Vodka and Coat

Friday night was just one of those nights. One of those nights where the God's of the strange all come together and send you on a crazy trip.

I hadn't seen Dylan for a month, this is far to long so we decided to go for a burger at our regular date place 'Rare Burger' (I felt guilty for cheating on Blue 9). Our friend Dan came along as well and after some delectable burgers we decided to grab a drink.

We found a nice little bar called The Dove and as we walked in we noticed a nice amount of cute girls. Before we knew it an incredibly hot tattooed woman was walking up to us. Holy shit, had we found the only bar in the city where women hit on men!? We straightened up, smiled, and prepared to be chatted up. Of course this woman wasn't here for some English men, she was a bartender and asked us if we wanted a drink..... damn. We placed our order and before we knew it another cute girl was walking towards us. Now this girl was my type to a tee, girl next door with a little edge, big brown eyes, I've gone weak just thinking about her! She was coming up to me... to me! She sidled over and simply said 'Can I check your coats guys?' Fooled once again we sat down in a booth and began to drink. Five minutes later a woman defining the word sexy walked up and sat down in our booth.... Thank you God! However once again our hearts were broken as she informed us we could only sit there until the party who had reserved it arrived. Eventually some girls did come over with the intention of talking to us.... alas they weren't exactly the most stunning creatures of the night, in-fact they probably should have just stuck to talking to people at night.

We soon moved and were immediately accosted by the most annoying girl in the world. Let me start by saying that this girl was wearing a hat in a bar, always a bad sign. If a girl wears a hat she is either a moody bitch, loaded with baggage or a loud and annoying shrill human being, the girl who was talking to us was the latter. She refused to believe we were English and so in order to prove a point she spoke to us in a terrible English accent for the entire night. I wanted to kill her. This would result in me going to prison so I thought I'd fuck with her instead. Luckily Dylan was on the same wavelength. He introduced himself as Rob whilst I introduced myself as Dylan. I then proceeded to talk to her in an American accent and convince her I faked the whole English thing. She made all the hilarious jokes you would expect a moron to make to an Englishman; Harry Potter jokes..... that's about it. She was without doubt the least funny person I have ever met.

Finally relief arrived in the form of Dylan's latest squeeze, I will let him tell you about her. She brought a friend, unfortunately the friend was a guy, fortunately he was a cool guy. Dylan was feeling ill so decided to leave early, meanwhile this new guy, Chris, was heading to a club.... Fuck it I thought, I'm on this like cream cheese on a bagel. We found cute coat check girl and waited for our coats. Now fellow readers it's been a rough month and I needed to get back on the proverbial horse so in a moment of madness, egged on by Dylan of course, I decided to ask coat check girl for her number. I stumbled through, appeared to be losing her interest so brought out the big guns, the dimples. Success! Number in phone.... more on that later.

Chris and I proceeded to the next club, Lit Lounge. A gloriously gross place which plays an eclectic mix of music but i populated by horny 19 year old girls..... joy. Chris and I took some shots (because that's the sensible thing to do) and started to become acquainted with the local talent. Chris then found some of Dylan's girls friends by the bar and we hung out with them for the evening.

We went downstairs to the dance-floor and the fun began. One of the girls we were with (I have no idea what her name was) was absolutely shitfaced... and I mean shitfaced. However she wanted another drink from the bar, I happened to need my thirst quenched too so accompanied her. As we hit the bar she pressed herself right up against me. Hmmmm interesting. She then started dancing with me all up in ma grill, and i mean all. up. in. ma. grill. This felt wrong however, she was really drunk and I was just drunk. It wouldn't be fair. She then leant in slowly but wasn't going for my lips... she was heading for my ear. She whispered into it "We can dance and it's fine because you're gay aren't you?" Woah. Woah. Woah. I spat my drink out and objected before adding the obligatory 'not that there's anything wrong with that.' She wasn't convinced, she asked me to prove to her wasn't gay..... At this point I laughed and thought of Adam Pike and Jack Prevezer's saying that sometimes a theoretical pull is better than the trouble a real one can get you in... this was one of those times.

Drunk girl led me back to her friend Bethany who was immediately the love of my life. Cute, edgy, Jewish, smaller than me. Hot Damn. Next thing I know she has started dancing with me.... well hello. She's into it, this is fantastic, this is amazing this is... about to be interrupted by her friend who tells me that I will have to wait in line. Sure enough I look over to my right and there is literally a line of guys all watching this girl dance with me as they wait their turn. This was getting weird. The whole night descended into anarchy. I met a random guy, got some random numbers, was told I was gay and then had to wait in line for the girl of my dreams. I was stupendously hungover the next day.

