From kingdoms far and wide — Texas, Toronto, Boston, Narnia, Philly, Florida, Virginia, and Neverland (just to name a few) — people descended upon DC by the dozens to witness two lovebirds take flight.

And I guess “epic” is used a lot.  So I’ll say it was sexy.  How sexy?  Not just “I’m not shy, so I asked for the digits” sexy.  No.  More like, this weekend was so sexy, it made you want to drop your pants and go at it right in front of everyone so badly that a few times you even caught yourself unbuttoning your fly, or tugging at the zipper, and had to decide right then and there just how important pride was when having fun.

I may have decided to ignore pride a few times.

Actually, I should pause here and apologize to Recessions, the bar we went to Friday night.  In a successful attempt at solving the world’s race relations crisis (yet again) with LiLu’s B — (read: performing a karaoke version of Ebony & Ivory) — I may have ended the set by yelling “Sexual Chocolate” à la

and then dropping the mic on the floor and walking away.

I am sorry, Recessions.  I did not mean to use your props as, well, props.  I got carried away in the moment.  B and I were doing the best Rat Pack impression¹ we could, I was trying to make up for the fact that I chose to sing my half of the song in some sort of Kermit the frog + country twang and, yadda yadda yadda, out came Sexual Chocolate.

But enough about me.

The weekend was epic.² I’m starting to become convinced that there isn’t a single scene from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that we don’t have the personnel to recreate.  There was so much salt flying

this weekend that there’s still some in the coat I wore to work today.  Next Always Sunny mission: wine from a can.

I don’t even know how to tell a story in this post.  There was the almost-in-labor pregnant woman downing 32 oz beers on Friday night while getting dry humped and doing some dry humping of her own, all while getting her belly and ass spanked.  There was ultimate karaoke (with video to prove it), multiple brunches, rampant fondling, even more groping, goblets the size of your face, 80s style bling (i.e., gold) draped around necks, dance battles…

This weekend needs a few pages in the record books.

_____________

¹Brought our drinks on stage with us; skipped lyrics to drink mid-song…

²Balls. I said it anyway.

The post is a lighthearted joke about him finding a lady to spend some time with.   I wrote it Monday, a few days after having invited him into our home for a drink for the first time, after we had been talking, and talking and talking about doing so since we first moved in in mid-July.  I scheduled it to post at 12:01 this morning.

I took it down.

Outside this “old guy’s” house this morning there was a police car, a medical examiner’s van and a stretcher.  No ambulance.  No flashing lights.  No emergency.  Just response.

I don’t know what happened.  And may not know for a few days.  But the post didn’t seem as funny anymore.  This space was meant for better things.

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a special announcement.

I am a ruh-tard.

And, well, I had never done karaoke before.  Until last Friday.  When LiLu made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

We were at this bar called Recessions where they serve beer at happy hour by the 32 oz. mug for $3 each.  That’s right: $1.50 per pound beers.

So we sang our hearts out.  There may have been some “dancing.”

Sorry for the poor lighting, but I think these three and a half minutes speak for themselves.

Just in case you don’t have video access, LiLu rickrolled the entire bar.  That’s like one hundred people, kids.  And I went along for the ride.  My entire strategy was to sound and dance as much like Rick Astley — one of history’s greatest human beings — as possible and to pay homage to a Family Guy episode.

To answer your question, if you watched the video, yes I do have a short-bus pass and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything in the world.

Happy Friday.

Let’s say I don’t want to.  Let’s say that pedestrians have the privilege to survive crossing the street but not the right.  Let’s say that as the man behind the wheel of the vehicle, I have all the power that actually matters and I want to flex some muscle; that the only reason I Zipcar’d this pimpmobile Scion xB in the first place was so I could play a little game called “Just the Vehicular Tip” and I just wanna nudge a crosswalker with the grill of my ride.  What then?

Then we’re at an impasse, I guess.

Maybe it’s just DC.  Or maybe it’s just cities.  I don’t remember pedestrians being this bastardly in my small Jersey hometown.¹ DC pedestrians need a little humbling or at least a refresher on how to cross the street.

