Today in Sheer Internet Joy

As you might imagine, I participated in many drinking games in college.  We played all the traditional ones:  Asshole, Oblivious Pursuit, 99 Bust-a-Rhyme (known at other Universities as "Kings Cup"), Beer Pong, the Star Wars drinking game, Quarters, Circle of Death, etc.  When we didn't have any other options, sometimes we created the games; left with only a nickle, an empty cup and all the beer we can drink, Marc, Shannon and I created a game called "Pump Factory" that got us obscenely drunk one night at The Hut, the fast food joint at the student union run by an awesome chick named Carmen that really liked us...we purchased beer for 20 cents on the dollar for all 5.1 years I was in school. 

One night, about 5 of us had a ton of beer but nothing to do and we had a conversation about who--currently, historically or in fiction--we thought it would be awesome to have a beer with.  What started as a simple, philosophical discussion became a full, knock-down drag-out argument that had us rushing around our house looking for people to break ties on who you'd rather have a beer with: Bill Clinton or Freddy Krueger.  Since it was March when we were having this argument and college hoops had been on our TV for the last 72 hours, we set up a full, 64 person bracket, expanded our voting pool to about a dozen people and whittled it down for a final four.  The final four of the "People we'd most want to have many beers with" was:  William Wallace (we were obsessed with Braveheart at the time), Han Solo, Jesus Christ and Indiana Jones.  If memory serves--it at really doesn't--Han Solo won in a close final over Jesus Christ. 

I miss college.

Considering we had a fraternity house full of engineering students who could create a bong out of just about anything, I'm shocked and disappointed that none of us ever came up with this AMAZING idea:

"You sunk my battleship and I seem to have pissed my pants."

Hello again!

Let's just start here:  I'm dehydrated.  Damn dehydrated.  At some point this week, I plan on being normally hydrated again but until that point...christ I'm dehydrated.

Holy hannah, New Orleans is fun.

The Big Easy...that's where I've been for the last few days and that's why I haven't been blogging like a good little blogger.  I would have alerted my stunningly good-looking readership of nine but I didn't want some of the seedier sides of said readership--I'm looking at you, Mary Kate--to take advantage of my vacation and rob my condo blind whilst I was away.  She probably would have left me only with a camera and a toothbrush, for whatever reason.

"What kind of sick bitch takes the ice cube trays out of the freezer?"

Anyhow, my gloriously beautiful wife and I traveled down south for a week to visit her Father and Step-Mother, take in the sites and consume entirely too much alcohol.  Here's some stuff that happened:

Day 1:  We arrived in New Orleans, ate at Sonic about 5 minutes after we left Enterprise Rent-a-Car (Helllllllloooooooooo Frito Burrito!) and made our way to her friend Kendra's house.  Kendra is a cool cat who was in our wedding and has a lovely apartment not too far from the Tulane campus.  She took us out to a proper deep-fried NOLA dinner, we had a few beers and then we went to what amounts to a state fair:  Gretna Fest.

Gretna, apparently, is a suburb of New Orleans and--from what I could tell--is pretty much Tulsa with a river.

Wanna go?  No?  I don't blame you.

All of the white trash fixin's for a good state fair were present and accounted for:  Guys in Harley t-shirts?  Check.  Women who shouldn't be wearing tube tops?  Double check.  Deep fried things you wouldn't think to deep fry?  I ate deep friend brownies.  Coors Light?  Oh hell yeah.  Arrests?  We witnessed many.  What's left of Lynyrd Skynyrd?  Can't you smell that smell?

 Hint:  It's either you guys or Katrina.  What?  Too soon? 

To be fair, we couldn't actually see Skynyrd...they were playing on the other side of the levee and there was an enormous crowd.  Misery loves company, I guess.  But we sat in the grass on the far side of the levee and took in their musical genius.  In a word, the whole night was "awesome".  I will admit that sometimes I miss the hilarity of Tulsa so it was super-fun to go to a festival that celebrated all that is white trash.  Also, I don't know if AC/DC has, like, a house in Gretna or something but I saw soooooo many people sporting black AC/DC shirts.  Odd.

