Ramblings and Reflections

Flashback IV - "A Two-Fer"

This next two posts are forever connected, so I simply cannot re-post without the other. Enjoy!

Chapter 13 - Quarter Beer Night

 

Back when we were in junior college, me and Stubby were sitting around a college dance and came to the conclusion that the DJ really sucked and that we could have done a better job that he was doing keeping people on the dance floor.

The next day after we sobered up, we re-visited the notion and decided what the hell, let’s give it a shot. So we set out on become DJ’s. We bastardized my stereo, put a shit-load of music on our credit cards and bought a sound system, mixer and amp from a buddy of ours. We also had to give *T* a call since she had broken her foot the night before at the dance trying to do a polka, ala The King and I whilst drunk. While most of the time it requires being drunk to actually polka, trying to learn how to do it drunk it not a good idea. But, I digress…….

One of the places we got a steady job at was the enlisted club at the local Navy base, a little hole in the wall called the Powder Keg. We were pretty much the house DJ for almost 3 years and had developed a pretty good following. We kept the place hopping and a lot of our friends would show up to hang out with us even though they weren’t military. Of course *T*, *S* and *K* already knew about the place and had been hanging out there for a couple of years, hanging out with the enlisted guys and confusing sex with love.

Even after we stopped working there, we’d still stop by on Friday nights and hang out, partly to make fun of the new DJ and partly because the beer was real cheap. One particular night, it was quarter beer night and me, Stubby, *T* and *S* were there. We didn’t properly coordinate with each other before hitting the bar and before you knew it, three of us had gotten $5 worth of quarter beer. Normally, quarter beer comes in small Dixie cup size containers, but not at the Powder Keg, they were full 12 ounce cups!  So there we were, standing next to a table with 60 cups of beer on it. We tried as best we could be we couldn’t finish all the beer between the four of us. So we were stopping everybody that walked by our table, offering beer to them and making friends the entire time. In truth, the DJ wasn’t bad and we had a great time. I entered (on a dare) a jalapeno eating contest (I lost), *T* and I participated in a charity auction (more about that in a later chapter) and we all got very, very drunk!

Later this week, the Department of Defense is going to release the list of military bases that they plan on closing. I certainly hope this old base isn’t on the list, as it is one of the largest employers in our small little county and adds a lot to the local economy.  But, if for whatever reason it shows up on the hit list, I’ll make sure that me, Stubby, *T*, *S* and the rest of our old crowd gets together one last time at the Powder Keg for a night of drinking and remembering.

We’ll send the old girl off in grand style, she’ll deserve it!

 

Chapter 14 - Tits and Toliet Seats

 

Once upon a time, I bought a woman. Now I know what you’re thinking, but she wasn’t a hooker (well, maybe she was but that wasn’t mentioned in the terms of this particular financial transaction). As discussed in the previous chapter, we were all hanging out at a local watering hole on quarter beer night and they were having a charity auction for the American Red Cross or the Heart Association or something like that.

As part of their efforts to raise funds, they auctioned off a dance with a woman and a man from the charitable foundation. The bidding started and (I guess) because we were all pretty hammered due to the quarter beer, *T* and I decide to bid on the guy and the gal respectively. Both of us won and while I don’t remember exactly, I think our winning bids were in the 20-30 dollar range and that was top dollar around those parts. You see, guys from our county would go to the local strip club to watch their sister dance topless and shove dollar bills into their g-strings. So, if blood relatives could only score a dollar, the charity had to be ecstatic to get 20 to 30 times that and no one had to get naked (although from what I remember, *T* tried her damnest to get the guy she bought out of his designer jeans).

Speaking of being naked, *T* reminded me in her comments from the previous chapter that there was somebody else hanging out with us that night, “Neener. ‘Neener didn’t hang out with us all that often and it was probably in part because all of wanted to get naked with her. She had these humungous boobs and all of us guys (and probably some of the girls) all wanted a little bit of that action. I saw ‘Neener’s rack several years later when Stubby and I made a midnight road trip to the beach unannounced.

I had a ’84 Olds Cutlass with the Hurst package. There were only two adjectives you used to describe that car, fast and loud. Stubby and me were sitting around one night during the beginning of the summer; everybody else from the group had already headed to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the beach. *S*’s family had one of those doublewide trailers there and *T*’s family had a trailer there as well, so everybody always headed there during the summer at one point or another. So there we are, sitting around my house bored out of our skulls and we decide its road trip time. Now from where I lived to the beach was a three and a half hour road trip, but it was worth it because as I said, we both got to see ‘Neener’s hooters. We pulled up outside of the trailer, the car was making all sorts of noise (the car had Hooker Headers, which come to think of it, is pretty fucking fitting for this story). ‘Neener as we would soon find out was in one of the bedrooms in the trailer with her beau and as we sat noisily idling out front, she “sprang from her bed to see what was the matter and torn open the sash” (my apologies to Clement Clarke Moore). And there they were, two of the most spectacular orbs of bulbous fat Stubby and I had ever seen in our life. It was truly a Kodak moment and once she realized that she knew the people she was flashing, she covered up, but as Neil Young once sang, the damage was done.

