Hey Girl

I am not that guy. But for the next few moments, I will attempt to be that guy.

Last night, some friends and I were at Moosehead on Montford Drive when these two guys asked if they could sit with us. Bold, I thought.

They obviously wanted nothing to do with the other men at the table. Instead, they saddled up to the women and started in. One did not want to say his name, but kept on rattling off names of people he knew at UNC, just to see if one of the girls knew them. She did not.

The other guy was better. He called my friend a liar. Moments later, he complimented her hair. Then he tried to grab it.

For years, I've been receiving a steady stream of advice on how to talk to women at bars. It's always conflicting. Be nice first, then mean. Or, be mean, then nice. Buy her a drink. Get her away from her friends. Close the deal. Get her number. One piece of advice I've never heard? Be yourself.

All of that being said, I think I've come up with the perfect conversation to use on women at bars. Here goes:

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Hey girl.

I like your shirt. Really looks good on you. Did you pick it out yourself? You did? That's hot. Can't say the same about the pants. I don't know how you cram ALL of your ass in there.

Let me buy you a drink.

What am I drinking? A beer. It's better than what you're drinking. I wouldn't be caught dead holding a mimosa. Really. Men don't drink those. Tell you what, let's do shots. But not jello shots. Jager. I like Jager. You don't? Well I do. Jager it is.

Did I mention how good you look? Damn.

Don't text your friends. Don't listen to them. I'm a really good guy. Ask anyone. I wouldn't do that. I'm not here just to pick up women. Really, I'm not. I'm just out having a good time with my buddies and then you came along. Where are my buddies now? I don't know. Don't care. Why haven't you picked up your Jager? Shots!

Seriously, you need some new jeans.

What do I want out of life? That's a pretty deep question. I mean, I just met you. I don't even really know you. Have you seen Jersey Shore? Oh man, now THAT'S a show.

You need to get back to your friends? Come on, don't go. It's late. Where are you going next? You should come with me. I've got a whole bottle of Jager at home. You should see it. There's real elk's blood in it. No really. It's true. Shots!

Fine, I understand. Tell you what, let me get your number. We should go out again sometime soon. You get to pick the bar. But not the drinks.

Ok, I'll call you. Take care, girl. Maybe wear some different pants next time. Wait, why does your number only have eight digits?

Amplifying Your T-Pain

There's something magical about having a song you like stuck in your head.

There's something even MORE magical about playing that song over and over again for a friend who obviously hates it.

This is that song:



I don't know who this Maino guy is, and aside from getting a chuckle from his Super Bowl ads and SNL Digital Shorts, I can't really say I'm a T-Pain fan either. The song is familiar to me because it's the song they play just before tipoff at Charlotte Bobcats games. It's the part when the guys from both teams bro-hug each other.

Today, NBC started using it in some of their promos. It blared from every TV in the newsroom at least twice an hour.

Brandon sits next to me. He hates it. So I did what any respectful cubicle neighbor would do: I found it online and cranked it up.

"Is that you?" he asked.

Yup.

The Fastest Time I Never Ran

I've never cracked the twenty minute mark in a 5K race. Except this one time, when I didn't.

5K's are usually pretty detailed affairs. Most have computerized timing, fancy sports drinks on tables, sliced oranges on platters and slick promotional doo-dads for upcoming races. At the very least, they have numbers you pin on your shirt.

I ran a race in West Virginia a few years ago that had none of that.

Instead, this one had popsicle sticks with numbers on them. When you crossed the finish line, you got one. Then, you took it to some nice lady sitting at a table inside a firehouse, who asked you your name and then wrote it next to the number in your hand. If you crossed the line first, your popsicle stick had a one written on it. Second had two, and so on.

I'm not sure exactly when I finished that day. It had to be somewhere in the mid-20's. I took my popsicle stick to the firehouse and the nice lady wrote down my name.

A friend had an interesting strategy of running as fast as he possibly could from the starting line, then absolutely dying about a mile in and having to drag himself for the final two. At some point I passed him. I waited around to see how he finished.

I'm standing there as the lady and the other folks in charge of the race start calling out names. Overall winner. Masters winner. Men from 25-29. That's when I heard my name.

They called me up to the front. People clapped. They handed me my reward (a glass mug). Somebody took my picture for the newspaper. I looked confused.

They said my time was 17:14 when I knew it wasn't. They said I was the fastest 25-to-29-year-old in St. Albans that day. I knew I wasn't. But I didn't know what to say.

People started to go home as I stood there, speechless, mug in hand. And that's when I figured it out.

I had come in 60th place. I remembered that from the popsicle stick. I also remembered the zero looked surprisingly small. The nice lady in the firehouse had written my name next to the six. Whoever really came in sixth ran a blistering 17:14 5K.

