Quick Hits

Boy, has my life changed since the last story. I won a keg toss at the area Oktoberfest (which included a $25 gift certificate to a local meat market), planned a trip to New Orleans, and I got a flu shot.

The last one isn’t enormous news. More of a public service announcement. If you work in an office, please protect yourself from illness.

If you feel the need to fly to New Orleans to protect yourself from illness, by all means, do that, too.

While there’s been so much activity in the life portion of my work-life balance, the work part is dropping off. The day job is a day job that begins and ends at certain points of the day and doesn’t carry over into any other aspect. The shifts at the venue are becoming few and far between, and the bar is, well, the bar.

The ID business is booming, however, we’re reaching peak malaise season.

After the first rush of new college kids settles, we see a softening of crowds in anticipation of the bigger bar days — Halloween Saturday and the day before Thanksgiving. Expect to hear some banal stories from this guy, albeit for those two big days.

Are the IDs still present? The underbelly of scholastic entertainment still feeds off the need to get to go drinking at bars even though a house party costs less and you can pass out with no need to fumble your phone on the pavement while opening the Uber app. So, yes.

So, where does this leave us?

You and me. Sharing stories.

Well, the stories will get smaller, like the ones below. A few quick hits to keep you going until someone does something laughably and catastrophically, monumentally idiotic on Saturday, October 26.

Turkey Hunting

I’m not a hunter. Don’t like guns. Shot a musket once and hit nothing I was aiming at. But this isn’t about hunting the animal. It’s about getting those three sweet strikes in a row. While in line, some nonplussed kid strikes up a conversation with me about some chit-chat topics. I’m not entirely sure he’s ever been in line at a bar before, but alas, here we all are. Just me, him, the birthday boy, and the three poor souls in the back with fakes, each worse than the other. After I take their low-class IDs, some of which copied designs no longer used anymore, the first kid and the birthday boy go inside. I was in a good mood.

The team leader makes his way back to me asking for all the IDs back after he and the newly minted drinking-age adult sauntered out of the gateway like Woody strutting out of the box to Annie and Stinky Pete. I don’t give fakes back to anyone. There’s no point. And if they try to bribe me I’m very upfront with them. I always tell them, if you hand me money, I will take that money and still not give you the ID back. The Asshole Fee in full effect.

The Loco-Motive

There are things you don’t expect to pair so serendipitously on a weekend. Like a woman in her late 50s eating a hot dog, glaring at a 5-foot-2, glossy-eyed and bushy tailed 21-year-old in a mini dress dropping her phone on the sidewalk. The girl picks up her phone and heads back to her group of friends, all guys over 6-2 and fresh off the set of GAP’s Dress You Up ad circa 1999.

The older woman finishes her hot dog and proclaims, to nobody in particular, “They gon’ run that train.”

But nobody besides me really heard her, so she said once more, “GET READY, GIRL. THEY GON’ RUN THAT TRAIN.”

“CHOO CHOO!”

“CHOO CHOO!”

If I have any friends on the more sheltered side of life, here’s what that means.

Like We Did Last Summer

I don’t how the fight started, but some guy in a Michigan sweater started running across the street and threw some haymakers at a random dude who may or may not have been talking some shit. Was it smart? No. Was it funny? Hell yes.

Why?

Because the next set of people waiting in line were coming from a wedding reception and a man clad in a dark blue suit saw the events unfolding and couldn’t help himself but yell at them.

“TWIST HIS DICK!

TWIST IT!

TWIST HIS DICK!

TAAWISSST HISSSS DIIIIICK!”

That’s some funny shit, right there, man. It’s great when you see the internet come to life. I let him go inside early.

The Michigan sweater fighter thought he’d be smart and switch his shirt with a friend’s red flannel. It was easy to spot.

Should’ve twisted that guy’s dick.