Long awaited recap of D.C.

So I should have wrote this a long time ago but I didn't so here we are at last. Well, D.C. was a lot of fun. I flew into Dulles Thursday night. I ordered a town car to pick me up from the airport since downtown D.C. was so far away. It was quite the adventure b/c after talking with the driver for awhile, I noticed he was only going around 45. I guess I wouldn't have thought anything of it except for the fact that we were on the fucking highway. After further inspection, I am pretty positive that he was drunk. I guess the dead giveaway was the swerving and the phantom car that he yelled at that flew by him. He asked me if I saw any car and I said I didn't know what he was talking about. What a crazy asshole. Then he was talking about how the wife should always respect the husband and do whatever he says and I basically tuned him out while I smoked a cigarette just saying "yeah" once in awhile so I wouldn't come across completely rude. Plus, I didn't want to anger him or anything in case he decided he was going to pull a Vanilla Sky on my ass.

I arrived to the hotel to find Hokey, KZ and the Zoomeye in the lobby. We went upstairs, threw our shit down and met with Chew who proceeded to take us to 18th Street Lounge which was basically a glorified house party with no keg off the porch with expensive drinks and no people. After painfully hanging out there for a couple drinks we headed over to Ozio. I met up with Stacey's friend who was completely wasted by the time we got there. The thing about D.C. was that there was a cover at every place, even on Thursday nights and all they played was top 40 hip hop. As you can imagine, I found this very annoying. Plus, I don't think I payed under $8 for a drink. Typically, I wouldn't mind that kind of price but the place better justify the cost which many of the places did not. So Hokey ended up meeting this one girl who he's actually going to visit within the next couple weeks. She was way cool so I'm hoping the best for him. Her name was Massa as in "yes, massa". We left Hokey at Ozio and proceeded to try to find some late night places but all we came across was 5 just down the street which we ended up not even going in b/c we heard there was a cover and no one in the place. We took a cab back and ordered some pizza. I went outside just to take a little walk just to see what our surroundings were like and who's sitting there eating his empenada outside of the hotel but Hokey. Apparently he got a ride home from a 250 lb black woman who was a prostitute. Sweeeeet. Well, at least that was better than getting a ride home with the biggest con men I've ever come across... aka. DC Cabbies. I bet Mr. T never acted like that in D.C. Cab. Yeah, these guys have the biggest racket going. They don't have meters in the cab. They tell you a price and that's what you pay. If you argue it, they point to a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers on it and then that's supposed to make everything ok. Anyone can point to a piece of paper with numbers on it, I don't understand how that justifies anything. I swear I would get a ride from to a place and get a separate cab for the ride home and sometimes the difference in price was around $10. Doesn't make any sense.

Friday, we woke up early and went to Arlington Cemetary... simply amazing. We saw JFK's burial site, the Challenger tribute site and the changing of the guard for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was a brisk, bright, clear day and it really made the cemetary come to life so to speak. I think the tour guide said there were around 25 burials a day at Arlington. Are you kidding me? That number is ridiculously large! We then went to the International Spy Museum which was alright. Very interactive in the beginning and then just sort of fizzled out towards the end. It was also information overload. I'm not used to being bombarded with new information like that everyday and by the time I was done with the Spy Museum my head was spinning.

We did get to ride the Metro everywhere we went and I have to say that was one of the most impressive parts about DC. There were a lot of impressive sights in DC but riding the El everyday made me have an even greater appreciation for the Metro. In fact, I'm not as big of a fan of the El now that I have ridden in the lap of luxury better known as the Metro. First, it's really clean, I didn't see any garbage. Every car is carpeted. I didn't see any homeless people. Even the clientele seem more exclusive. I love how I just referred to public transportation riders as clientele but as you can see, this is how impressed I was. The stations all looked very cool in the aesthetic sense. The trains ran quiet. But the best part of all was at every station there was a screen that said in how many minutes the next train was coming, what line it was and how many cars were on the train. How awesome is that? I think about the Metro every time I'm on the shitty El now, especially when you walk into a car and that faint smell of urine is hanging in the air.

Anyways, after the Spy Museum we went to a brewery that was right across the street to grab something to eat. Everything was good except for our extremely poor and very flaming, gay waiter. We then headed back home to shower quickly and then went to 1223 for their happy hour special. This included a $20 cover for you-call-it from 5 til 9. Jesus, that was dangerous and we got into some rowdy drinking. That's where Hokey met the one girl who invited him to Superbowl. That's where Nick met that one girl who was Korean and German and was pretty hot. She was cool too, she knew her Napoleon Dynamite which is always a plus. I danced like an ass after 4 hours of boozing it up to Jock Jamsesque songs, bought people shots, took stupid pictures, had some laughs... it was a pretty good time.

