A Night at the Toilet Bowl in Flushing

Tonight, my mom, my sister and I went to what will probably be our final Met game at Shea Stadium. For my mom, it was actually her first ever live baseball game. Funny part is, none of us are actually Met fans. Shea is just convenient and we usually come across free tickets.

It was actually a really great night out because I rarely spend time with my mom doing things because she's always working. It was actually nice to be out with her doing something again.

Tonight, after a day full of grocery shopping and eating, Cole, Casey and I took a trip down to the Astoria Beer Garden at Bohemian Hall. I'd only heard of this place before tonight from many people who frequent this heavenly establishment. Picture this: A walled-in New York City park with about a hundred picnic tables and hundreds of people drinking pitchers of beer, smoking cigarettes and having a good time. We had pitchers of Spaten Oktoberfest, Stella Artois, this great Czech beer that none of us know the name of and the unholiest of unholy beers, Hoegaarden. Cole compared it to drinking "cinnamon flavored hot dog water." It was terrible.

As the night progressed, Phil, Steve and Adrian met up with us and Casey won a flip-cup game against "Jim from Connecticut." Then, for some reason, a bunch of drunk, fat, neo-nazi's started fighting in the garden. It all started when one of them said, "You should've been burned in an oven." That's about the point where I sobered up.

Good night.

If you haven't already, download the new Girl Talk album. It is so fantastic. And you know I wouldn't steer you wrong.

Saying good-bye is harder when you're drunk. Or maybe not?

Last night, after making a few phone calls and boiling some pasta, a bunch of us at Purchase had a small going-away party for our good friend Mike. He's going to be in Hawaii working for John's Hopkins as a Resident Assistant Coordinator, what we call an RC around the Purch. Everyone is fairly jealous of his job because a) it pays pretty well and b) IT'S IN HAWAII!! Funny thing is though, Hawaii was Mike's last choice of sites to work at and has been resentful of it ever since he found out he was going. Mainly because he doesnt like oceans, islands or heat and it was going to be super expensive to get there--planes aren't cheap you know!

Anyhow, we got together, ate some food, watched Hairspray and then decided to get nostalgic and put on last year's RA-Vue. While the quality of the DVD wasn't spectacular, we were all in a riot watching the GLBTU Dance, the LARPer Battle and Brand New Day. I have a feeling that (and the beer) is what got Cole all riled up for later on. STAY TUNED!

At about midnight, I was up the block talking to Tim about today's video shoot for the Orientation Videos when I hear Cole yelling, "Al, where the hell are you...we're going to White Plains!" In my mind, I pictured us going to Stop&Shop to pick up some food and, more than likely, some beer. Instead, Cole blew my mind with this once. "We're going out to a bar to drink with Juli and Bro-Bunk next door." Juli is a pseudo-boss of ours who is leaving Purchase today. Twenty-Six, short, spunky, athletic and knows how to drink. Bro-Bunk is the apartment next to ours which is occupied by three baseball players living in a single bedroom. Every inch of wall space is a clash between Yankees and Braves memorabilia.

I'm understandably hesitant at this proposition. Cole's already had a few drinks earlier in the night and was antsy, Steve was practically comatose on the couch, Kyle, a neighbor from across the street and persistent guest was twenty and I had work at 8:30 in the morning. Here's how we got around all that! Steve drank some iced tea, gave Kyle a fake ID and decided he'd drive. That and I'm horrible with peer pressure, especially when the pressure is coming from Cole sitting on my chest yelling at me to be his friend.

We get into the bar without a problem. It's your typical sports bar--nothing flashy, a bunch of tv's hanging on the walls, old regulars looking at the new breed of boozers that will undoubtedly call this place "The Bar" at some point in their lives. All the girls were orange and all the guys had gel in their hair and smoked menthol cigarettes. You know this place. You've been here hundreds of times.

Juli and Bro-Bunk are already pretty forgone at this point--easily a few pitchers of beer in. So what to do in this situation? Play catch up. Cole slapped down his debit card and within SECONDS we were two pitchers of Bud Light richer. Juli kept the supply of light beer coming and before we knew it, Cole was getting hit on by an Ogre. That's when we knew to call it a night. This is at 2:30.

The ride home was fine--Steve was pretty much completely sober but having Cole in the passenger seat was a mistake we didn't see until it was too late.

