Monday, December 19, 2005

What did the five fingers say to the face?

SLAP!!! I'm Gina F. Pitera BITCH!!!!

So this Saturday night around 2 AM I received my first ever real slap to the face, and ouch it hurt!!! For some reason, either pent up aggression towards me, or just to watch me in pain, Ms. Gina decided that on the way out of Rebecca Roses' party to totally blindside me with a vicious, blind sided slap. While I have been punched in the face before, this slap rivaled any blow I have ever taken, as the unexpected nature of it totally stunned me. Due to this I lost my hearing for a good 2 minutes, and I also had a headache until mid-day Sunday. Now some of you will probably love the fact that someone I dated long ago whacked me in the face, and think I deserved it. That's absolutely justifiable, but the fact of the matter is I didn't even make a lewd or derogatory comment at the time, so the unexpectedness of it came as a shock to me. The funny thing about this is that I wasn't even mad about it , as I split a cab home with this Minnesotan about 3 minutes later. Shocked ans suprised and amused were my three main feelings at the time, and not so much anger. This is ranks high in the most random situation I have been in all month, and the overall situation is somewhat of an analogy for my friendship with Gina.

Besides that, my weekend as a whole was very much like shopping at the GAP or watching the Motor City Bowl, alright for a few minutes, but overall an average/ "blah" experience. Rebecca's party was serviceable, and I enjoyed talking to Mike, Rinee, and Gina P. Actually for the first time in a long time Gina and I had that fun friendly repertoire going on, which made my Charlie Murphy impression even more random. Rebecca's party overall was great but in my humble opinion the winner of the Christmas party contest goes to Katie (and Gina). There was nothing wrong at all with Rebecca's but the overall crowd at Gina's was more fun, lively and interactive.

Overall my roommates were probably the highlight of my weekend though, as each night was filled with drunk dials, and coming home to them at 3 AM, with them still being rowdy. Anyways I could continue on a bit and try to make my weekend sound interesting, but don't worry, I have a slate of events lined up this week that will be very "entry" worthy. Stay tuned....

Monday, December 12, 2005

Lets get all drunk and shitty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City

A random thought: I think I have set a new Matty B record. I have noticed that in the past 3 months I have not once been in a prolonged (like more than 15 minutes) bad mood. I know this seems unreasonable but it is true. I just don't get mad anymore, it is so weird!!

A Second thought: Since graduation is about half a year in the past, I have realized a sad simple fact that seems quite obvious. I just realized that some of my friends who live in far places from me (FL, CA, IL, VA, etc.) will become bi-annual friends, meaning that on average I will see them only a couple of time a year. If I wasn't so distracted by all of newness associated with me living in Manhattan (the new people,things to do, places to visit) I would probably be really upset about this.

A Preamble: When reading this be aware that my sober waking hours < my drunken waking hours this weekend. Be prepared for fuzzy and inconclusive stories. Oh and by the way I am bagging the "timeline style of writing" that I have been notorious for recently. Time to go back to the superficial short style that I love.

After Working 55 hours this week......
Bye Bye office, hello weekend. After notifying my boss that I would be in Atlantic City for the weekend, I was off to Meet Mike, Liz, Rob G at a Thai restaurant on the Upper West Side. As I left my boss shouted "Don't lose your shirt, and watch out for the hookers!!!," My office is so freaking classic.

Friday Night Freak Show

After eating we decided to go to Hunter College to a "Rock Show Party." Now to be honest for once in my life I was at a loss for words, and cannot adequately describe this event.
Okay since I am lazy I am going to plagiarise Mike. Here is his rendition of the shitshow:

"My mouth dropped when we entered the room and everyone in my group feared for our lives. We were all wearing brightly colored JCrewesque clothing and were clear targets for these people. Hunter College events usually surprise me everytime I go because of how easily school organizations can provide alcohol to underagers, and now I was surprised with how they organized a mosh pit and let kids jump around and hit people in the perimeter of the room. Why couldn't these punk kids stay in the middle of the room? After Anthony's friend got roundkicked in the face, we had to make sure we left the room (to avoid people in our group retaliating) and find a place to drink."

