Decemberism

Last Saturday I started a hard bender, that should be ending about now…in the last 10 days, I have done 2 bar crawls, a rave, a fifth exchange an open to close, lost a set of car keys, lost 2 credit cards, rented a car and probably eaten about 2.5 meals that weren't late night pizza.

But before we get into that, a few things I wrote into my phone that I thought would be good thing to blog about.

1. Who the fuck wears ear plugs at a rave?
I understand, loud music is very hard on your ears. My good friend's father is a world renowned ENT doctor, he would shit himself if he knew that I consistently went to raves without ear plugs, but the problem is, ear plugs make you look uncool. The reason one goes to a rave is to get drunk, do drugs, dance and eventually make out with some equally fucked up sweaty chick.
This becomes much harder to do when you're wearing ear plugs, and can't whisper stimulating conversation on the dance floor such as "What's your name?" or "You got any rolls?"
I get it, you want to be able to hear when you are in your 80's but you will have much more respect from your grandkids if you are obviously falling apart due to years of hard living.

2. What type of dipshit streams a concert?
As previously mentioned, while "going to a show for the music man" is a bullshit line you will hear many a hipster say, it's not true. People go to concerts to party and hopefully have sex in a portopotty, even if you legitimately do not want to imbibe or roll your face off, you still want the pounding bass pulsing through your body and to feel the burn of the flames or the cooling touch of the co2 cannon. Watching on Youtube just sounds like a torturous way to induce FOMO on yourself. At best, it will just piss you off that you aren't there. You won't actually enjoy yourself while you watch a grainy lagging feed on your iPad, but you will make out the fact that some bro is 3 way kissing a couple sluts wearing nothing but pasties but you couldn't afford to buy tickets because you just paid a 6 month car insurance premium. This ends with you masturbating while you cry. If you can't go to the show for whatever reason, it's probably best to avoid it completely. Shut down social media too...people know that hash tag #coachella is guaranteed to get them a ton of likes, it's bound to be everywhere.

3. What the hell do extras talk about?
I work on a tv show and from time to time I spend extensive amounts of time on set. But I'm part of the crew, most of these guys are my friends and coworkers. We talk about our weekends, how the shoot is going or a movie we recently saw. But on certain days we will have hundreds of background actors. These background will have to pretend to be partying or doing some other sort of bullshit act, repeated takes, over several hours. But they literally meet each other a few seconds before the take. An AD will make a white guy stand next to a black guy and an Asian girl, so the scene appears to be "multi-cultural." There you go, that's your social pod for the next 3 hours.
I know what I would do, I would take this opportunity to attempt to nail as many chicks as possible. Here is my rationale. First of all, every extra is a pretty desperate person, they need 75 bucks in a bad way. Most extras are aspiring actors, but even the most delusional of them probably realize they won't be noticed in the background of a pool party scene demonstrating "acting talent."
Also you know that this person doesn't have shit going on. After they wrap the scene, most extras are going home and hoping to get another extra gig in a few days.

And you know what bored, desperate, poor, girls with no ambition are down to do? Get drunk and fuck. But most extra males are themselves pathetic, possessing no game they just start saying the alphabet when they run out of small talk. If they had any game they would at least be getting guest star roles. But still, I can't imagine how hard it would be to put up massive numbers by just taking a bunch of girls to shitty valley bars at wrap, its got to be better than going back to their parent's lower middle class Woodland Hills home.

These are the things that go through my mind when I'm drunk in a basement at my roommate's holiday party whilst A-Trak djs on stage.

So back to matters of importance.

What business does a 26 year old have taking a party bus down to Hermosa and blacking out in the name of the Big Ten? Well apparently not much. As much fun as I would love to claim I had on the crawl, I remember absolutely nothing. Literally, I pre gamed from 9am-11am at my apartment and then walked a couple blocks to get on the bus and remember nothing after that. During this time I lost a credit card and car keys.

Now if you have lost a credit card before you know it sucks, but only like 3 out of 10. Basically you are without access to money for the rest of the weekend. There is a new feature at some Chase banks where they will print you a new debit card on site, but it's just not pleasant. Going to the bank blows, there is always some sort of inherent judgment when I realize a personal banker is looking at my meager account balance realizing that I pissed all my money away the previous weekend and then lost my card. I honestly don't even understand how I can be considered an asset for Chase, I'm just glad they haven't fired me yet.

I started to see some activity on my card Sunday afternoon though so I immediately cancelled it. A few hours later I realized one of my friends had my card (and since all Chase Debit cards look the same, didn't realize it) we had apparently swapped during the mayhem of the crawl.

So whatever, I got a new card and life moved on. (Coincidentally I found an old credit card while tearing my apartment apart, previously thought to have been lost 3 months ago) Losing your car keys however is a 12/10 on the pain in the dick scale.

Oh don't you have a back-up set? Well as a matter of fact I had 3 back-ups, they have all been lost over the years in a similar fashion. So what does one do when you lose keys and need to drive to work?

Your options are as follows:
1. Have the car towed to the dealer and have a new key laser cut with a chip for $400.
2. Rent a car for 2 days and beg your mom to overnight the last remaining key.
3. Go get drunk to take your mind off it and then borrow your roommate's car Monday morning.

