me + strangers

me×!strangers×

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Oh you know, buying hats...making friends!
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I was walking out, she was walking in! Look who I ran into on the way home! If you need a pack of smokes, a toy with blinking lights or a DVD with either variety of a person having sex with a horse ("You want man fuck horse or horse fuck man?") THIS is your lady! (I've been running into her on the mean, late-night streets of NYC since 2005!)
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...make a new travel buddy! Like this sleepy little abuela who spent most of the bus ride bouncing her tiny snoozing noggin against my shoulder. Haha. Adorable.
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Congrats, other Meredith! Let's hear it for internet strangers!
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Playing Ms Pacman! 10 POINTS!
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While waiting in line for security, we made friends with a woman who was in line with us who ended up sitting next to me on our flight! Yay, airplane strangers!
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With Tia Tequila?
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Right before the big drop (bonus points for accidentally taking a picture of the kid over my right shoulder shitting rocks).
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NONE SHALL PASS! (The guy at the temple didn't speak any English, put he certainly understood the pantomime for "Hey, wanna pretend we're having a SWORD fight for this photo?" Yes!)
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Mike took this great photo of us with some of the Cathay Pacific flight attendants, then we said goodbye and headed to the gate. Thanks so much for coming out to see us off, Mike!
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That guy on the right had no idea about our boners.
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Buddies.
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I think this girl was one of Jenne's friends.
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Here's me saying goodbye to Ahmed after we got back to my hotel around 4pm! This guy was the best! Despite only knowing a few words in each others' language, we managed to talk all day for an eight-hour road trip. Thanks again for driving, Ahmed!
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But, hey, what's a couple of extra bucks if it's gonna make some dude's day (and help keep all these statues safe!)
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NOW PRETEND YOU'RE FIGHTING WITH YOUR DESERT STICKS. YES, JUST LIKE THAT. PERFECT!
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Lost the pyramid, but GAINED a friend!
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The guy with the mule wasn't getting much love (everyone wanted to sit on camels) so I figured I'd throw in with the underdog!
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Hahaha.
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Here's Gurj and I being really subtle about getting a photo of us in front of the couple. Smoooooth.
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Can you tell that I liked her? (I think this is my favorite creepy picture of myself, btw.)
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...and met up with a girl we'd met earlier in the afternoon that was traveling alone. We hailed a tuk tuk and headed to...
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By the time we got to the LES, whatever party we were supposed to have been attending, had long since ended. So instead we made friends with a bearded, black cowboy...
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But that doesn't mean I relinquish my right to do the chicken dance and make clucking noises around your car for the next 3 minutes.
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...he chickened out! Hey, I don't blame him - he had nothing to gain from the race. If he won, everybody would've been like "Yeah, of course you beat the white guy, YOU'RE BLACK!" But if he lost, then it would've been like "Oh no, you're the black guy that got beat in a foot race BY A WHITE DUDE!" So, hey, I'm not saying I don't understand.
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Here's me with two of Jen's friends whose names I don't remember because I got stinking drunk. Hahah.
the november roundup
November, 2005
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And a heartfelt ending. Why, Ricky? WHY? By the way, Brother Lawrence was manning my camera for all of this and I'd like to thank him for taking such great pics.
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...but it's a ballad with YELLING! AND A MORAL!
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We also learned something else about Jamaica: no matter where you go, no matter how remote or desolate the place might seem, you will have about eight minutes of "alone time," before a local will appear, seemingly out of nowhere, to try to sell you something. A tour, a bracelet, a boat ride, a snorkeling trip, and if all else fails, a giant bag of weed.
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The guy in the black leather jacket was pretty much the drunkest ambulatory person I've ever seen in my life. All throughout the show he wove his way in and out of the audience, jumping around, spilling drinks and either routing for or heckling the band. (He was so drunk it wasn't clear what he was yelling. Just that he was very enthusiastic about whatever it was he was yelling.)
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Check out Silky Black Cowboy giving me the "I'll give you one guess which whiteboy's so gonna throw up when he gets home?"
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Afterwards, we went to Baramundi for a couple of drinks and it turns out that one of the bartenders there and her boyfriend both read this site. Read: FREE DRINKS! In a turn of incredibly bad luck though, it turns out that they were there to celebrate leaving the US and going to Australia (I think?). I told you that your pic would make it up here eventually! Hope the move went well!
