Thursday afternoon, I was standing with my friend Will in front of a cooler the size of a footlocker. Larger than a footlocker. A leglocker? Whatever. Will opened the casket-sized thing, and I beheld a pig.

A dead pig. Gutted from stem to stern, its legs splayed and pointing upward as if in some sort of porcine supplication. It grimaced hopelessly at the ceiling like a distressed, eviscerated prostitute. It was like a scene out of Se7en, except I wasn't repulsed. I was suddenly hungry.

Will and Eric had earlier that day picked up the freshly dressed pig and painstakingly rubbed it down with a mixture of cumin, brown sugar, cider vinegar, garlic and cinnamon, all of which were crawling eagerly into my nostrils. Despite its ghoulish appearance, it smelled divine.

"Eric tried to hold it up while we rinsed it off before rubbing it," Will explained. "But it weighs over 70 pounds. He couldn't hold it. You should have seen us trying to jam the garden hose into its asshole." I was suddenly less whetted.

"It's disturbingly like human flesh to the touch," Will continued. "It was really weird putting the rub on its tongue." Okay, not hungry!

But it wouldn't last. I would succumb. You see, this Sunday I celebrated my 40th birthday. (My actual birthday isn't until, well, right now, but I wanted people to actually attend the party.) And now that we've cleared out the vegetarians--I'm sorry, you guys--I think it's clear that in said celebration, we roasted an entire fucking pig.

It was Eric's idea. He started with the idea of a barbecue--"Maybe some ribs"--and soon escalated the idea into SPD (Singular Pig Destruction), which is a well-known variant on Mutual Assured Destruction. Will signed on shortly afterward, as Will is also a tremendous fan of putting various animals to the sword and to the torch. An unholy alliance was formed, and in the weeks of planning that intervened between the germ of the idea and its (literal) execution, I was to be treated with the sight of Will and Eric absently, evilly stroking their beards and talking about various rendition techniques with a certain unnerving gleam in their eyes.

A roasting box was procured for the big day, and invariably, as my friends arrived, their pupils would dilate as they beheld the giant box. "There's a pig in there?" they'd ask with wonder. If I were wearing suspenders, I would have snapped them insolently against my chest and rocked back on my heels and said "A-yup." Will and Eric, in the meantime, fussed endlessly over the entire operation, nattering to each other like barbarians discussing the finer points of skull-crushing implements. Inside the roasting box, the pig abided in peace, rendered fat pooling placidly inside its chest cavity.

The guests continued to arrive, most of them pretending to genuinely like me so they could sample their taste of giant pig. Some even brought gifts, despite my invitational directive that gifts were wholly unnecessary. "Unnecessary for you," some of them seemed to say, as the many bottles of whiskey I received were quickly dispatched, some of them by me. Dusty and Kirk, responding to an old, stupid running joke of mine, brought me an alarmingly enormous, veiny dildo and an autographed photo of Stockard Channing. It's best not to ask.

Towards the end of the cooking process, it came time to flip the pig over to crackle up the skin. As Eric and Will attempted this procedure, the pig's feet came off, and the nicely caramelizing carcass thunked back into the box. Eric and Will stared at the feet (in their hands--this was rapidly becoming an Abbott and Costello routine as imagined by Artaud) for a moment before declaring, "Well, nobody was gonna eat any fucking hooves anyway." The unfooted hog continued to stare without comment into the slate-gray skies, figuring, probably, Well, it's not the worst thing that's happened to me today. As if sensing emotional collapse on the part of the dead pig, Will took this opportunity to jam an apple into its mouth.

And after a while, Will and Eric declared the beast to be well and fully cooked; they pulled it from the box and took it into the kitchen to rest for a while. It looked like a giant, pig-shaped Rollo candy; the onlookers--everybody--gasped and oohed and ahhed. Upon setting it on the counter, Eric promptly tore off an ear and gave it to me; his first offering to the (near-) birthday boy; I wondered idly if they had irrigated the ear with the same assiduousness that they had spent on the thing's asshole. I wandered outside into the throng and held it up triumphantly.

"I got an ear!" I yelled witlessly. People cheered, because I know only slavering, brutal maniacs. My social life is like a Rob Zombie movie. I bit into the ear.

It was delicious. The skin had formed a lacquerlike finish, concealing inside a ridiculously luscious admixture of cartilage and fat. Never had hitting bottom felt so much like rocketing to the top. I passed the ear around to the assembled heathens, and they fell on it like starving hyenas. Orgasmic moans began to fill the air, and I briefly thought about Stockard Channing before returning to my senses.

Thanks to Will and Eric, of course. Thanks to my wife. Thanks to all my friends. Thanks to the luckless hog. Thanks, I guess, to time itself, that merciless fucking shit. Thanks for reading for all this time.