I took pictures of this ecevent BTW, and it was worse than it sounds. If my computer didn't have herpes right now I would post this to exemplify this horrifying event. You'll just have to wait until I get my computer fixed on Saturday to see this disaster.

Introducing you to my new friends (who may or may not replace you)
After this experience I decided to NOT flake on my roommates, and go join them at this "classically college" bar on the Upper East Side. Now before I set the stage, lets be honest, this is a MAJOR achievement for me. I am the classic flake out. Ever since my high school days I have made a habit of planning to hang out with more than 1 group of friends in an evening, and totally piss off the second set. Now at around 11:30 when the roommates called me back to back from different phones, I knew they were expecting the classic flake out, but for once I pulled through, and made it to the bar just before my name was called to participate in my scheduled game of beer pong (Which my roommate Jayme conveniently signed me up for.).

Okay as usual let me set the scene of this bar.....I walk in and the bartenders are standing on the bar, handing out free beers for no particular reason. About 15 minutes later, after I had won my first game of beer pong the attractive female bartender was standing on the bar, pouring shots into people's mouths. In the back are 4 beer pong tables, and you sign up for the game on a chalk board. The name of this bar is "The Big Easy" and I give it a 17 out of 10 rating.

Okay so 2 of the 3 roommates made it out tonight, Jayme and Brian. Since this weekend was so eventful, I am only going to give the mini bio on each one.

Jayme- A super chill girl from California (went to UC Davis), who is the biggest partier in the house besides me. She is a mix of Rebecca Rose's ability to pick up random references and Kara, in her propensity of going out , and making everything a good time. She is working for a law firm right now, as an assistant of some sort, but has been accepted to George Washington, and Georgetown Law Schools to date...wicked smart. We watched Saved by the Bell together every morning before we go to work, and yes we are 22 year old college graduates, thank you very much.

Brian- A polite kid from North Carolina (Went to NC State). He seems like your typical nice guy, but can throw a zinger out there when you least expect it. He does research over at Rockefeller University, and is some sort of bio/chem/engineering major. At the bar on Friday this girl was trying her best to pick him up, and asked HIM for his phone number (My favorite bit of entertainment of the night). He was embarrassed by this, (the girl was not too hard on the eyes, but super annoying) and I have teased him about this and threatened to steal his phone and call her ever since. Classic Matty B-harassing my friends for my own enjoyment.

So to sum up the night.....I met a bunch of Jayme's friends who were really cool.

  • Brian and I teamed up and won 3 or 4 games of pong in a row.
  • It is very odd playing beer pong when you don't know your competition very well, it makes it much more competitive.
  • I still have my shooters touch at beer pong
  • I scolded the "shot girl" for exploiting an old drunk man at the bar. She felt bad and apologized to me.
  • I walked home 30 blocks with my roommates, laughing the entire way.
  • I bought Triscuts as my drunk food and Jayme hasn't let me live this down since.
  • I got to bed at 4, and had to go to AC the next day.

Atlantic City Transportation
The bus to Atlantic City is ridiculously cheap, and pretty fast. If I was all Bourgeoisie like my good friend Justin I would have hated it, but it was so cheap I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I was.

Atlantic City
In AC Greg and I walked around looking for a sportsbook to sit in for an hour, but gave up and ended up at an Irish Pub inside our hotel, which was the Tropicana. To be honest this who night wasn't too eventful, as Villanova won a sloppy game in a somewhat dead environment, and Greg, Justin, and myself all got rip roaring drunk. Dinger as usual was about 71% less fun because he had his girl Anne Bibby around, and was toting around all of her friends. It was disappointing, as he went to bed early, and did none of his Dinger"esqe" antics that we love him for. He didn't even stay at our hotel, and was tucked in wayyyy before he should have been.

