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 |   A little bit of everything, colored my own way. |
| 30DBC PROMPT: "What was the most outrageous thing anyone has ever dared you to do? OR What was the most outrageous thing you have ever dared someone else to do?" What's up players? We're on a tear here this week. A bender of the written word, if you will. I feel like a lush...this is going on something like the third entry in a row that has influences near the bottom of a bottle of somethin', for sure. I don't doubt that there are many stories in my past that have been predicated somehow by the phrase "I dare you". But before I continue, I need to ask a serious question: does it count as a dare if there's also money on the table? Now for some background: Yesterday I mentioned a little dive bar called The Clover Bar. Today I'm gonna tell you about the legendary Keystone Grill, a steakhouse I'm pretty sure we drank out of business. I would go there with coworkers when I worked at the service center for the local electronics company. Sometimes we'd go two, three, six nights a week, whatever we were feelin'. And on any given night anyone could walk in with $10, leave with $6 and be pretty wasted. Turns out the bartenders weren't seeing that enough cash made in into the till to cover the beer and liquor going out. And when the owners caught on, they'd hire a new bartender, but keep the regular guy around just long enough to train the new guy first. And part of that training typically included pointing to our crowd at the bar and the regular bartender insisting we always "be taken care of". How that place managed to stay open for as long as it did while keeping our livers intact is something I'll never know. Anyway, I was kinda in-between a few relationships at the time. My boy BJS knew I'd had some ups and downs lately with women, including one or two that worked in our office. He was convinced I had mad skills as a player, and could get any woman I wanted. Anyone who knows me knows this is not nearly the case. At least not in my mind. I know it was a Friday night; we were out to celebrate just getting paid by knocking back large beverages. BJS and some of my crew (I was the boss of most of them) knew I thought the hostess at Keystone was really adorable; a tiny little college girl named Mickey, who was from out of state. She had that cork-screwy blonde hair that I like and a little bit of sass, and spent most of the year in The 'Lo. She had a boyfriend, but as a wise man once said, "Boyfriends aren't obstacles, they're stepping stones." BJS seized what he felt was an opportunity to prove myself and my game. He came up with an idea. He rationalized that since I had a crush on Mickey, I should do something about it rather than just talk. He said I had two weeks, because he felt there should be some pressure on me but not too much. If I got her number, he'd give me $50. The only caveat was it had to be legit...meaning someone in our group had to see it. And I did the right thing, the right way...I took his money, instantly. I excused myself, went to the bathroom, winked as I passed our table, and went up to talk to Mickey. And sure enough, I got those numbers...but I never got a date. We got close that spring to actually going out once, but Keystone kinda got in-between us. It was a Sunday...and we hardly ever went to Keystone on a Sunday, but the Sabres were making a deep run in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the bartender promised us shots everytime the Sabres scored if we came in on a Sunday. The Sabres hung five goals on the Leafs that afternoon. I remember leaving the bar and staring into a blazing sunlight, hammered. I had to cancel my date, and by summer Mickey had gone back home, and Keystone was closed before school started back up in the fall. But BJS kept his word and paid up the $50. I'm also pretty sure on more than one occasion I was the influence on someone else's dares seeing the light of day (or debauchery of night). My buddy DJ Seanny would occompany us to Keystone sometimes, when he wasn't dj'ing at the restaurant in the mall across the street, Kahunaville. K-ville was like a giant bar/arcade done up in a Hawaiian theme. And it was DJ Seanny who coined the motto "When a story starts out with 'After we left Keystone...', nothing good could come of it." And was he right. We left Keystone and went to see his buddies over at K-ville. Seems they were having some kind of beef with the people who worked at the Jack Astor's upstairs. I maintain to this very day I don't know what the whole story was; just a war between the two most popular late-nite retaurants in the mall. So we decided to stick our faces into Astor's to see what was up. We sat at the bar and ordered some drafts. I don't think we actually got served though. We started chatting with a few girls, one I had gone to school with and hadn't seen in a long time. Things weren't really working out there conversation-wise either, and as two men who were having trouble getting served in a bar, we looked for some way to get noticed. Years ago, before they remodeled, when you walked into the bar area at Astor's there was a large metal garbage can full of in-the-shell peanuts. You went to the bar, grabbed a bucket, filled it with nuts, and left the shells wherever. Until the health department stepped in and said there were to be no peanut shells on the floor. DJ Seanny had a genius decision. However, it was clear after a night at Keystone, then K-ville, then striking