Three hundred fifty days of the year, I’m a pedestrian, too.  But on those other fifteen days, the scenario usually plays out this way:

I’m driving — probably faster than the speed limit but not irresponsibly.  Then a pack of wild pubescents step out of the shadows into the middle of the street and start crossing.² But they’re not rude about it.  Oh, god, no.  No; the appointed pubescent pack leader sticks up her hand and informs me that I am to stop so that they might make it across.  Like it’s 1995, I have basically just been told to talk to the hand.

Annoyed at their lack of consideration for my Zipcar, my driving record and my conscience and at the return of an inane gesture I hated at its inception, I curse unprotected sex for being such an easy skill to learn and mumble under my breath that I wish they’d never been conceived or at least that one day someone would teach them a lesson.

My question is simple: why not make that “someone” me?

The problem, to me, seems obvious.  These brats are just so sure that I won’t hit them.  They just know it (thanks to “driving laws”).  They look through my windshield and actually think they recognize weakness.

To you, pubescent pedestrians, I say, “Call my bluff.”

Maybe I’m having a really bad day.  Maybe I just got fired at work.  Maybe I don’t like the looks on your faces.  Hell: maybe it’s Tuesday, I’m bored and this is one of those “might as well” moments.

The point is that you know less than you think you do.  So maybe I don’t hit the gas and roll through you like a rack of bowling pins.  But maybe — just maybe — I’m a little, you know, slow getting to the brake and I put bumper-like wrinkles in your skinny jeans.

And yeah: I’m likely to end up with a scheduled court appearance for it.  But maybe — and again, this is only a “maybe” — I pay my fine and walk out of court wearing a smirk anyway because satisfaction is priceless and $250 was a bargain for the humility on your faces.

__________________

¹Other cities and towns, feel free to chime in.

²How closely they cross in front of me is, of course, relative to how fast I’m moving: the faster I’m going, the closer they’re crossing.

Our actual conversation went like this.

me: *manly sneeze*

lady: *unaware of surroundings*

And then it ended.  Without recourse.  Like many before it.  I should’ve a) let her know about it, b) made my friends proud by being able to report a story of witty proportions and c) made myself feel like a winner, but instead forgot my abc’s and said nothing.

In a more perfect world, the conversation would’ve gone like this.

me: *manly sneeze*

lady: *unaware of surroundings*

me: Yes, it’s your fault.

lady: Excuse me?

me: The reason I sneezed.

lady: What?  I don’t –

me: Your perfume.  Too much.  It’s like you’re trying to cover up sin or something.

lady: Who do you –

me: I’m the guy whose nostrils your “aura” just ravaged.

lady: You should know, this “aura” costs $100 a bottle.

me: Then you should make a trip to small claims court and file for damages.  Because it also smells like it has real bits of panther in it.

lady: And just what are you wearing?

me: [name of cologne]

lady: Ha.  Never heard of it.

me: You also can barely smell it because I didn’t rig my shower to spray it rather than water.

lady: It has to last the day.  *attempts to ignore and return to paper*

me: Ma’am, that would last until the end of days.

lady: *folds paper*  So. What?

me: So, to be fair, you should sniff that guy’s pit.  *nodding to the crotch-rubber sweating from the everywhere, on this 50 degrees-morning, like it’s a part-time job*

lady: You’re a rude little –

me:  Oh!  My stop.  There is a god and he can smell you, too.

Hater tots: I eat ‘em; with melted cheese and ketchup.  And when my plate is empty, I’m Oliver Twist.  I can’t help it, really.  It’s a disease.  But I don’t want a cure.

Case in point: I hate the DC sports market.  I have had to suffer through more Wizards and Redskins games than I can remember.  Every. single. year, I listen to pundits ignore logic, empirical evidence and reasonable limits on hope and imagination as they insist that this is their year.  Not only has this mythical year not happened while I’ve been here (a decade), it hasn’t happened since 1991.

But they keep promising that it’s coming.  I find balance by enjoying their losses and shortcomings.  Such is the essence of hating.

Yesterday, like every Sunday this time of year, was devoted to football.  And because networks tailor their broadcasts to viewing markets, I had to watch — you guessed it — the Redskins.  But this time, it was different.  This time, it was fun.

The Redskins lost to the Detroit Lions.  The Lions hadn’t won a game yet this year.  They didn’t win a single game last year (the first team in history to lose all 16).  Actually, the Lions hadn’t won a game since 2007.