Ahhhh yes, Coat Check Girl. I have done some stupid things in my life, however on Saturday morning I sent THE worst first text I have ever sent. Still blurry from the night before I grabbed my phone to check her number wasn't all a glorious dream, it wasn't! I then sent her the following text.

'Hey, it's Rob the English guy from last night. How was work? Did you get out late? Did all the coats get returned to their desired destination?' She is yet to reply.

Korea Town

Hardcore regular readers will remember the Ugly Christmas Sweater update from last year. Well the driving force behind it, the group of friends known as BSC were at it again last night. Inspired by our newest members Hana and Jen a Korean night had been arranged.

This had been organized months ago, our group of friends would have a typical Korean adventure, whilst I was a little upset the Korean's didn't share the Thai peoples love of prostitutes I was still game. Then the emails started. It's fair to say that in the build up to last night I must have received an email a day with different instructions/guest-lists/ideas/menu choices. Perhaps the most worrying one came in the middle of last week. we were all emailed a list of Korean traditions when eating dinner and getting drunk on Soja. Basically all the traditions can be honed down to one sentence; The most junior member at the table has the least privileges and has to be everyone else's bitch. Unfortunately for me I am the baby of the group by a good couple of years so it looked like I would spend the evening respecting my elders.

Disaster. Catastrophe. A flu epidemic appears to have struck New York. People left, right and centre started pulling out of our Korean extravaganza. It was suggested that the baby of the group send round an impassioned email begging people to come, but as a stickler for tradition, coupled with the fact I am lazy, I refused. We set off to a Korean Restaurant to begin the evening. The restaurant had been reviewed by the New York Times, a fact it was very proud of. It displayed the review everywhere, on the walls, on the place settings, everywhere. The issue with this was that the review gave it one star..... hmmmm. Also my place setting didn't have a review, it just had pictures of puppies for sale.

I thought the evening was about to take an interesting turn when a new member of the group sat opposite me. This cute new girl suddenly had me shaking off my hangover (oh yeah, I got shitfaced on saturday night). Cute girl looked younger than me too. After some prying I was left disappointed, she was 26 and was in the midst of some major relationship drama. Luckily for her right now my mind game playing is top notch so we had an Oprah moment and I gave her some golden advice.

Finally the food started arriving but not before I had poured everyone their drink whilst not making eye contact! There appeared to be now rules regarding the amount of food the Junior can eat so I stuffed my face.

At this point in the update let's all take a moment to applaud Miss Hana Jung on her food selection. Bravo.

As dinner finished we were off to the second half of the evening. Karaoke. Chinese for empty orchestra.... kinda haunting if you think about it. I had been practicing my repertoire of songs and had made the decision that unless I saw a drunk Asian businessman singing Lady In Red the night was a flop.

We scoured the streets for a decent bar in which to sing and my word did we find one.

We ascended three flights of stairs and pushed open a rickety door to find a Korean couple with some microphones. They ushered us into a room with really really small chairs. It was at this moment we realized we were sitting in a daycare centre. Yes we had managed to find the only place in New York city which is daycare by day and karaoke by night. I personally felt like I was in a crazy strip club. Bright flashing lights, private rooms, a strange looking Asian man on the door. It was odd. They made us place what can only be described as fuzzy condoms on top the microphones so as not to spread germs and we were ready to sing. Unsurprisingly Victoria went first. The music blared out of a huge speaker in our tiny private room and the lights went epileptic. Then the sound of The Spice Girls filled the air. We all chose songs and drank... we needed to, as one bad rendition after another was blared out in this daycare/Karaoke/strip club mash up. The best part of every song was afterwards they would give you a score out of 100. What this was based on we will never know. It was impossible to score below 85 and above 99.If anyone ever breaks the 3 digit barrier in that place drinks are on me. The songs kept coming (my suggestion of 'All By Myself' wasn't taken kindly by the cute girl) and eventually our hour was up (kind of like a strip club).

Eardrums bleeding, pupils dilated we stumbled out into the cool night air perhaps just a tad more cultured than we had been earlier that evening.

Pia Pia Piano's

When you wake up in the morning to find three stamps of varying words and pictures on your hand as well as a discarded Burger wrapper (of the Blue 9 variety) and half a Gatorade all accompanied by a thumping headache, you know you had an interesting time the night before.