out at Astor's, we were not geniuses. We were going to steal the garbage can full of peanuts. We had to wait until some of the crowd had subsided. I shit you not when I say that this was a real metal garbage can. I was in charge of creating a distraction while he set the whole thing in motion. I went over by the girls and grabbed the waitress. I demanded two pints and a round of shots, and Bang! Bang! Bang!, which was my cue to abort and GTFO. DJ Seanny was kicking this can, half full of peanuts, across the floor of the bar. I grabbed a handle, he grabbed a handle, and we were out before anyone knew any better. This was the most poorly planned heist of any kind in the long and storied history of shenanigans. Seanny's car wasn't even parked close to the entrance...more like halfway down the parking lot. And his car was a tiny Chevy Beretta. A two-door. Not made for putting a garbage can in the back seat. But we were in too deep now. We had to get this thing back to Kahunaville somehow. We couldn't get it in the car or the trunk. Which meant I had to hold on to it, while it was outside of the car. There's me, hanging on to this can for dear life in the mall parking lot. Sparks are coming up when the bottom of the can would bounce off the ground. It was a one minute drive that felt like twenty. He pulled up to the back door, set the can out and we parked. I waited for him by the mall entrance. It turned out his boss was pretty pissed. I guess we were allowed to talk a good game, but we weren't supposed to engage in activities of this nature. Furthermore, he wanted us to return the can and the peanuts. Which we did, begrudgingly. We pulled up to the mall entrance after dragging this can back up through the window of the Beretta, and we overturned it right in front of their door. And then, my friends, we grabbed a couple of 40's, headed back to my place to play Sega, and called it a night. BCF PROMPT: "What do colored Easter eggs make you think of?" I can assure you that this section today won't be as exciting. I don't recall pulling any stunts with Easter Eggs. I do know we colored them when I was a kid, but we were crazy poor back then. We didn't use the fancy egg dye kits. Just water and food coloring. No Paas eggs with stickers and our names on them for us. Just the straight up hard-boiled egg. And when there were too many colors in the water, you'd get a funky, ugly multicolored egg. You'd have to take a piece of newspaper, fold it up a few times, and skim off the old dye. We'd probably have a dozen, maybe two dozen, to color. And all I know is that for weeks we'd have hard-boiled, dyed eggs left over. Now, I'm a big fan of breakfast eggs. And I'm a fan of egg salad sandwiches for lunch. But a hard-boiled egg? To eat? No thank you. Too cold and rubbery. Not appealing at all. Especially once it sat for a few days and the dye permeated the shell. A blue hard-boiled egg does not a healthy salad or snack make. Ugggh. I wanna gag a little thinking about it. MUSICAL BREAK!!  "I'm a player, I play...don't play to win, I play to show..."  VITAL STATS:  Speaking of peanuts, I created a little fiasco after doing a little shopping at CVS the other day. Because I live by myself, I shop basically when I need something and don't buy a lot at one time. And I always get a reciept, just to make sure what I've spent is correct and see how I'm doing budget-wise. Plus I'm a stats-and-numbers guy. I like to see how much that stupid card on my keychain saves me.Last week CVS had a really good deal...Snickers Peanut Butter Eggs, the two-pack, buy 1 get 1 free. I know a good deal, and that's a good deal, yo. I may have bought (and consumed) nearly an entire case of them over the course of a few days last week. No joke. Come Friday, of course they were all out of this deal, and seeing that it's an Easter treat, would be til next year. But, they had bags of the regular, year 'round Snickers Peanut Butter Squares, on sale at 2/$6. Another good deal, yo. Until the cashier rang them up and they were $4.19 apiece. Wrong answer, cashier lady. I took her to the spot I saw them with the sign, and she gave them to me at the sale price. Crisis averted. I came home, sat down and cracked open the bag. What I tasted was a hell of a lot more disgusting than I expected. It seems the Easter Egg by Snickers is just peanut butter, nuts and caramel. The squares have that plus a layer of "nougat". This confection throws off the balance of everything and makes it all too sweet. And what the hell is "nougat" anyway? I don't see it charted with any food group I'm aware of. I decided I would return the unopened bag the next day. I went to look for the reciept. The two bags of candy were all I got from CVS. My Tops and Kinney reciepts were on my dresser with the contents from my emptied pockets, where everything ends up. I went through the garbage, and I went through the plastic bags. I tore my room apart looking for this damn slip of paper. Nowhere to be found. Incredible. Now I'm wondering if I even took it. I always pocket it. And having worked in retail before, I hate being the guy who returns things without a reciept. Now I'm stuck with a whole bag of Snickers Peanut Butter Squares I won't eat. The lesson here, kids: always stick with Reese's when it comes to chocolate and peanut butter. Well, I learned something today, and I hope you cats did too. Time to go out in the world and not repeat the same mistakes. Peace, and GOODNIGHT NOW!! |
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