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Thursday 27 October 2011

The Second Coming-Back (with beer)

Welcome back to part 2 of the story of the first Kareoke Sunday at a bar I used to work at. By this point the story is less about karaoke (blessedly) and more about the after party. When we left off my car was hurtling from pub to party late on a Sunday night (when respectable people are getting a good night’s sleep before work on Monday morning). At this point my car contained (sung to the tune of “12 days of Christmas”):
-          7 (different) sets of directions,
-          6 pints of lager (Pablo grabbed a spare “for the road”)
-          5 drunken bar staff,
-          4 bottles of wine,
-          3 full cartons,
-          2 spirit bottles,
-          And not a hope of finding this place...
After taking about half an hour to drive to a house two suburbs away, we arrived at the chef’s house where the party was continuing as it had started. By this I mean that everyone was pouring as much alcohol down their throats as possible to the musical accompaniment of two or three piss wrecks on Singstar. What followed was pretty much standard for those days and that house. People jumped in the spa in their underwear, girls jumped in the shower and discussed the finer points of their boobs (with comparisons), wrestling became a completely reasonable social activity and our alcohol supply was starting to look like Batman’s parents (it was getting murdered too). I was relaxing in my boxers in the spa talking to one of my managers about the finer points of marketing strategy. This was made surprisingly difficult by strategy being a bastard of a word to understand when the speaker is slurring as badly as I was.
I’m sure there have been studies into this, I can imagine there’d be a bloody big queue to sign up to be part of a study like this, but apparently drinking in a spa gets you drunker, quicker than drinking not-in-a-spa (if that makes sense). It’s something about the bubbly, warm water and your body absorbing alcohol faster. Try it with champagne and a girl in a spa, you get the idea. Seriously though, that may be the best scientific experiment of all time. Can you imagine the funding request? “You need a dozen young women in bikini’s, a hot tub, and two kegs of beer? Are you sure this is for science young man?”
So I’ve wandered back inside to pour myself another whatever-the-hell-we-have-left and coke and discovered that our alcohol supply is looking lighter than that barmaid we fired because of her “eating disorder” (crack addiction is apparently an eating disorder). As I gazed across this sea of broken dreams, empty bottles and a tipsy looking housecat I decided that something needed to be done. I had a carton in the fridge at home, I could go get that! (brilliant logic, thank you alcohol impaired brain function).
So I’ve jumped in my car, reversed over the letter box, aimed for home and shot off to bring life and alcohol back to the party. I would be hailed a hero by the drunken masses, they’ll probably give me a medal or something. Yep, this is a great idea!