The one bartender who looked like the po' man's version of Keanu Reeves with long hair was a complete asshole. In fact he told Hokey when it came to making us wait for 20 min for our last free drink and then trying to charge us b/c it was after 9... "I'm from Chicago and we don't do things that way". Hokes responded "That's funny, b/c I'm from Chicago, where are you from?" This douche say "Joliet". What a jerk, are fucking serious, Joliet??? It's about 1.5 hours outside of Chicago. Plus, Hokes did 2 yrs of J.Co down there. So after making fun of this guy, he split the drinks with us which was still unacceptable. But that bartender did get his later that night... Karma's a bitch. I guess this shithead went to the public bathroom in the bar and cut everyone in line without saying anything. Of course there had to be around 20 guys in line. So this Rican jumps out and smashes him in the face with a beer bottle. All of sudden I'm standing there and this bloody mess goes running by me bitching to his bouncer friends that someone hit him. We were laughing our asses off.

After leaving 1223, it was too late to go anywhere else except to the empanada stand to grab some much needed grub. Nick got some fruit filled stuffed pastry so as he was wolfing it down I decided to bring this to these girls attention who were standing next to me. It involved me saying something like "look at that guy, what a slob" or something equally as stupid. As I proceeded to make fun of him, I could tell he was getting upset which only made me want to antagonize even more. So as anyone could have guessed, he retaliated. He ended up pushing me, unfortunately, I got pushed into the girls. I didn't knock them down or anything and I was extremely apologetic but some Mr. Hip Hop, 5 ft nothing, mexi-trash got all riled up "cuz we fuk'd wit hiz bitches". Man, this guy doesn't even know how close he was to getting destroyed, especially with no back. It was pretty funny though, he got all in Nick's face and Nick didn't take one break from eating his empanada as he stared him down. The guy at one point even tried to throw a punch and Nick just blocked his hand and told him not to throw it in slow motion anymore. Mexi-trash was pullling the ole hold-me-back routine behind his women b/c he knew he was about to get a beat down. Anyways, the girls eventually pulled him away which is what he was praying for to happen. This one guy came up and said "I can't believe you just dogged that guy without even saying one word, even though he was talking all that trash, everyone could tell he was scared". I barely saw any of it b/c as I learned in Sept, it's always better to be looking over everyone's back to make sure no one's going to sucker punch you. So I basically didn't pay any attention that douche while I surveyed the crowd. Better safe than sorry.

Sat night to come another time, I'm tired of writing about this for now.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Saw that movie last night with Jim Carrey and what's her face from the Titanic. I guess I didn't know what I was walking into but what an amazing movie. Something that I haven't figured out yet really hit home for me when I was watching it. It's all about a couple who has troubles and instead of working things out, the woman (damn, what's her name?), Clementine in the movie, goes to a specialist who removes any memory that ever existed about her ex, Joel. Joel finds out about this and in turn, goes to the same specialist to have his memory removed of her. This process takes place while one is asleep. What makes this movie so cool is that most of it takes place within his memories of her. As he relives the memories while asleep, he realizes that she is being erased from his mind. This is shown through objects/people disappearing in the background and eventually she disappears and he goes to a different place in his mind. After awhile he doesn't want to forget her and he attempts to save her from being permanently deleted by hiding her in other memories that originally didn't involve her. Unfortunately, by the time he wakes up, she has been completely deleted. He wakes up for work as he would do everyday, this day happened to be Valentines Day. As he's at the train platform, something comes over him and he rushes for this other train that goes to... somewhere that starts with an M. He goes for a walk on the beach where he thinks he's never been just ro reflect. Clementine is there doing the same thing. They become reaffiliated with one another only to realize through another subplot in the movie that they used to be in love with one another. I guess my favorite part is after they realize they probably won't work together in the long run, they still decide to do it over again b/c having that deep feeling for another person is worth it all the pain and torture when things are over.

I was hoping to find what I was truly feeling if I wrote a recap of that movie. Unfortunately I don't how to explain it. I think it has to do with unconditional love and the point that you never know what you had until its gone. Don't take anything, especially love, for granted. Most everything can be worked out and it's worth it in the long run. I'll have to watch that movie again, it stirred up a lot of feelings that haven't been around in awhile.