Thanks, Stockard Channing.

Coming home from work today, I caught up with a gal wandering down my street. I guessed she was in her twenties, but it was hard to say; I was walking behind her as she distractedly talked on her cell. She had remarkable pants, to the extent that she was wearing them, which is to say, she was barely wearing them. Now look. I'm not some creepy fucking letch. I'm just a dude trying to make his way home.

But I'm only human. A human heterosexual male. And normal, human heterosexual males tend to notice things like when random girls happen to be wearing their pants hanging halfway down their asses. Which is what was happening here. There was a good five inches of ass crack staring at me, and, once I gave up the idea of trying not to stare--which happened almost instantly--I also clinically noted a distinct lack of any evidence of underwear. I honestly found myself cocking my head to the side (why do we do this?) to verify that there wasn't even a hint of a thong strap concealed somewhere. Nothing. I continued to stare helplessly at the pistoning half-globes and stepped up my pace so I could pass her and make it all end. I felt terrible. I'm not voyeuristic at all, really, but Jesus Christ, how can you not notice?

As I passed her, I spied another detail. She had one of those front-loading baby slings on. With, of all things, an actual baby sitting placidly inside it, bouncing against her chest. Those dealies always make me think of baby vampires, where the child is poised at any moment to lash out at mommy's neck to feed on her lifeblood. This wasn't helping AT ALL. I caught part of the mom's phone conversation, which seemed to involve some complaining about a guy named "Davey." The child coldly contemplated the mother's unprotected neck. The mother's exposed ass presumably kept bobbing behind her exuberantly. I hastened my pace yet again, trying to put this unwholesome thing behind me, literally and figuratively. The third party continued to receive cellular castigations of the unknown, unloved enigma named Davey, and I scuttled forward, feeling like I had committed some mental form of frottage.

She gave me an inexplicably dirty look as I sailed past her, which made me feel even worse, for some reason. I wondered if I was, at that moment, a proxy-Davey, or if her half-ass had strange ocular talents that I'd never experienced before. The child on her chest stared at me liquidly, probably wondering how adroitly he (or she) could go after my jugular.

I'm turning 40 next week, as it turns out. I'm aging, yes, but I'm not decrepit or creepy or horrid. I mean, I'm working on it, but I've got a ways to go. I'm looking forward to hanging out with around 40 of my good friends while roasting a fucking pig for dinner.

What I'm trying to say is, lady, if you want to wander around Capitol Hill with your undead baby jouncing off your damn chest and your asshole winking at me in the sun, I'm going to look at it. Sorry, honey. But you'd look at it too.

Yes, this was an entire blog post about some insane woman's exposed ass. The internet is improving your life.

Jack in the Box seems to be trying to dethrone Taco Bell as the purveyor of "most annoying fucking ads ever" lately. I'm speaking specifically of the stoner-centric ad where the asshole tries to order 99 tacos for two cents at the drive-through. These ads are nearly as insulting as Hollywood's upcoming summer lineup. Let's take a look.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Leaving aside the perpetual embarrassment that John Travolta has become; leaving aside the goodwill that Denzel Washington seems insistent upon squandering; leaving aside the residual greatness that Luis Guzman continues to exude despite appearing in one out of every three movies ever filmed including Hey, Don't Fuck My Butler!; the inescapable fact exists that this is a Tony Scott movie, and so it will be intolerably awful.

Scott has made approximately one and a half entertaining movies during his zombie reign--True Romance, which my friend Rory probably wisely suggests that benefits from a Tarantino boost, and Crimson Tide, which is a risible submarine movie that is more or less rescued by the nearly unbelievable straight-faced performances that are loaned to Scott interest-free in service to a patently ridiculous movie.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, I am almost positive, will continue to drain my sympathy for Denzel Washington, and will also probably fail to feature a scene where John Turturro is doused with robot urine. And really, what other use is there for John Turturro?

Moon

I like Sam Rockwell, but it's a little precious to shoot a feature film where he just presses his ass against the camera for 87 minutes. Also, it's sort of irritating to give your movie a title that obligates asshole humor bloggers to say things like "M-O-O-N, that spells box office failure!"

What's that? Yes, I do hate myself.

Imagine That

FUCK YOU, HOLLYWOOD! That's YOUR job! I work too hard and too long to imagine things! That's all well and good for the French, who work like 8 hours a week, but we Americans demand you imagine shit for us!

Except that you imagined something with Eddie Murphy and Thomas Hayden Church. Say, would it be okay if I worked sixty hours a week until this film isn't in the theaters any more?