In conclusion, I knew it was time to go to bed when I was playing on a video blackjack machine at 3 AM by myself, not really caring if I won or lost. We all left planning our next get together, which will hopefully be over New Year's Eve in Philly. Dinger left me skeptical of his attendance as his classic Jewish line of "Hotels are expensive" and "Maybe my mom could pick us up on New Years" (so he could save the $$ a hotel would cost) left me with the feeling he might flake out on us. I guess it takes a flake to know one.



Sunday, December 04, 2005

I am Alex Rodriguez

Bill Lumbergh: Heyyyy Matty, whats happening???? Yeahhhh were gonna need you to come in on Saturday, MMMMMMKay?

Matty: Ugh, okay.

From these humble beginings so began one of the best Saturday I have had in a very long time. This Friday my little company moved from our 141 5th Avenue address to 757 3rd Avenue. Because of this move all 20 of us in our companies employees were required to come in and help set up our new digs. Although somewhat tough to actually comprehend "working" on a Saturday, little work was actually accomplished, and it was more of a chance for me to become more social with my coworkers, as we ordered food and hung out for a lot longer than we were required to. I also spent about a good 2 hours playing around with the CEO/President/Founder's little girl who is 3. Needless to say it built me up an enormous amount of goodwill, and as all of you know I am about 6 years old at heart, so it wasn't a burden on me at all. At around 3 I decided it was time to get out of there and start gearing up the big game.....

'Nova Vs. Oklahoma.

I left my apartment around 4:15 to get to the Manhattan Villanova Alumni Gamewatch. In true Villanova fashion, this was held at a bar called "The Park Avenue Country Club" on 27th and 3rd. Now going into this Saturday I decided that my goal of the day was to be independent and confidant, and I had totally planned on going to the gamewatch solo, and end up meeting new people/mingling at the gamewatch. Right before I was about to walk out the door I gave the token "Hey do you want to come along with me to go______" that is a pretty common and act of simple courtesy to bestow upon ones roommate(s). No as ya'll know about 87% of the time the normal answer is "No thanks, but thanks for asking, I am doing _______." Well when I asked my roommate Thomas to accompany me to the Gamewatch, he decided to go against the grain and tag along with me. I would go into more detail about my Gemologist roommate from Chicago, but I will go into thourough detail and analysis of my roommates later this week.

The Gamewatch

The Gamewatch was something that was very fun, but will be exponentially more fun once the college and pro football season commence. While about 95% of the bar area was there for the Villanova game, Wildcat fans only encompassed about 25% of the entire restaurant, as there was a USC football Gamewatch there too, so while cheering for 'Nova I had the good fortune of hearing corny cheers from my least favorite fan base in all of sports. Good times. The Gamewatch was fun, but it seemed like an event geared more towards the 25-28 year old crowd. Thanks to Thomas though, I was introduced to a girl who ran other alumni events, such as happy hours, and I gave her my email address to contact me. Yeay networking! Anyways I was very happy that I went, and it was wonderful to cheer on our squad in an impressive victory among partisan fans. After the 85-74 win, I left the bar around 7:30 to go eat dinner with Mike before going to the "Christmas in the Little City" party, hosted by Katie "Steel Reserve" DiPerna and Gina "St. Pauli Girl" Pitera.

In classic fashion Mike and I had a miscommunication, and ended up in different areas of lower Manhattan, and I made the decision to skip dinner and go straight to Hoboken. Now this was a good and bad decision.

Good-I got to spend much more time at the party by skipping dinner, mingling with a ton of people

Bad-I had no food almost all day, and was about to drink heavily after having 4 casual beers at the Gamewatch.....a recipe for a drunken disaster.

Night in Hoboland

After a Nova win I entered the party in a great move. The party was set to start at 8 PM, and I rolled in there very noisily at around 9:30, expecting to catch the party in the upside of its lifecycle. So I walk in and ....crickets. I was the 2nd guest there. So to review I went there an hour and a half late and it was ME who tapped the keg.

