Rio, Funk Carioca and Topless Addicts.
After a bus ticket sellout, a breakdown, a lot of traffic, and some shitty directions – whoever had the idea of naming one portion of a street after a husband and the other after the wife but using only the last name on the street signs is a fucking idiot – Sam and I showed up to our hostel a day late. We’d told Victor, a friend who’d stayed with us the week prior in São Paulo, to grab us a couple spots. Something had gotten lost in translation with the Kenyan owners, and they said they’d given the bed we’d paid for away. It took a half-hour of arguing in broken English and Portuguese before they found us space in a tiny six person room.
Our roommates were a pair of Brits that had just finished college, a 27 year old Finn who spent all his time playing online poker, and a cute Brazilian photographer. The three guys were already drinking some beers they’d been forced to smuggle in due to the hostel’s strange no beer (but anything else) rule. Victor stopped by to introduce us to a German named Ingo that he’d been traveling with. Ingo was wearing a shiny black shirt and white linen pants. He was ready to party, and a few lukewarm beers weren’t going to cut it.
Eugene.
The Men’s Center took a trip up through the Pacific Northwest, opening up in Eugene, Oregon. We had the keys to an apartment and free reign to do whatever we wanted while we were in town. With a complete lack of regulation, it was time to get thoroughly rip roarin’.
Weed, California is a must-stop destination for folks with, ahem, alternative interests. Solely based up the town’s inexplicably stupid name (why anyone would name their home after the shit they have to pull out of the driveway is beyond me), Weed is a smoker’s mecca. We didn’t have any doja to enjoy, but standing under the eaves at a Burger King smoking Kools while it softly hails had to suffice.
Showing up in Eugene while the University of Oregon was on Spring Break did not bode well for our particular Friday night, but after robbing a fair amount of the booze at the house we crashed at, a cab came to pick us up and take us around. After giving us the run-around, telling his life story and desire to be a small-time criminal lawyer, the cabbie dropped us off at a mostly empty bar in the college district. A few games of pool, expensive beers and a litany of questioning looks from the numerous cougars in attendance pushed us to bid our farewell.
Luckily, we eventually wandered into a concert, and the one good thing about hippie bands (including a didgeridoo player and Kurt Cobain’s gay brother on keyboard) is that, in combination with booze, the good vibes overdose always leads to fighting. When that fighting involves a prototypical mountain man and a New Jersey outcast, not to mention the background bro-support from a middle-aged doo-rag enthusiast, shit starts to get fun again. While these guys continued to argue over who spilled whose drinks, I took a good mood straight to the bar.
Despite the full house for the jam band, the streets of downtown Eugene were empty. What few like-minded drunks in search of a good time I came across all turned out to have mental problems. Plus, they were all in cars and didn’t take too kindly to me flagging them down. Oh well, what the hell. They should have been drinking.
With no one around, we made our own party on foot.
Finally a relatively classy joint was found, and it was packed. All of the non-student population of Eugene was packed in this bar, and people just started buying us shots. With no concern over burning bridges with wild lies in a random city, we started filling in fake back stories for our travels. I became a photographer for numerous fake magazines, which turned into a real theme of the trip. 
Waving a camera in a girl’s face is the easiest way to find the friendliest women in town. Telling one that she is good looking and well dressed, whether that may or may not be the case, is particularly effective. Saying phrases like “Ooh, I like that” or “Yeah, keep working it” are also a boost, for most young women have been accustomed to hearing these things in fashion model-based rom coms throughout their lives.
Booze makes dudes feel very affectionate towards each other. Remember the “I love you man!” commercials? That was on point, because it’s happening all night. Mix a little techno in to get your genitalia pulsating, add some mood laser lighting, and you soon see the locals that you just met getting frisky on the dance floor. Who doesn’t want to dance-fuck their friends to Daft Punk?
Of course, the one thing that sucks about such a lasered-out, hip-ass dance floor is the confusion caused by the inordinate amount of lights usually firing at once. Combined with blurry, boozed-up vision, it’s nearly impossible to scope out who’s worth talking to and who is lame. Thus it’s a big plus when the DJ is courteous enough to start marking people as one or the other.