That was me on Friday morning, slowly piecing together the night before.

It started with a song. To be more precise it started with the song 'Something in Common' by Free Energy, a happy clappy dancey pop song that my former roommate Victoria had fallen in love with. Whenever she comes to visit down from Queens we have to listen to the song many many times. It transpired that Free Energy were playing a small gig at a bar called Piano's. Now let me put into context why this was exciting. I fucking love Piano's (the bar.... I could give or take the instrument). If I have nothing to do and am out then inevitably I will recommend Piano's, it has everything, a bar, a dance/club bit and a gig venue in the back. I had my 23rd birthday there and to be honest when the big 25 hits I'll probably be there again. If you have come to visit me in New York, I probably took you there. I've managed to pull women from all corners of the globe in that place. It's my New York Robinski's.

Delighted that I had an excuse to go I was all over the idea of a night out like a rash on a nymphomaniac. The crew was a good one. Everyone had a connection to 203 East 14th Street, they had either lived in the apartment or were dating someone that lived in the apartment.

We started the evening in the same way any night at 203 begins, we listened to 'Something In Common' 7 times on repeat. We slowly started drinking some Wine and Beer. I harped back to an old saying 'Beer before Wine feeling fine, Wine Before Beer.... feeling fine!' A big night lay ahead. We arrived at Piano's after a rowdy cab ride and stumbled in. We headed for the back and into the gig room. Now I hadn't been in this room for a while and had forgotten the nasal stinging stench that singes your nostrils when you enter. A mix of B.O, beer and Hispters. It smelt gross. We sucked it up and had more beer. Victoria then requested we move to the front by the stage so we could dance.... begrudgingly I obliged. Once the band started setting up I could see Vic becoming more and more excited. Finally a waif like individual with the waistline of Kate Moss appeared n the stage and wrote down the set list.... guess which song wasn't on it! We asked politely and he decided to stick our song on one from the end. As the band struck up and started Victoria became 'That' girl. You know, the one at the front of the gig who dances way to much and is far far to into it. The rest of us had to take it in turns to dance with her to avoid embarrassment. It took a while, but eventually the opening chords to the one song we knew struck up. There was one problem, our friend Markus was in the toilet. So unfortunately for him he missed the one reason he came out! The rest of us danced, Vic may as well have thrown her pants on the stage and just like that the band were done. We had our picture taken with the singer.... seriously, and then scurried off upstairs to the club part.

By now I had switched from Wine to Beer to Vodka to JD, things were starting to become blurry. After busting out the weightlifter move a few times 4 of the 6 of us went home, these 4 are of course all in a relationship, so it was up to Victoria and I to hold down the fort. The problem was Victoria had been caught in the tractor beam of two competitive guys both vying for her affection. She seemed to be enjoying it so I took the time to talk to the bemused Chinese girl standing next to me. The conversation didn't exactly flow! Eventually Victoria managed to escape her two would be suitors and headed off home, I decided to stick it out with Miss China, unfortunately her boyfriend turned up and I took that as my cue to leave.

All in all a fun, drunk night at Piano's and now I have somewhere to stay should I get lost in China. I wouldn't expect anything else.

Oh and for those wondering about the Burger wrapper.... I was hungry when I got home.

Diary Of A Bored Man

Life is boring. Nothing exciting is happening. These blogs are stagnating as a result. In order to convey the total mind numbing boringness of my life we will once again delve into the diary of a typical wek.

Monday - Day off. This is one of those glorious days where you do nothing whatsoever. You rise at 12 consider breakfast but instead decide your time will be better spent sleeping for an extra hour. Once you are up at 1 the mother of all achievements is on, the less than 12 hour day. The less than 12 hour day consists of going to bed less than 12 hours after you left it that morning. In order to achieve this you will need the following. 1) Take out menu's. 2) Football Manager. 3) YouTube. 4) Cable TV. Once these are in place you can split your time equally between watching dancing midgets, winning the champions league, ordering Thai food and cursing the cable company that cancelled the food network, thus ensuring the commercial to put it back on plays during every single ad break! After interchanging between these things for ten or so hours you hop back into bed at 11:30 to complete your less than 12 hour day. Beautiful.

