FURIOUS ECHOES

I’ve Seen That Movie Too

In the due course of my usual social activity, I go to a lot of parties. Sometimes the parties are at my house and sometimes the parties are at different houses and sometimes the parties are in my room, which are the worst kind because the next day I find mud and cigarette butts in my bed. On even more rare occasions, there might be a party in a vehicle (stuffy, cramped), or in a studio apartment (stuffy, cramped, fire hazard). But, there are some things which tie together the party-going experience. One, of course, is beer. I don’t mean beer in the international sense though; if you told an average German citizen about the atrocities that Americans commit against beer, they would respond as if you had told them that a mustached, egomaniac dictator was brutally executing divisive, genocidal policy on a public scale. Weird. Anyway, the “beer” and its familiar yet sickly aroma (when spilled gratuitously on the floor) creates a distinct olfactory backdrop for the events of the night, so you can more easily recall them the day after. That is what would happen were it not for the other effects of beer. The other reliable constant in the college party experience is the people you meet. There are some very resilient archetypes which unfortunately thrive in this kind of environment, kind of like how flesh-eating parasites can spawn on a week-old loaf of bread. (That wasn’t my bread, man! I don’t know whose loaf of bread that is! I ain’t touching it, it looks like a John Carpenter film prop!) One of these archetypes is the friendly hipster. I really hate talking to the friendly hipster because I am kind of an unfriendly hipster and so I generally just feel bad for myself until he wanders away out of disinterest.  It would be shamefully easy to conjure up something about the bulging, lopsided fat girl or the guy who has railed five Ritalin and is pissing on the floor, so I’ll skip to the only one that really makes me angry: the smart guy.

The smart guy is my favorite, in a roundabout and gruesome way. Much like early Christians, who flogged themselves to behold the pain of salvation, I secretly enjoy my horrible time with the smart guy because it is an inconvenient, but appreciated reminder that there are indeed people out there in the world who do not have your best interests at heart. The trademark of the smart guy is that he is smarter than you and is so excited to tell you about all the things that you do not know. “Now, hang on a moment,” you say. “It sounds like he’s just trying to be a nice guy and share his knowledge with you.” This is not true. The smart guy is so excited to be talking to you in particular because you did not get the tip-off beforehand about avoiding getting into any conversation with him. I’m using “him” to be consistent here but I did meet a smart girl the other night and she wore too much eye shadow and tried to tell me how important the study of philosophy was and liked the wrong Hemingway books and it was not sexy. So, here I am talking to smart guy, who is about to let me in on some major secrets with regards to how computers work. I smother my first instinct to punch him in the word-hole and, for the sake of science, and humor, pretend to be a complete retard. Computers, you say? Ah, yes, I think I saw one in a store once, but I was scared to touch it because I heard that the government can drug test you through the Face Books! The smart guy does not pick up on my subtle wit and continues explaining how the Internet is like a series of multicolored bendy straws. Okay, yeah, I think I had some Internet on a burrito last week, and so on. This usually keeps going until I slip up and ask a suspiciously knowledgeable question that he does not know the answer to, and will usually compensate for by starting to talk about his business ideas, which are always and unfailingly, completely stupid.

Through my description, it doesn’t sound like such a bad experience, right? The problem with the smart guy is that he is a lost cause. By instantly assuming that you are a total dumbass, he is revealing his entire personality to be structured around the generous gifts of wisdom that he imparts unto others and it is only through that brave selflessness that he can derive satisfaction. The smart guy cannot be happy unless he is telling you about all of the super rad things he knows and is certain that you do not. Invariably, however, I do know. I do know that cats are the only animals that purr. I did read that article in the Times about the economy. I did hear that french fries are not actually of France. Don’t we live in a fascinating world?

But it would be dishonorable of me to persecute the smart guy without at least mentioning his friends. I cannot even begin to express my heartfelt and undying scorn for sloppy drunk girl, celibate soon-to-be messiah, and people with nicknames that are food items. And then there’s the guy who always changes the good song and the girl who has made a cocktail out of real diesel fuel and then oh god the forty-five year old townie who is just trying to hang out wit da cool kids.

The crucial lesson I have learned through repeated trial and error is that if you want to have a good time at a party, make sure to arrive naked and singing.

I’ve been learning how to drink wine. This would not be so extraordinary if it weren’t for the fact that learning to drink wine is so HARD and insanely complicated and if there weren’t so many different types of wine. Here is what you might think after first being exposed to wine: there are some grapes and you ferment them and then they turn into magical tasty alcohol. This is mostly true. Sadly, there are a group of people called ‘wine snobs’ who are sadly in cahoots with other groups of snobs whose only purpose in life is to make other people feel absolutely and completely horrible about themselves. These are the kind of people who are not your friends. They could be, as in, they have the potential to BE friendly, were it not for the sad and immutable fact that you have bad taste. The other potentially very wonderful aspects of your personality do not enter into the equation. You drink shitty wine and therefore, you are dead to these people. You do not exist in their version of reality. That is the sort of barrier you must overcome in order to drink wine with real motherfuckers. (Protip: “motherfuckers” is not a word recognized by the default Mac OS X dictionary. Be advised, humor writers/journalists/pornographers.) Anyway, I’ve been learning how wine operates. I’ve been told that it is a semi-transparent and/or purplish liquid that, if ingested, may cause short-term euphoria and/or depression, based upon how much of a shit-head basket-case you are. Your mileage may vary. I do not generally consider myself on the critical end of the shit-head scale, so I usually have an alright time punctuated by an alright night (alone) further punctuated by a headache (also alone) the next day. That is not really important right now. The important part is that sometimes the wine tastes good and other times it tastes like pig shit and the hard part is when you go into the the store and try to divine the pig shit from the elixirs of life. It’s not as easy as you think, and you’re probably thinking it’s pretty goddamn hard. Imagine a room full of one million bottles. That is the wine store. Imagine further as if there is a single bottle, out of that one million, that will grant you immortality. The first step to being a wine consumer is acceptance that you will never find that bottle, ever, and that the best you can hope for is an eerily phallic glass thing bearing markings like “Proprietor’s Choice” (which doesn’t mean shit) and discussing at length the exquisite qualities of the grapes which were abducted and inhumanely slaughtered for the sole and lonely purpose of giving you the confidence to approach the girl in the corner with the big nose and to tell her how big her nose is and would she please sleep with you. These are the kind of low standards you must expect when you are new to the wine trade. It is a kind of initiation ceremony where you are humiliated all the way down to your animal subconscious on how shitty your taste in wine is and how it will only be through the grace of Our Lord Above that you will learn how to choose which wines are the way to salvation. It is really that simple. And so you wake up and realize that the vomit you are sautéing in is YOURS and you resolve, yes, next time I will do better, and then, you do! It is a somewhat miraculous event not unlike when Jesus Christ parted the Red Sea. And then you realize that there might actually be a chance for you in this harsh, modern age, and you go and you buy another bottle of wine. There is really no intermediate step. You keep buying wine until you find that magical bottle. It will probably never happen but, much like your faith in God (ha ha!), you must believe that some day, that pure and golden joy will be yours. And thus, the wine lobby sends me a check for $200. Good night, everyone.