So I had been driving for about 30 seconds and now was completely lost in the back suburbs of bloody nowhere, vacant blocks on the right, housing estates on the left, cop car up ahead... wait, what?! Yeah, that’s a cop car. It’s about 3am on a Monday morning, I’m the only car on the road,  and my car looks like rolling probable cause most days anyway. I’m suddenly hoping for someone to get murdered nearby so the cops have something to keep them busy.
I stop at a set of lights, the cops stop on the other side of the intersection. Lights go green, I drive through, the cops turn right through the intersection. Ok, they didn’t do a u-turn. I’m ok... why are there headlights behind me? Oohhh... crap.
I take the next left into a housing estate hoping they’ll keep going straight, no luck. I take the next left, then another left and then pull into the first driveway I see. Lights off, engine off, I climb out of the car trying my best to look completely inconspicuous. The police car rolls down the street, they drive slowly past me and keep going. Have I got away with it? I’m not going to stand here and try and find out. Like Dr. Frankenstein discovering a way to hold his monster’s head on, I bolt it. Cops go one way, I make a run for the other, before they knew what was happening I was around the corner, down the street and across the road, where I found the park I had passed a few moments ago.
I could hear the cop car racing up behind me so without breaking stride I dived full tilt into some native bushes. I have no idea how I managed to land without breaking my neck but somehow I’ve ended up crouched behind these bushes watching the police car’s spotlight scanning the area.
*Ring ring*
Oh fuck.
*Ring –bash, bang, shtthfckup!*
Me: “Nyello?”
Jim (still at the party): “Mate, where are you?”
Me: “...Hiding from cops in the bushes?”
Jim: “... why?”
Me: “Because I’m not real keen on getting breathalysed right now?”
Jim: “You drove? Where the hell are you?”
Me: “I told you, in the bushes in some park somewhere. More details to follow from my arrest report unless you shut the hell up!”
Jim: “Again? Do I need to find a driver to come get you?”
Me (watching cop car race off down the road): “Nah, I’ll be ok. I’ll call a taxi. Promise I won’t drive again”
Jim: “Good. No Driving.”
Me: “yes Mum, see you later” -click-
So once the cops had definitely left the area, either looking for me or they found something more important to do, I jumped back in my car, immediately broke my promise, and proceeded to un-lose myself back to the party. Sadly without alcohol but with a good story anyway.
Apparently most of the party had heard the details of that phone conversation so by the time I came back there was a (small) collection being passed around for bail money and a (large) pool going on my odds of making it back alive. A few people tried to talk me in to turning myself in until they were told that it didn't count and they still lost the bet. Cheerful bastards...
The story must have gotten around, because by the time I turned up to work the next day the section on the notice board marked “Things to Remember” read something like:
-          Beer of the month is Millers, $5/stb
-          We’ve run out of the venison
-          Wine of the month is somethingorother
-          Parkland bushes are a great place to hide from the cops.
Important things to know in life