Year One

This might be the most awesomely bizarre collection of comedic talents ever assembled. Will blank-faced Michael Cera be able to withstand the incredible onslaught of muggery that will be brought by Jack Black, Oliver Platt and David Cross? Or will he succumb to the pressures of a John Turturro-like tsunami of robot-urine comedy-face? (Forgive me if I'm stretching this metaphor. I can't seem to let it go.)

You know, I actually like all of these actors, for all of their various foibles. I even have serious affection for Harold Ramis, who, for all his crimes, has made the world a better place with some of his earlier films. But this just looks like a catastrophe.

Tetro

Hey, a chance for Francis Ford Coppola to redeem himself!

Vincent Gallo--Tetro

Or a different thing.

"You have perfect hair," said Will to Warren. "But you don't do anything with it!" Will was drunk. For that matter, so was Warren. Will's excuse was: it was his birthday. Warren's was: it was Will's birthday. None of this explains any of these comments, except for the fact that, hey, birthday. Warren leaned into his liter of beer; I wasn't sure if he was hearing anything. It's probably best that he didn't. Will continued his assault.

"Look at your hair!" he cried. He seemed to study Warren's skull for a moment. "Look at your ears!" This might be my favorite male-to-male comment ever documented. "Look at your ears!" Hey, you can't! Anyway, then Will challenged me to shots of Stroh, an undrinkable rum brine that the Austrians have perpetrated upon society. I of course accepted. It made for a lousy following workday, and my mouth tasted like ants had set up shop there.

I love bar talk. This was not, technically, bar talk per se, but I'll take it, because it 1. happened in a bar, and 2. made me laugh pretty hard.

But let's define our nebulous terms. Bar talk does not necessarily have to make you laugh. It is enough that it makes you uncomfortable or embarrassed. Let me explain.

Warren again. He recently wrote a piece for the web in which he defended the movie Predator 2--against whom I am unsure--and argued that the movie qua movie was actually the best movie ever filmed. Now, this flies in the face of all sense and wisdom, of course. Predator 2 is actually an embarrassing pile of shit that is not worth the thousands of maggots that feasted upon its utterly unwelcome presence in Hollywood. But Warren would not be deterred, and thus regaled us at a bar recently about the unheralded merits of this terrible film. Even Eric, the bartender, was having none of it. I should point out that one of Eric's very favorite films is Cliffhanger, the noisome Sly Stallone mountaineering pic.

"Warren, you are full of fucking shit. Predator 2 is horrible," said Eric. "FUCK YOU!" screamed Warren. Warren likes to point his finger a lot; he was pointing at Eric, just in case Eric was unsure as to whom it was being suggested be fucked. Eric laughed.

Warren then treated us to his latest treatise on film, listing for us his top ten movies which were "ruined by women." Number two on the list was any iteration of Romeo and Juliet. ("Without fucking Juliet, you've just got guys kicking each others asses!") "You are fucking insane, Warren," Eric moaned. The wife by this time had her forehead in her palms. "Warren, you can never talk about this list to any woman you want to sleep with," I said. "The misogyny is horrible. Are you crazy?" Then I informed him, "Anyway, you really fucked up by leaving out Gangs of New York."

"OH FUCK! How could I miss that?"

Bar talk is important. It shows you your friends' true faces.

The other day, my friend Jonah was preparing to leave the bar. For some reason, the word "nutrageous" was uttered in the course of conversation.

"I haven't had a Nutrageous in a long time!" he exclaimed. "I'm totally going to buy one." I farted moodily into my barstool.

Twenty minutes later, I received a text from Jonah. "Operation Nutrageous was an unparalleled success." I read this and whooped. I immediately texted him back to explain that "nutrage" was going to be my new euphemism for a male orgasm. I also explained this latest strategic plan to Eric and the wife. I provided hypothetical examples.

" 'Feel the fury of my nutrage!' is what I'm going to say." Eric chuckled and gripped the bar a little more tightly. The wife was back to cradling her head in her hands.

This says something about me, I suppose. I just prefer to not think about what that is.

The wife and I took Monday and Tuesday off this week; Monday was our sixth anniversary! Thank you, thank you. That's six solid years of faithfully not fucking other dudes, except for the four or so times I blew those guys at Volunteer Park. But way to go, wife, as far as I know!

We had a couple options as the date approached, both of which we'd done before: Oregon Coast or Whidbey Island. We opted for the latter, mainly for this reason: it was a lot closer. It's clear we're getting old. "You want a refill on your glass of wine, or would you prefer to stay motionless?" "I prefer to remain sedentary." "I concur." (They do not move.)