I walked back to the firehouse. By then, the folks in charge were packing up and heading for home.

"I didn't win this," I said, trying to hand her my mug.

"Sure you did," the nice lady smile back.

I told her what I thought had happened, with the popsicle stick and the wrong time and the confused look on my face.

"Oh, it's ok honey," she said as she walked away. She didn't care.

Today, I ran a 20:37, and it took everything I could to get there. I'm probably in better shape now than I was then, and today was the first race that's nearly caused me to vomit afterward. I don't know if I'll ever get down to 17:34. But if I don't, at least I have my mug.

Dress Up

One time, a co-worker was so worried about the state of my wardrobe, she bought me new socks. I had a habit of wearing white tube socks with, oh, everything, and at one point, she decided the time for action had come. After having a long talk with me, she showed up with four pairs of socks. Everything from khaki to navy blue.

"Here," she said, defeated, as she threw them down on my desk.

Apparently, I've come a long way. Thursday, I put on some nice new jeans, along with a nice blue button down shirt and my khaki sport coat. They were sitting on top of the pile. That's it. End of story.

Until I got work, anyway. Everybody thought I was up to something. They always think that when the pants match the socks.

They told me I looked, well, nice. In the past, they've asked where my job interview was, or who I had a hot date with that night. This time, neither was true. Sigh.

After work, I headed to the gym. One of the women in my class owns a boutique here in Charlotte. "Wow," she said, "you look great. That's a good look for you." She'd never seen me dress like that. I told her that she just made my week. It was true.

All of this from me: a guy who goes to the mall maybe twice a year and who probably likes thrift stores just a little too much for his age. From time to time, I need to go buy new clothes because I don't have enough underwear or pants to make it through an entire week. I always have to call in a coach. Preferably, it's a woman who's willing to save me from myself.

Thursday, then, proved to be a day of some kind of cosmic significance, similar to one where you catch all the green lights on the way to work, or where they forget to ring up the extra order of curly fries they threw in your bag in the Arby's drive-thru. Not only did I dress myself (full disclosure: I do that every morning), but I actually picked out clothes that managed to make everybody happy.

The problem is that I really don't have any depth. After years and years of accumulating things, I'm prouder of my book collection than I am of my closet. I've got hangers upon hangers of shirts that I can't bring myself to wear. Some still have the plastic collar shapers in them, years later.

After the gym, I put the same clothes back on. I wanted to see if it would work again. It did. I went out for dinner, and this girl I know adjusted my lapels. Twice.

I didn't want to let it go. Later that night, minutes before I went to bed, I was lying back in my recliner in my full regalia. This may be as good as it gets, I thought as I looked down at my perfectly matched socks. I really should be up to something.

Shots With Joe Namath

I'm not a shot guy. Never have been.

Yet for some reason, people insist on buying me one. Or two. If it's more than that, we're usually celebrating something that doesn't deserve it ("Hey! It's Saturday!").

Tonight, apparently the excuse was Hey! It's Thursday! Some guy who had more than a passing resemblance to Joe Namath saddled up to my friend Lindsey, who probably talked to him just a little too long. Broadway Joe, it turns out, is a contractor who kept telling us how good he had it three years ago. "$67 a square foot! For TILE!" he made of point of repeating.

All I wanted was a burger and a beer, but at some point, four shots of Jagermeister showed up and one of them was passed down to me. "Jager's all I drink. It's got real elk's blood in it," said Mr. Namath, before launching back into his discussion of exquisite European floor coverings.

So, at the moment that everybody else raised their glasses and thew their heads back, I discretely tucked the shot down in between my legs. I didn't want to insult Joe Namath after all, so I waited for him to get up to use the bathroom. Or maybe to go have a smoke.

Didn't happen.

There I was, not wanting a shot of Jagermeister yet unwilling to waste it. After five minutes, I turned to the friend sitting next to me. We talked over a couple of options. He decided the best thing to do was to have him turn to face me so he could discretely suck the Jager out of the glass.

I really hate to insult someone, even a Hall-of-Fame lookalike who's trying to make a friendly overture. I know I'm not a shot guy, but maybe I should have just taken it down. At least Joe would have appreciated the gesture.

I was thinking about that when the second shot arrived. I dumped it on the floor.

Late Night With The Hawaiian Punch

Gotta make this a quick one, but as I get ready to run out for a 10:20 p.m. hockey game, it occurs to me that the schedule for such things is exceedingly, oh, what's the word I'm looking for...

Shitty. That's it.

My team is the Hawaiian Punch: an extraordinary group of men who gather to drink beer and, before it erodes our mental sharpness, take the ice at some point. We have a good record this season in the C-League, which means if you really have trouble standing up straight on the ice, WE WILL DESTROY YOU.