Anyway, back to quarter beer night, the night wound down and we’re all pretty wasted and *T* decides she’s too drunk to go home so she crashes at my house for the night. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but *T* and I have been thru a lot together and I don’t regret a minute of it and don’t think she does either. Surprisingly thru it all, we’ve never slept together. That’s amazing considering the number of people both of us cannot say that about!! (But that’s just a hypothesis; none of us would keep a list, would we?) You would have thought the sheer logistics of us spending so much time together under the influence would have led to something.  But alas, as *K* once broke my heart, all *T* did that night was brake was my toilet seat.

I was a bachelor and I lived in a male-occupied bachelor house. In my bathroom was a well used toilet with a toilet seat that had seen better days. One of the hinges that held it to the bowl was broken. I knew this, and knew how to “adjust” so it didn’t become a factor in my trips to the ‘loo. Sadly, *T* was not aware of the logistics that needed to come into play and shortly after she entered the bathroom, I heard a loud “crash”. I called her name, got no answer, so I tried the door. It was unlocked so I opened it. There, on the floor, shooting me a full-moon was *T*, and my toilet seat; well it was lying under the sink, halfway across the room. I helped *T* up, and put her back on the couch. She doesn’t remember much of this (had I mentioned we were REALLY drunk?) but best I can put together is that her approach to my toilet seat had taken on the characteristics of a base-runner stealing second, and when she hit the seat on an angle she (and the seat) just kept on going. Now I’m not a sentimental guy but I really liked that toilet seat. It cradled my head many a night while I was praying to the porcelain gods. When I came back out of the bathroom, *T* had gotten ready to crash on the couch and was sitting there in nothing but her panties. Naturally the next thing that came out of my mouth was “nice tits”.

And so goes the story of most of my twenties, I start out the night wanting to see one girl naked, end up seeing a completely different one naked, and still go to bed alone.

This story has distracted me. I wonder if it’s happy hour at Hooters yet? Hummm………

 

 

Flashback III

Here's my next installment -it's from January 2006 and is a continuation of the "rock and roll band" theme.

Tell Me Doctor, Where Are We Going This Time?

Is it the fifties or 1999?

Actually, it is 1984.

I was on my way to the airport yesterday on my way home from travel when we stopped in my old stomping grounds for some lunch. We had several choices along Route 301 in downtown Waldorf, MD and considered several before we settled on Bennigans.

We were seated and I couldn't help but stare at the waitress attending to some of the other tables in our area. She was young, early to mid 20's and very cute. But secondary to that I sensed that I knew her. There was something about her that was so familiar. I tried to read her name tag as she walked by several times, glancing casually as to not attract attention not only to her but my 4 colleagues that were traveling with me. I didn't get her name but I just knew that I knew this girl. I just couldn't figure out from where and when. I left this area 9 years ago. That would have made this girl at best a teenager of 13 or 14. I've been known to go ugly early, but I never went young, or at least that young, so that couldn't be it. Finally as we were getting ready to leave it dawned on me. She was standing next to the hostess stand as we were preparing to walk out and I asked her what her last name was.Once she told me I asked her if Kathy was her mother and she replied "yes" and asked me how I knew her mother. I responded "I was in a band with your mother over 20 years ago". Her eyes lit up and she asked "was that the band she used to sing with when she was pregnant with me?" The answer was yes.

White Raven was a garage band in Southern Maryland in the early to mid 1980's. Most of the groups in our area around that time were playing to the popular music of the day. Not us, we settled for rock and roll over Squeeze and A Flock of Seagulls tunes. The one thing we did that was mainstream is pictured at left - It's a white satin jacket with the name of the band stitched on the back. Back then, even if you couldn't play real good, you had to look good. I still have mine after all these years. Kathy was our female vocalist and I remember when we auditioned her she needed to meet two criteria 1) she had to be able to sing and 2) she had to look hot in a pair of spandex pants. Adding a female allowed us to expand our music, we added several songs from Pat Benatar, The Pretenders and Heart. Later we would experiment and add a horn section, aptly called the "Throbbing Tromboners" and expanded into some Huey Lewis and Springsteen stuff. Only problem with that is while it was a lot of fun to play songs like Thunder Road and Rosalita - Come Out Tonight, not many people danced to them. Sometimes it bothered us, sometimes it didn't. We never gave a second thought to doing Rosalita though, mainly because we liked the line "Now I know your mama she don't like me 'cause I play in a rock and roll band", that was something we could relate to. 