Tuesday - This day usually consists of a shift at work that I like to call a 'Nothing Shift.' Nothing shift's are exactly what they sound like nothing. Nothing funny happens, nobody makes a lot of money, but nobody makes a small amount. The world just continues to turn. Everyone smells of BBQ and is zombified by the sheer nothingness of the shift. Beware the nothing shift though. The nothing shift can lead to excessive drinking, for you see after a nothing shift the brain has become a mushy mass of ill formed ideas and the one that usually pops out is the decision to go to a bar. By the time everyone is off work and at the bar it is usually midnight, meaning we drink until 3. Meaning we close down the bar. Meaning everyone is hungover for Wednesday.

Wednesday - The day is a write off, no man alive can cope with a hangover that big. Instead all hopes and dreams are projected onto the night, for you see Wednesday night is the perfect date night. It's far enough away from the weekend to not feel like a waste of a night and close enough to it to make you want to drink. In short wednesday night is the perfect alignment of the stars and planets to go out on a date.
The rules remain the same. You meet for drinks/dinner. You keep on eye on the bill. You decline her offer to pay despite dying a little inside when you see the hit your wallet is about to take. You then move onto stage 2 of the date. Stage 2 can take place anywhere in the city say another bar or perhaps back at your apartment. The trick is to get it right on Wednesday though because otherwise you have another 7 days to wait before you can go on a date again.

Thursday - The double shift. Lesser men have gone insane when confronted with the terror of the double shift, it makes them weep and beg for mercy whilst they simultaneously crap their pants and piss themselves, beware the double shift.
You start at 10 moving tables, filling sauces and laying out silverware in a race against time to set up the restaurant for 11. After that the shift begins. Lunch is slow... always slow. You serve a few tables, fold a few napkins and the thought of the evening shift is yet to enter your mind.
Then you go on break. This is perhaps the toughest decision of the day... where to eat. It's enough to drive a man mad! Usually you end up at Starbucks eating apple fritters and downing Latte's.
Then it's time for the evening shift. By now your feet are sore, your legs weak, your eyes streaming and you nostril hair parched with BBQ sauce. You check your watch... it's only 8! You want to cry. You've been at work for 10 hours, that's 10 hours of non stop country music. Your pray for mercy as you hum 'Against The Wind.' Then finally, finally it's over. You go home and collapse on your bed half man, half Rib Sampler.

Friday - The morning can go one of a few ways. You can close lunch, meaning you work until 6 and are manically swept off of your feet as the only waiter in the restaurant from 2 onwards. Or you sometimes have an audition.
If it's the latter you hop on the Subway to some nothing part of New York, find some tall non desrcript building, head up a few floors and wait to be called. Smiling falsely you shake everyones hand and then read the page of script they have prepared for you. They seem to really like you, in fact, heck, they love you! They tell you when they will be putting on the play/filming the film and ask if you are free on those dates.... You are. They say they will call you..... They don't.
Friday night. Call Dylan find some cool New York bar and get right on it. Friday night is drinking night. You party hard because Saturday night will be spent at work... and that's no treat.

Saturday - The morning always starts with football. PHart and his terrible QPR side loose, nobody in the Gilbert household is happy but at least I got to see Warren Barton's opinions on Liverpool's current crisis whilst I sat hungover in bed.
Suddenly it's 4 and it's off to work. The weekends are a different animal at work, they get very busy. When it's like that it becomes every waiter for themselves. You have to get in with the hosts so they will sit your tables thus generating maximum income. After that you have to sell sell sell. Everything on the menu is your favorite dish and nothing can't be done for a guest. You do however want to stay out of the kitchen. If you don't you face the wrath of the chef, who at this point resembles a BBQ stained gargoyle wearing MC Hammer's pants, screaming at you for being in his domain.
Eventually... eventually you are done, off the hook. Usually with a nice amount of money in your pocket, so what do you do with the money? That's right spend it on beer. So you trudge off to some crap bar that is empty because you don't want to walk in and be the only sober people inside and drink until the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday - A day off. Always starts with walking the 200 steps from your apartment to Blue 9 Burger always fresh and always delicious. Due to the fat content of these being more than James Corden you limit yourself to one a week. This eases any hangover.
After feeling a little better Sunday gets underway and to be honest, it's a lot like Monday. You sit around, you watch TV, you play computer games. It also has the ability to be a second date night. After laying the groundwork on Wednesday you can often suggest something a little more relaxed for your hungover souls on Sunday such as a movie or even better just hanging out at the apartment and seeing what happens. I don't want to give away all my moves though.

So as you can see my life is pretty dull right now, although it could be worse, I could be snowed in, I could be a Liverpool fan or I could not be in New York. Guess I'll just have to get on with it eh!

