Weekend Happenings

I had a nice little weekend going without Y? around so after running around the apartment naked for about 10 minutes, I decided to move on and be social. Friday night was the premiere of Sex in the City, so basically all the ladies went to the premiere and a fashion show prior to it. I did hear that there was a certain amount of debauchery that occurred during it, but overall it seemed pretty tame besides them getting home at 4am (its almost like they ran a marathon of lady things). All the guys including myself, ds, blev, l'haim, and amen went to amen apartment downtown. The best part about this shindig is that I called up l'haim first and told him that I wanted to pre-game a bit prior to going out to the restaurant. He replied in an exclamatory manner that he can't even remember the last time he pre-gamed, I am thinking to myself that its time to bring sexy back to St. Louis, because we all know pre-gaming -> drinking -> sexiness. Either way I tell l'haim that basically I am going to show up at someone's place with alcohol in hand because I wanted to celebrate two big things happening at work for me. I called up amen and left a message basically inviting myself over because I wanted to get my drink on. Though I usually do not do that, I thought amen and I have established a mutual level of understanding as in he understands that I want to get my drink on prior to going out. Either way amen tells me I am more than welcome to come over but again he has not pre-gamed in forever. So basically I now believe that I really need to bring sexy/pre-gaming back to St. Louis. I get to amen apartment and l'haim steals my parking spot, but its cool, I let it slide because he gets in the car with me and we drive around for about 10 mins looking for a spot. I am sorry, but seriously, after searching for a parking spot for 10 mins, I never want to live in the actual city again, I appreciate where I live so much more.

So we finally make it over to amen's place and I begin to finally get my drink one, 1, 2, 3, 4 beers, its like I am Coolio except without the dreads. We try and play some drinking games, but I don't want to get amen's place dirty and there are not many drinking games you can play without spilling a drink randomly at one time or another. I am as usual pretty impressed with amen's place, its like a bachelor pad extraordinaire, except the fact that he has more shoes than my mother and some of my ex-girlfriends combined, here's to being fashionable big guy. Eventually we meet blev and dsing down at the restaurant for some shenanigans. l'haim decides to be "that guy" at the restaurant and make our waiter extremely uncomfortable by asking questions like "how do you like working here?" and "how is your shift going?" Somehow he ducks and dodges most of the questions, and overall survives unscathed which is pretty incredible. I was surprised he did not turn into Y? and ask for a discount at the end of the meal, that would have been the icing on the cake. Overall it was a pretty good time considering the conversation was pretty lively and the surrounding tables were as well. We took our leave after dinner and returned to amen's apartment for some more drinking and had intended to go out again until mother nature peed on us. And when I say peed, I mean rained, but basically torrential downpours occur right as we plan to hit up another spot. So we try and wait it out for a bit, but eventually we just reserve to ourselves that we are staying in for the night and soon the politics conversation comes out, and that's always my cue to hit the sack.

On Saturday, basically I just cleaned and worked, so domestic, I know, until about 8:00 pm when myself and amen drove on over to mkram's apartment for a rousing game night. Now usually I get pretty excited about game nights, its pretty wholesome fun and there are always hilarious tendencies that come out. I bring Taboo because there is no game night that I can take part in without having Taboo in the pecking order for games to be played. There were 6 of us involved, l'haim, rhaim, mkram, scotty (sorry scotty, cannot remember your last name for the life of me), myself, and amen. Now as you might have noticed, lhaim is married to rhaim and scotty is in it for the long haul with mkram (especially after the conversion classes, oye, that seems like a lot of work, kudos big guy, you are a gentleman and a scholar for surviving). So that leaves myself and amen as the extra two, rather than shun the idea of us, we embraced and made quite a few jokes about. I think I might have made my significant other jealous for a bit, but I digress. The first game we play is apples to apples, I had never played it before so I came out close to the bottom of the pack, though in all truth the game has little rhyme or reason to it. You have a hand of cards that have nouns on them and someone picks and adjective card, you must pick the best noun card out of your hand and give that card to the person who picked the adjective card. That person then picks the best card that describes that adjective in their opinion. So you can either go logical like miles davis = creative, funny like darth vader = touchy feely, illogical like bombs = delightful, or completely nonsensical like rosie o'donnell = dead. You choose on the basis that you think the person will choose your card. So when I chose my cards, I was completely judging on which made me laugh the most. Either way, basic good time, but nothing to write home about.

