Strippers, Mannequins, Facebook and Portman

Retiring the SC

After being out of SF for the better half of the last two months, I was surprisingly looking forward to a wknd in SF and seeing people I had not seen in a bit. Friday ended up being a flurry of happy hours, and hit up a couple hot spots including a German beer house, which is now one of my favorite places to drink. There is something relaxing about drinking beer around people who love to drink beer and not around a bunch of metros who think beer is the drink of Neanderthals. Also, there were a lot of hot girls there and ample spots to SIT down, which may be the real reason why I liked it.

In any case, after that I met up with my roomies and some of my ole CS buddies at Zebulon and then rolled to Osha Thai for dinner. Osha is one of those places which 99% of the Indians love - I am thinking because its veggie friendly, reasonably priced and has ample seating to throw a huge bday at. It was ridiculous – our dinner must have been interrupted 10x within one hour, so that the staff could sing happy bday to that very special guest.

Anyhow, at the next bar, I met one of my boys, DW who was visiting from NY. DW and I go way back – we worked together at CS and then he bounced after a month to a different firm. We somehow maintained a friendship primarily over our love of Round Table pizza and strip clubs. Seriously, ever time I roll to NY, we end up talking and hanging at a SC, and ever time he rolls here we roll to the MB and Hustler. We are not homos – its just we enjoy looking at beautiful girls and on the reals, a SC is a great place to have a serious conversation – there are never any awkward moments or pauses. DW recently got engaged, and I thought it would be great to roll one more time before his bachelor party. I mean I consider him the king of SC, and envisioned a fun night full of dances and crazy stories that we would have to avoid telling his finance.

What transpired could not be further from the truth. After getting $$ and paying $40 to get in, I was shocked to see my main man DW a completely changed man. Granted the girls were not up to the usual standard, but DW was really disgusted. He was like lets bounce immediately. When I asked him to stay at least for one show (I am unemployed, so I wanted to get something for my $40 fee), he tentatively agreed. When a brokeback Asian girl came on stage, we both looked at each other and got the fuck out. What had happened to us? Had we become responsible people and lost our love for SCs?

The mere thought of that scared the shit out of me, so we agreed to roll to Hustler Club. After downing a couple more drinks, I was hoping we would return to our old ways. I waited till I saw the hottest girl in the club and went up to her $20 in hand and smiling ear to ear. I asked her if she could give my Asian buddy a dance, and she said yes (surprisingly..). To my shock, my buddy said he did not feel right getting a dance now that he has a fiancée (who admittedly was hotter than any stripper in the club). Fuck me. The guy who was down for the Champagne room in every sc we went to was now refusing a cheap $20 air dance. As we sat there watching another girl dance on stage, my buddy turns to me and asks “ What do you think this girl does when she is not stripping – do you think her friends know?” This got me thinking and made me feel bad for the girl, which of course killed my buzz. Worse than that, I then began to think maybe DW is the lucky one, whos “fantasy girl” and girlfriend are the same girl...These are the last thoughts that any sc attendee wants to have, and I correspondingly bounced home.

Anyhow, this post is for you DW. Congrats on the engagement, on retiring from your title as the SC King and screwing up the SC experience for me. If you become a health nut and denounce Round Table, don't bother calling next time you are in town.

Mannequins

I saw a great movie and a not so great movie this week. I know I will get some heat for this but the not so great movie was “The Dark Knight”. (Ducking to avoid all the shit being thrown at him). I finally went to see the movie last night after hearing all the hype from my friends and the media, and came out a bit disappointed. First off, I thought the action scenes were sick, especially when the truck flips over and when the Bat –cycle does a 360 on the wall. I thought the lack of a dramatic score was quite effective as a lot of action scenes were done without background music which I felt was awesome.

Now for the bad. Maybe its from Dawson Creek days, but I thought Katie Holmes was more effective as Rachel Dawes. I thought the plot was a little far-fetched (SPOILER ALERT) esp with creating Two Face and killing Two Face within 20 mins, the commissioner miraculously returning to life. The end bothered me – didn’t Two face think that the batsuit would be capable to stop a bullet? Come on now, he had to be smarter than that.

The stuff with the two boats was kinda cool and I have to admit Heath Ledger did an amazing job as Joker – Oscar worthy though? I don’t know about that..What bothered me the most as well was the way Christian Bale spoke when he was Batman… he was very breathy and was dramatic for no reason. I still think “Batman Begins” was levels above “The Dark Knight”…- I felt it was more intellectually satisfying and as a viewer you got to really understand what drives Batman. In any case, I am going to watch it again in IMAX and hopefully I will see what the hype was all about.

In any case, the movie I would highly recommend is Lars and the Real Girl, starring Ryan Gosling. This I thought was an Oscar-worthy experience, and accordingly he was nominated for several awards. This was a great feel-good movie about a guy who has some emotional baggage and orders a sex doll on the Net and makes her his real life girlfriend. He does not have sex with her, but treats her like a gf in every other sense – talking to her, dressing her and taking her to parties, etc. The movie is about how his family deals with this embarrassment, how the town evolves and adapts to support “Lars” and eventually how Lars deals with overcoming his need to have this gf and how he finds true love.

Facebook

One of the most unique things about my trip to Africa was not being "online" 24-7. I would occasionally wake up early and check the laker score, and once or twice go on facebook.However, Internet is slow as hell down there and surprisingly it was harder to find Internet cafes when i was not staying with SB. Anyhow, I slowly was able to focus on my own life and not worry about all the "friends" on fb, and making sure they knew where i was etc. (I have my blog for that....)

When I got back to SF and started spending more time on the computer looking for jobs, I ended up spending WAY too much time on facebook. I think i would check every hour, desperately looking for some new photos to look at or see what others peoples status updates were. I never got too involved on posting myself, except to defend Lakers, but still it was still a great way to kill some time when I needed to procrastinate. I mean TMZ and ESPN gets old after awhile. However, I began to realize those little breaks really add up. I am not blaming FB - FB does not waste time - people waste time.

In any case, I have started a little social experiment and going to try to be FB free for the next month. No more checking out friends pictures from vacation or their night of boozing. No more reconnecting with old random friends - while it was one of the best parts of FB, I felt lame in accepting their invite and moving on. As if by accepting their invite now meant we had caught up - there was never a follow-up email.

Its sad but I have ran into people that I had not seen in awhile and would tell them " I feel like we just talked or hung out", when in actuality I just had looked at their profile.

Will I survive? probably. But don't feel offended when i don't return your message or your poke. And most importantly, don't be surprised if I don't remember any of your bdays and don't post that meaningful "Happy Bday" on your wall, which is oh so unique.

Portman

Just when you think Natalie Portman could not look any cuter, just check out this video.