We did splurge a bit on accomodations and made reservations at the Inn at Langley, a magnificent establishment that welcomed us and our credit cards with a room with a fireplace, a windowed whirlpool tub, and a hardwood patio that with its three-story beachside view practically invited us to dump a body over the side, which we promptly did the first time housekeeping bothered us at 10:30 AM, wondering if we were ever going to leave so they could give us more toilet paper.

Apart from the gorgeous inn, our stay did not really get off to an auspicious beginning. The two-doors down tavern was shuttered with a mysterious "CLOSED UNTIL SUMMER" sign. Langley is nothing if not capricious about business hours, but that was a bit much. We pounded on the doors energetically, but were rewarded with nothing but a muffled silence and possibly slight creaks as angles were bent out of true by the coastal winds. The building dates to something like 1908 and looks like your grandfather's teeth; a spirit level is nearly required just to get your beer to the table. I hope someone's going to fix the old place up before it just slides into the ocean.

We instead made our way to the Edgecliff Bar & Grill just up the road a ways. A couple of local duffers were watching the Mariners play their peculiarly dumpy brand of ball (the AL West: May Require Goggles) and commenting acidly: "Who the fuck is this guy?" (Guy grounds into a double play.) "Never mind." I can't tell you how much better it is hearing stuff like this rather than hearing Mike Blowers' run-over oboe intonations.

But this was only a momentary respite. We then went off in search of food. The tavern being closed, we were denied salty fried things, and also giant squid attacks, and so we went across the street to the innocuously-named "Mike's Place." You know, I can't say we weren't warned right from the start. For one thing, Mike's Place has its own generally deserted ice cream counter. There is almost nothing more depressing than a completely barren ice cream counter. I imagined Archie Andrews sitting there, desolate and alone, raising a pistol to his head.

Our waitress greeted us at our table. "Can I get you something to drink?" The wife asked about their wine selection. "Oh, we don't serve alcohol here."

Don't even "family" restaurants--which Mike's assured us it was right on the menu--offer a fucking beer for poor Dad to drink so he doesn't run out and fuck his secretary on his new motorcycle? We sagged a little. (Our bartender friend Eric contends convincingly that they must have been busted at some point and lost their liquor license; the fact that they run a "trivia night" in the back--on the night we were there, actually--sort of backs him up. Who does a bar trivia night without alcohol?)

Wife sensibly ordered the fish and chips, but did also ask for a garden salad; I ordered the french dip (or, in Mike's grandiose parlance, the "Prime Dip"). And a couple of soft drinks.

The waitress reappeared seconds later to explain that they were sold out of the Prime Dip. This made complete sense to me, as we were two of the six people who actually were in town at the time. Whatever. Mike's menu mentions that you can get breakfast "all the time," so I had a "fuck it" moment and just asked for bacon and eggs and toast and hashbrowns and purple melted crayon jelly and also my original salad, which no longer made much sense, but, oh, fuck it, as I said. The howling emptiness of the ice cream counter was starting to weigh on my psyche.

The salads came out first. Fine. Dressing came on the side in the little plastic cups that always make me think of prostate medicine (for some reason; I'd like to emphasize that my prostate is, as far as I know, stupendous). We gnawed the begreased leaves agreeably.

Then the entrees came. I sighed at the sight of my bacon, which resembled tiny deck planks; the eggs, however, looked just fine. Then I looked over at the wife's alleged "fish and chips," and felt myself falling down the rabbit hole.

Here's all I can figure: the waitress must have interpreted the wife's garden salad order as "instead of the chips," because there were no fries at all. What she received was a tiny little saucer with about six little fried fishlet chunks dumped unceremoniously atop it along with a little cup of tartar sauce. She stared at this meager spectacle while the waitress asked, "Can I get you anything else? Salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard--" because, mmmm, fish and mustard; "--vinegar . . . "

"Yes, vinegar, please!" cried my girl. I rapped my bacon against my plate rim and contemplated its implacable juicelessness. "We are not seasoned at all," my hashbrowns trilled to me, and they were unfortunately correct. The wife continued to wait for her vinegar. "Maybe if I eat this really slowly," she said, chewing delicately.

We never saw our waitress again.

I don't want to sound like we had a bad time; we didn't. I mean, Mike's Place wasn't great, but it got better. We ended up having a nightcap at a really splendid place called Prima. And the Inn at Langley, while pricey, is really fantastic. We also fucked a lot, and that always seems to improve one's mood. It beat the hell out of Volunteer Park.

A MESSAGE FROM THE CDC:

Human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection have been identified in the United States. Human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection also have been identified internationally. You're all going to die, probably tomorrow. Everyone is encouraged to masturbate before the end times arrive. Hail Dagon, the fish-god! I dreamed that whole hideous crawl, and can yet feel the ooze sucking me down!