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...and got a smooch!
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Besides getting some great boob pics at the party, I also won a $20 bet. This girl was talking about the movie Goonies and turned and asked me "Hey, what was the name of the lumpy head guy?" "Sloth," I told her. "Sloth Fratelli." She was like "That's not even close." Anyway, I was positive that it was this his name. We were gonna Google it, but no computers were around. In the end, we decided that we'd walk around the party and ask other party-goers the same question. If at least five other people, unprompted by me, named the lumpy-headed character in question as "Sloth," I'd win $20. If, I couldn't find five partygoers to corraborate, I'd have to pay her $20. Needless to say, I had that shit wrapped up in about three minutes. Here's me with the girl I made the bet with. Hahah. (Just for the record, I'm so right.)
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It takes me about ten seconds to spot a rowdy, drunk girl in a crowd. I started goofing around with her and snapping pics...
new years eve 2004
December 31, 2004
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A party tit flash!
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Here's us with an elder Klingon. The two people on the left hammed in on our photo opp because they were too scared to ask the other younger Klingon for a photo. (That's how seriously intimidating he was! Other adults were too scared to ask him for a photo! Hahahahah).
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Holy crap, I'm almost a year behind on this diary and I have no idea who this girl is. Maybe a friend of Tara's from Houston that she put me in touch with? Tara, a little help?
the november roundup
November, 2004
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Yay, wacky Dad!
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Then we decided it was time to play everyone's favorite game: DRUNK GUY JENGA! The rules are simple, each person takes a turn placing any object within reach on the passed out person. If you wake them up, you lose!
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Me and some guy who wanted to show off his nipple.
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Somewhere during the course of the afternoon, I ended up making friends with this deaf mute guy. He spent his day circling the park and barking (yes, literally barking, he's deaf mute, remember?) at girls in bikinis to get their attention and then taking their picture with a disposable camera. He communicated with us by miming and manage to tell us that he puts all of his photos of girls in bikinis in an album and that we should all come over and look at the pictures sometime because he lives right around the corner. (I swear this is true. How could I even make something like this up?) The only thing I didn't learn was his name.
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Hey, it's Jim! This (fugging) guy and a few of his friends were in town from all over the place (Toronto, Boston and London if I remember correctly). He read about the show on my site and they all decided to swing by and check the band out! So rad!
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JimmyK with Mr & Mrs Battjer.
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Even a broken arm wasn't going to get in the way of giving NYC on a Monday the thumbs up. Shortly after 4am, the boys returned to Queens with smiles.
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Remember how Fatty and I played frisbee in the park on Sunday? Well, we ended up befriending two Italians that were visiting from Milan. They'd been in town for a few weeks, but were staying in Astoria and told us that they'd been disappointed with the NYC nightlife they'd seen. I gave them my cell number and assured them I'd take them out and show them a good time. So on Monday night we met up and I took them on the rounds. We started off with a few drinks at the Fish.
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We waited through another few minutes of gagging and gurgling, but there was still no "big payoff" like before.
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Hahahahah. Holy fuck. Who knew Justin Timberlake had a brother with Down's Syndrome?
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How's this? (Check out Amber totally doing the sneaky reach-around boobie grab). Hey Amber....
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"Hey dude, that's a fresh hat! I've never seen a cowboy skull hat." "That's because I made it myself." "Wow! You made that? I can't believe it! It's like a work of art - that you can WEAR! Say, you wouldn't mind posing for a picture, would you?" Bwahahaha.
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Especially this one girl who spent most of the song dancing while leaning all of her weight against me.
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After Fatty and Colin primed the audience and by the time I hit the stage to deliver a Bon Jovi smackdown, things were totally...
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Here she is again with the lean.
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Normally, I'd edit these down - but that blonde girl made so many awesome faces it just wouldn't fair to not show you all of them.
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A bad name, indeed. Thanks for all the support ladies. You done made New Jersey proud.
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When you do the Jovi right, girls can't help but touch their boobies! Hot damn!
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Or at least it did until her friend decided to get in on it by rubbing his ass all over me.
