Free Booze: The reason for the season

Who else is excited about Christmas? Anyone? Okay, who else is excited about having the next five (or more) days off and getting embarrassingly drunk for most of that duration? Alright, that’s better. As it is for many of you out there, today is my last day of work. I have to work for a couple of days late next week too, but those days won’t be much other than an exercise in some early morning drunk driving. Hey, I don’t want to break the law but I’m a dedicated employee who’s willing to do whatever’s necessary to make sure the glue stick factory I work at maintains maximum efficiency during the holidays. I mean, these horses aren’t going to slaughter themselves now, are they?

With all that said, I’m going to limit today’s post to some minor items that have been on my mind lately, as well as a short discussion on the beauty of Xmas parties.

Xmas parties are awesome. Sure, they can get awkward and most of us would much rather be drinking by ourselves, I mean, with friends but can you really get too bent out of shape about free booze and food? I hope not. Like many of you, I’ve had to attend a number of Xmas parties in the last couple of weeks. While I won’t get into a discussion of the dynamic of Xmas parties or specific details about all the parties I’ve attended, I’d like to draw special attention to a couple of the more stellar parties I’ve been to during this blessed season. First, special thanks go out to my girlfriend’s family for inviting me to their restaurant’s Xmas party this past Sunday. It was…awesome. It was a pretty low key atmosphere with no more than about a dozen people in attendance. Which worked out well since the party basically consisted of free beer, wine, booze and lobster. Boatloads of lobster. I’d say that I ate approximately 5 lobsters on Sunday night. I could’ve eaten more, but I didn’t want to be rude…to the eggplant rollatini that was sitting right next to the lobster. So, I also knocked back about three servings of that as well. I can’t really describe how fantastic it is to eat that kind of food for free but trust me, its really fucking spectacular. I highly recommend dating Italian girls whose parents own fine dining establishments.

While that party was fantastic, it still pales in comparison to my friend Dave’s parents’ party. Well, not the party as much as the after party. Dave’s parents’ party is always an event. His parents are booze hounds of the highest order so it goes without saying that there is always an open bar at their Xmas party. As if that weren’t enough, his parents also happen to be swingers. Yes, you read that right. As you can imagine, this generally leads to some high quality people watching at said party. This year was no different. In fact, it was one of the better years for scoping the ridiculous antics of drunken 40-50 year olds. However, it was all merely a prelude to what awaited us later in the evening.

I like to call Dave the “King of Bullshit”. He’s not so much a liar as he is a chronic embellisher. Everything Dave says is usually at least 25% grander than the reality. So, when Dave informed us he had rented a limo and secured us the VIP section of a local gentleman’s club (for free!), I was skeptical to say the least. However, when 10:30 rolled around on Saturday night, I walked out of Dave’s parents’ house to see a stretch Excursion pulling up in the driveway. Before I knew it, 10 of us were on the road and heading toward a night that can best be summed up by the words of our friend Carl, “Somebody’s going to jail.” Luckily nobody went to jail, though a few guys came close at one point. Within minutes we were walking into the club to see a VIP section reserved for us and three bottles of Grey Goose with our name on it. The rest of the night is quite a blur. I do know that I insisted on buying numerous shots of Jager despite the presence of free booze for all in our party. I also remember telling the girl that our friend Kurt brought with him (What?) to the club that she was a slut, but that I meant that in a good way. I have no idea what that meant but it seemed to go over much better than you’d expect. After that, it’s all one big black and white montage (I become color blind when drunk) of clear heels, bad music, liquor, meatheads and my friends doing enough lindo coffee to kill a water buffalo. Which is probably why Kurt told me I “bailed early” despite the fact that I didn’t go to bed until nearly 3:30 am. You can say a lot of things about my friends but you can’t say they aren’t in the Xmas spirit. I mean, just think how many toys they bought for all the children of those good young mothers that night. So, after all this rambling you’re probably wondering why I told you all of this. Well, because I have my office Xmas party today and I guarantee you it won’t be half as fun as either of these. Not even close.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s a smattering of other random things that I wanted to touch on:

- If you don’t know who Jake Scott is (I didn’t either) then take 15-20 minutes to read this article by David Hyde that ran last week in the South-Florida Sun Sentinel. It’s a great article on an extremely interesting and unique former athlete.

- I don’t generally watch BET, not since they stopped using that computer animated girl named Cita to introduce videos. However, my new favorite show is on the channel that I’m not supposed to and you ought to give it a look see over the holidays. If you love stories about crime, drugs and murder (my personal holy trinity) then you’ll really enjoy American Gangsta.

- I’ll be the first to say that Pacman Jones is an awful, awful human being. However, he also happens to be a damn fine corner and return man. He’s as responsible for the Titans late season surge as Vince Young is. So can somebody tell me how he doesn’t make the Pro Bowl in any capacity? Please? Anybody? I defy you to find me five better corners in the AFC.

- I’ve made it clear in this space over the last few months how much I enjoy Marcus Thomas’ ability to play football. I’ve even said that I hold no ill will toward him for his dismissal from the Florida football team. I’m not quite sure what I think about him now but I know that he comes off as immature and petty in this article.

- Speaking of the University of Florida football team, they secured a commitment from the nations #1 QB, John Brantley, yesterday. Brantley’s father and uncle (now a Gator broadcaster) played for UF in the 70s and Brantley was coached in high school by former Gator QB Kerwin Bell. Despite these strong connections to Gainesville, Brantley originally committed to Texas this summer. Well, after months of speculation, Brantley finally changed his mind yesterday and committed to Urban Meyer and Florida. Brantley has been named the Gatorade Player of the Year and dominated the annual Elite 11 camp this summer, bringing home numerous awards, including the Leadership award, Most likely to be successful at the next level and Most likely to win a National Championship as well as camp MVP. Interestingly enough, Texas stole a QB commit from Florida last year when Jevan Snead (who’s now transferring to Ole Miss) broke his pledge to the Gators in favor of his home state Longhorns.

Finally, Florida takes on Ohio State on Saturday in basketball in what will be Greg Oden’s first exposure to high level competition at the collegiate level. I have no idea what to expect from his game (other than Dick Vitale, uggh). It should be extremely interesting to watch the interior matchup of Oden vs. Noah & Horford throughout the game. Its definitely the highest profile big man matchup that the college game has seen in 15+ years. However, I think the game will be decided by the guard play. Both Taurean Green and Lee Humphrey have been up and down this year while Mike Conley, Jr. is possibly the nations most underrated freshman. If the Gators pressure D can force Conley to play at a faster pace than he wants and force some turnovers then Florida will win on Saturday. If not, OSU will end up pulling away late and winning by, possibly, double digits.