Once we get done with that game we move on to Taboo which is basically the king of all games, it is the trump card to every single family/friends get together. If you want to get enemies loving each other and friends hating each other play Taboo. We split up into teams and I am placed on the team that does not include l'haim, professional Taboo player since May of 2008. The first round starts, and he is answering clues within the first 10 seconds of their introduction. It turns out hes a cheater, and you can all say you heard it here first, l'haim cheats at board games (this supports my l'haim claim of professional taboo player since may of 2008). When l'haim has the buzzer, I swear it was like he was a gymnast with that buzzer, through the legs, above the head. I have never seen technology and human form melded so well together. Even when he did not have the buzzer his voice basically impeded the game. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea, except his voice caused the timer to be stopped and everyone to start yelling at him. After every round, he made sure I was keeping the scores accurate and the rules needed to be clarified to make sure no-one but him could get their cheat on. He even found a way to get around a rule, so we had to change the rule to prevent him from cheating even more. I loved it, it was like high school swimming when before each meet my team would have a team chant, but our team chant was special, we would steal a t-shirt from the opposing team and do a little song and dance, at the end we would lift whoever was captain for the week in the middle of the team and he would rip off the shirt we stole and start roaring. Nothing says good sportsmanship like stealing and destruction of personal property. Either way, l'haim's team lost (meaning my team won, heck yes) and balance was restored to the jewish community taboo universe. We then called it a night and I returned to my domicile with my dignity intact.

On Sunday, me and the g/f, need to find a good nickname, how about gorgeous? brownie points ahoy! Anyway, gorgeous invited me to Taste of Clayton which is this snazzy event where lots of restaurants get together and charge even more for their food than they would when you go to the restaurants. There were 6 of us there, Smorr, Brando (sorry can't remember your last name as well, though I think I never was told it) mmeye, awils, myself, and gorgeous. I was pretty peeved once I figured out exactly how you go about enjoying the event. The idea of these things is that you get to try lots of different foods determine if you like the items and then eventually you might go to the restaurant. I purchased 12 tickets for like 15$ and within the first 5 minutes I was out of tickets given the fact that items cost 5 tickets a piece. Not to mention, most of the items looked extremely unappealing. The only thing that I liked was some white sangria which was 4 tickets a glass until the end of the event when the lowered it to 2 tickets a piece. We ravaged the sangria when it was lowered to 2 tickets a pop considering that is actually a somewhat normal price for it (slightly low, but I am not one to complain about that). In the past I guess I am used to flat fee events, you pay one fee at the door which entitles you to just walk around and taste everything, if I ever end up meeting the person who organizes it, I am definitely going to relay this idea to him/her. To sum it up, the company was amazing (more brownie points), but the food and idea were underwhelming to say the least. We eventually moved to Barcelona to have a drink, ordered an extremely large pitcher of red sangria which was very good as well and seemed to never end. We moved back to the event area soon after to watch the fireworks which I can safely say I was impressed by. It was a 10-15 minute show and though the fireworks were not like gigantic, for some reason, we were pretty close to them. There was even some guy talking on a cell phone almost on top of the launchers, the things some people will do to get off the phone (I am underwhelmed by the quality of that joke and I created it). We called it a night after that so here I sit thinking to myself, one, why can't St. Louis get these events to be even remotely enjoyable and, two, why can I not find a place online to give feedback to the event.

Either way, this Saturday should be an awesome time, we are having a get together at the sanctuary and I am looking forward to it, gonna make some appetizers and then get to the drinking and drinking games. And as in the traditional way that I leave my posts, I wrote a haiku earlier in the day to Y? and it fits well with our plans on Saturday:

Drinking games are swell
'Til someone dirties the floor
in that special way

Again, apologies for using 'Til, gotta fit it someway. Read More......

