I adored every second of it. We were the assholes in the back row of the theatre drinking booze we snuck in and laughing at everything. Ryan wrote a pretty comprehensive recap of the experience, you should check it out here.

The nonsense continued when my friend Kathriona came in from Ireland for a visit. Kathriona and I were both drunken menaces to society when we lived in DC about 7 years ago. She has since grown up - gotten married, bought a house and had two beautiful kids. On the other hand I have since purchased the entire box set of "Eerie, Indiana", arguably the greatest TV series from the early 90s (Who would ever argue that?), and have every intention of some day watching it:
So obviously, we've both really grown as people. But this time Kathriona came in for a visit without her husband and children, which meant she was sans responsibility for 4 whole days. This in turn meant that she should be spending the majority of those days drinking heavily. And good friend that I am, I decided to join her.

So Friday night we were out until about 3am, which is crazy enough. 3am? That's blurry-infomercial-watching time, not drunken-CVS-shopping time. And what is the appeal of a 24 hour store when you're wasted? I wasn't even looking for snacks or anything fun, I was swaying back and forth in front of their scotch tape selection, wondering aloud how much scotch tape is too much.

Saturday night was even more eventful - after spending a good many hours at a bar in Astoria with friends, Kathriona and I hopped in a cab to meet up with her sister in Sunnyside. The cab ride was only 10 minutes, but it was more than enough time for me to lose my cell phone. At least, I think that's when I lost it. Who knows - I may have thrown it at a lamppost that I thought was disrespecting me, such was my state. So we get to the final bar at around 3:30am, not holding out too much hope that they'd still be serving since bars close at 4am in NYC. Well, it was our lucky (ridiculous) night, because when the bar closed at 4am it did so with us and about 20 other people in it. It was a lock-in, and it was surreal: everyone was smoking (Indoors! Heavens!) and everyone was dancing to some weird European techno and for a solid 6 minutes I was convinced everyone was rolling but me. So we kept drinking and dancing and probably throwing bones; until about 5:15am when I looked around and realized the sun would be coming up soon, and that I had lost my phone, and that there was a gentleman to my right at the bar who kept asking if he could braid my hair. And those were all very good reasons to take my leave.

The next day I suffered through an all-day hangover that seemed to disprove my belief that chanting "liquor before beer, you're in the clear" gives you a free pass on monster headaches.

And then last night I continued my "I'm still young and hip, LOLz and WTF and Spring Break!!" week, when dinner with my friends Doug and Gina turned into bar trivia night. I remembered that no contest is too meaningless for me to get overly-competitive about, something I learned at an early age when I accused my CCD teacher of cheating in a class game of 7-Up. So while I'm telling everyone to listen to me because I know a thing or two about European capitals (I don't) and toys from the 80s (I really do), I am simultaneously shooting down everyone else's suggestions with snide comments like, "What are you, some kind of expert? Some kind of human body expert, Dr. So-and-So? Whatever. You're an anesthesiologist, you don't know shit."

In the end we came in second place, which won us a free round of shots. These free shots helped dull the pain of losing, though not as much as keying the car of one of the guys who won. Or so I would imagine.

What a week. Time to take a break. As Roger Murtagh famously said in Lethal Weapon 2, "I'm gonna die on a toilet, aren't I?"

Wait, what? That doesn't relate to me at all. Fuck you, imdb.com.