I was the designated driver that night so it was promised that we would go balls to the wall the next night in the French Quarter.   And that we did.  We headed down to the quarter to watch the Saints game the next afternoon and I met up with an old buddy from Benet where we proceeded to have many, many beers before getting one of those godforsaken Hurricanes (or two?  Maybe three?  I dunno) and roaming around the quarter for the rest of the night.  We ended up at an absinthe bar and closed the place out with the bartender, the bouncer and this rather strange couple from Chicago.  This is where the night got weird.

The guy actually owns a goth corset company.  I don't know if you know anything about me but when there is a dude who owns a corset company in the room, I talk to that guy. 

Pictured:  Hawtness

And yes, that was the most PG-13 picture of a chick in a corset I could find.  Although, when you google "Gothic Corset" many, many terrifying pictures come up.  Like this:

Oh, dear god.  

And this:

 Why?  Why, god, WHY?!?!

So I'm talking to this dude and his wife who own a gothic corset company.  Honestly, I don't know how or why the subject came up but we started talking about Vlad the Impaler.  As his name might imply, Vlad Tepes was not a nice guy.  He ruled a section of Europe in the 1400's then known as Wallachia and was constantly at war with the Ottoman Empire.  As his name suggests, his favorite mode of torture was to impale a person on a (text far to awful to type) by inserting (text far too awful to type) while it slowly (text far too awful to type) until it emerged (text far too awful to type).  Also--and I cannot stress this enough--he was Bram Stoker's inspiration for freaking Dracula.  Clearly, he was just a super, super good guy.

Vlad "Giggles" Tepes

1431–1476

Anyhow, my new gothic alterna-friend at the absinthe bar was trying to convince me that Vlad the Impaler was anything other than a terrible human being.  He was passionate about it.  Like he had written his gothic dissertation on the guy or something.  At this point in my evening, I was (super) drunk on beer/hurricane/vodka/absinthe/etc and I was ready to fight him tooth and nail on the subject.

As you may well know, I am a bit of a history buff who has some knowledge of the serial killer because I read far to many books on the subject.  I recommend Colin Wilson's The Mammoth Book of the History of Murder if you want a fabulously-entertaining-while-being-equally-and-sufficiently-horrific bathroom book for your loved ones this Christmas.  While he is not technically a serial killer--"asshole" is the better term--within that book, you will find a nice little section on our good friend Vlad. 

My corset creating bar-mate kept going on and on about why Vlad was such an important leader but he oddly refused to acknowledge all the horrible things Vlad did, suggesting they were "media creations"...as if CNN and Fox News have an ongoing smear campaign against Vlad Tepes.  To put this in a modern historical context, it would be like if a guy insisted Adolf Hitler is viewed unfairly solely because he built the autobahn.  He kept saying things like "He reinvigorated the local economy!" and "He created a set of laws that is still used there today!"  All I kept saying was "His name was Vlad the fucking Impaler." 

No, I assure you my arguments were more intelligent and eloquent than that.  Although the words above did spill out of my alcohol blessed mouth more than a few times.  The moral of the story?  I guess it's this:  never get into a heated argument about a guy named Vlad the Impaler at an absinthe bar in the French Quarter called "Tony Seville's Pirates Alley Cafe" with a guy who owns a local gothic corset company and is sporting the greasy pony-tail-and-goatee-combo of a virgin Dungeons and Dragons player.

Let that be a lesson to you.

____________________________________________

Tomorrow:  More trips to Sonic!  I stayed at a haunted hotel!  I went on an "Obituary Crawl"!  I'm likely still dehydrated!

M-F

As we all know, the clock is ticking here at the Rabbit; it is inevitable.  At some point--probably before the end of the fiscal year--I will be out of a job.  And as much as I've enjoyed helping thousands of grown men masturbate for the last few years, it will hurt losing this job.  Not because I truly enjoy the work.  No, it's more because I truly enjoy money.  I wish, though, that I had some more money.  We all would like to make more money at what we do but I think we also can agree that limited money is better than no money. 

Which brings me to the perks of my current job.  I get some pretty amazing insurance.  Krishni is kind of blown away by that.  I get lots and lots of free porn.  Brad is excited about that little benefit.  Occasionally we have big, drunken "Cube Crawls" here at the office that feature scantily clad models running around the office doing jello shots with the pasty tech guys.  Not gonna lie: that's pretty fun. 