And yet our games start late. Really late. We've already had a 10:45 p.m. faceoff this season and there will be a few more of those before the winter is out. It makes it hard to build any kind of fan base. It's tough enough to convince anyone to hang out in a rink where the air temperature is always lower than it is outside.

At this point, I shouldn't be surprised by this. In high school, our practices were always sometime around nine or ten at night during the week, and that's on top of a 40 minute drive from my parents house in Cortland, Ohio to the rink on the south side of Youngstown. In college, the only ice time our rec league could get at Ohio University was at six a.m. Imagine what it's like to walk across campus at 5:30 in the morning with all of your hockey gear in tow. I'd rather not.

The problem is, the Pineville Ice House already has my money, so I'd might as well show up. I know; all of this makes it sound like playing hockey is a chore when it really is a privilege, which it really will be tonight, just as soon as I make a beer run.

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

I'm not much of an expert on hockey, you see. Sure, I play it. I watch it. I schooled myself on Prime Sports broadcasts of Pittsburgh Penguins games during the mid-90's. I honed my skills on NHL 95 for the Sega Genesis, which led to a career in which I was unable to fight and only scored goals by cutting directly across the crease.

In reality, if I was a Hockey Expert, I probably would be watching more NHL games. I wouldn't have played for a team in high school that went 0-27. I was the goalie. I once made 48 saves in 36 minutes. We lost 9-0.

My past experience both playing and watching inferior hockey make me all the more excited that Charlotte is getting a better franchise. Some big shots from the Carolina Hurricanes were in town today. The new team will be their top-level minor league affiliate. The new owner of this glittering AHL team says Charlotte is growing and demands a higher level of play.

Not that I DEMANDED it really, but I'm going to get it. Next season, I'll be able to watch better players and better coaching. Not that I didn't like the Checkers, you see (the new team will still be called the Checkers, by the way). But in my quest to become a Hockey Expert, an American Hockey League team is going to help my cause much better than the ECHL ever did.

Allow me to explain, casual fan. Over its entire history, just 434 East Coast Hockey League players have gone on to at least play once or twice in the NHL. Sure, it sounds like a lot, until you go through the list and have a hard time finding anyone whose name you MIGHT KINDA SORTA recognize. By comparison, 85 percent of the guys playing in the NHL this season are AHL alumni. The league is just plain better. What can I say. I'm a hockey fan that doesn't watch enough hockey. Make that GOOD hockey.

That's why I'm excited, even though I don't know WHO will be playing for the Checkers, or what their colors will be, or how much a ticket will cost. All will be revealed soon, the team said.

In the meantime, I'm playing for a third-tier house league team in Pineville. We're good, but our competition is a bit lacking. Before our game on Monday, I sat in the bleachers as two top-level teams went at it. If we were ECHL, these guys were AHL.

I suddenly felt very inferior. But I watched as the defensemen played, and how they positioned themselves, and saw when they decided to cycle the puck and when they broke off to backcheck. I tried to emulate that during our game.

We won 9-1 Monday night. Just sayin'.

Rolling Out The Red Carpet

I spent Saturday night in Charleston, West Virginia, celebrating with a friend who, after eleven years, was finally leaving town. We all got together at a bar that used to be a five minute walk from my old apartment, the Red Carpet Lounge. Sometime soon, I'll post something much sappier about how great it was to see a bunch of old friends and to be back in Charleston. But for now, let me tell you about some of the features you'll find if you ever walk in the door at the Carpet:

• There is a patio out back, surrounded by a crudely built wooden fence that is at least ten feet tall and looks like it was built by early humans to keep the velociraptors out. In reality, its probably to keep shady East End pedestrians from wandering into the bar. The patio is named Fort Swagger; the namesake is Charles Swagger, some guy who died back in 1998 and whose ashes are now interred for all eternity in a flower bed in the corner. There's a plaque there with his initials on it posted on one of the fences. Some people inside the bar told me his wife was scattered under some outdoor stairs.
• There's a pay phone on one of the walls. It's handy for a quick booty call to your scary looking ladyfriend when your cell phone dies. I constantly checked the coin return for any loose change or human thumbs.
• They serve Stroh's. Seriously, they do. I was so shocked, I ordered three of them. Sadly, Blatz, Schaefer, and Carling Black Label were nowhere to be found.
• There is a table that's shaped like a fish, and then, in another part of the bar, there's a hand-carved wooden plaque dedicated to the table that's shaped like a fish.
• There is some guy in there who comes in just to listen to the jukebox. He sat there while the party was going on, playing some old school songs you might have slow-danced to, had you been at a 5th grade Motown-themed dance in 1972. The jukebox, unfortunately, is one of those newfangled computerized numbers with a thousand songs in it. The old one basically contained only the entire catalogs of Dave Brubeck, Merle Haggard, Boz Scaggs and Toby Keith.
• The guy sitting next to you at the bar could be homeless. Or he could be a West Virginia state legislator. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

More pictures from the Red Carpet over the years, including Saturday night's obligatory group shot:

The Slippery Slope Of Snow Driving In Charlotte

First of all, it should be known that you suck at driving.

