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

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

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 (7^th 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

Holiday From Responsibility

This is the tale of an idea. They say an idea can change the world. Apparently ‘they’ didn’t mention that the idea had to be on a Boeing 757 as it smacked into one of a matching pair of sky scrapers (it’s been 10 years, we can joke about this now). This idea hasn’t changed the world yet, but I think it could. This is the story of the greatest holiday known to man.

I awoke one bright summer morning at the crack of 11am. Having once again failed in my goal of “get up in time for Maccas breakfast” I decided to find out where I was. As it turns out I was at a friend’s house and it was the gentle screaming of his clapped out lawnmower that had interrupted my slumber. So I shortly found myself with coffee in hand providing supervision to my friend as he had a fair old crack at shoving a rusted, asthmatic lawnmower through grass so feral it probably received Centrelink payments.

After a few minutes of “you missed a spot” and getting branches thrown at me I came to realise I was missing something. There was something unmistakably wrong with my day. It was like dancing with Heather Mills, something wasn’t quite right.

I wanted a drink.

There was a need deep in my soul that could be quenched with bugger all but a nice, cold, rum and coke. I knew I wanted it, but I also knew I had to be a productive human being at some point during the day. I had only just gotten out of bed and a whole day full of crap I didn’t want to do ahead of me. That and being a uni student, I was pretty damn broke. I had enough money left in my bank to put a little fuel in my car or buy some food for the week ahead (not both). I had study I should be doing, money I should be saving, and no doubt a whole bunch of other things I really should have given a crap about.

But no. Something inside me climbed a metaphorical mountain and declared to the world “No! I will not!” in what was no doubt a heroic pose and a bold statement of defiance. The fact this statement was immediately follow by “Fuck it, I’m getting drunk!” probably tarnishes that a little, but I stand by my alcoholic convictions, and that’s exactly what I did. I marched right inside, found myself a bottle of rum, some ice, the biggest glass I could find (note: may have been a vase, this may also explain why I keep finding floral arrangements in my drinking cup...) and mixed myself one hell of a drink.

A few minutes later I was sitting in the back yard basking in the radiance of my excellent decision. Also the sun, but mostly my decision. I was suddenly feeling better, it was like my life had found something it was missing, and then poured it over ice and added a slice of lime. It is truly a wonderful feeling to know what you want in life, to go after it and achieve it. Especially before midday and with a minimum of effort.

My compadre gave up on the lawn and joined my in a glass of righteousness, soon realising the wisdom of my ways. A newfound look of respect appeared in his eyes when he realised what I had discovered. The Idea had come to me, I was merely a conduit for a greater power that had seen that tasks of men; the toil and labours, the drudgery and hard work. This power looked at the great tasks of men and spoke thusly:

“Eh, Fuck it.”

It was on this momentous day that I declared the first Holiday From Responsibility. I faced the world and decided that nothing I did today was going to be my fault. I was on holiday from having to take responsibility for my own actions, from study, from work, from commitments, hell, even from pants.

15 minutes later my car returned to my friend’s front lawn. Sideways. At speed. With me hanging out the window waving my beer.

That small amount of money in my bank account? Turns out it was just about enough for a carton. Fuel? not my problem. Food? not my problem. I was on holiday from having to be responsible for any of that junk. So my friend and pulled up a couch on the front porch and proceeded to ensure we were well and truly drunk by 2pm. We accomplished precisely stuff all that day, it felt pretty damn good. We called friends to see how there day at work was going and tell them about our idea, several bailed early to honour this new holiday (with a fresh carton). We invented new drinking games, we cheered on joggers and school kids passing the house, and we made the best possible use of a warm summer’s day in Australia; we got f**k-eyed.

A little later another friend of mine, let’s call her Chesty, came by to see what all the fuss was about. This quickly turned into her driving me on a snack run to the local shops. Chesty later described, with some horror, chasing me down the dairy aisle of a supermarket while I cackled madly and skulled a litre of chocolate milk shouting “If I yak this up later, it’s not my responsibility! And it’s going to be chunky as hell! AHAHAHAH”.