An investigation and response effort surrounding the outbreak of swine flu is ongoing. But we've got nothing. [Image of CDC investigator turning out his empty pockets and shrugging.] See? You're fucked.

CDC activated its Emergency Operations Center to coordinate the agency's response to this emerging health threat and yesterday the Secretary of the Department Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, declared a public health emergency in the United States. So don't worry, citizens. We have deployed someone named Janet. But what can she do? She's just a girl.

It doesn't matter. [The CDC begins openly weeping.] I want a lollipop, mother. [The CDC pulls itself together.]

CDC has issued a number of interim guidance documents in the past 24 hours. Take that, flu! Documents! In addition, CDC's Division of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) is releasing one-quarter of its antiviral drugs, personal protective equipment, and respiratory protection devices to help states respond to the outbreak. So one quarter of you will be given debatably effective drugs, and the other three quarters will be given not-debatably useless cloth masks and ossified chicken legs. In these stressful times, Janet recommends voodoo prophylaxis.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO STAY HEALTHY

Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it. Do not eat used tissues. Do not rub the tissues into your sister's eyes, unless it's pretty funny.

Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. DO NOT wash your hands after you take a shit. Dude, that was your ass. Don't even look at your hands. Pretend you have no hands. Type with your chin.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Also your spouse. You don't know where that skeeze has been. And finally, Barry in HR. That fumbling man-whore would fuck a rotten peach. Barry is also a profligate drooler.

The 1918 pandemic strain has polymorphism from swine and human H1N1 in all eight gene segments. Similar swapping of polymorphism in human co-infected with season and swine H1N1 can lead to rapid evolution. Avoid swine, humans, evolution and polymorphism. Jewish isolationist Republican werewolves may be immune to H1N1.

Don't forget to masturbate! We all die alone. It's okay if you're a little sticky.

You know what you probably don't get much of? ESTONIAN COMMENT SPAM! But I get it! Lots of it! I have no idea what the dude is saying, but I think I recognize the phrase "turkey hump," which my grandmother used to babble endlessly about before she went insane and died. Or maybe that was while she was going insane. Perhaps she was always insane; she did used to croon "Tiny Bubbles" to me as a child, which would explain a lot. No defenseless kid needs to have unstable grandmothers howling Don Ho songs about champagne into his face.

Anyway, this is the sort of brain damage that leads someone to post vicious comments about movies that he has no intention of seeing in the theaters. Let's roll!

Earth

When did polar bears become a common trope for piously earthing shit up? I guess we're starting at the beleaguered poles and working our way up to the Equator. Makes sense, I guess--penguins and polar bears, SAVE THE EARTH!--but of course that just makes assholes like me go "Well, wake me up when the otter die-offs start."

Look for 2011 for the sizzling sequels "Wind" and "Fire." Say, how come Air always takes it up the ass?

Obsessed

Here's an example of a film that they just should have folded with the name, like Unfaithful. What more do you need to know? I think I'd be more intrigued by something called Bowling or Mumbly-Peg. So someone is obsessed. WHOO! It doesn't help that that someone appears to be Beyonce, and even less so that Jerry O'Connell appears to be involved in the equation. I'll go ahead and advance my argument--which I have been developing for years--that in any Jerry O'Connell equation, he comes out as negative b. Solve for x and you get Ali Larter. This is why everyone hates math.

State of Play

This is sort of the flip side of something as terrible as Obsessed, title-wise. Trading in thunking obviousness for dimwitted nonspecificity, State of Play opts for a faux-moodiness that, semi-formidable cast aside, it probably will not earn. The producers could have easily opted for the title Plate of Stay and retained the same amount of unearned gravitas, but then again, that was probably the working title when they were filming Marley and Me.

But who knows? I'm happy to be wrong. Tony Gilroy is one of the writers, and he has given me much joy with his Bourne movies and the estimable Michael Clayton. On the other hand, he has drained joy from my life with such atrocities as The Cutting Edge and Armageddon, which is perhaps the most aptly named movie ever made. Then again, he also wrote The Devil's Advocate, which is so frothingly insane that it makes me think of other insane things, like "BJ and the Bear," which contains neither 1. blowjobs nor 2. bears. Basically, people like Tony Gilroy are why I don't sleep at night and instead pace around while screaming.

The Soloist

CHECK THIS SHIT OUT, YO

Robert Downey Jr.
Catherine Keener
Jamie Foxx
Stephen Root

That's three really talented white actors turning up to help out a schizophrenic black cellist! Most films would only spring for one noble white person. I commend the filmmakers for their commitment to really mobilizing caring white people who only want to help the black insane musical homeless community. It's almost as if it's straight out of Hollywood.

