Social Experimentation

I've been slightly busy the past week or so pursuing some worthy literary pursuits. I've been churning out shorts, trying to write a new script and doing copious rewrites on my coke story (it's starting to sound too much like someone took the LS and Len Bias stories and tried to cram it into a made for TV movie)

I've also been staying up until like 3 in the morning watching episodes of Grimm and Once Upon a Time...god they're awful, but awful in a train wreck kind of way where I can't stop watching. So amid watching bad tv, exercises in futility involving my own writing and a 27 page deposition about some Pennsylvania man that diddles kids, I haven't had much time for the blog.

However, I do have a little social experiment I would like to discuss with you. Over the weekend I had like 6 hours to kill after wiffle ball until a dinner with friends. The obvious choice would have been to pick up a 12 pack of beer, post up on the couch and watch college football all day. Ill content to waste my Saturday afternoon I decided to take a drive. I drove south for like an hour and ended up in this lovely little town called Manhattan Beach.

Manhattan Beach is everything I want from LA. It has the beach, everyone wears swimsuits, flip flops, shirts optional, campy spring breakesque bars, tan, flowing blonde hair (LA girls = pasty with black hair), piers with illegal immigrants fishing, surfers, stupid little beach shops (where everyone steals shotglasses and Zippos from on high school spring breaks) It was honestly like a less trashy Panama City. This is exactly what I wanted when I moved here. T-shirts, beach and boogie board shops on the boardwalk. Ever since I got here everyone was like "you would totally love Hermosa, or Manhattan Beach is so your scene." Perhaps I'm that easy to stereotype, perhaps those southern beach towns are just all the good parts of LA (or what I as a midwesterner perceive to be the good parts) without all the bullshit that sucks.

So I didn't have a real point there, but while I was walking down the beach I saw dozens of fire pits, and people having raging beach parties. YES! How have I been here 3 months and not been to a fucking beach party? We drink in hotel lobbies and listen to house DJs every night, weak...beach party for the win.

I got to thinking, wow, I could blow off this dinner...how do I make these people become my friends, hence the experiment that I now propose to you.

My scientific method is a little rusty but I believe you start out with some sort of question, or topic for your experiment. We'll call this, "Are people inclined to party with a stranger if that stranger brings something to the table."

Goal: Meet new friends, party (Any time I'm alone I always have this fantasy that someone will see me and be like, that kid looks like he wants to have a good time, "Hey man, want to come with us to the sickest most insane party ever and have the greatest night of your life?") This is probably repressed emotions from wanting to be included in the "in crowd" in middle school, nights I would lay by the phone praying it would ring with someone inviting me to do something.

Moving onto the hypothesis: I hypothesize that if I wandered up to a random beach bonfire with a 12 pack of beer, I would be accepted with open arms and have a good time.

Note: I considered 6 pack, but any time you take a 6 pack to a party it is very clear that I BROUGHT THESE 6 BEERS FOR ME, I AM GOING TO DRINK THEM ALL, it's really the bare minimum you can ever bring to an event, it's tacky to show up empty handed, at least bringing a 6 pack you give the notion that you aren't a mooch. Conversely, most people bring a sixer to give off the facade that they contributed, and then end up drinking 12 beers and half of the Goose that someone else brought. Bringing a 12 pack people are like, "What a guy, he brought some to share" immediately this person is offered shots. Always go with the 12 pack, it's not like you aren't going to drink 12 anyway.

Procedure: I figured I would walk along the beach until I saw a group of like minded people, I had a 12 pack of a decent beer...I didn't want my first impression to be High Life. Remember I'm hoping that not only am I granted a bonfire party pass, but I'm fiending for the invite to the house party they are heading to later (if such an after party exists.) Once I found a group that looked fun, I would muster up the courage to approach and say something along the lines of, "Hey guys I brought some beer and my friends bailed on me, anyone want to hang out?" At that point you would have to be a pretty cruel soul to say "eh, fuck off guy, this is our party, go drink over there by the trash can and the seagulls...it's possible, but unlikely. Then I will slowly unravel my life story for them, tell a few of my good stories, find a common bond and just like that I gain acceptance.

Experimentation: I was walking down the beach and there were beautiful food spreads. A soccer ball eventually made it to my feet. Hey, this could be the perfect parlay into hanging out, I'll ask to join this soccer game. I looked up and realized it was just a Mexican family, mother father and four boys...no thanks. Every step I took I began to doubt myself more and more. Honestly who just cruises up to an established party and says, hey man I brought my own booze...but at the same time, this is character building, I hear plenty of stories about people going out by themselves and just striking up conversation with their neighbors, this is what makes people interesting.

Finally I saw it, a group of twenty somethings throwing a football. A girl tripped backward and fell on her face, and then got up laughing maniacally. A couple bros did a beer bong. THIS IS IT, I thought. I'm just going to go up there and give it my best shot, perhaps challenge them to a shotgunning contest or something. (Note: A great way to gain favor among a bunch of drunks is to do some sort of alcohol achievement. I was at a Halloween party a couple weeks ago and only knew 1 person there and he was busy munching his girlfriends twat so I approached the keg and did like a 45 second keg stand. I was the most popular guy at the keg the rest of the night) After pacing back and forth like 30 times I finally approached the camp fire, casually cracked a beer and then asked one of the guys if he knew the score of the Alabama/LSU game. Then one of the girls approached and said how did you do that thing with the lighter when you opened your beer? Aha! I had done it, I wowed someone with an alcohol related accomplishment. I was just about to spring the question, hey my friends took off, you mind if I kick it with you guys for a bit...when a ATV cop came and shook me down.

Are you retarded? No glass on the beach.

Sorry sir, I'm from Indiana.

Yah well are you allowed to have glass on your Indiana beaches?

Sir, we have cornfields.

Get your glass out of here, now.

Conclusion: Cops are assholes, even in cool ass beach towns.

I didn't have it in me to return to my potential friends at the bonfire after making the walk of shame back to my car in the parking lot so I just got in and drove home for another average night partying in a hotel lobby. Seriously, you would think we were in high school with the amount of hotel partying we did. At least in high school though we were ripping shots and trying to see how blasted we could get and not drinking 20 dollar martinis and trying to gossip about our insider industry knowledge. Seriously people in LA don't even try to hit on the opposite sex when they are out, it's almost a battle to see who can have the most interesting conversation, who is the best bullshitter about the "next big thing" that they may or may not be working on.

Conclusion 2: Out here you hear a negative connotation in someone's voice when they discuss the campy bars like Cabo Cantina and Barney's Beanery, the bars near the beach that specialize in serving 2 for 1 64 ounce margaritas starting at 3pm on a Saturday, as if getting shitty at a bar on a Saturday is something you need to justify. I'll justify it by calling it fucking awesome, and while I'm recovering from my hangover on Sunday you can write all your friends back home and tell them about your lovely Saturday hike through the canyon with your girlfriend and how you're really psyched about how healthy you've been eating lately...the avocados they're just so fresh. Yah, well so is my fucking In N Out.