I initially chose 3, before finally resorting to option 2 Monday night. I must say, driving a rental car was lovely, I might just treat myself once in a while, or use them for dates. I imagine a girl would be very impressed by a man with a clean car, or even if she could clearly tell it was a rental. Most people that use rental cars are mature, it implies that they have maintenance done on their vehicle. I will simply drive my car until it no longer starts, at which point I will give it to NPR and ask my father to buy me a new one. (I might legit just take hand me down cars from my parents for the rest of my life or until I sell a script...so potentially the rest of my life)

But come Thursday, I had my new keys, I had my new credit card...I'm fucking back baby? How should I celebrate? By going to a rave on Venice Beach and staying out at Townhouse until 2 in the morning of course! Quasi-famous dj Atrak played the Snowglobe/Recess holiday party Thursday night and had an interesting array of free booze. The party was co-sponsored by Colt 45 and some sort of Four Loko-esque energy drink, so if that sounds like a good time, I assure you, it's an even better hangover.

This would of course lead into the Friday of the 3rd annual west coast fifth exchange. You know how this goes, each one of my friends buys a fifth of booze, wraps it and delivers it to our secret santa victim. I had a buddy that works in fashion so I of course got him skinny girl vodka wrapped in an Adam Levine cardigan (has his own line at Kmart now!) I received some Krakken rum and a kit of ingredients for dark and stormy (first time drinking that beverage, big fan!) Out of the 24 bottles of alcohol at the party, we drank about 23.5, and called it quits at 5am...just enough time to sleep until noon and then immediately start pre gaming for the Santa Monica Pub Crawl...

Ugh.

You would think that I had learned my lesson the previous week when I, you know, lost my life. But, fucking Paul Bird was in town, and after Ragegiving, he was ready for an encore. So we all dressed up in Santa outfits and stormed to Main Street. As with most bar crawls, I peaked entirely too early as I was making out with a pair of lipstick lesbians while we were still at our first bar. (It's tough to top that) But my real trouble started when we got to a bar that had a special on Fireball shots. My outfit was incredible, my dance moves impressive, my confidence at an all time high, but nothing can save me from myself. Instead of finding the hottest chick in the bar and directing her straight to my bed, I think I unknowingly stepped outside in a desperate attempt to stop sweating. I was not allowed back in. This is how people get separated on bar crawls, I would never see my team again.

Oof.

The next thing I knew, I had time traveled to Brentwood and I was again partying with Johnathan Martin, this time engaged in a heated game of beer pong. It did not end well for me. Again I resisted the urge to make him get on his face or do some elbows and toes on bottle caps because well, even if he was a bit of a pussy with that whole hazing thing, he is still about 6'7 300 pounds and seems to be a cool enough dude.

The weekend has to end at this point right? Nope, made it to a rooftop bar to pregame the Venice Canal parade and ended the night by drowning a couple bottles of Pinot Noir at Mao's, because the key to not getting hungover is to never stop drinking.

Yesterday was, to say the least, a struggle. But I've realized a few things to help you get through it. Never tell anyone at work a fucking thing, do not run with them in your social circles, and make sure your show has been cancelled before you black out at the wrap party. The key is to set a precedent that you are just a sickly child with bad seasonal allergies.

I currently don't have a voice, I can hardly move, but I set a precedent Friday that I was coming down with some sort of bug. I told my coworkers that I was going to have a holiday gift exchange with my friends and spend the rest of the weekend trying to get healthy. This way when I seem a step behind on Monday, it is because I am clearly recovering from my illness, not going through the various stages of withdrawl. God Forbid I call in sick on Monday, they will immediately think "ohhh he was sick on Friday" not, "That worthless piece of shit is too hungover to come in."

There was a costumes girl that called in sick yesterday, and I truly believe that she had food poisoning, but she set the stage that she was going to a birthday party Sunday and told the whole world how excited she was about it last week while we were at work. When she called in sick Monday with food poisoning, she didn't have a prayer. Everyone assumed the worst. Now it doesn't really matter in entertainment, everyone is a terrible person who drinks, does drugs and cheats on their significant other, but still.

One of the things that living a debaucherous lifestyle is to shroud yourself in a vail of mystery and deceit, no one outside my close circle gets to know who I really am, no one ever knows if I'm serious or joking, and when I make a deliberate effort to lie, I commit to that shit.

The storm is over now, the clouds have settled and the warm weather has returned to Los Angeles. I'll go home in a few days and do lots of wholesome activities in the midwest and when I go out a few times I'll humblebrag about how much better my life is to everyone just enough to make them subconsciously hate themselves. I'll probably go to Chicago for New Years and that's how my 2013 will end. I'll look back and say "Fuck, I'm still an unpaid writer working in a production office, when the fuck am I going to get real about all of this."

But then when you take a moment to stop wallowing in your own misery, I'll think about all the little vacations I took. Mardi Gras, Palm Springs, San Francisco, Vegas x2. All the wild and crazy shit I did last year are memories that will last me a lifetime. Why Am I in such a hurry to be successful. I have plenty of time to scrape by and be irresponsible and build my resume of fun stories I'll be able to use in my writing down the road. And it's not like I'm going into a sales office and making cold calls all day, I fucking drive to the Universal Lot and make tv...then I go home and lay on my couch with the windows open in December and watch tv while I smell the ocean.

There were a lot of bad choices that led to this point but I have to accept that there were probably a couple good ones too. Some people hide what they are or want to be, I've accepted that I'm just a single guy living the dream in LA that has an exaggerated misogynistic version of himself as an alter-ego that he writes with, and that's ok. I live hard and it's starting to get a little out of hand, but it's going to be ok in the long run, because I keep it real with you and I keep it real with myself.

That was a rough 10 days, and I am dehydrated...both physically and emotionally, but hey, that's why the Arrowhead guy delivers water 4 times a week, to put me back on the road to recovery.