A Magical Place

On December 26th family Gilbert made the journey to Disneyland, Anaheim. As can often be expected with these things it was eventful. I will start by running down each family members take on roller-coasters.

Dad - Hates them. Would rather watch the Disney parade.

Mum - Despite a bad back is always game.

Me - I'll always go but can be easily dissuaded into chickening out.

Claire - Loves them and will ride anything.

Elizabeth - Is scared of the teacups.

So with this in mind we all made a pact to do everything and anything. We raced into the park and made sure we had our fast pass tickets to Space Mountain so we wouldn't have to que later. In order to pass the time we decided to jump on a couple of other rides. First up was the Buzz Lightyear ride. A slow moving, slightly spinning ride in the dark. It was full of fun and merriment.... but no for Elizabeth who felt sick afterwards.

A fact you need to know for this tale is that Claire suffers from Vertigo. Basically if things move fast she becomes dizzy. After the Buzz ride she said she felt a little dizzy but would carry on. Next up was the relatively tame rollercoaster 'The Matterhorn.' Elizabeth spent the whole time before we went on crapping her pants with Dad slowly turning whiter at the prospect of moving fast. We made it to the front of the line and all jumped aboard. 30 seconds later the tame ride finished. Elizabeth had survived. Dad had survived. Claire had not. An attack of the dizzies had struck her and she had to be helped out of the children's ride and onto a bench.

She then made the executive decision that she couldn't ride anything that moved. Fun. So the family had been beaten by Buzz Lightyears's ride and The Matterhorn. The problem was it was 11am at this point and we still had plenty of time in the park. We were then reduced to riding the Winnie the Pooh ride which crawled along whilst robotic characters ate honey. Claire felt a little dizzy after that but maintained that was the level of rides she could cope with. Elizabeth was pleased.

Elizabeth was even more pleased when we stopped off to wolf down hot-dogs for lunch. Lets not beat around the bush here, the food at Disney isn't exactly gourmet! The hot-dogs were disgusting, like a dog had just curled out a crap and it had been placed between a bun. Even fouler than the hot dogs were the abomination that was 'Meat on a Stick.' The world 'Ronseal' hasn't ever been more appropriate, it does what it says on the tin. 'Meat on a Stick' was a lump of meat on a stick. Even better than seeing the foul processed food was watching my pescaparian mother gag at the sight of fat Americans and camera happy Japanese chowing down on the meat.It was the closest anyone came to throwing up all day.

So a day of crap food and crap rides as the family all left the park feeling queazy because of Matterhorn's, Toys and meat. Still at the end of the day it's all about spending time with family.

Arctic Conditions

On Thursday night I removed myself from American culture for a slice of Britannia in the shape of a ticket to see the Arctic Monkeys. Dylan had lovingly found the tickets via some means on the internet and we were off to look good on the dancefloor.

Ladies and Gentlemen the weather in new York has turned, it is absolutely freezing. The kind of freezing that makes your hands so cold it's like you've been jerking off a Polar Bear. I was ill prepared for this cold snap and had not really dressed accordingly. Having lost my gloves in a drunken mess on Tuesday I was struggling against the biting winds as my body slowly started resemble a popsicle.

I arrived at the venue 5 minutes early and waited for Dylan, he had a work engagement so we decided to meet there. At 8:45 (meeting time) I received a message from Dylan asking for the address. I was not best pleased. By now the weather had turned and a smattering of snow was falling, my nuts weren't having any of it and retreated into my body to find warmth. Of course Dylan couldn't find a cab because they were all taken as no one in their right mind would want to stand in the cold longer than they had too.... except me. Of course I'm my own worst enemy and should have picked up my ticket from Dylan earlier in the week. The next 10 minutes a barrage of messages were exchanged as I demanded to know how long he was going to be. I ended up calling Dyl and telling him to run the final few avenues if he was stuck in traffic.

For those not up to date on their pop culture the singer of the Arctic Monkeys is currently dating a TV presenter called Alexa Chung, she is beyond beautiful and needless to say I am a little bit in love with her. As I stood slowly freezing to death I noticed a tall attractive woman standing next to me.... then I looked again, holy fucking shit I was standing next to Alexa Chung! My balls were no longer afraid of the cold and decided they wanted to see what the fuss was about. I stood gawping, heart aching and longing as she too waited for a friend in the cold! Annoyingly for me her friend showed up after a minute and she swept inside via the VIP entrance. Then I saw in the distance a mound of flustered curly hair come jogging down the road.... finally! There was one problem though Dylan had been at his work Christmas party and was down 4 gin and tonics. He had just run halfway across Manhattan in the freezing cold and he looked like he was about to die. He excused himself for a moment, walked across the road, probably vomited and then it was time to go inside.