But since I've gotten married, there has been one major problem beyond being a technological fluffer: my schedule.  You see, when I 1st started this job, I was just coming off my "work" at Steppenwolf Theatre Company.  I worked an odd schedule there where Tuesday and Wednesday were my "weekend".  When I started here, I told them I could work weekends because that was what I was used to.  As a result, I was given a Sun-Thursday schedule.  I actually liked that a lot since Sunday, especially during football season, was a super-slow day filled with ESPN.com, South Park episodes and computer games.

Since my marriage, however, I've realized how fun it would be to have an actual weekend and be able to do stuff with my wife, friends and family on Sundays.  For the past year, I've been bugging my boss to move me to a regular Monday-Friday schedule.  You know, like a normal person.

I finally got my wish.  For the 1st time in my life, I will have a regular M-F job.  I can go out on Saturday nights again!  I can attend Mother's and Father's day!  I can watch the Bears!  Provided I still have a job in October!  Ha ha!

Seriously, this will be the 1st time I've ever worked relatively normal hours (I will be working 8am to 4pm).  The only other time I worked M-F, was when I worked at KJRH in Tulsa on the morning show.  And I had to be in the studio at 4 freakin' 30 am.  Those are not, what one would call, "normal hours". 

Color me happy.  At least until the next Jonestown blood-letting here at the Rabbit, that is.

Anyone have any job openings anywhere?  I can work weekends!

The "T" is for Terriffic!

Seriously, it is.

A few folks have asked me what the 'Bonzer T' is about.  Fair question.  The short answer is that it is my video game alias.  Not for cool games where people wear headsets and play Mortal Combat with a friend in Vietnam; I don't have the technological wherewithall to play anything like that.  No, I'm referring to old school games from the N64.  With my super-secret alias, my ninja-like character named 'Bonzer Terriffic' can shoot up Nazis and the Nazis will never know it was actually an unshaven fat guy on a couch wearing only his boxers named 'Mike Jacklich'.  I'm safe from retribution.

The longer answer is that 'Bonzer Terriffic' is my porn alias.

You know that game--Mom, maybe you don't--where you take simple information like your pet's name or your middle name and then tack on the street on which you grew up and that becomes your pornstar name?  I always hated that game.  But then again, I don't like these so called "rules".   I will admit, that sometimes those rules come (har!) up with some pretty wicked adult film names.  I have an ex-girlfriend whose porn name was "Dolly Yukon" by these rules.  That's pretty good.  I have a former friend (he knows what he did) whose name turned out to be "Charles Timberridge".  I would absolutely buy that guy delivering a pizza to a lonely housewife.  Maybe he looks like this:

I always preferred to be a bit more creative when it came to such life long decisions like what your porn name must be.  By the rules, my porn name should have been "Hugh Yackley", which, I must admit, has grown on me.  It's solid.  But it lacks the pizazz necessary for such a career.

Anyhow, many moons ago, in college, I was an underrage drinker at the Outback Steakhouse in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  A few guys in my fraternity worked there so us poor, underage kids could drink beers and order off the childrens menu thereby getting drunk in a public place while spending as little money as possible.  For those unfamiliar with the Outback Steakhouse, it is an Australian themed restaraunt that could be considered the Olive Garden of steakhouses.  You get a decent enough meal but if you're looking for a good steak, you're in the wrong place.  In this instance, "the wrong place" was "Tulsa".  As Tulsa often is. 

On this particular evening, I found myself gazing at the coaster beneath my mug.  Listed on the coaster were a few Australian translations of typical English words.  In this case, the coaster read, "Bonzer = Terriffic".  I turned to my friend Marc (probably he was there...he was always there with me) and said "Bonzer Terriffic would be an excellent porn name".  Or, more likely, I said something like "Boszner Terristific wuld be as awesoms porn num. Hoooooooooo!"

I drank a lot in college.

From this one absolutely forgettable evening, I created a life-long, completely ridiculous alter-ego that is only mentioned within the context of video gaming or the above porn name conversation.  And now, Bonzer Terriffic is the title for my totally rad blog.