You hadn't made the "big time" where we were from unless you played the various local fire houses from their fund raising dances. Here's a picture I found of us hitting the big time by playing at a dance at a local fire house. Of particular note is the crepe paper streamers in the top of the picture. They're green so I can only guess this was a St. Patrick's party. I honestly can't remember. And yes, that's a confederate flag hanging up behind us. We were so cutting edge!

My favorite song that she did, and I remember it like it was yesterday was The Rose by Bette Midler. She would belt it out and it would almost bring tears to me eyes. Here's a picture that's really hard to make out, but it's Kathy and me playing a one of our "gigs".The last time she sang with us she was something like 8 months pregnant and when she sang The Rose we all thought she was gonna go into labor right there on the stage.

It's funny because as I was driving to our office in Southern Maryland we passed a place where we used to play. Only the Halfway House is gone. Torn down and now the site of a gas station. I began to think back to our shows there, the stage that was so small that once Scott's drums were set up there was no room for the rest of us. Ahhh, memories.

That's all, just another example of the past impeding on the present. I wouldn't trade either for all the money in the world.

All I wanted to do is play my guitar and sing....
So take me away, I don't mind
You just better promise me I'll be back in time.

Flashback II

Here's my volley back over the fence, Thsi one is from August 2005 and was entitled:

An Alternate Reality - Circa 1979

Over the weekend I was channel surfing and came across a VH1 special entitled: Ultimate Albums: Kiss Alive! That sent me reeling back to a time long ago when life was simpler and the amount of stupid things we did greatly outnumbered the sane ones. In a flash, I was off to our spare bedroom rummaging through shoeboxes of old photos. So if you will, please allow me to set the stage for you - it's Halloween 1979 and a group of aspiring musicians are allowed to set up in a friends barn for a Halloween party - there's only one stipulation, the band MUST come in costume. So, if you haven't figured out yet where this is headed, here's a couple of pictures to help you out (I apologize up front for the quality of these pix - they're 25 years old and didn't transfer to digital very well).

Yep, that's me (on the right) and Migraine-Boy kicking out the jams back in Southern Maryland in 1979. 

Here's another:

This was at the end of a song (notice the big finish moves by M-B and me. Also, if you can make it out, check out the large budget pyrotechnics we had right in the middle of the picture (it's a fountain sparkler).

We had a great time. Here's one of me during a guitar solo. You can make out Eddie, our drummer in the background....

We were playing in a barn - they had to move out the horses earlier in the day so we could set everything up. Our friend at the time, the one who M-B affectionately calls jackass lost his high school class ring that day - he swore a horse ate it.

Here's another one of me - this one was taken by a girl who came dressed as a nun. But she certainly wasn't virginal.....

We're talking high dollar costumes and make-up. Ok, well at least the make-up was expensive. We bought it at the local theatrical store and had to buy extra because it took us three or four tries to get it right. I remember all of us in my parent's basement hovering around the bathroom mirror like we were getting ready to go out on dates - rouge, blush, eye-liners, lipstick, eyelash curlers. I think this was my first foray into theatre make-up.

At long last everything's torn down and we can rest - here's me and M-B sitting on a bale of hay relishing in a job well done. 

Now here's the kicker, this was a Baptist Church Youth Group party - No alcohol and I had to (literally) sneak out behind the barn to grab a smoke. They used to call me "that Catholic boy who was a bad influence" on everybody else - but I don't believe that for a minute. I think I got a bad rap because I had a window sticker on my truck that said "If you value you life as much as I value this truck - Don't Fuck With It" and I always parked by the front door of the church. Doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. Oh that and I was legal so I could buy beer for everybody else - hummm, maybe that was it.

Migraine Boy - Anything I failed to mention here is intentional and needs to remain locked in the vault, we both have reputations to maintain.

Well that's it, a leisurely stroll down memory lane - let's hope the VH1 Culture Club special doesn't have the same affect on me.........

Stepping Up to the Flashback Theme....

Never one to not step up to a challenge, I have dug into the archives and come up with a flashback post from earlier in the life of this blog. When I started this thing I was only going to use it to post what I considered funny stories from my past, an electronic retrospective if you will, addressing each posting as a separate "chapter" in the life of umdalum. In time I began posting about current events and ranting about a wide assortment of stuff, moving away from the original concept but vowing to one day return to it.

