Old Howard Walks Into A Bar...Slowly

I ran into the Charred Pork Bucket Monday for awhile and it was awful, as always. And yes, the Old Drunk Guy was there and he was actually eating a salad and seemed relatively not too drunk. Anyway, another old timer came in about the time I did and sat down a few spots to my right. And this guy is in really bad shape - I believe his name is Howard, as if anyone reading this cares what his name is. Old Howard walks really slowly - I've observed Old Howard leaving the joint before and it takes him like 5 minutes to walk from the front door of the restaurant to his car that is always parked in the crippled spot about 25 yards away. In other words, he doesn't get around real well. So, after he takes forever to walk to the bar stool and get himself situated, he pulls out four $1 bills. Now, he's probably been coming into the joint several times a week for like 30, 40, 50 years or more. So he should know how much a drink costs. But Old Howard proceeded to get into a 3 minute conversation with this Asian looking bartender chick about what he can get for $4. I started to consider feeling bad for the Asian looking bartender chick after she'd run through like 5 liquor options and then I realized that she has to do this probably like 4 times a week with Old Howard, and I really did feel sorry for her. Eventually he got some kind of scotch for like $3.50 and, yes, he kept the change that the Asian looking bartender chick gave him. A few minutes later Bob came on behind the bar(I think they switch shifts there at 6) and Old Howard got into a conversation with Bob (readers may recall my general disdain for Bob from past posts) and it was awesome to listen to (not a good awesome either). They started to talk about how much they hated soccer. Old Howard was really angry that the US/Italy game had been on TV earlier in the day. In fact at one point, Old Howard proclaimed that he'd rather watch hockey players skydiving than soccer (I didn't quite figure out how one had anything to do with the other) . After another minute of Old Howard and Bob going on about how neat it would be to watch Wayne Gretzky get crosschecked at 20,000 feet, Old Howard turns my way and asks this "You know what I mean young man, I wanna see something with some action!" I said "There's always midget lesbian porn." Even the old drunk guy was laughing at that one and he almost never gets anything I'm saying (admittedly I'm esoteric and he's old and drunk, so...). Luckily, Andy came in soon after that and saved me from hearing Old Howard and Bob venting about soccer and fantasizing about watching midget lesbians do Alex Ovechkin with 2 strap-ons. Oh, and when Old Howard finished his scotch, I was hoping and expecting he'd leave, seeing as how he had like 37 cents on him. But no, the Old Drunk guy bought Old Howard another round. So, Andy and I are chatting about this and that and there were 4 kids to our left probably in their mid 20s (right around Andy's age or a little older maybe). And these guys started talking about fantasy football. And I hate fantasy football (I'll explain why sometime). They are going on and on about Lee Evans being a #2 now that T.O. is with the Bills. I mean like for 5 minutes. I was about to start screaming, because to my right Old Howard and Bob are babbling mindlessly about hating soccer and loving strap-on hockey player/lesbian midget action and to my left these kids are going on and on about Lee Evans potential fantasy value this season (I won't even bore anyone by going into what these 4 guys were saying about Trent Edwards, who one of them called Trent Green at one point). And I said to Andy "I gotta quit coming into this place. It drives me crazy in here." So, I can officially report: The Charred Pork Bucket - it still sucks.

Later Monday we were playing trivia out at Zoo Station with Luke from the Jacobys. We played really well by the way. Gramma Dave, who is running the game as usual, comes by and I ended up having Andy give Gramma Dave the address to this blog. And that might have been a mistake. What happened is Gramma Dave read the post about our discussion covering socialized medicine and took, as old Mrs. Rummer might say, umbrage. I feel a little bad because if you go to the post from last week where I talk about the conversation, Gramma Dave has a comment on the post. And on the comment he links to his blog where he responds to what I wrote. And he wrote like 2,000 words or something. I didn't actually read beyond the first 2 sentences because I have a short attention span and what he was saying was making my head hurt (it appeared to be all pie in the sky do-gooderism silliness from what I could gather). But I do wanna say one thing to Gramma Dave: don't take what I write too seriously. Also, Geilfuss got in the act as well and left some comments taking, again as old Mrs. Rummer would say, umbrage with my descriptions of some of the events that occurred at the O's game last Friday. And I won't even respond to them, he should know better. So, let me say this - if people want to start leaving a bunch of comments on this blog, cool - go right ahead. But please don't take anything I'm writing too seriously. I certainly don't.

Tonight they're doing some bobblehead giveaway at the old ballpark. And I'm gonna meet Andy and Mcgrain down there and if anyone is bored or if there is an extended rain delay, stop in Sliders, we'll be around there out front. I am a big bobblehead fan myself. In fact I have one on my desk right now and it is a bobblehead of my main man, Secret Squirrel. I also have one of Astro Jetson somewhere in Greensboro; why? Because Astro Jetson pretty much encompasses everything that is good in the world. Which isn't much, unfortunately.

They were showing The Dark Knight the other day on the HBO and I'm not the biggest fan of the thing. I went to see it in the theater around Labor Day last year and I thought it was too long and the dialogue was utterly stilted and there were a couple of holes in the plot. I liked the whole Hobbs/Locke aspect of it though. The only problem with that is that in the movie Locke wins when the folks on the ferry boats don't blow each other to bits. And that is just too unbelievable for me. I'm a Hobbs guy all the way, obviously. After seeing it again, my thoughts are pretty much the same. Although Christian Bale is pretty funny as Bruce Wayne. I think he's riffing off his performance as Patrick Bateman when he's Bruce Wayne, which is a good thing, believe me. And if anyone hasn't seen American Psycho, I highly urge you too. Christian Bale is awesome in it.

Situation no win