Fighting

Sleeping.

Crank: High Voltage

I have been chewing my hands off waiting for this fucking thing. "He was dead . . . but he got better." COME ON! If you don't want to see this, then you are dead inside, or possibly Amy Smart's immediate family. But seriously, what's not to love? It has BAI LING! If you don't read Go Fug Yourself, you rightfully might not know who she is, but all you need to know is that if you put her names together, you get "bailing," and that's pretty fucking awesome. What? You need more? Okay, well try this on for size, cowboy: it also has David Carradine playing a character named "Poon Dong." Still not sold? Two more words: Corey Haim.

*screams*

FOR GOD'S SAKE, PEOPLE! You lapped up defibrillation parties like Moulin Rouge like nobody's business! Jim Broadbent gets played in gay disco bars thanks to that! Does that make any sense to you? What the fuck are you sneering at? You don't want to see Jason Statham fuck Amy Smart in a hippodrome? You're damaged. I can't even talk to you.

Go ahead. Go watch The Soloist. You'll be the only ones there. We'll catch you next time at Iron Man 2. That's the one where Robert Downey Jr. gets gobbled by Gwyneth Paltrow at the county dump. Sweet!

A month or so ago, I attended a poker tournament at my friend Will's. I ended up winning the thing, beating out, among others, a professional poker dealer; this was mainly due to outlandishly freakish luck. By way of example, the last hand of the night--against the poker dealer--had him going all-in against my straight flush. (Early in the game, I managed to knock Will out first, who had sensibly put in all his money with pocket aces, which I promptly cracked with an improbable trip sevens.) It was thoroughly disgusting for everyone involved who wasn't me, and I received a well-deserved earful about it. It was like a diseased hamster showed up at a magic convention and made Australia disappear.

Last Friday, we had round two. It was, by and large, the same lineup as the last time with a few exceptions; a couple guys from the first one had been driven clinically insane by their absurd, existential loss to me before and were chewing on their arms locked up in Arkham. Joining us in their stead was Will's girlfriend Julea, a fairly driven woman who had been playing thousands of hands online, including her phone. Present as well was Jake, the affable dealer; Tony, who plays with a kind of stoner gentleness that almost makes you forgive his supernatural knack for sucking you out on wildly improbable river draws; Warren, a voluble and volatile ur-competitor who is given to howling epithets like "You're going to taste my shoe polish in the back of your throat when we're done!"; Kevin, another gentle soul who should probably take up some other game not involving cards (he went out holding absolutely nothing--I mean it; his final hand, when revealed, was like a terrible pointillist painting. It was utterly senseless close up, but even backing away from it, it still looked like a chaotic mess. He might have actually had a Rules for Contract Bridge card in there, I think).

The game began horribly enough, with the glitteringly predatory Julea staring us down like a hyena regarding several abandoned corpses. She took down an early huge pot with a miserable pair of sevens (I had nines, god dammit), and then later fixed me with a truly frightening smile as she called my fairly massive bet based on my made flush. She turned over her full house, and I thought, You are being killed by a tiny little girl, but fortunately, it's the sort of thing you're used to.

In the meantime, Warren spent a wild three hands in a row with Tony, and Tony ate his fucking lunch on every one of them. Now, you have to realize that Warren is an intense, competitive fellow even when money isn't on the line. So you can imagine how well it went over when Warren turned over a Q-5 to make trip queens and Tony then lazily flipped over hiis Q-6 . . . and the kickers played. Tony blinked owlishly, not sure what the outcome was. "Is it . . . is that a chop pot?" he asked innocently. "NO, YOU FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER!" screamed Warren, leaping up from his chair and, for reasons best not inquired about, embracing a nearby bookcase. He looked like a surrealist's Pieta. "QUEEN SIX, MOTHERFUCKER! ARE YOU BLIND?" Warren hopped around a bit and then paced, as if nervous motion would turn back time and allow him to pull back his chips and poison Tony before the previous deal.

Eventually Warren sat back down and adopted the red-eyed stare of a man preparing to climb a bell tower. "Awkward," whispered Will, and then Julea promptly sacked the room again with yet another hideous straight. I stared at my dwindling chips and sipped a whiskey; Will hollered encouragement to his girlfriend; Warren sat tightly, his entire body a series of mistuned piano strings. Tony, unconcerned as ever, murmured something about having to go see his girlfriend and said he'd be back in a few minutes: "Just go ahead and take my blinds." Kevin, long since having nonsensed his way out of the game, was content to occasionally cut the deck when needed.