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Quicly became a duet. Er, sort of. This girl didn't sing with me, however, she did lay writing on the stage while I sang and did all sorts of crazy floor dancing. It significantly enhanced my performance.
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So I go to my bedroom to check on things and who do I find in there? Jenny Penny and the random dude that got Vin, Amber and I stoned out of our tiny minds that one random night at Lit!
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Then, much to Tobias' dismay, we started taking pictures of us giving his tag the dreaded "thumbs down." Oooh! That's gotta sting. Tobias was beside himself and spent the next five minutes standing in front of the bench we were sitting on trying to get us to start a fight with him. Tobias really wanted to fight, but only if we did something first. Scott, explained that since neither of us were going to hit him, if he wasn't going to hit us, he should just go away. Despite Scott's words, Tobias stood there for the next five minutes (literally, FIVE MINUTES) sounding like a broken record: "C'mon, hit me motherfucker. Come on, hit me. Hit me you, bald pussy. What about you, blondie? C'mon hit me. Let's do this. Let's do this. Yo, for real, yo. Let's do this. C'mon, hit me. Hit me..."

Towards the end, he mixed it up a little: "Yo, you're lucky it's just me. How about if I call my crew up and get them to come down here?" Scott, called his bluff "Tobias, it's 3:40am on a Wednesday. More than anything else in the world, I would love for you to call your crew up. Go ahead, call them up. And then when they get here, when you're "crew" is all here, we can fight. How does that sound? Does that sound good to you?" The audience that had gathered, laughed at this, and what little signs Tobias had earlier shown of calming down and leaving us along immediately disappeared and he began trying to get us to punch him with a newfound fervor.

At this point, Scott realized that Tobias clearly wasn't going to go away on his own accord, so in his loudest speaking voice (and keep in mind that as a former opera singer, he can speak very loud) Scott said "EXCUSE ME, COULD YOU PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE. I JUST WANT TO SIT HERE AND ENJOY MY DRINK AND YOU'RE IN MY PERSONAL SPACE." Tobias kept leaning into Scott's face saying "C'mon hit, me. C'mon!" etc. So again, Scott said "I'M ASKING YOU AGAIN - PLEASE STOP BOTHERING ME. YOU'RE STANDING TOO CLOSE TO ME AND YOU'RE TRYING TO PICK A FIGHT WITH ME AND YOU'RE MAKING ME UNCOMFORTABLE." Tobias didn't stop. So Scott stands up and Tobias steps up to get close to his face again. Seeing no other way, Scott turned his head to the sizeable crowd that had gathered to watch the very small guy persist to berate the very big, bald guy, and asked them "Does everyone here see what's been going on?" Before they could answer, Scott quickly dipped down low for a second and exploded out of his crouched position and with his outstreched arms sent an unsuspecting Tobias sailing backwards, legs up in the air, several feet through the air.

Tobias landed square on his back, smacked his head on the floor and continued to slide backwards with his legs up. He stopped just short of crashing into the bar (which, no joke, was a good 15" from where he'd been standing just a second earlier) and scrambled to his feet. In the sevearal moments that Tobias stood there wild-eyed and quaking, staring at Scott across the distance he'd just so uniquely traveled, torn between wanting to charge at Scott while at the same time understanding that the guy he wanted to charge at was the one that had just sent him hurtling through the air, the bouncer (that I guess had been standing outside on the street the whole time) heard the commotion, came running to the back, grabbed a hold of Tobias and positioned himself between the two men. As soon as the bouncer got a firm hold on him, Tobias, who'd spent the prior ten seconds in a state of non-action, started ferociously struggling to get free so he could kick Scott's "fucking bald ass." After thirty seconds of trying to calm Tobias down, the bouncer looking over Tobia's clearly larger opponent and told him "If you don't calm the fuck down, I'm going to let you go." Tobias immediately calmed down. With Tobias under control, the bouncer walked over to Scott and told him that he was going to have to leave. At this point, the whole back room chimed in to tell the bouncer that it was the other guy that should be thrown out and Tobias (with cheers from crowd) was ejected from the bar. The bouncer, whose name was Jamal, came back in, and after hearing what had happened from a few onlookers, apologized and bought Scott a beer. Oh, and here's the best part:
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Here's Stephanie's shot of me with "the new guy."
