First off: Happy Holidays to all my loyal readers. I wish to thank you for your continued worship of my brilliance! You can repay me by purchasing my novel. Upon completion of this transaction, I will receive one dollar from my publisher, which I will then use to purchase beer – Mexican beer, the cheapest of all beer. You really can’t get anything else for only a dollar. A man has to do what a man has to do. Okay, wait - better plan: buy three copies of my novel, and then I will at least be able to have an Anchor Steam or something. Problem solved. Bam.
Christmas morning started off normally enough for me. I was slightly hung over from the party at my landlord’s house, which is directly upstairs, but all in all felt pretty good. I got a coffee, marveled at how many cookies I apparently ate in my drunken state as my party favor cookie bag was pretty much empty, and then came back home where my various gifts were summarily torn asunder. I got some cool stuff, mostly dork related. My mom adopted a Hawaiian turtle in my name, so I took the liberty of naming him ‘Our Lord and Savior.’ I thought it was fitting.
Now, you might think that this is an odd name to come up with on the fly for a turtle. But, considering that I had the History Channel on pretty much all day and it was really, really Jesus-heavy – go figure, eh? – it was a very natural decision. Plus, who else gets to say they named Our Lord and Savior. Dan Silver, that’s who.
My gift for the relatives was a little Christmas video that I shot of me playing a song on the guitar. If you must, you can view it here. Naturally, it was a hit among the family. Again, do not underestimate the multi-faceted nature of my brilliance.
After all was said and done with the gift situation, I popped in the new Medal of Honor game into the ol’ 360 and took it for a spin… for about four hours. I beat the game for the second time, cursed myself for not buying Call of Duty: Black Ops or asking for it for Christmas, and then watched the greatest holiday special of all time, the Christmas episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
If you are one of the unfortunate souls who has never had the joy of watching IASIP, then not only aren’t you allowed to read anything I write anymore, but you have to go set fire to your TV. I have neither the time, nor the patience to explain to you via a complicated system of graphs, Powerpoint presentations and overhead projections how truly sad a person you are. It’s like crack for your eyeballs. So go watch it. You’ll thank me. And, more importantly, you still get to be my fan. Then I worked out, but that’s boring. On to Xmas night….
For several months my Christmas night plan had been to get dinner and then go to some stupid punk rock show with Kevin over at the Elbo Room. Yes, I know. I am kinda over punk rock too, especially San Francisco punk rock bands, which are typically astounding collections of horrible and aging musicians who seem to think that it’s fun for us to watch them get annihilated on cheap beer – PBR; not Mexican beer – and then attempt to remember how to play the same three cord songs with only slightly in-tune instruments and lyrics that you can’t understand - but it doesn’t matter because the subject matter of the songs is always moronic from the get go. The Ramones are no more. Long live them. As for about 95% of the current crop of punk bands… quickly die them.
And to be clear here, I’m not saying that I hate all punk rock bands. I love many of them, especially the ones I grew up listening to. I’m just older now. I appreciate people who can actually play their instruments while rocking out (read: various sub-genres of heavy metal), and give a shit whether or not the audience is having a good time or not. I know these punk bands exist. They just tend to come through town rather infrequently.
So, at about 08:00PM, Kevin calls me and says he’s ready to go get dinner. I show up at the restaurant. He’s with his girlfriend. He informs me that, SURPRISE, it’s also his three year anniversary. I quickly deduce that he isn’t coming to the show anymore because of this. How do I deduce this? He tells me that his girlfriend isn’t coming. It’s his anniversary. You do the logic puzzle thereafter.
We get through dinner. I feel like I’m getting a charity visit, like I’m the cousin who was alienated from his family and only had a twenty-four hour pass from the loony bin to celebrate the holidays. I’ve spent a day without real social interaction. I’ve been going stir-crazy in my place, but I no longer want to go to the show because, as stated above, punk rock shows in San Francisco notoriously suck.
I vocalize my dilemma. I further state that I don’t just want to go to a bar by myself because I’ll just sit there and get drunk and lonely. That doesn’t sound fun. Sam is out of town. Brett is sick as a dog. Adam is doing, well, whatever it is Adam does. Coworkers are with their families. I don’t know any bartenders who are working. I want to talk to people, but I don’t want it to be awkward conversation with strange drunk people.
And I want to look at pretty girls.
Can you smell the Christmas miracle approaching?
And that’s how Dan Silver wound up at the Gold Club on Christmas - despite the obvious disapproval of Kevin's girl - getting seventy-five dollars worth of lap dances, the same monetary amount as the check my mother sent me with the very clear instruction to use it for something fun. She even wrote ‘Christmas Treats!’ on the check itself. I defy you to argue with me how boobies are anything but the ultimate treats.
You can’t. I know.
I hope ya’ll had as good a Christmas as I did. But as I think back to the statuesque Russian girl wiggling her be-G-stringed hindquarters in my face, I tend to think you probably didn’t.
Frankly, I’m okay with that.