The olden days of throwing myself about in the moshpit are long gone. Instead Dyl and I met up with his friend Tiff and her roommate and decided to stand on the edge and frown on the shenanigans of the youth of today. A few songs in I suddenly felt a searing pain in my foot. Some fat Irish girl had stabbed me with her high heels, her and her equally tubby friend apologized and then started asking me a plethora of questions I was not interested in. They were soon given attention though by the drunk swayer. The drunk swayer was a man who was off his face and was standing around swaying uncontrollably pointing a random people and singing to them. He, Tweedle O'Dum and Tweedle O'Dee were soon the best of friends, stabbing and swaying along to the music. The gig changed pace when the band played one of their slower songs, Cornerstone, somewhat of a love song. The swayer saw this as his chance he grabbed one of the fat girls and started singing in her ear before leaning in for the kiss, unfortunately for him and luckily for the watching crowd he was presented with the cheek as oppose to the lips.

As quickly as they had all fallen in love the trio were no longer friends. The Swayer wasn't done there though. He set his sights on Tiff's roommate. As he moved in for the kill in stepped that colossus of a man and protector of women's rights, Dylan Viner. Bristling like an angered wolf he told the Swayer to move on or there would be trouble. The swayer moved on very quickly, as quickly as a 9-1 victory can be forgotten (no plethora of status updates after this result guys? Shame, I love reading them. COYS) . His next target was Dylan, he leaned in and rested his head on Dylan's shoulder, a quick push and he disappeared into the crowd. we saw Swayer later squaring up to some guy about to get in a fight, I assume they kissed and made up though.

As I braved the cold home Dylan and I reminisced about the old days of attending gigs, and we both agreed by far the funniest two things we have seen both involve out friend Jeremy Elster. The first was when he arrived at a gig for the last 3 songs, because Shabbos went out late that night, yet still insisted he enjoyed it and it was worth the money. The second was waiting for Oasis to take the stage at Finsbury Park only for a bowl of pasta to come flying through the air and land of Jeremy's head. Good times.

Murder Bar

They say where you drink is a reflection of you.... If this is the case then man am I in trouble.

You see I don't like the bar where I regularly drink. It's dark and dingy and has a terrible selection of beers, however I find myself there at least twice a week.

The Watering Hole is less than a block away from work, this means that after a stressful shift where you reek of Barbeque sauce there is really only one place to go. I've tried to champion other bars, in fact Crocodile lounge with its free pizza with every beer threatened to topple the hellhole that is our local, it just couldn't bring in the numbers and fell by the wayside.

Perhaps the worst thing about The Hole is the karaoke, dear sweet lord the karaoke. I have had some interesting experiences revolving around that microphone. Hell I've sung when I've had a few to many and I can just about get away with it, but the problem is when pissed up girls belt out 'It's Raining Men' it makes me want to cry. The most interesting aspect of karaoke is when the Mafia come to drink in the bar. You see the Mafia get what they want and when they say it's their turn to sing, it's their turn to sing. There is a catch to this, you see they sing the same fucking song every... single... time. Even more messed up is when you try to sing the song that they always do. Halfway through your rendition you will feel a thick Italian hand hand on your shoulder followed by the pasta breath of someone quietly explaining that you can't sing that song because it is reserved for a friend. It is at this point you drop the microphone and leave the bar.
Perhaps the most surreal moment was watching actor William Hurt singing the song with the Mafia before hitting on every young black girl in the bar.
No matter how drunk or sober I am, no matter what day of the week it is I always seem to end up at The Hole. Even on my birthday at 4:30am I suddenly realized that I was standing in a room with a familiar dank smell. At the point I stumbled home.

But by far and away the most frustrating thing about the Hole is the fact there is no reception there. It's like it is a vortex and once inside you can never escape, at no point can you call a mate to see where they are because that involves walking outside into the cold New York air.
Nothing good comes of a night in The Hole, you either leave to drunk and are annoyed you got wasted for no reason, or you leave sober and are annoyed you bothered to buy a couple of drinks.

So Ladies and Gentlemen the reason you haven't heard from me for a few weeks is because I have been trapped. Trapped inside a bar full of shitty sports memorabilia, bad singers, weird smells, terrible beer and a lingering sense of guilt. The Watering Hole. I tell you, if drinks weren't $4 for regulars I'd never go.