No really. You’re not nearly as good as you think you are. Sure, you say, I’ve handled bad weather before. I’ve driven x-amount-of-hours through wind and pounding rain and all sorts of blizzards and tropical storms. I’ve got street cred, you say. I’m the Dr. Dre of inclement weather transportation.

In reality, you’ve got about as much street cred as a 12-year-old kid on a sugar high at a slick-track go kart course. When things really get bad, you’re going to white-knuckle it at speeds topping out at ten miles per hour. Or, you’ll haul ass and look confused as you skid sideways into a telephone pole.

We’re not used to truly awful weather here in Charlotte. Certainly not snow and ice. You want evidence? Look no further than this last weekend. A few inches came down and the whole city turtled on us. Nothing was open. People didn’t leave the house for days. And, of course, nobody drove.

Unless, of course, you were from the north.

Oh, some people told me, you’ll be fine because you’re from Ohio. You can steer your way across a solid sheet of ice one-handed while juggling bowling pins in the other. Even my boss assumed I’d have no trouble driving in through the worst of it. Of course, he’s from San Antonio, where they closest thing they’ve ever had to a whiteout is a confetti storm during a Spurs championship parade.

The truth is, we don’t know how to drive any better than you do, Southern Man.

A couple of years ago, the brother of one of my best friends from Ohio was driving home in a snowstorm and got rear-ended by a cop. I’ll repeat. A COP. See, he was sitting at a red light and had been driving the proper speed and all, and the nice policeman misjudged the stopping distance and ended up somewhere between his backseat and bumper.

And police are supposed to be the most bad-ass drivers on the road.

Growing up, I was in the family Buick when it flew off of a two-lane state highway in Ohio, somewhere between Warren and Ravenna. It wasn’t even snowing. The people following us saw a perfect 180, then a side entry into the ditch. Nobody was hurt, but I do remember having to collect my M&Ms from the front seat. I was sitting in the back.

My dad was driving. And dads are supposed to be the most bad-ass drivers on the road. Especially northern dads.

Up north, we’re just as frightened of the snow as you are here in the south. The thing is, we take that fear and turn it into something tangible that costs money, like all-wheel drive or snow tires or (gasp) chains. Some people put winches on their jeeps, because they know at some point in their lives, they’re going to slide off of a curve and end up tumbling over a hillside. Best to be prepared.

Up north, we’re so afraid, we plow our roads into submission. We spread so much salt, our highways have heart disease. There was somebody who rolled around in my old neighborhood with a backhoe, charging $20 to clear your driveway and the street in front of it. I always wondered how a 15-year-old kid got his hands on a backhoe.

Down south, people resent us Northern Men. They think we’re all cocky. As the snow started to fall last Friday, another boss of mine looked out the window and boldly declared to the world, “Come on. THAT’S not snow.” He’s from Cleveland, where they apparently have lake-effect snowflakes so big, sometimes you find walleye in them.

Northern Man will laugh at Southern Man as Southern Man crawls along on a barely damp street, aging noticeably as he haunches forward in his seat with his hands at ten and two. By comparison, Northern Man is making an appearance in a Hal Needham movie.

Yet, Southern Man will laugh at Northern Man as Northern Man sticks his chest out, and declares with bravado and fanfare that dammit, it doesn’t matter how much snow and ice we’re getting, nothing will keep him from CostCo. Sure, Southern Man declares, let’s see how you feel after you wreck on the way home and can’t extricate your bulk-sized tins of Carmel Corn from your crumpled trunk.

This last weekend, I, Northern Man, did venture out on to the icy roads. It took me five minutes to make my way 30 yards up a slight incline and out of my parking lot. For most of those minutes, I looked on as the front tires of my Cavalier spun helplessly. I scratched my head as my car gracefully glided backward as I thrashed my steering wheel left and right, hoping THAT might do the trick.

I realized at that moment: I suck at driving.

I’ll just say this: Southern Man, Northern Man, be informed. More snow could come this weekend. Watch the ridiculous TV news reports that tell you how to steer out of a skid (and then try to remember them when you actually skid). Go to the store now, before the roads ice up. That way, you can stay at home during the storm and dine on bread and milk, just like a prison inmate.

Buy a snow shovel. Find your sled. Build a snowman. Be nice. Pretend like you northerners and southerners really like each other. We both have to share this city and its roads, no matter the weather. And if you’re still upset, stay inside and have a Coke. Or a soda. Or whatever the hell it is you southerners call it.