 

So with that said and with thanks to Uncle Keith for coming up with the idea, I give you the following "chapter" originally posted on this blog in July 2005.

 

Chapter 17 - The Summer of Love

 

**It's been awhile since I posted one of my ridiculous "shit that happened to me when I was younger" stories, so here goes.....**

 

It was 1996, the summer before me and Stubby moved south. We had become regulars at the little hole in the wall sports bar that I blogged about previously (see Chapter 7 – When Social Circles Collide). It was here in this exotic place and this special time that Stubby fell in love not once, but twice that magical summer. Ok, so maybe love is too strong a word, but he did get laid a couple of times.

Our friend Chris who I’ve talked about before introduced us a friend of hers, who I’ll call Christy. Christy and Stubby didn’t real click (in a hot, throw down kind of way) at first but we all enjoyed each others company and continued to hang out together.

Stubby and I were sitting in a local meat market called Legends one Saturday night when we decided to call Chris to see what everybody else was up to. She told us Christy had a date and was going to another bar to shake her groove thing with the guy. The only strategical error Christy made was telling Chris where they were going. Within a matter of 30 minutes, the three of us were in the car and headed to the dance club. Our mission – fuck with, and/or embarrass Christy. ‘Cause that's just the kind of friends we were.

Our original plan was to get into this club undetected by Christy and set up camp at the bar and watch her make her moves on this unsuspecting young buck. We all knew that in doing so, we would be in store for a great show. The only thing Christy wanted out of a guy in a relationship was the one thing she could put in her, if you catch my drift…. We thought we were going to have to abort the whole damn mission when just as walked in, we bumped into Christy coming out of the restroom. Instead, this encounter led to us meeting the date and a dialogue that has been remembered and repeated over the years. Christy introduced the date to me and he responded by grabbing my hand and saying “Bud!” when Stubby was introduced the date responded by smacking him on the back and calling him “Dude!”. And right there, in the middle of the bar with the cover band playing Meatloaf’s Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad, Stubby and I unintentionally entered into a mono-syllabic bond with a guy who had obviously spent way too much time hanging out in the shallow end of the gene pool. Being sarcastic and messing with both of these two was akin to shooting fish in a barrel. It was simply too easy. After awhile, Chris motioned to her two new friends, Bud and Dude, that she was ready to leave, so we split. We went to the sports bar and told the story over and over again to the patrons. From that day forward, the owner of the place, Ed would only refer to us as Bud and Dude. I would return and visit after I moved south and on those occasions that Ed wasn’t there, I would leave him a note on a beer coaster that I had come to visit. And the coaster, yep you guessed it, a BUDweiser coaster. Ok, so I guess I got off track with this part of the story, so long story short, a few weeks later, Stubby hooked up with Christy, the result being a passion play that left his dangle bits a little bit less dangly (I know this is HARD, but try to follow along).

And then there was girl #2, or as me and Stubby would refer to her as “Part Deux” in the epic Summer of Love. Let’s protect her identity and call her Julie. Julie was hot, and quite a looker and she and Stubby hit it off immediately. Her eyes were like two molten balls of goo, her breasts heaved like bulbous sacs of fat, damn she almost had it all, but there was one thing she craved, and she would soon have it, yes I’m talking about the throbbing manhood that is my friend Stubby (those of you who know Stubby, feel free to laugh out loud now). It didn’t take long before they hooked up and Stubby gave her a ride on the bologna pony.

Now I don’t know about girls, err excuse me, women. But guys talk, and as a guy you are trained to know that any reporting of sexual activity that is shared with other guys is probably at least 50% bullshit. But when Stubby and I got together after his tango de la bimbo what he told me could not have been made up. Mainly for two reasons: 1) the odds just aren’t there and 2) Stubby’s not that creative. He tells me that as he’s walking into her apartment building he has the sense that he’s been there before. It’s not until he’s left the next morning does it dawn on him (like the choice of words?, morning – dawn, damn I’m clever). The building Julie lives in is the same building that Christy lives in. To make things just a little more interesting, based on his cranial-reconstruction of the floor plan layout of the building, Julie and Christy shared a common wall connecting their two apartments. And what wall would that be you ask, why none other than the bedroom wall. I ask you, how funny is that? I mean in a town with a population of 20,000+, what the hell are the odds that someone could do that? It’s amazing, it’s incredible, it’s true! I told Stubby it was a damned good thing he’s not a screamer…..

Stubby had it all that summer, and he had the perfect escape. He was moving, and he knew neither of them would follow him. We were all certain of that, they couldn’t be that far away from their baby’s daddies. It was the perfect scenario; non-committal sex, beer and a new nickname.

What more could a man ask for?