Quick thought to start: as if I'm not skeptical enough about the "realness" of it, they put this edition of The Real World in Hollywood. Uh ...

If you've read this nonsense long enough, you know that Captain Morgan and I are good buddies. Well, it wasn't always like that. I didn't even know the good Captain in my college years, and even for a bit after that (he was playing hard to get or something). I spent some time experimenting with drink combos in college. Hey, it was better than studying and infinitely more expensive, so what's not to like? Anyway, here are a couple of my bigger failures:

Orange Crush and vodka. For those that don't know what Orange Crush is, it's basically orange soda. Yeah, I know, all you yuppie chick types are all over the new orange crushes the bars are serving these days, but I'm talking the real stuff. It put hair on your chest and rotted your teeth ... which is something most chicks totally dig. Anyway, I drank this in college for a bit. Naturally, being in college, I used high quality vodka. Dark Eyes. If you haven't had Dark Eyes, well, let's just say that a portion of the size of the coke-bottle lenses in my glasses is likely due to my Dark Eyes usage. Hey, maybe that's why they call it that! Eureka!

Anyway, I called this nonsense an imitation screwdriver. Most of my friends called it Puke Sauce. Um ... yeah.

Rumplemintz and Sprite. You probably got a little ill just reading that. I actually thought this was one of my better ideas of the time. Considering that one idea I had at the time was the bed brush, which was a brush to clean the dirt out of your bed (I can't believe I actually admit to some of this idiocy), well the ol' Rumplemintz and Sprite idea was failure on toast, waiting to be served up. My girlfriend in college was a bartender for a bit, and a couple of us went to her bar one night to hang. Everyone decided to try my new drink and, naturally, she made nice, big, tall ones. Dig the scene:

[everyone tries the drink]
John: Ew
Mike: Ew
Me: Isn't this great?!
Elaine: Ew
[all look at me like I just kicked their dog and burned their house down]
Me: What?
[all look at their nice, big, tall drinks and look back at me]
Me: Hmm ...

As a bonus, I got to finish everyone's drink. Score! I never came up with a name for that one, but it was quickly dubbed ... you guess it ... Puke Sauce.

Enough of that ... for now. So, I have this iPod, and it's one of the bigger ones, so I have some 2000+ songs on it. I'm too lazy to put together playlists (I'm sure you're shocked by that news), so I generally just throw it on shuffle and skip through the songs I'm tired of hearing (which is about 1800+ of them, but that's another story). I've recently come to realize that "shuffle" means "play the worst 4.2% of the songs, including playing the Oompa Loompa song every time I turn on the machine."

That's right, I have the Oompa Loompa song. Try to contain your jealousy, lest you turn into a giant blueberry and get rolled down to the Juicing Room.

I can't believe I forgot to tell this story. A few months ago, I'm in the airport headed to a flight, and I was walking behind this woman. She dropped a bunch of stuff, so I stopped to help her pick it all up. I pick up a lipstick thing, a brush and .... a tampon. Hooah! I was pretty proud of myself. When I realized what it was, I managed not to go running down the hall, screaming like a 5 year old girl who just realized a centipede was in her hair (dudes, y'all know that's the initial reaction we guys have).

When I was in Vegas in March, I managed to catch the show Love, which is a Cirque de Soleil show based on Beatles music. I highly, highly recommend it if you like The Beatles at all. I've since grown a new appreciation for how incredibly talented they were at writing songs. Amazing stuff.

One other tunes recommendation - Eddie Vedder has some high quality songs on the Into The Wild soundtrack (which is a fascinating movie as well), particularly "Hard Sun."

Unfortunately, it looks like M. Night has failed his fans again. Oy.

This blog's getting long, so I'm going to save one story for the next one. Let's just say it's centered around the words "loosen up your butt." Yeah.

A recent note on my phone was this: Girl who smells like a hamster.

Yeah. I think I might just let your imagination run with that one. I couldn't figure out if she had cedar shavings in her pocket, or if she had spent all day on the wheel and eating pellets. Anyway.

