The Last Weekend.

In more ways than one.

On Friday I met my friends at American Dream Pizza for our usual pre salsa meal. American Dream's latest claim to fame was Obama's struggle to keep their pizza in his mouth. :) The pizza's good, and it's the only place I've found that's willing to put salmon on a pizza. However, the part of the place I like best is the Crowbar.

I found the Crowbar on my 22nd birthday, having no clue about it's connection to American Dream. It has a back alley entrance, and a wrought iron overhang sign that screams old school dive. It looked as good a place as any to finish off my birthday. We staggered in, and it was... surprisingly post modern. However, the bartenders are actually good, and they serve ten different varieties of the Kamikaze. Plus, you can have good pizza, and good booze at the same time. Yum.

However, I digress. We had pizza, and I had a kamikaze. We talked and ate, and laughed at the connotations of the combinations of Tristan and Willow's names once they get married, the names of other people, the fact that my mom wanted to name me Raphael, and as always, time passed. We soon found that it was nine o'clock, and meandered our way to Platinum.

Latin X kicked off, and I drank far too much. Unlike the Crowbar, the bartenders at Platinum are... less than proficient. However, I used that to my advantage. They run a deal that before 11, well drinks cost $1. I managed to convince them that a caipirinha is a well drink. Essentially 3 shots of rum for one dollar! Hot damn. I had 4 of them, and wound up buying rounds for the whole table. I threw in a couple of Vodka and Tonics, and I was unusually drunk, on less than $15.

The hilarious moment occurred when I was talking with Tristan about our experiences in the military, mine in the Army, his in the Marines. As he regaled me with tales of a Marine SGT who was too dumb to live, Chris walked up, and slapped me on the shoulder, and caused me to spill my drink. Oh, well. I switched the drink to my other hand to avoid further traffic from disrupting my alcoholism. Twenty seconds later, Bill walks by, and hits my other shoulder, causing me to spill more of my recently relocated drink. Tristan cracked up. I chugged my drink down, to prevent any further problems.

I drank, and danced, and talked. I tried to find Simona's camera to take some pictures. Someone beat me to the punch, and the camera disappeared for about 2 hours, and Simona got all overprotective of it when it was found. C'mon, I'm trustworthy...

I decided to have a Mint Julep for my final drink. I talked to the bartender, and as usual, he had no clue how to make it. As I walked him through it, this exchange occurred...

"Add Bourbon."

"Which kind?"

"What kind do ya'll stock?"

"We have Irish, Tennessee, Kentucky..."

"NO. Just use that bottle of Jim Beam."

Irish Bourbon? I died a little inside when I heard that. I also cried a little when he strained the mint out of my drink. What the Hell. No tip for you.

As usual, time passed, and before I knew what was happening, the lights got turned on, and Simona kicked us all out. Talking with Nate on the way home, he and Dave invited me over to La Conga for late night Mexican food. At 2:35 in the morning, La Conga was packed. I'd love to see their hourly business estimates. While we were devouring our burritos, we were joined by Roger and Alana, and a couple of Roger's friends. After the food was gone, we went to Nate's house, and danced a little bit more. Dave, being our resident Hawaiian, showed us some Maori dances, and Nate and Alana showed off their rumba skills. I danced a little casino with Alana. Fun was had, and I didn't wind up home until 4:30.

I spent a good chunk of Saturday sleeping. I woke up at 1, and dragged myself over to the TV to watch the Belmont Stakes. This was supposed to be Big Brown's triple crown victory lap. As I was watching the warm ups, I was bouncing around on a football message board I frequent when bored. In an off topic thread about the Belmont, I called Da'tara winning. Take that!

Saturday night, well, Sunday morning technically, Mike IM'd me, demanding food. He swung by, and we hung out at his place, as he ordered pizza. Pizza Pipeline said that it would be about an hour for delivery. We figured it was a Scotty-esque overstatement to keep us from getting our expectations up. 55 minutes later, our pizza arrived. Wow. Mike had gotten his hands on a leaked copy of Beast With a Billion Backs, so we watched that. I wound up passing out on the couch.

I woke up at about ten o'clock, and none of Mike's roommates really cared about the giant curled up in their living room. That just goes to show what kind of house it is.

After shaking off my grogginess, I fired up their 360, and played some Halo 3. That's my one regret about going with a PS3. MGS4 completely outweighs it, but I do miss Halo. I love the mythology of the game, and the soundtrack is glorious. I might buy that soundtrack. When Mike woke up, we played some Metal Slug 3. Old school, nintendo hard games, designed to suck the quarters out of you pockets. I went through 39 continues. At 50 cents a pop, you're looking at damn near $20 gone, to beat 5 levels.

After ordering another pizza, we hunkered down to watch the NBA Finals game 2. That game went from a massive blowout, to inexplicably becoming a game at the end. That just goes to show, you really only need to watch the 4th quarter of an NBA game.

I wound up getting home at 10:30, and went pretty much straight to sleep. A good end.