This was the first of many Holidays From Responsibility. Since that fateful day the call has gone forth many times. Call in sick to work, ditch the missus, stop what you’re doing and head to the liquor store because no-one wants anything to do with responsibility today. It’s time to feel good about doing nothing again.

That’s right, NOTHING is your responsibility, it’s your day off.

It’s your Holiday From Responsibility.

-Worst Guy Ever

An Idiot's Rug

I have a problem. It may sound like a common ailment. You may indeed have suffered from this at some point. The Australian Bureau of Statistics hasn’t put an exact figure on it but my sciencing suggests that 1 in 3 people will, at some point in their lives be the victim of an idiot (if you haven't and you can see two people nearby looking annoyed... bad news).

This may not come as a surprise to many of you. You’ve read those “Letters to the Editor” sections of the newspaper, you’ve listened to talk back radio, you’ve seen that some undeniably cruel bastard digging up the scarecrow-like corpse of Gretel Killeen and using it to summon the eldritch spirit of Big Brother for another horrifying season (where’s that bloody 2012 apocalypse when you need it). Idiots are all around us, they make life that little bit harder for us every day. The people who stop in the middle of a shopping centre and block the entire walkway to have a conversation. The taxi driver who has decided that “hazard lights” translates to “I’m about to do a something stupid, inconsiderate, annoying or all three at once lights". The bouncer who thinks you look like someone who got kicked out of the club a couple of weeks ago, by someone else, while he wasn’t working, but he heard the guy was wearing a white shirt, like the one you’re wearing now. Yeah, the peoplle you meet when you don't have a gun...

Sometimes this stupidity pays off and you get given back the change for a $50 when you gave the guy a $20 or bartender forgets to ring up a round of drinks. This doesn’t happen as often as I feel it should. Maybe we should start a national campaign to support idiots getting into jobs that benefit the people and keep them out of government jobs...

Then there’s the judgement calls; those times where you’re not sure if you’re winning or not. I’ve had one of those recently. Like a prematurely ejaculating birthday present, it came as a surprise. I have a fully carpeted kitchen now.

Yeah, that’s right. Plush red carpet from wall to wall all through my apartment, including the kitchen (luckily the bathroom was spared). I’m now stuck without a real idea of whether i should enjoy this or flat out hate it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad having a nice thick rug under foot when I’m cooking (ok microwaving, it still counts as food though) and while it’s new it remains nice. I’m looking at this like the US economy, or Julia Gillard though, I don’t see it lasting.

There’s a reason most kitchen aren’t carpeted. Kitchens are messy. That’s why you don’t see serial killers chopping up corpses in a bedroom or a lounge, too hard to get stains out. Serial killers know what they’re doing, that’s why they’re SERIAL killers, if they got caught after the first one they’d just be normal killers. A serial killer will go for a bathtub or a nice kitchen bench (proper granite, none of that Ikea crap) because it’s easier to clean up afterwards. I’m now denied this since I have a carpeted kitchen, on the bright side a whole bunch of people get to live a little bit longer... no connection... honest...

I didn’t ask for the carpet, it was just there one day (perils of living in a hotel, sometimes you come home and someone decorated). But honestly, I’m not too worried about cleaning it, that’s what housekeeping is for (perks of living in a hotel, I come home to a clean apartment every day).

So I’m not going to care too much about being a neat and tidy cook, and everything else can get sorted out between the rug and the maid.

Now to try some recipes that call for a lot of red wine and fire.

-Worst Guy Ever

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A Good Topic is Hard to Find

It’s not always easy to come up with something on the spot. It’s like when someone says “Hey, tell a joke” and you mind goes completely blank. You knew hundreds of jokes a moment ago, but now they’re all gone. The same thing probably happens to actors, musicians and anyone else who has found an outlet to express themselves. Sometimes there just isn’t a way to get everything out.

That’s where I am today. I’ve started three different posts in the last few days and just kind of trailed off. They were good ideas for posts too! I’m sure I’ll eventually get back to them and finish them off, but today it just isn’t happening.

