OK. So we’re sitting around the apartment when Big Jon says we need to watch “The Big Lebowski”, to which I reply that I haven’t seen it, to which they freak. Seems that I’ve seen so many movies that when they occasionally find one I haven’t seen we must watch it IMMEDIATELY. Of course I do the same to them.

So this sets events into motion. Ace decides he’s got to run out and rent it. So I explain that someone has to pick Nate up from work, which is right next to Hollywood Video anyway. We don't rent from Blockbuster as I'm still pissed over the whole "5 Days, 5 Nights" rentals they did a while back (OK, maybe it was ten years), in which they wanted the movies back by MIDNIGHT of the FIFTH NIGHT. 5 days, 5 nights my ass...

So he volunteers. But then they say they can’t watch ‘Lebowski’ without Cauccasians (White Russians for you sober people). Why? I don’t know, I haven’t seen the film. I never really wanted to as I had seen “Fargo” (I believe it was done by the same people) and felt violated by it. Yes, I hated it that much. I felt cheap, dirty and used. And not in the fun way that I usually pay money for either. Someone once compared something I’d written to “Fargo” and violence nearly ensued. Still, it went better than the time someone compared my work to Woody Allen…

But all the liquor stores are closed, or would be by the time we got to one, as it was almost ten PM. I then point out that I have to go to the all-night grocery store anyway (I do all my shopping late at night as, by and large, I hate people.) so I could pick up some girly, pre-mixed White Russians there.

And then Jeremy, or G.I.-Jew as Nate likes to call him (This is funny mostly because Jeremy is Catholic) comes online and we decide that we really should include him in the activity. So Ace plans to pick him up on the way to get Nate, then swing by his own house to pick up the road cone he stole in college so the Jew could do his impression of our absent friend Brian’s former, rebound girlfriend, affectionately known as ‘Killgore’. Once again, I’m not quite sure where the name came from, but it does conjure the right mental image for this woman. Sorry Brian, but she looks like a linebacker. The road cone is just to help Jeremy get the right tone of voice. She’s the one that when she used to come over insisted on turning my real Route 666 road sign upside down so it read 999. Why? Probably just to fuck with me, but who decides they’re going to fuck with someone they just met? Especially when that person actually has a two-by-two Route 666 road sign hanging prominently in his bathroom? (Well where the hell do you keep YOUR road signs?) I only mention it because when I nailed it to the wall so she couldn’t do it anymore she ripped the nails out WITH HER HANDS. Where was I? Oh yeah…

For the record, here’s the plan:

Me: Get in car, go to store, get girly liquor, return to apartment.

Ace: Get in car, get Jew at Jew’s house, get Nate at work, go across street to Hollywood and get movie, go to house and get road cone, return to apartment.

Group: Watch movie, drink cheap liquor, laugh balls off at Jew doing impression of Killgore. (Basically what we do every night.)

So as Ace is on his way out the door I mention that Nate has been wanting to rent Madden 2004 and I have a coupon from when I rented “Identity: Special Edition” (See two entries down.) for a free rental if you rent two. At this, the whole plan goes to shit. Everything collapses, I end up picking up Nate, not going to the grocery store, not renting the movie (which I wasn’t eager to see anyway) and everyone, sans Jew, ended up watching football and after that my Special Edition “This is Spinal Tap”. (And in case you read the “Identity” post, the “Spinal Tap” Special Edition IS worth the effort to find if you’re a fan.)

Sadly, it was a road-cone, Killgore- impressionless night.

What I don’t get is why the coupon was the final straw? I figured, hell, if they were going to rent a movie and a game then surely they could find something else to watch. I’d have suggested “Death Wish 1 or 2”, “The Great Escape” or “The Magnificent Seven” as the little punks just stared at me blankly the other night when I tried to explain to them who Charles Bronson was (He died the other night in case you missed it.). I even showed them a picture. Nothing. I mean, I accept the fact that I’m old, the fact that I’m hanging out with these 22-24 year olds keeps ramming that thought home, but BRONSON MAN! How can you not know who Charles Bronson is?

Somehow, I blame the failure of the evening on this cultural point. That, and the fact that Ace’s new gothy, ‘Lady Friend’ called him, and he’s still following her like a flu-ridden bloodhound as he has yet to get her into the laundry room.

Rent “Death Wish” NOW, you fools!


This post is dedicated to Charles Bronson (3 November 1921 - 30 August 2003)

May a hail of righteous gunfire sing thee to thy rest...