Tuesday, May 22, 2012

All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

>>  A couple years ago I introduced a lot of my boys to Aziz Ansari.  I was in a prime spot on the bandwagon because of the Raaaaaaaandy! videos, and I sold a lot of tickets onto said bandwagon.  Some time later, Aziz came to perform in Lawrence, and somehow I had no clue it was happening...until J-Dub texted me during the middle of the show, telling me how hilarious Aziz was in person.  I was pissed. Not only did I not know Aziz was performing mere miles from my house, but the very people whose lives I had enriched by giving them Aziz all went to the show together, sans me.  I raged on J-Dub that day (with a crystal clear "I'm just kidding around, but seriously you guys are dicks" kind of tone) and he never forgot it. So when Aziz came to Kansas City a couple weeks ago, he bought Christine and I tickets to come along with him and Ashlee, as atonement for the last time.  His only request was that I give him props in the blog, since I blogged about what a jerkface he was the first time around.  So here you go. 

>>  Sooo, the Anchorman sequel.....I'm gonna have to give it a whirl, but I'm a little bit scared and a little bit excited and mostly just nervous that it's not gonna be as amazing and life-changing as the first one.  So it's basically just like I felt when I was about to give my second $4 handjob behind the dumpster at Taco Bell.

>>  So it seems like every single Red Sox story that has broken in the last nine months is just bad news piled on top of more bad news (fried chicken and beer in the clubhouse; Francona is a pill-popper and an adulterer, let's blame the collapse on him and run him out of town; Ortiz isn't a true clubhouse leader; injuries to Ellsbury, Youk, Crawford, Bailey, Lackey-- oh wait that last one is FANTASTIC news, I feel guilty that I didn't get to chip in for Lackey's Tommy John surgery.)  But there is a silver lining to the latest controversy, the "Josh Beckett played golf in between starts when he was supposed to be injured OMFG" story.  Beckett, being the true dick that he is (in a good way, I say) during the press conference afterwards, refused to apologize for golfing, and multiple times during the presser repeated the line "My off-days are my off-days."  I laughed when I read it, I laughed more when I heard it, and now it's ingrained in my lexicon.  I look forward to beating that phrase into the ground over the next few years.  I come home at 4am when I said I was just going out for a couple of Happy Hour beers...hey, my off-days are my off-days.  I win 27 games of beanbags in a row, talking trash to everyone at the party, including the host's parents....my off-days are my off-days.  I get refused service at a ritzy bar in Louisville because I forgot I was back-pocketing a Miller High Life when we walked in....my off days are my off days. 

I love it.  Just when "Sorry for partying" was starting to lose steam for me, Beckett goes ahead and drops this little gem in my lap.  Thanks Joshy.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Hide The Money Y'all! There's Poor People 'Round!

Yes, I'll Have Another won the Kentucky Derby, and yes, I cashed a NICE check.  Right around $1,100, and I owe it all to that dumb bastard Chaddy and his inability to handle his booze.  My inability to lose money at the Derby is becoming ridiculous.  As Fundy texted me after the race, "The rich get richer!".  However, in true "Hammonds can be an insufferable know-it-all douchebag when he's drunk" fashion, I didn't get to enjoy the victory until about 10 minutes after the race....

Here's how it works in the infield at Derby:  since you're in a big field with about 100,000 other people, you're only watching the horses up close for about 10 seconds as they run past you, and the rest the time you're staring at one of many jumbotrons they have set up.  Depending on your angle, and the color/number combination of the horse, it's really tough to tell who is in what place sometimes.  This is how it came to pass that everybody within a 50-yard radius of our group thought that #15 had won the race (I'll Have Another was #19.)  There was one dude holding out, who swore up and down that #19 won.  We had put fake tattoos of our horses on our forearms earlier that week, and now I was flashing mine at this guy, playing the whole "Dude, I would know if it was 19.  I have a lot of money on 19.  I have a fake tattoo of 19 on my arm.  I WISH it was 19....trust me.  It's not fucking 19 that won that race" card.  If you've got drunk with me and we've had a sports argument, you know the face I was making the whole time, too.  We started polling people retreating from the frontline back to their camps...EVERYBODY but this one random guy was saying the winner was #15.  Then, all of a sudden, they updated the jumbotron with a different view, one that clearly listed the win, place, and show in a more prominent font size.  And that's when I realized that it was indeed a 19.  And that I had indeed won over a grand.  And that I am indeed a douche.  Although that random guy and I shared a gigantic hug right at that moment, so I'd like to think he forgave me.  If not, then the 50 bucks that I gave him did the trick.