I’m not sure if this is the cumulative result of a four-day weekend followed by some serious dental surgery (I was the patient, not the guy with the drill, luckily) and a couple of days of top quality pain meds or just good old fashioned writers block. The creative juices just aren’t flowing and the only way I’m going to fix that is by finding the literary (not literal) clitoris. It’s like I’m 13 years old again and just can’t find the bloody thing (I’m kidding, at 13 I was only just figuring out that an orgasm wasn’t a microscopic life form, though I’m sure my biology teacher had a good laugh at that essay...). The point is sometimes things don’t come out in a rush, you have to work at it for a while, let it settle, before coming back and going at it a bit harder... dammit I’m still thinking about clitoris’s. Is that the plural? Clitoriseses?  Clitorii? Clitorati? That just sounds like a very invasive paparazzi. Or a celebrity gynaecologist with a camera. Either way... ugh.

I had a point... Sometimes it’s hard to articulate a thought, this is made harder when the thought isn’t coherent to begin with. I had a friend writing a stand-up comedy sketch a while ago who was a bit short of material. I offered to help him out with some ideas and evaluate what he had so far. So, once we’d been at the pub for a few hours we were starting to get some pretty good stuff down on paper. Napkins and coasters really, but they’re still mostly paper.

I had the great suggestion to get on stage and talk about how hard it is to write a stand up comedy script. My reasoning was something like “You’re supposed to write what you know, yeah? So write that this is harder than we thought! Whose round is it?” Which seems reasonable, a lot of comedians talk about stuff they know. Women complain about their boyfriends, men complain about their wives, gay comedians complain about their handbags, Jerry Seinfield complains about being rich and still not funny. Why not complain about trying to write something funny?

You have to write a stand-up act tailored to an audience you don’t even know yet, this can go badly if you go too high-brow to a crowd full of gorillas that some cheerful bloody zookeeper thought it would be funny to put mullet-wigs on and then drop off at a local pub’s comedy night. This went badly in the case of this friend who once did a gig in front of a crowd of miners (people who mine, not under-agers) and didn’t get a single laugh from a few jokes about party drugs. He later found out that this was due to the fact the people who hand out random drug tests were sitting in the same room. You’ve never met a group of people who suddenly found they (quite deliberately) knew so little about illicit substances. It could have been snowing cocaine in that room and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in there that would admit to thinking it was anything but a very unusual bit of weather.

So you get on stage and talk about how hard it is to come up with material, and how times have been tough for comedians all over since Michael Jackson died and George W. Bush left politics. Talk about some of the stuff you wanted to say, talk about the stupid conversations you had coming up with new material, talk about the fight you got into at the bar when you tried out a new joke on the barmaid. How were you supposed to know she was Jewish?

If you can’t come up with something funny to talk about, talk about not being able to come up with anything, then write a blog post about it.

-Worst Guy Ever.

Support Single Mums

Righto kids, it’s story time. I’ve decided to share with you some stories of my youth so you may learn from my example. Good example or bad example doesn’t really come into it, but we can probably assume bad.

While I was young, care free and stupid (read: at university) my collection of friends and associates liked nothing better than to savour a cleansing ale and debate the finer points of social interaction, politics and religion. Either that or our nights ended up looking like Iraq if the US forces had been dropping beer, women and road-works signs from their aircraft instead of bombs.

Amongst some of our social circle our BBQ’s were known as marathon events to be feared by the uninitiated. Working in bars did nothing to lessen the regularity of late nights, late mornings and day-3 kick-ons (when you wake up/regain consciousness/get discharged from the ER on the third day of a bender and decide you might as well keep going). In fact there was a while there where our default state was ‘drunk’ and we had to make a conscious effort to sober up on days where we were working.

During this golden age of golden ale I found myself being on the receiving end of a cry for help. A friend of a friend had been asked if she could invite some young gentlemen along to an evening of birthday related revelry. Apparently the birthday girl had found her social circle had less cocks than a militant-lesbian chicken farm. I’m guessing there must a been a series of comical miscommunications that lead to the words “young gentlemen” being confused with “drunken idiots” because there I was telling my friends about the party we were attending that weekend and at no point did anyone ask if they needed to rent a tuxedo. I think even a tuxedo t-shirt would have been high-brow for us.