-Worst Guy Ever

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Kareoke: The Tone-Deaf Killer

This story is from back when I worked in some bars that were unlikely to feature on any tourist guide. The delightful clientele varied their tastes from “jacksancoke” to “jacksstubbee” and their partners usually drank the most over-sugared, brightly coloured cocktails we could invent. Usually with stupid names (the “Smurf in a Blender” used to sell quite well). We regularly heard questions like "whaddya got inna can?" and "got anything stronger than metho?". Yes, this was a place where your regulars included uniformed police and we occasionally closed early because we ran out of glassware that wasn’t being used to stab someone.
Somehow the idea that our Sunday nights were a bit lacking in the quantity and quality of patrons got up to management and, after what I’m sure was a severe drinking session, enough brain cells had been duly silenced for a karaoke night to sound like a good idea. Apparently no-one considered half-smashed bogans belting out their favourite tracks from that bible-on-CD of musical taste “Best Beer Drinking Songs in the World Ever (Volume 2)” to be bad for business. Thanks to this idea Sundays suddenly became a ghost town. You couldn’t even get staff in the place. That’s right, people who were being paid to be there would honestly have paid money to be somewhere else. The music was so bad and so loud that deaf people would show up to sit around, watch people’s facial expressions and feel better about their lot in life. But that came later.
This story is about the opening night of karaoke though. That fun, lively first night that was like that first sip of beer after a long hard day at work (the following weeks were more like eating the entire carton of beer bottles, then trying to pass the resulting shards the next day on the toilet). That first night most of the usual crew decided to hang around after their shifts to see how this would go, and maybe see who was brave enough to get on stage (hint: not me, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket).
Jim and me both finished up nice and early so we settled down with a couple of pints and some dinner before the show started. Dinner ended up being a monstrous chicken parmi and 4 pints. Jim had knocked back about 3 pints as well by this point and we agreed that in the interest of road safety, one of us should be the designated driver. We had both had a few too many to pull this off legally, so we figured the next best thing was to halve our chances of getting caught by only one of us driving (Brilliant plan, drunk logic). Since Jim lived closer, we figured we’d drop his car home and then I’d drive us both back. We both had bought similar sports cars and spent more time and money than I’d like to admit trying to make them go fast (or fixing things we broke) so it was going to be a quick trip. One of the apprentice chefs caught wind of this and asked if he and his attractive female friend could come along for the ride. Attractive female friend? Sure there’s room!
What happened next wasn’t responsible, or safe, or good for anyone’s tyres. It involved phrases like “yellow light... fuckit, I can make it” and a girl clawing at the dashboard while shrieking like a cheerleader. When you’re cornering through a set of lights that have been yellow for what feels like forever at 90kph and the guy in the passenger seat asks “was that a cop car?” while pointing to traffic on the opposite side of the road, you can only hope to put as much distance between you and him as possible. As quickly as possible. Sadly that wasn’t my only brush with the law that night (more about that in part 2). I won’t go into much more detail about that trip, but bragging rights extend as far as claiming to have survived it (and if Jim’s to be believed, the wet patch the girl left on his seat).
One we had returned to the bar and grabbed another round of drinks we settled in to watch a few hours of sheepish looking regulars and a few staff climb on stage to try the odd duet. It was like the outtakes of Australian Idol. Not the hilariously bad ones, just the average and less-than-average singers. Luckily we didn’t really mind, a few more rounds had helped soften the blows of the jarringly missed notes and slurred lyrics.
Suddenly it was getting towards closing time and the head chef suggested we keep drinking back at her place. The call went out “who has a car?” and being one of the very few people who worked at the pub that had both a car and a licence I put my hand in the air and said those classic words: “sure, i’m fiiiiine”. At this point that was about as good as it was going to get from the assembled train-wreck of waisted waitresses and blitzed bartenders, so a few of us piled back into my cramped car and raced off towards the nearest bottle shop. Pablo was in the passenger seat and had worked at this particular place (picture a riot with a 6 drink minimum) prior to moving to my slightly less blood-stained venue, so he was able to convince the manager to sell us a couple of cartons and a few bottles despite having already closed for the night. The stories Pablo would tell about that place never ceased to amaze me.
Now with all of us crammed back into the car with the addition of a few crates of booze we dashed back to the bar and our gratefully awaiting friends. Who had already left for chef’s house. Dicks. On the upside, Sunday night was also pour-off night. This was the night we cleaned the beer lines, and to clean them, you had to empty out the beer first, and there’s no sense in wasting good beer, so why not have a drink while you do it. We arrived back on the scene to see a line of fresh pints waiting on the bar, not that we could take them with us to the party though. It would be stealing to take glasses from a bar and stealing is wrong...
So now we had a very small car with 5 very drunk people in it, each holding a pint, and 3 cartons of booze squeezed in on top. It would’ve been dangerous to light a match anywhere near us. Somehow still being the designated driver for the night, we’ve headed off to the chef’s house. It took about 10 minutes of driving before we figured out that no one actually knew where the chef lived and started making the appropriate phone calls. I’m not going to tell you about the quality of the directions I received, but the number of times I heard “wait! Turn here!” caused me to corner so sharply that Pablo in the passenger seat had to hold my pint for me.
I hate to leave you guys hanging, but I don’t want to make these too long. So it looks like this will have to be a two-part series.
Next week, Part Two: The Second Coming-Back (with beer).

-Worst Guy Ever

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Chivalry is severly maimed and on life support