Some brilliant gym stuff for your perusal:

1) They had this Corporate Wellness thing this week, which was a free service where you could get your health measures checked out - blood pressure, heart rate, sperm count, etc. Ok, I was kidding about one of those. So the title of this thingy is "Corporate" and it was held on a Wednesday from 10-2 ... when all the "corporate" people are at work. Hello ... McFly? Next up - a free health screening for strippers on Saturday at midnight.

2) This one trainer was training this dude, and having him do walking lunges with weights. If you've never done walking lunges, well, it ain't easy. It's a fairly athletic move, and it's hard, especially at first. I usually try to do them when I'm drunk just to really push the envelope and see if I can concuss myself. Concussions generally add to the buzz. Or so they tell me. What was I saying? Oh, so the trainer has the poor guy do them right down the middle of the busiest part of the gym. So, as if it's not bad enough that he's trying to do these and remain balanced, he also has to duck people left and right. Pure genius. I figure as long as you're giving him near impossible tasks, why not have him make Brittney Spears into a good mother and then whip up some world peace.

3) As if that wasn't enough, the same day, they have an obstacle course sort of thing set up ... that ended at the bottom of the stairs. I was just waiting for that saying about people, stairs, and slinkys to come to life. Naturally, the people using the obstacle course weren't the most athletic, either.

Random note: someone needs to hurry up and open a bar called The Pickled Liver. I'm just sayin'. C'mon, you know this has to happen. Why fight it? Give in to your liver picklin'.

Two notes from a wedding I went to this past weekend:

1) I was pointing something out to a friend, and I said "It's over there behind that dude." The response you don't really want to hear? "That dude is my Dad." Um ... yeah, that was a tad awkward. I played it off by calling everyone dude the rest of the weekend. The preacher wasn't amused.

2) Speaking of awkward ... you'd think I'd already know not to do this, but obviously, I don't. The bride was walking around the reception trying to decide whether to close the bar or not. She came to our table and this was the convo:

Bride: "So, are you guys going to hang out here for awhile, or what?"
Me: "Yeah! There's free booze!"
Bride: [silent]
Rest of table: [awkwardly silent]
Me: [slugging down drink in order to get a fresh one before the bar closes]

The reason I should already know not to do that is it's the reason I've been banned from Bermuda. Someone tried to ease my pain and tell me that no white folks were allowed anymore, but I found out that's not true. Eh, great weather, beaches, an island getaway that's only a 2 hour flight away ... who needs Bermuda? Hmm.

There are a couple of bars here in (C)harm City that are advertising the experience of Miami! In Baltimore! Um. Yeah. The big attraction to Miami is (1) the women, (2) the weather, and (3) um ... the women? Ok, ok, the men as well, for those into that sort of thing. So, are the Baltimore bars flying the women in and bottling the weather and releasing it here? Right. Essentially, the "experience of Miami" means you get the same Baltimore people and places, but higher prices for drinks. Where do I sign up? Other similar ideas:

- the experience of Los Angeles ... in Kansas! Complete with complimentary boob jobs and liposuction.
- the experience of rural Georgia ... in Detroit! Complete with a complimentary noose and less teeth.
- the experience of Amsterdam ... at Amy Winehouse's joint! Cuz if there's one thing the Winer needs, it's more drugs, and easily obtainable ones at that.

Speaking of drinks, the bar at my gym starts again this Saturday. Yup, you read that right ... a bar ... at my gym. I've written about this before, but there are few things better than riding my bike to the gym on Sunday morning and dodging beer bottles, cigarette butts, and someone's lost cookies on the way in. I guess that's better than my previous gym. Rumor has it they shot porn movies in there after it closed. I believe the proper response to that is "ick" ... talk about needing a free health screening at your gym ...

One final tip. If you're attending an event for the SPCA ... an organization whose main objective is to get people to spay/neuter your pets ... don't bring your un-neutered dog to it.