Eventually, I got knocked out on some terrible hand that I felt obliged to go all-in on and was called by approximately every person at the table and some random telephoners from New Hampshire that had learned of my awful hand; I got slaughtered. Fortunately, we had decided that everyone was allowed one re-buy back in that would give you half the chips you started with. Everyone at the table ended up using the re-buy except for Julea, who continued her implacable mission to destroy us all; only laconic Tony and his preternatural life-draining draw luck could match her; I suspect he is an incubus.

For my part, I had to be cautious. Facing such strong chip stacks, I became, for a time, very conservative, playing only strong hands. Fortunately for me, right about this time, I started catching cards again. Ace-queen brought me some money, as did a blessed pair of kings. Grotesquely, around this time, I also managed to catch a grisly quad sevens, which provoked dark muttering; fortunately, Warren was not in that hand, because I think he might have bled out of all of his orifices and then destroyed Tokyo.

Then I knocked out Warren. Warren had been drinking nothing but Amstel Light all night, citing past poker failures as being caused by his profligate intake of whiskey. Warren, it must be said, took it as amiably as possible given the circumstances. "Is it time for whiskey now, Warren?" we cautiously asked. "Yes," he replied. "Yes, it fucking is." His mood immediately improved.

A funny thing was happening. I was building my stack quietly, still catching pretty decent cards. I folded when I wasn't in the blinds, for the most part, unless I had some monster, and Julea . . . her stack was slowly being reduced. A few hands later, Tony bit the dust, his stoner luck finally ground out when someone switched out one of his hole cards with the six of cups from a Tarot deck and he didn't notice. This left Julea and myself. And a few hands later, she was out.

Yeah, I won again. Two for two. And I again want to reassert this: I'm terrible. I generally have no idea what I'm doing, I am never reliably sure of what my opponent might be holding, and I'm pretty sure I'm about as difficult to read as a billboard. And yet I've lucked into two wins in a row. This won't last, if only because if it ever happens again, my fellow poker players will mount my head on a pike and hang a sign on it out in the yard which reads: "OH MY FUCKING GOD FUCK THIS TOOL."

So I am loathed. I am also $150 richer. It's so totally worth it.

Where was I? Sorry for the teaser last night, but I quickly realized that I was literally too tired to type. So I quit and went to bed. Because THAT'S WHAT HEROES DO. They get tired and quit.

Anyway! So there Eric and I were, feeling like complete frauds, wandering amongst the Monopoly-looking dudes, many of whom, we noted, had actually brought their own tasting glasses. Some of these snifters were--I'm not kidding--the size of fishbowls. Eric sneered at them and I just felt embarrassed. These snifters would literally hold a liter of liquid, and we were at a tasting event where pretty much every bottle had a pour regulator on them so that they would dispense only a few milliliters of liquid; some of the scotches there to be tasted go for upwards of $200 a bottle. So these dumbfucks were carrying around these ridiculous tanks only to have them occasionally splashed with a tiny amount of liquid whose aromas would struggle vainly to reach their noses.

We got to brass tacks quickly, immediately picking up our non-aquarium sized tasting glasses and dashed giddily into the first of three tasting rooms. Eric spotted a table for Famous Grouse. "Have you ever had that?" he asked me, and I said that I hadn't. "That shit is all over England. Order a fuckin' scotch in London, you're getting Famous Grouse." I've been to London a couple times, and that's never been my experience, but I didn't care. "You want some?" I asked. "Fuck no," he replied. "That shit has killed me a thousand times." He stood there for a moment, staring silently at their sign. "All right, let's go over there," he said eventually.

He's right; it's not too good. But of course there was much more.

I won't give you the whole laundry list of scotches, but maybe just a few. We did spend much of the night searching for the Glenmorangie table with increasing anxiety; it's one of our favorite distilleries. We finally located them--they lacked signage for some reason--and sampled their ridiculously heavenly Nectar D'Or, which gets finished in Sauternes barrels. Glenrothes' 1985 vintage was like getting thirty-six handjobs from a mermaid all at once. Japanese distillery Suntory brought an 18-year Yamazaki that we kept furtively coming back to sample, like teenaged boyfriends returning to visit dextrous, indefatigable, willing mermaids. I may be stretching this simile too far.

Oh, and there was swag to be had. When we registered, we got a little poker chip that was exchangable for a Ziploc bag that contained three cigars, a cigar guillotine and a box of matches. Now, I don't know shit about cigars; they've never really been my bag, and so apart from bachelor parties and various Vegas trips, I hardly ever have them. I have no idea about them, but we received one Romeo Y Julieta, one Saint Luis Rey, and one Playboy branded cigar. This I found amusing. I don't really have any opinion or comment on all the familiar psychosexual jokes that arise from sticking a large cylinder in your mouth and then sucking on it for a long time, but it's hard not to think about when you're lighting up a Playboy penis. In fact, I lit it up on Sunday night, just to, you know, experiment, man. I sucked and sucked, and then I left it on our patio and it got rained in. So I don't know what that all means, but I'm COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF.