So the night has arrived and we’ve started the night with a nice big feed, a couple of cartons of beer and that all-time favourite male bonding ritual ‘watching the game’. Someone’s team won, everyone got drunk. I’ll skip the details of the drive out to the party but rest assured it consisted mostly of two cars loads of young men doing what young men do; drinking, some minor racing and shouting and the odd arse hanging out the window. We’ve descended upon the nice little community holding this birthday soirée with all the subtly of the Concorde’s last flight and to be honest, there wasn’t much chance of anything going well when two car loads of seasoned alcoholics turn up with a couple of cartons of beer and half a hundred pre-mixed peel-and-drink shots (In the worst flavours possible, banana & sambuca?  Really?). Mind you the shots didn’t do much except ruin the poor girls carpet...

We’ve arrived, been introduced to the birthday girl, been introduced to her enormous chesticles, discovered the party was being held while her parents were out of town and then immediately commenced to cause trouble. We didn’t set out to start an argument, it just kind of happened. It turns out when you wear a t-shirt with a silhouette of a pole-dancer and the words “I Support Single Mums” across it, you might offend some people’s delicate feelings. If you should somehow find yourself in this situation the correct response is probably not anything like as follows:

 Girl (having seen my shirt): “My mum wasn’t a stripper! She raised me and my 5 brothers and sisters by working hard and she still had time for us without ever having to be a stripper!”

Me (not even bothering to try and explain the concept of a ‘joke t-shirt’): “5 brothers and sisters and you as well? No wonder she wasn’t a stripper, she wouldn’t have been able to bank roll that. Obviously your mother was a whore if she made that sort of income”

Girl: “whinge whinge whinge, something about rights and equality, whinge”

Yeah, I tuned out pretty quickly when I got distracted by beer.

The good news is that one of my friends managed to hook up with this girl shortly after this exchange based entirely on telling this girl what a horrible human being I am. He may have embellished slightly in suggesting that I kick puppies for fun and once chased an elderly hip-replacement patient in a ride-on lawnmower. I’ve never kicked puppies. He even managed to salvage himself out of high-fiving me as I walked past while he explained to the girl about my apparent fondness for the führer and his great plans.

I later named this move the Luftwaffer Wingman, in honour of this stroke of genius (spending a whole night sharing a girl’s hatred of a friend just to get her into bed).

As the night wore on I steadily worked my way through the character flaws of each guest at the party, my particular favourite was the kid explaining how the Army had pre-selected him for direct recruitment into the Special Forces instead of the traditional method of actually using some kind of selection process and training course. Having pointed out that a skinny teenager with a homo-esque ear piercing, problems with authority inherited from MTV and a firm belief that “smoke weed erryday” is a life philosophy might not be the first choice of recruiters for the armed services, let alone for the cream of the crop, the young squire defended his honour with robust verbal jousting. This ended the way it usually does when someone realises they came to battle of wits with a rubber chicken. Also that I’m a foot taller than them.

Having successfully convinced the idiot that his village needed him, I found myself following a time honoured tradition of peeing in the garden. As a general rule at parties, gentlemen will yield the indoor bathroom to the ladies as a sign of chivalry and deference to the fact their aim might not be so steady after a couple of shandies. Instead men follow the old rule of “I’ve had three beers, the world is my urinal”. During my time contemplating the violets and lavender bushes of the garden I spied a cheeky little gnome staring back at me from beneath some bushes. So with the firm knowledge that this would turn into a “it seemed like a good idea at the time” thing, I gave the smug little bugger a nudge with my foot and was delighted to discover I’d decapitated the cheerful midget of the marigolds.

Souvenirs of the night:

Birthday Girl’s phone number

Decapitated Garden Gnome’s head

The joy of seeing Skinny Special Forces Teenager called out on his blatant lies to the point where he went home

The now famous “Luftwaffer Wingman” manoeuvre

Further evidence that I really shouldn’t be trusted unsupervised

-Worst Guy Ever