Be still, my hating heart.  It was glorious.

My first instinct was to turn to the local Redskins coverage channel, CSN.  This is what I do every time the Redskins lose.  I revel in the dismay of their fans.  After any loss, I’m guaranteed a solid hour of “How could this be?” and “Where did it all go wrong?” But on a day when the home team had lost to the worst team in sports history, fan reaction such as “we need new everything” and “worst day of my life” made this cold heart lukewarm.

The only reason it wasn’t the highlight of my hating weekend is because on Saturday night, America’s favorite golden boy, Tim Tebow — University of Florida quarterback and appointed center of the all-that-is-moral-compass — got rocked.  I mean, he got hit like a blindfolded piñata.  That’s right: a blindfolded piñata.  It was a great moment.  But don’t just take my word for it.  Reactions from all kinds of sources have been streaming in, like this one, for example:

It was the best thing since sliced bread.

– spokesperson, Wonder Bread

But I’m not a Cranberries song, so I don’t have to let it linger.  Moving forward.

With no time to write for today, I give you my disappointing attempts to use my iPhone video camera for the first time.

Oh.  I almost forgot.  It’s a poorly-kept secret that I enjoy a lyrical parody every once in a while.²  So you should go here.  No, really.  It’s lyrical parody/WMATA drama Suburban Sweetheart style.

Happy Friday.

_________

¹Though I’ve heard it was spotty anyway.

²You can find a couple examples here and here.

So I should not have been surprised, on my walk home last night around 5:30, to see the latest in a long line of public urination on DC’s streets.

I was standing right where this marker is

View Larger Map

As you may have already noticed, that’s not exactly a shady part of town where one comes to expect random acts of excretion.  But as said above, I should’ve known better.

So I’m standing there, waiting to cross, on the phone with Miss Bianca, and in the little park in front of the old Greyhound building there’s a little girl-child without any pants on.  I’m confused, because at first I don’t see any parental-like figure.  But in a second, he appears.

The dad says something to her and she starts emptying the tank in the grass.

In broad daylight.

Without cover of shrubbery², bench or trashcan.

Just lets a river run through it.

And the dad applauds her.  And I realized he is teaching his 3 or 4 year old daughter that public urination is part of growing up; that it’s the stage after diapers.

Let me make this clear: there are people all over the world teaching their cats and dogs to use the toilet in their homes.  Yet, this man is teaching his human daughter to use any patch of grass she can find.

We are moving backwards, people.  I take this one moment as irrefutable proof that we are raising a new generation of confused children.  And we need to act quickly to buck the trend.

Hence, my newest invention: the bathroom.

Bathrooms are great.  You can put them in virtually any building.  They welcome just about anyone without judgment.  Here’s hoping this catches on like wildfire.

_____________

¹Not the Aaron McGruder kind.  The cow-tipping kind.

²If you’re a fan of wildly inappropriate humor and/or saying “TWSS,” you’ll understand why I couldn’t use the popular synonym of “shrubbery” in this context.

If you think I’m hairy, and you wanna groom me, come on, city, let me know.¹

I am not hairy.  And I don’t mean “I am not hairy” like a creepy guy who insists “I’m not that hairy; my mom says I just got visited a lot by the Hair Fairy when I was a baby and that’s why I’ve had a Geraldo Rivera mustache since I was 3.”

Lip sweater made from real Rivera wool. Or, six sheep were killed in the making of this nose scarf. Pick your own caption.

I mean “I am not hairy.”  Not that there’s anything wrong with being hairy.  Except for dramatically increasing the chances of something like this scene from Along Came Polly happening of course:

Yet, it’s like you, DC, have assembled some secret Hair Paramilitary Force (HPF) to stalk me on your streets.

Years ago, for example, what I thought was a homeless man stopped me on New Hampshire Ave. and vociferously insisted I cut my hair.  I now realize he was one of your agents in full camo.

Last week, you got me twice, DC HPF; twice.  First, you got me at work.  A coworker looked at my arms — again: not hairy; I can produce affidavits to that effect — and joked that she wanted to cornrow my arm hair.

Not four hours later, you got me again DC.

I’m standing on the corner of 14th and Irving in Columbia Heights.  Older black dude in a medium-charcoal double-breasted suit and a baseball cap walks up — no — rolls up (there’s a difference) on me while I’m sifting through mail and Twitter.

