_interrobang_

Alright, I guess I better get this done now or I never will.

I got back in town Tuesday afternoon. I was planning to get here Monday morning but I got delayed. It's ok though, I plan for these things.

The trip went pretty well, I got to spend time with all the family. I even got around to stopping at my older brother's house who I rarely see. I do, however, regret not spending enough time with some of my friends from Las Vegas, like Scott and Joey. I'll have to make more time for them on my next visit.

I've put up some photos from the bar that we went to on Brigitte's birthday. Here's one:



My father seems to be doing ok. I was worried about his health for a long time because he had gotten injured about a year and a half ago while trying to boogie board. Have I mentioned that my dad is over 70 yrs old? Well, he is walking around ok now and back to spending his evenings out about town like a tomcat, so I am not so worried.

I brought back my cat, Emma Frost. She is very underweight and I don't think that anyone back home has the time or desire to take good care of her. I'll be scheduling a Vet appointment for her soon. She's at least 11 yrs old and her teeth are falling apart. I worry that her bad teeth are the reason she doesn't eat well, but she seems to be eating a lot since I got her here. The reason I don't keep her here with me all the time is because she gets into very violent fights with my other two cats. Not to mention that I don't really want to have more than two cats in my house. I am turning into a crazy old cat guy! Someone take my cats, please!

OK now. This next story I wasn't going to post. It's really not very exciting and I have a habit of being longwinded, so unless you are really really bored you should just stop here. But I kind of promised that I would write about it, so here it goes:

On my sister's birthday, Brigitte took me out to hang out with some of her friends at a little dive bar called "Beauty Bar". The facade is modelled like a Beauty Salon. It's good enough to make you think that it might have even been a salon at one time. But anyway... Alex, Bret and myself decided to bail for a bit and go play a few rounds of blackjack and we told everyone we'd be back later. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the dollar black jack tables that we were looking for so we decided to throw some money on the Roulette Wheel instead. None of us won anything substantial but we had a good time and got free drinks. I forgot which casino it was, but I want to say it was the Golden Gate.

Well, instead of heading directly back to Beauty Bar, we walked around Freemont street for a little while and picked up some Margarita's at this place called "Mermaids". Mine was Pina Colada. These were big margaritas that were in a container shaped like a football (an American Football to clarify for my international friends). By the time we got back to Beauty Bar we still had not finished our Margaritas and we had to stand outside and sip on them for a few minutes. So Bret gets a little bored and he takes out his phone to play back a stand up comedy sketch that he has recorded on it. Everything is going pretty good right now, we are drunk and happy with our Margaritas, gathered around Bret's phone listening to some guy whose name I don't remember do his sketch. And then the conflict starts...

While we are standing there drinking and chuckling, a couple walks past us. But the boyfriend comes over to us and asks, "Hey man.. is that an itouch phone?"

Now this guy looked real shady, and I don't know if It was because I had been drinking but I was immediately taken aback by him. We are going to nickname him "Snagletooth" because he has very bad teeth with big gaps between them. Almost as if his grown up teeth had never come in. Bret responds with, "Uh... actually it's an iphone, but yeah."

"Do you think I could see it for a minute?", asks Snagletooh.

Now, I could tell that Bret was feeling a little awkward. For a moment there, I think he tried to pretend that he didn't hear the guy. I would also like to reiterate one more time that Snagletooth did not look very trustworthy. Furthermore, his tone and mannerism were rude and unsettling. So I decided to step in and in the most polite way that my drunken ass could muster I told him, "I really don't think my friend wants you to borrow his phone."

Snagletooh inquires, "What do you mean?"

"I mean that he doesn't want you to borrow his phone." I really don't know how much clearer I could have made that statement. Fortunately, he figured it out the second time. Instead of walking away, though, he responds with, "How come he couldn't tell me that himself?

Which I quickly remedied with, "Bret, tell him you don't wanna let him borrow your phone."

In retrospect, I realize that it was very unfair and impolite to put that kind of pressure on Bret. He is certainly not a timid man but I believe that he likes to avoid conflict. I think I was making him nervous, but nonetheless he backed me up with the statement, "I would rather not lend you my phone"

Snagletooth could have easily realized that we were not in a mood to lend our expensive belongings to strangers on the street, and just gone on his merry little way. But being pigheaded is a gift which had been offered to him in his youth and he had most readily accepted. So he decided to respond to his by throwing out insults. He turns to Bret and says something along the lines of:

"Well, you could have been a real man and told me that yourself instead of having this motherfucker on the sidelines talk for you. I have a phone it's just not charged right now. I just wanted to borrow yours for a bit. You didn't need to have this motherfucker approach me all rude..."

And this is where I exploded.
I want to make it clear to everyone that I am not a violent man. As a matter of fact, I consider myself as a timid introvert and I avoid conflict like the plague. I would never punch anyone. I don't even know how to throw a punch. Had I been sober, I would have likely just kept my mouth shut because usually these situations make me very nervous and uncomfortable. But on this day I was drunk and I can get real loud when I'm drunk.

So I cut him off at the moment he implied that I had approached him and I started yelling so loud you could probably hear me at both ends of that street. I think my rant went something like this:

"How the hell do you get off trying to say that I approached you when you were the one who came up to us to snag our phone while we were just standing here minding our own god damned business? You need to just shut your mouth and get your buckwheat looking ass home" (he had funny looking hair. I remeber noting that when I made the buckwheat reference).

All the while that I am saying this, I am slowly padding around him in a very menacing manner and looking him dead in the eyes. He had to be about a foot taller than me, so I am sure that I didn't look very intimidating, and due to my inebriation I was probably slurring my words and walking funny.

I did make him uncomfortable enough that he felt the need to distance himself from us. So as he responded with a litany of challenges and bulgarities, he stepped back away from us and into the street. At this point, I was facing him as he was standing about 10 feet away from us. It occured to me that it would be so much fun to throw my football margarita at Snagletooh's face, it would have been humiliating to him and Oh so gratifying for me. However, I caught a look at Bret's face and it was evident that he was wordlessly pleadng with me to just let it go. So I did.

At almost the very same moment, we heard Snaggletooth's significant other calling out to him from the end of the street where she had continued walking to while all this was happening. He finally caught a hint of sense and decided to follow her commands.

As he was walking away, the three of us looked at each other and had us a good laugh.

A really loud laugh.

So Snaggletooth could hear us.