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Me. Hahahah.
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But eventually we won them over with our cityboy charms
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Oh my god, how in the world could I have forgotten to mention this in my last post? So remember how I went to the LA Weekly party with Laura right when I'd gotten into town? Well right when I got there, Laura introduced me to one of her friends, and he was like "I know this guy, I read his website!" Tavis, Laura's boyfriend was in disbelief. He was like "People you don't know read your website?" As soon as he said it, almost on cue, a girl walking by sees me, stops, grabs my arm and screams "OH MY GOD, YOU KEEP A DIARY!" and then laughs and walks away.

Later that night when I got home, she had emailed me. She introduced herself as Ellen Griley (Hi Ellen!) and was at the party because she works for the OC Weekly paper (also owned by Village Voice Media). She invited us to come down and check out the LBC "so we could flash all of our favorite gang signs and really mean it" and attend her friend's annual THONGSGIVING party. Thongsgiving? Clearly this was a group that Grant and I could roll wit. Here's Grant and I with Ellen. Woooo!
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Here's Ellen's friend Ryan, the host of the Thongsgiving bash.
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I heart her. (Mad props to Laura's friend for snapping this pic).
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We chatted Michael up for a few minutes and after we'd established a rapport, I asked him if I had any shot with his cute friend and he replied (please make sure you read the next sentence in your best Balki from "Perfect Strangers" voice) "Don' be ree-deek-you-los!"
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...that she was only fourteen years old! Doh! Turns out her family owned the club and twice a week she worked the door to earn some extra money (ummm, her allowance, I guess). It was a little past 2am and we were all knackered from our long day of scootering (and too much wine at dinner) so we decided to pack it in early and head back to the resort. We arrived at our car to find Grant sprawled out across the backseat asleep...and decided to do what any friends in our situation would do: scare the living shit out of him. We all got on one side of the car and at the count of three started rocked the (tiny) car back and forth as hard as we could while screaming. Grant leapt awake (screaming along with us) and nearly soiled himself. I tried to take a pic of it, but the flash bounced off the car's glass and it didn't come out. Sorry.
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We wandered the streets for almost an hour trying to decide on where we wanted to eat (ok, trying to find the place that had the most hot girls dining there). The problem was, there was so many restaurants (and so many hot girls) that we couldn't make up our minds. Finally, as we neared the point of collapse from hunger, we were courted by this dude, Kostas Vallasso, and he was so friendly and funny that we decided to eat as his place.
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It was right around this time that I decided it was time to pull out the video camera and start capturing some of this. I mean, Christ, I'd already failed to capture the lobotomy guy and Smari dropping the C-bomb about his sister - I wasn't about to miss out on any more. I asked him if he minded me filming him talking and he said he didn't. As soon as I started taping, he launched into all these stories about Iceland's crazy nightlife and told us that we needed to come back over the summer and spend a few days. "Don't worry about a hotel." He told us, "You won't be needing one." Hahaha. (Footage coming soon).
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Miraculously, he managed to avoid getting a ticket (but he did accidentally lock himself out of the car...Doh!). We thanked him for the tour (it's still one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for me - so Smari, if you read this, thanks again!) and then told him that we were thinking about checking out the Blue Lagoon on the way back to catch our flight but that the lady at the rental car place had seemed underwhelmed when we asked her about it. Smari told us "Fuck that lady. If there's only one thing you could see in Iceland, it should be the Blue Lagoon. Don't miss it. Go there now." That settled it. We bid Smari farewell, and headed for Grindavik.
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Check out the sauce stains on his shirt. Awesome.
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This was the best part, I was standing really close to him with my nuts out and all of sudden he woke up. He seemed started to find me standing so close to him and and was like "What's up?" So I said to him enthusiastically, "Nothing, dude! You're rocking the fuck out, that's what! Let's take a picture together!" He jumped up and with like "Ok!" So that's how I turned an "Almost Got My Ass Kicked" situtation into the greatest "You Don't Know You're Posing With My Balls But You Are" picture of all time.
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See, here's me all like "Hi, I'm here with your butt."
karaoke blowout
September 21, 2003
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Check it out y'all: BASS CLEFF!