Throughout the rest of the night, we simply wandered like the happy children that we were, sampling our way through 80+ scotches. At various points, Eric recognized other bartenders in attendance, greeting them warmly--Seattle bartenders are all apparently well acquainted. And not that they were tough to spot: many of them took the loosest possible interpretation of the phrase "jacket required." One guy was wearing a windbreaker; another was wearing a hideous vintage houndstooth horror that I'm pretty sure he peeled off a cadaver; the overall effect was like Holden Caulfield after spending a night out rolling in filth.

Oh, there was also the buffet dinner. It was like every buffet dinner ever given out in the history of man, despite the relative opulence of the Rainier Club, which features a fireplace of a size suitable for a Viking funeral. Long tables piled with warmer trays filled with dispiriting things like dour penne in cream sauce, vegetable medleys and grey surrendered pork loin. Eric had rounded out our table with the variously disheveled other bartenders he had found, and, unsurprisingly, they ate like starving Huns.

Eventually, after a couple hours, things had to come to an end. We finished up at the Dewar's table--whose rep had supplied Eric with the comp tickets in the first place--and sampled a surprisingly good blend that apparently you can only get by performing twelve heroic tasks, such as altering a river's course, or eating eggplant. The guy kept it under the table so the plebes wouldn't grab at it. As things were wrapping up, we made plans to meet the fellow at Vessel, a downtown Seattle bar a few blocks away.

Here's the thing about downtown Seattle. After about seven o'clock, it rolls up and dies like a mayfly. Downtown Seattle is simply not your kind of destination neighborhood, even on a Friday night at nine o'clock. So we had the upstairs sitting room all to ourselves. A bunch of the guys from Vessel had been at the event anyway, and so came up to talk to Eric about the various scotches and to discuss cocktail minutiae. I clinically noted that one of Vessel's gimmicks is that they have a machine that will carbonate virtually any drink--I resisted the bleak, twisted urge to ask them to carbonate a Bailey's or something, and instead ordered a Toronto and listened idly to the bartenders prattle on about arcane drinks like Grimacing Apes and Take A Dump In Purples or whatnot.

We weren't drunk, despite all the booze talk. The scotch samples were way too small for that . . . or so you'd think. After about fifteen minutes, the bar began to fill up. Funny; lots of assholes in suits! Yeah, it was all guys from the scotch tasting. They were wasted; they must have utterly blitzed those tables for two hour straight. That or they were the most pathetic lightweights ever to be beheld. One of them fumbled with the drink menu while the server stood by patiently; he stared at it owlishly for a time.

"What's yer scotches here?" he asked. "You gonna carbonate that shit, or what?" he joked.

Eric passed me a look and then flagged another server. "We'll tab out now."

Last week, here's what happened. I was hanging out at my favorite bar when their Bacardi rep showed up. He offered my bartender--a fine fellow named Eric--a ticket to a single-malt scotch event hosted by the "Scotch Malt Whisky Society of America, Lt." Eric immediately asked him for another ticket, casually and laconically, and received one from the rep. He then called out over the bar: "Skot, do you wanna go to a scotch tasting held by industry?"

I tried not to have a stroke. "Yes," I replied neutrally.

"You available next Friday?" he asked. "Yes," I said again. I continued to sit quietly.

"Okay."

This last Friday, I went to the Single Malt Scotch Whisky Society of America, Ltd.'s Seattle get-together held at the fancy-schmancy Rainier Club. Co-sponsored by the "Robb Report," whatever that is. "Regular" tickets are supposed to go for $130.

It was, wonderfully, a "jacket required" affair, which, on the West Coast, is a complete joke. Over here, you wear shorts to funerals. But there we were, me and Eric, who met up at a McCormick & Schmick's for a beer, attired in suits; we might as well have been wearing zebra costumes. Eric is six and a half feet tall, so he was looking like a superhero; I am nearly a foot shorter than him, meaning that I looked like an unemployed shoe model.

Once at the event, things proceeded alarmingly apace. When Eric presented our credentials--mine completely falsified--we were directed to the "center lane." There was nobody else in the center lane. We breezed by sixty or so people in one quick dash, and bathed in their appalled gazes. Eric jerked his shoulders proudly, and then we were in the maw of the beast, surrounded by strange besuited beasts and their appalling trophy chicks.

I heard things like this (okay, not really)::

"My cravat is unstoppable.
"I really think that monocles are coming back.
"Smile! Your tits really bounce when you smile."

More later.