Just as we get onto campus, Cole gets a phone call and Steve pulls around and BACK TO WHITE PLAINS TO PICK UP JULI & BRO-BUNK. But first, Cole had to pee, so we did what any good group of friends would do--drop him off in the woods and turn the car so that the headlights are facing right at him and start honking.

We needed to get gas before making the run, so we stopped at a Mobil where we found out that Juli & Bro-Bunk had somehow made it to Hubba's in Port Chester (which is about 15 minutes away from White Plains). For those unaware, Hubba's is literally a hole-in-the-wall with two entrances--one in the front and one in the back. They cook up greasy, fatty, wonderful food served on paper trays with a Styrofoam cup of Hubba Water. It's basically tap water with a drop of fruit-punch added to it. They dry their french fries in a cardboard box when they're fresh out of the fryer. Cole swears he caught his meningitis from there.

It's already 3am at this point and I need to go to sleep, so on the way to Po-Cho, Steve drops me and Kyle off. As Steve speeds away, we both pray we see both of them again.

About 40 minutes later, I'm half asleep and hear honking and yelling. It's Steve and Cole, Hubba's cups in hand.

I don't know if I'm under the weather or just like sleeping a lot, but I've been asleep for most of this week so far. On Monday night, as the sky was falling and the trees were bending into ninety degree angles, I decided to take a short nap. This was at about 7:30pm on June 16th. I woke up at 8:50am on June 17th. It took me a good minute to convince my foggy brain that, yes, I did just sleep through the entire night and that, yes, I was due at work in...10 minutes. The walk past the Dance Building into the Bookstore was one of the stranger walks because it felt like I hadn't seen Purchase in days.

Today, after work, I watched Jackass 2 for the first time since I saw it in theaters. I definitely almost threw up twice from both a) being disgusted and b) laughing so hard. Other than that, this was a pretty uneventful day. Oh, I did cut up Mike's Recital and it sounds really good. It's too large to host anywhere at the moment, but I'm working on that.

what's going on.

The past two months have definitely been the most...different months of my life. I definitely
trace it back to the end of April when I broke off a three-year relationship with my now ex-girlfriend. In retrospect, I had been out of that relationship for about six months in my mind; we really never saw each other and when we did it wasn't "quality" time spent because we'd both be too tired or too broke to go out and do something. Plus, I also think that we are at two very different points in our lives and would've been apart all summer anyway that it only made sense to me for us to be single again--no messy over-the-phone-or-through-email breakup while I'm at Purchase and she's somewhere in Europe.

Though it seems harsh, it was probably one of the better decisions I've made this year. While, at times, I feel kind of lonely, the feeling of freedom that comes with being single has counterbalanced the gloom that also comes with being single. At one point during one of the more depressing days went into George Costanza mode and wondered if that was the last relationship I'd ever been in. Then I realized that I was a halfway attractive 21 year old male in New York and being foolish.

The end of my Junior year was a welcome end, but it also brought about the harsh realization that I was next. This time next year, I'll be the one moving off campus into a closet in Brooklyn. I'll be the one with crying, proud relatives at a rained-out graduation. I'll be the one celebration my graduation in the Olde on the last Friday night. And that, needless to say, scared the living shit out of me. I sort of wonder what being out of school will be like. School is the place where I meet people and do things. You don't exactly get a freshman orientation at every new job you start or apartment you move into. School has taken up 16 of my 21 years on this Earth. That's over 3/4 for those of you keeping score at home. During the other 1/4 of my life, I was shitting in my pants and coloring outside of the lines. This should be interesting, to say the least.

Two days before my 21st birthday, a friend/schoolmate of mine died, along with her entire family, in a house fire. No warning. No good-byes. Just a simple "See you in September," that will never come to be. I didn't really know how to react to the whole thing--I didn't cry or really get upset. I was only really upset because all of the people around me were extremely upset. It was like getting a contact high off of totally depressed energy. On the day of my birthday, I decided to get off campus and see the new Indiana Jones movie. It made me feel even worse. Aliens, really? I digress. In the midst of all this, I get news from another close friend of mine that his father is basically on his deathbed, so there's a good chance that we'll all be dealing with this again very, very soon.

So now for the fun stuff.



After a lot of the negative stuff passed, many of the people living on campus this summer have been getting together and having a blast. The only downside is that many of the people around have graduated and are simply dodging the real-world for at least 3 more months. It's good to be around these people, but I feel like I need to make a few new friends. Not that I don't love my friends--I do--but we're getting so close to each other that things are starting to get irritating. It's really unfortunate, but this happens with ANY group of people that spend a lot of time together.