Mid-week update

I never understood why people were so obsessed with hump day until I started working. Or happy hours, or TV dinners, or maids. . . wait, I get the maid thing, but seriously, the whole perspective shifts as you move from the magical world of college into the 'real' world. It is my personal mission to stem the flow of this transition as much as possible by trying to make something out of every night.

Ok, so I had received a hot tip from G, souteneur of good music, to check out the Funky Butt Brass band at the Broadway Oyster bar. Now the Oyster bar is one of my favorite places to go during the summer because the music is funky, the place reminds me of New Orleans, and people dance. The food I can't eat so much, but who needs to eat when you've got dope music?

We Rosh and I headed down to check it out with Wizzo and met up with a friend of hers down there. I didn't even have to walk into the bar to know that we had made the right decision. As navigated from the parking lot in the rear, up to the entrance, I could hear the sousaphone bumping out bass lines. I'll admit it, I started second lining in the middle of the street. Funky Butt is clearly a band I'm going to see at every opportunity. Check the Oyster bar's calender and get your funky butt down there.

Last night was going to be a chill one, cuz even I need to sleep every once in a while. I was going to grab a drink with Em at 33, this fantastic wine tasting bar which doubles as a retail spot down in Lafayette square on Park. Its pretty well hidden, right next to the Chocolate Bar and doesn't have any kind of sign noting the name. In fact, if not for the small open sign on the door, you wouldn't know it was a place of business at all.

Long story short, Em gets sick, Rosh and lady S decide they are in, we have Aim join us, and while we are siting there, enjoying a Moscato D'asti and a triple stout, we catch the menacing outline of T&R walking by. I do my best Jesse Owens to catch up with them and then convince them to join us.

This was not an early night, but at least it didn't end with a half hour discussion on the pros and cons of Walmart. . . which may make its way into the blog as a point counterpoint/battle royal between Rosh aka The Man and Y? aka the Romanticized Revolutionary.

Whatever...Karl Marx was a Heeb too after all. Read More......

The Sanctuary

So Y? already teased this in talking about the weekend, but Friday's Shabbat dinner and "after-party" deserve more than just a passing mention. Luckily, I am here to pick up the pieces for you all who missed out. So Y?'s parents were in town, which meant Shabbat dinner at the sanctuary. Granted, I had to bring my own chair, beer, and candles, but I scored an invite. (Sidenote: Schnucks's in the CWE only sells Shabbat candles in packs of 72, so the candles are on me for the next 35 Shabbats!) Anyway, dinner had all the amazing interactions you would expect when two parents (one of whom is a rabbi deeply learned in Torah) enter the world of the young professional on a Friday night. Save for the candles, challah and wine, nothing and no one was sacred as the chicken marsala and potato chips flowed like honey from the kitchen.

So, around 11:30 (four hours after the dinner began) we decided that it's probably time to conquer the world beyond the sanctuary. As we are determined to find new things to do in the city, we headed out to check out some SLU bars, figuring that its a major urban university (albeit Jesuit) there's gotta be something good going on. And was there ever...

So we get down to SLU and park by a place called Magnolia's. Everyone's pumped up and ready to go, fat and happy from dinner, when the bouncer tells us it's a $3 dollar cover plus a one drink minimum. A ONE DRINK MINIMUM? Sounds kiiiinda like an East Side joint you're thinking? Us too. So we move on, only to be greeted at the window of the next bar by stereotypical white shirtless dude. So now we're stuck. I mean, this is St. Louis so of course there are only those two bars within walking distance. So, being the resourceful smart Jewish folk that we are, we ask some passerbys what exactly is Magnolia's? "A gay club dude."..."No, really, man, what is it?"... "It's a GAY CLUB."

So we start looking around, really paying attention to our surroundings, and the tight pants give it away, that Magnolia's really is a gay club! Not that there is anything wrong with that, and it certainly was the most popular place around SLU that night, but not quite what we were looking for when we set out for some Shabbat night exploring.

I guess the lesson here is that when you commit to finding new things in St. Louis, you gotta be ready for anything. So when you come out with us, consider yourself warned, you never quite know where you might end up. But in a place like St. Louis, where so much is too often the same, isn't that a good thing? Read More......