Chivalry is dead. There, I’ve opened with a cliché. Now put a sheet down over the carpet, because I’m about to lay this thing out and it could get messy.
Here are a few tips on being a gentleman. Let’s look at the word though, Gentle – Man. You take the raw testosterone of being a kill-a-bear-with-a-big-rock man and refine it, add some class, something smooth... you take those rugged good looks and sharp wit and pour it over ice like a fine cognac.
If you’ve never helped a woman with something heavy, opened a door for someone, let someone else get served before you because they were waiting longer or general stopped being a completely self-centred fuckwit for 5 minutes, I need to ask a favour. Get sterilised. Or move to the US. Just get the hell away from the normal people until you learn one tenth of being a gentleman. What follows is a brief summary of some of the finer points of being a modern gentleman:
Opening the door for her – In these modern times of gender equality and lesbians, it might be a bit difficult to figure out if the short-haired, overall wearing, crotch-grabbing individual walking towards you is an under-developed teenager or a kid with bitch-tits and awful clothes. Ok, that’s not the point but it just bugs the crap out of me sometimes. Rule of thumb: can’t tell, don’t ask. Boy or girl, pregnant or fat, ironic or actually-that-stupid. This applies to all of the above. ...What was I saying? Right.
Opening the door for her (really this time) – how hard is it to open a damn door? No-one is in so much of a rush that they can’t hold a door for a woman (regardless of age, 18 or 80). Don’t expect a thank you for it, that’s like expecting presents on your birthday: it should happen, but you’re not about to whine and complain if it doesn’t. I’ve had women snap at me saying “I’m a grown woman! I can open my own doors!” I’m sure she was on her way to her smashing the glass ceiling and raging against the constraints of some kind of man-spiracy, but that’s in the minority. Most of the time opening a door for someone else is a clear demonstration of a thoughtful person. You’re demonstrating that you aren’t self-centred and have thought about the people around you for more than a couple of seconds, you’re also demonstrating a basic grasp of the mechanical concept of a “door handle” which some people still seem to struggle with. This is also a great way to break the ice with a pretty girl or find out if a granny has a hot female relative your age (I once got set up with a cute little thing because I gave her mum a jump-start in a rainy car park one afternoon).
Get your wallet out – If you’re a gentleman you are master of your finances, regardless of how large or small. Managing your money is important; don’t go to fancy, expensive bars and restaurants if you’re living on a uni student’s poverty budget. In any case, buy a girl a drink, not because she thinks she deserves it, but because you’re a generous soul and understand that a happy friend or a smile from a pretty girl is worth more than a few dollars in your pocket. What were you going to spend that money on anyway? Another beer for yourself? Whether you’re out with friends or on a date, spend a little extra, buy the girl a cocktail, pick something from the top shelf. Be generous. Why? Because you work hard and earn enough that you have a little left over to share (if you don’t work hard and earn enough to share, go change that). A friend on your side is worth more than a dollar in your pocket.
Drink a proper drink – A Gentleman has taste. Jim Beam & Cola in a can is not taste. That’s mass produced crap that you’re struggling to digest. Even Fred Booker Noe III (7th generation Jim Beam Distiller) considers Jim Beam Black Label to be the entry level Jim Beam product (White Label is a watered down version to reduce sales tax). He’s a man that knows a lot about bourbon, but isn’t so blind as to accept nothing else. I had the pleasure of attending a bourbon tasting presented by the legend himself and he spoke of scotches and rums he enjoyed as well, not just the bourbon he produces. An honest and balanced opinion. That said, occasionally try something from the top shelf, or just a step up from the basics. You’ll be amazed at the difference between a house scotch and something that might cost and extra 20%. You might also develop a more refined palate and a bit of sophistication. Don’t be fooled, no-one was born appreciating fine wine, liquor or art, it’s something that is developed. In any case, if you’re going to be a man of the world you should experience more than basics. Drink beer other than the stuff on tap at your local or on special in the retail liquor chain. Look for something unique and different. Learn something new about it, even if it’s just that absinthe cause’s loss of memories and eyebrows.
These are three little tips to try in modern life, two of them can be precticed in a bar! You really have no excuse not to try this. i don't care if you're a mormon and can't drink. You're already going to hell for laughing at the stuff I write. Bottoms up!
Being a Modern Gentleman isn’t easy, but it’s different. And that seems to be what so many people are looking for these days. Something other than the same crap you see out every weekend, the same drinks, the same shirts, the same hair, the same fights. It might be worth trying a different path for a while. This one isn’t currently having a dozen vodka-lime-and-soda’s spewed onto it.

-Worst Guy Ever