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And informed her that as a BirthdayBoy it was my undeniable right to get a kiss. First off, I can't believe this worked. Secondly, she didn't even ask to see any proof! (It's been my birthday almost every night since. Awwww, yeah).
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This is hands down my favorite pic of the night. Bert N' Tha Boyz.
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After a little while, we tired of simply making silly faces with the girls and decided to up the ante...
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A few minutes later, we convinced them to take more pics ("Taking pics is fun, right?") and Grant got in on the action.

Okay, I think it's safe to say that we were all pretty liquored up. At some point during the next few hours, every guy on the trip managed to get their luggage out...which leads us to the very first ikeepadairy.com contest!
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She was like "Why are you all laughing?" and started to walk away. I managed to convice her that we were just happy to meet such cute girls and Seth got his act together in time to snap this pic.
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After months of getting people to willingly pose with my balls, it was time to try something new: getting unsuspecting people to unknowingly pose with my balls. I discreetly whipped out my bag, and grabbed one of our new friends for a picture. I handed off the cam to Seth who totally shit the bed by not managing to get my balls in the pic. Doh! The rest of the guys in the pic (Check out Grant and Franks' faces) were laughing so hard that the girl in the black shirt was totally confused...
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This guy was one of the only people there that fit-in with the rest of the crowd less than we did. I mean, c'mon, homeboy was wearing a leather vest! I went up to him and told him that he bore an uncanny resemblance to my brother-in-law (you know, the guy that married my non-existent sister) and asked if I could take his pic (when all I really wanted was a pic of his leather vest). Anyway, he turned out to be the nicest guy in the world and we ended up hanging out with him the rest of the night (and I got the pic of his leather vest, taboot).
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Check out this cougar that was circling Colin and me; clearly trolling for a lil' spitroast action.
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On the way out, a friend of mine who reads this site recognized the fashion-mullet man from back in April. I'm happy to report, he's since cut it off.
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Hey buddy, what is that? A roll of dimes in your pocket or....awwww, man! Gross.
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Me and the other guy scheduled to take the test that day.
motorcycle lessons
May 22, 2003
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Duet with a stranger.
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Usually as the night gets going, impromptu dance parties break out...
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Everyone there knows me (and my stupid jacket).
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Making new friends through the universal language of music.
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Me with our new friend (who was gracious enough not to get all "kung fu" on Grant for pretending to sing in Chinese).
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The nicest thing about the evening was that my dad was there. (I love those earrings on him).
lucky cheng's karaoke
March 26, 2003
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Me and three girls that I've never seen before in my life. (This was right when the ball dropped). Happy New Year, you, um, strangers!
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Okay, so check this out: We're back in Manhattan and we're walking down Houston towards my place and this woman is talking on her cellphone and walking towards us. She gets like 8 feet from us and we both suddenly hear this huge fart and as she passes us she says to her friend on the phone "Oh shit, I think these white boys just heard me fart!" and starts laughing. So we chased her down the street and asked her if she'd pose for a pic! In this pic, Doug and I are yelling "Ohhhhhh!" while she's telling her friend on the phone "Oh shit! Oh shit! The white boys that heard me farting is taking my picture and shit! They're taking my picture!" Soooo funny.
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While waiting for our slices to heat up, we made friends with strangers.
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And ended up running into the girl that David Forman totally made out with at the last Cake party (coming soon). No not that one, the one in red. HAHAHAHAHAHAH!
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No stranger to whipping out my own bag, I handed over the camera and teamed up with Grant for this amazing photo. (Look at our faces!!! nd bonus points to me for actually resting my nuts on the guys chair.)
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...which led to convincing drunk strangers to kiss us (er, sort of)...
geeks gone wild
August 07, 2002
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Okay, question for you: How the fuck did we not get thrown out of the bar??? I'm standing on one of the booths, screaming and doing a David Lee Roth kick while both Martin and Jessica get ready to touch my package. This is at like 10pm on a Wednesday!?! (Also, look over to the left of me...aren't those the same two girls from before making out? It's an hour and a half later and they're still going at it).
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Turns out that there wasn't anything going on - but that doesn't mean I don't want to take pictures!