(Side note: there was a fine young chap there before me, and Gina and Katie claimed that he couldn't tap the keg!!! What 23 year old male cannot tap a keg?!?! This is deplorable to me. It is similar to one not knowing how to tie a tie at this age.....ooops I only learned that 2 weeks ago. Now back to your scheduled program....)

As I entered the party I had a ton of energy built up from a huge 'Nova win, and I entertained Gina and Katie with my antics for a good 15 minutes. For once Gina wasn't repulsed by me and all seemed to be in good spirits as people tricked into the party. The lack of attendees early in the party made it very easy for me to move around the Hoboken apartment and consume beers at an alarming rate....another sign of things to come....

Now around 10 or so the guests began to come in more steadily, and all were in awe of the decor and the detail of preparation of the girls for this party. Now it is no secret that Katie is one of my top 10 favorite, non family member people in life. This being said I was nervous beforehand about her party planning skills. Now in retrospect these worries were plain silly as even Rosanna Billias couldn't have put together a party so well from decour, to alcohol selection, and in layout.to aside. I give the party a 15.5 out of 10.

The party layout

So the feel of the party, was very much like a 6th grade social, Katie's coworkers conversing with one another, and Gina's doing the same. Now at this time I had consumed a plethora of beers so I was feeling quite social and ready to mingle, so I decided to introduce myself to all the random people at this party that I didn't know. I finally started to act like the person I want to be, carefree and confident. Nearly halfway through the party, while doing this I came across two good looking girls, one of which who was almost out of my league. Now being that this evening I didn't harbor my normal insecurities I decided to just lay it out there and totally flirt with these two. I decided even if I ended up looking like a fool, oh well, I need to put myself out there more and stop being such a prude.

To my astonishment these two enjoyed the "Matty being Matty" personality that many of you have seen from me, and I ended up holding at least an hour conversation with these Staten Islanders. These SUNY grads also were doing all the telltale nonverbal signs that I have picked up of the years to tell they were interested, which was very fun Now before I get anyone's hopes up about a raunchy hookup story or anything, nothing at all happened as I pulled out my standard "Dammit I got too drunk card". I have mentioned this in earlier entries, but it really is the equivalent to A-rod Striking out with the bases loaded in the playoffs. He plays a great season and sets himself up for greatness, and then kills himself in the clutch. I hate ARod but I totally understand his anguish. To be honest in retrospect I am sure the alcohol gave me an enhanced confidence about the situation that wasn't even there, but it's okay, becuase I enjoyed the situation more than anything else.

So as the night wrapped up Mike, (who rolled in the party around 11:30) the hosts, and myself, decided to hit the Hoboken bar scene around 1:45 or so. We were poised to enter a bar a few blocks from the girl's apartment, but unfortunetly some of us (me included) did not meet the dress code as we were wearing sneakers. I wasnt too upset about the denial of entry, but while drunk Gina was verbally harassing a bouncer (which is not a fun position to be in, as I have had much firsthand experience) my Connecticut drivers license proved not to be durable as I thought, and i broke it in my hand. Dammit.

The remainder of the night was a standard bar hopping/drunken eating/game playing event that was very typical college, and while a good time we all know how this works ,and it needs no more explanation. The next morning I woke up, and bullshitted around Katie and Gina's apartment and left around 1. Ialso drank dome of the wonderfully tasty alcholic cider, which tasted great, even in the morning. Yeay 12 step program, here I come. Shit I am so freaking tired right now I think I'll just post this and add more later.

Grades of Katie (and Gina's) Party

Decor/Drink Selection= A+
Environment/Vibe =A
Guests=A-
Preparedness=A+
Enjoyment of my hour commute home=F-
Enjoyment of the hosts=C+
Just kidding......A

Yes I can give good grades, and credit where it is due, who knew????