Insanity Defense

Some people define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  If that is indeed the definition of insane, then I have a pretty bad problem. Perhaps I’m just uncreative, but I wake up every Saturday at about noon (This can be adjusted to as late as 3pm based on the epicness of the night before) Usually I’m not too hungover on Saturdays. This is of course because, even if I start drinking as soon as I get home from work and stay up until 5 in the morning, I am limited to a maximum of 12 hours of consecutive drinking. 

Most Saturdays I will walk to Subway, devour a meatball foot long in under 45 seconds and then start drinking. It’s not necessarily because I have a drinking problem, I just don’t know what else to do. But it’s beautiful in California, you live on the beach. Ah yes, of course. Go to the beach on a Saturday. Well, you see I do. But when you’re 25 years old you don’t build sand castles or fly kites anymore. I either go to a beer garden and start drinking pitchers of German beer or I play beach volleyball drinking vodka out of water bottles.

Of course no one forces me to drink all day Saturday, I could play volleyball sober and yell at my teammates when they fuck up, or I could choose to get drunk and not care. I think I drink for the same reason that 12 year olds in small towns fuck each other and do heroin and shit, they just can’t think of anything better to do. And sure I go surfing and it’s fairly difficult to imbibe when you are in the middle of the ocean, but since I spend all week at the gym working out my glam muscles I rarely have more than an hour in me when I’m out there.

Another issue I am running into is visitors. If you live in South Dakota, you may not have a constant influx of people coming to visit you. I am not self-absorbed enough to think that people actually come to LA to see me, they come to LA to fucking rage and I have a nice couch. But when every weekend turns into a 48 hour bender, my life becomes that of a permanent host, so I am living every weekend as if it is the only weekend I will ever spend in Los Angeles my entire life, because that’s the tour a visitor wants. And visitors like to party when they are on vacation…I’m literally on the 5^th consecutive hosting tour and I’m literally falling apart. These last two specifically took a lot out of me, but I am more than happy to do it.

Saturday I woke up after a fairly calm Friday night. I felt decent, and felt even better after my shower beer. Knock down a few more pints at breakfast while watching the Chelsea game (I just can’t do bloodies) and I was sufficiently lubricated by our 2pm volleyball match. The next 12 hours I spent drinking in various venues across western Los Angeles, stayed up super late and then found myself watching Saturday Night Live drinking a personal bottle of wine at 4:30 in the morning.

This is where most people call it a weekend. Go to a pool tomorrow, maybe take a hike. Read a book in a park, play golf…not wake up 6 hours later and go to a block party sponsored by a bar…right? But your buddy has the red-eye home…last day in LA…ok fuck it, let’s go grab a few Lokos at the 7-11 and check out this party .

Holy fucking shit…the Hudson block party was the most epic street fair I have ever experienced. Every girl there was under 120 pounds and had the jappiest most awesome sunglasses and short shorts. I’m not usually into that look, but yesterday I had a constant tummy tuck just looking at all the exposed midriffs and revealing tank tops. 2 bands playing at any given time and about 500 females wearing their sluttiest darty outfits from their sorority days at USC. West Hollywood isn’t my thing, but there hasn’t been talent like that assembled since the 1927 Yankees.

You can see where this is going obviously. Playing injured (after a hard day partying in the 90 degree sun, the last thing I needed to do was throw on a tank top and do my best 21 year old frat boy impression) I put on a Michael Jordan with the flu-esque performance and housed 20-30 beers on a Sunday. If I wasn’t so tall and prime for solid weight distribution I have to imagine I would be super fucking fat. And what was my reward for raging all day with a couple crazy Australians and my visitor from back home? That’s right, a total fucking eclipse. A fitting ending to an outstanding weekend.

So what are the takeaways to this tale? There has to be some moral here, else I could have just said, I got drunk Saturday…and Sunday too. Well the moral is this, blacking out on a Sunday has a silver lining, I don’t remember anything from Mad Men or Game of Thrones last night forcing me to re-watch this evening, thus giving me something to do. The second takeaway, I need to stop drinking like a fucking asshat and expecting differing results. I woke up in a cold sweat at 5 AM today and sat in the shower for 2 hours shivering like a meth head. It’s pretty much how every Sunday night/Monday morning ends up for me. So I either need to cut down on my drinking, people need to stop visiting, or I just need to accept my plight that I’m just never going to feel good on a Monday. I can compound my Sunday hangovers to Monday hangovers, but I don’t know if the future value of my physical health, is worth the 24 hour deferral as it usually makes it worse. Conclusion, I am insane.

I wonder if I ever committed some heinous crime if I could point out to the judge my reckless behavior and convince him of an insanity defense. I live my life like a watered down Dorian Grey (hedonist, fucked a lot of chicks, drank a lot, never aged...kind of a villainous Peter Pan) and I suppose you have to take the good with the bad. Living this lifestyle is fun, but it's taking it's toll. Although instead of a portrait that I keep hidden in the attic, I'm sure my liver bears the evidence of my insanity. But I must be doing something endearing because I literally had gay guys hitting on me like all weekend. It's kinda awkward, not flattering like I thought it would be...I should stop putting so much emphasis on working out my triceps, I think they are super into that and perhaps I need to stop playing “Call Me Maybe” during pregames, that's probably sending a mixed message.