Then Tony (who had jumped on my bandwagon hard and bet even more than I did on I'll Have Another) and I spotted each other, did a running flying shoulder bump, and proceeded to act like the black people receiving reparations in the Chappelle Show sketch for the next couple hours.

And because this has been the busiest week of work in my life (maybe even worse than tax season) and all my lunch breaks have been about 12 minutes long, and because of my unwillingness to spend much time blogging at home anymore, that's about all I have time for.  (I know, Easy E, it's weak sauce.  Blogging, like pimpin', ain't easy.)  But don't misconstrue that as nothing funny happening this year; on the contrary, this may have been my favorite year yet.  Great crew, great hustle, great stories, great inside jokes, great time. 

I was literally crying laughing at least five times throughout the weekend-- and almost literally crying, period, when some girl with a nose ring tore me apart during the Thursday bar crawl, when I inadvertantly walked behind the bar on my way through to the other section.

Nose ring girl:  That's not the walkway, BRO.

Me:  I know, that's a confusing setup...wait, wait, wait. I'm not your bro, BRO. (thanks Harold & Kumar for that comeback.)

Nose ring girl:  Ohhhh....~pause to gather up her most disgusted facial expression~...YOU'RE A BRO.  With your POLO, and your HAIR GEL, and your WATCH!

Me, with no absolutely no comeback, and my eyes almost welling up with tears:  Ummmm, I'm gonna go back to my friends now?

The worst part is my hair is pretty short right now, my polo cost like $6 at Old Navy, and though my watch is kinda baller, I found it in a parking lot in Iowa, so what the hell?  Actually that's the second worst part.  The worst part is that she used one of my favorite sarcastic insults and turned it on me hard.  I'm lucky Nose Ring Girl didn't see me the next day at Oaks-- now THAT'S a bro:




***************

Kentucky Derby weekend is always insane amounts of fun...it just managed to be fun AND extremely profitable in 2012.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Derby Up!

This year's Derby edition should be exciting, as we have added a few fresh-faced rookies to the 12-man squad (Tony, Tom, Katie, Jill); recaptured somebody after a two-year sabbatical (Kyle); re-signed the always entertaining wild card (the incomparable Slough); and of course have the cagey veterans signed to long-term contracts (Schne, JV, Tim, and I'm including myself, as this is now my 5th year in a row.)

I'm a big believer in betting strictly on a horse's name in the main event, since the last few years that race has been mostly a crapshoot anyway. Sometimes it pays off (Big Brown) sometimes it doesn't (Mission Impazible, Homeboykris). I guess at that point of the weekend, I barely care about betting smart anyway; it's more fun to wing it. This year's Derby field happens to include a horse named "I'll Have Another". I'm most likely going to bet more on him than any other horse I've ever bet on, and I'll tell you why:

Back in college, Paul and I both kinda fell into seperate Bromances with a couple of guys that we worked with at our respective jobs. After awhile, we found out that our two Bromances were also roommates with each other (what are the odds?) and a full-fledged four-way Bromance bloomed. Pretty soon our entire friend groups were combining for nights out on the town, and legendary shenanigans ensued. (This was also the period in college where Paul and I rarely said anything that wasn't an Anchorman quote, the Red Sox won the World Series, and despite it being my toughest year of school as far as accounting classes were concerned, I was getting b'd out on the reg during the school week. So in other words, one of the greatest stretches of my entire life.)

One night Paul and I were out getting rowdy with our Bromance crew (they called themselves the Sauce Monsters, whereas we were the Warriors, and sadly, that's not a joke. We've got t-shirts and everything.) Chaddy, who was undoubtedly the lightweight/bitch of their group, got particulary shitfaced, and without warning, started projectile vomiting ALL OVER the bar, without moving from his stool. When the carnage was over, and everyone within a 20-foot radius was done screaming and backpedaling, he calmly lifted one finger off the bar, and with puke dripping from his chin, casually told the bartender: "I'll have another." Needless to say, a catchphrase was born.

My only concern is that there are going to be a million other douchebags like me who will like this horse for the very same reason. As of now, I'll Have Another is going off at 15-1, but I'll bet that he becomes the favorite before everything is said and done. Not the worst thing in the world, but obviously it's more fun to bet on an underdog.
On a scale of 1-10, I'm super excited to leave tomorrow morning.