He invades my personal space.²  He puts his hand in my face, offering to shake, and says “Black Soulja.”

At first, I’m thinking I’m about to get an informal invite to join The Nation of Islam.  Until I look down at his hand.  It looks like the fake hand Chubbs had in Happy Gilmore, except, you know, an ashier, crustier version.  Let me be clear: it looks like this man had “washed” his hand in cement and then let rats nibble off as much concrete as they could once it dried.  Whatever was left, well, that was his hand.

Reluctantly, I shake because it’s what dudes do.  He leans in even closer, as my head leans back, and

dude: You got a beard.

me: * w *

dude: You got a beard.

me: * t *

dude: You got a beard.

me: * f *

When he says “You got a beard” for the fourth time — and for a fourth time he does indeed — he pulls a used – USED — beard trimmer (bare, no packaging) from his left double-breasted suit jacket pocket and a complete set of trimmer attachments from his right pocket.

I say, “I’m good, bruh.  Good look, though.”  He walks off.

And there, DC, is why I have had enough.  You got greedy.  You thought you could just recruit anyone but this guy blew his cover.  He was too creepy to fully execute his mission.  Or maybe he got distracted by his want to hustle me and lost focus.  Whatever the case may be, I’m on. to. you.

Oh.  And the beard stays.

_________

¹And if you think I’m corny — (for paraphrasing Rod Stewart) — and you wanna scold me, come on, people, let it show.

²If “the invasion of personal space” had a Facebook fan page, I would not join.

I was looking right at him but almost didn’t notice when he fell.  It just happened so fast.

We were walking home, headed east on New York Avenue, just about a third of a block from where the major DC thoroughfare hits 1st Street NW.  The lights were green east and west on NY, while the cars on 1st were lined up waiting their turns.

And he just fell.  He was standing on the sidewalk.  And then he just fell; into the street.

From our distance, honestly, it looked like another drunk guy had stumbled and fallen off of the curb.  But as we got closer, we processed more; we remembered more.  We remembered he hadn’t used his arms to break his fall.  He had just fallen headfirst.

As we neared the intersection, the driver of the closest vehicle stopped at the light on 1st Street was still in its car.  A bystander had rushed to the man’s aid and was supporting his head.  The man was bleeding — a lot and quickly.  It was enough blood that someone in a car from five feet away would’ve been hard-pressed to have missed it.  And no one could’ve missed the fall the man took.  Yet, the person in that car remained a person in a car, unmoved.

Miss Bianca took my plastic Safeway bag and I gave the helpful bystander the cloth in my briefcase to press against the man’s head.  I grabbed my phone and called 911.  Meanwhile, the person in that car sat there.

As soon as someone picked up, I gave our location first and described the scene.  About 20 seconds passed.  When I had just about finished, the operator spoke again.

operator: police, fire or ambulance?

me: uh?  ambulance.

A lot was wrong with this.  First, what I told her was the equivalent of “emerg-e-fucking-cy.”  It is her job to get first responders out there.  Second, if it really is my job to evaluate the scene and make the determination about which branch of emergency responders I want to speak with, then, damnit, tell me that before I waste 20 seconds while a man in his 60s is bleeding profusely from his skull in the street so that an ambulance can be on its way while I relay other information.  Third, I’m pretty damn sure that if I didn’t say “we need an ambulance” that anyone listening to what I’d just said would’ve figured out that it wasn’t a fire, for instance, and sent an ambulance.

While on the phone, I was watching the attempt to help and others are jumping in.  One man stopped at the light got out and pulled some sort of fabric from his trunk and brought it over so we could change the “bandage.”  He didn’t ask any questions first; he just did.

The cops got there pretty quickly.  They had been less than two blocks away.  We could see them pull out of the alley and come down the street.  And, soon, an ambulance was there, too.  We gave some witness info and it seemed like everything was under control.  We walked the rest of the way home.

But, to the waste of chromosomes in the car that watched the whole thing and did nothing, and to the operator who didn’t listen enough to what I was saying to realize that “man bleeding from head” didn’t mean “fire truck,” I hope you never need emergency care.  Not that we wouldn’t help you; because we would.  But karma has a really odd way of not being nearly that nice.