Of course, once people start making fun of the well-set system of light-coding, taking advantage of its costume opportunities, the utility of the program is eliminated.
The loc’s don’t take kindly to such shenanigans. In fact, Eugeners don’t much care for foreign folk coming into their bars, drinking their beer, chatting up their women and stealing their wallets. Who knew they could turn so fast?
Time to get the fuck out.
Anaheim.
After killing a few beers in my hotel room after the drive down to Anaheim (on a side note, I managed, with a lot of help, to Photoshop my booze receipts for the weekend to include them on my expense report), I relied on a trusty flask to power me through what was decidedly a boring game. My team, the underdog, lost after staying in it the whole way despite playing some horrendous ball.
However, in the press room and around the press tables at the court, you’d think it was the NBA Finals. I’d always felt that career sports reporters in small markets must simply be stoked on writing about teams that didn’t have as much scrutiny and flooded coverage as large market squads, but after seeing middle-aged men attack a catered buffet with a gusto normally reserved for rescued plane crash survivors, I realized that I was in the middle of their biggest event of the year. I mean, it’s easy to chalk up my lack of enthusiasm to me being relatively jaded and mostly drunk at the time, but when even the refs are eagerly grabbing brooms to clean off the court alongside a two-stepping janitor, it’s obvious that everyone present was stoked on getting involved.
With that in mind, I figured I might as well see what that life is like. With Office Space flashbacks running through my mind, I decided to immerse myself in the mentality of an average young professional for at least one night. After schmoozing and hobknobbing my face off post-game with writers, photogs and athletic administrators from a plethora of schools and newspapers, I realized that not only could I fit in, I could wreck shop in that environment.
Soon enough, people wanted to go out for food and drinks, and of course we headed to an obscure chain restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. The Applebees, Chili’s, TGI Fridays, Chotchkey’s, and in this case Joe’s Crab Shack establishment has been burned so many times in pop culture, and yet somehow they persist. I understand that people want something comfortable when on the road or whatnot, but when I hear arguments over which of these chains has the best drink specials, I start to question the intelligence of any patrons in those hell holes.
I can just imagine the presentations given to investors when people pitch ideas for another restaurant. The formula is simple. First, you need a name that is completely made up, easy to say, and clearly describes the theme of the joint. Second, the theme needs to translate easily into covering all the walls with random shit. Have you ever thought where those nick-nacks and obscure memorabilia come from? There is someone with a proclivity for shopping at garage sales and in possession of a giant distribution network that is making a killing off this crap.
Third, and maybe most importantly, you need to steal a drink list full of colorful, picturesque and overly sweet mixers from another restaurant and nickname them all with your own goofily retarded monikers, all of which must be puns revolving around your theme. Finally, after you’ve gotten people thoroughly drunk off of $9 “Wicked Tornado Slingers”, you need to figure out the most embarassing way to sing “Happy Birthday” to your patrons.
In the case of Joe’s Crab Shack, they took it to the next level, with their employees turning the god damned place into a light-show filled disco every fifteen minutes while they dance their asses off in the aisles and on empty tables while we sat around drinking $20 pitchers of margaritas. Shit, the place was such a fuckin’ party that we had to wait an hour for our first pitcher (of four that we initially ordered) because Joe ran out of pitchers in the back! Too bad the dishwashers were shaking their ass in my face while I slammed down some inedible nachos.
Of course, I sound like a crotchety old man, and I apologize. In the interest of fair reporting, I must admit that the other people in the joint were having a grand old time. The place was absolutely rip-roaring, despite being in the middle of hotel complex near Disneyland. Impressive stuff indeed, but despite my previous optimism on fitting in, I just could not buy it. At that point, it was clearly time to head to the hotel pool and party.
Getting hammered in a hot tub with everything getting paid for by work is a hell of a great feeling. It’s one of those situations where you can truly sit back and immerse yourself at the task at hand. After a long day of pseudo work, free hooch and clean sheets really make one feel good.
Even better is having a few basketball players show up when you’re kicking it, getting them to grab the rest of their team, and heading back to a hotel room to get faded until 4 or 5 AM with a bunch of cheerleaders. I’ll save those photos for when they make the NBA.
