So I’ve been wanting to see the Dropkick Murphys forever. I know everyone from Boston will find this ridonculous, since y’all can see them like, any frickin day you want, but I live in Houston, and I cannot. So! It’s St. Patty’s 2011 and I’m shipping up to Boston for like, 9 days. Why 9, you ask? Not too long? Cause it’s spring break, dang it! And my job rocks. Also my fabulous brother (I love you, Jballs!) has purchased me tix to see them. Live. In Boston. On St. Patty’s! There’s literally no possible way this could end well…
DISCLAIMER: before anyone with opposing evidence thinks of contradicting the following time-line (and there are many of you)… I’ll be spending the vast majority of the next 9 days drunk off my ass. What follows has been painstakingly reconstructed but, while constituting what may be a fairly decent account of the truth as we know it, I fear it bears no direct resemblance to actual event order…
The Thursday before: I land. I cab. I disembark somewhere downtown. I know this because I know how to get from Logan airport to downtown. My cab-driver… not so much. I fucking hate cab drivers. Moving on. Do not stop, do not pass go, I’m in a bar, baggage and all. We drink. Then we go someplace called Cornhole’s? We find this an extraordinarily entertaining name. We continue drinking. Migrate to a house party. Then we eat the most delicious meat-on-stick products I’ve ever tasted (and I have had A LOT of meats on sticks). They come from the best restaurant in Boston you’ve never heard of: The No. 1 Food. Catchy name, I know. Also they make everything! Nachos, Chinese, tacos, Italian, sushi, Thai, burgers, Mexican, subs, something call “creative combos”??, shit they’ll even sell you 2-liters of coke and some toilet paper till 3 in the morning. I ADORE No. 1 Food. I adore them so much I once refused to take my brother for stitches for a head wound cause my No. 1 Food was on the way. Cause also they deliver.
http://www.theno1foodboston.com/
Friday: I honestly don’t remember a fucking thing we did Friday. I feel quite sure we got drunk though.
Saturday: belated brother b-day bash. This started out well, and I think hit the low point with a conversation I somehow ended up having with some chick named Meredith? (NOT NOT NOT my friend Meredith, who, btw, is NORMAL) who was insisting that she really REALLY wants her bf to get like, super fat (not regular fat, but like, stuck-in-a-bathtub-fat) so he can have a big enough belly roll to donkey-punch her with while she’s blowing him. For real. Also she does a lot of drugs. No, actually, I think the low point occurred here:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/TCS-Lounge/416892105322
(the hands-down best dive bar in Boston, btw), when I saw my brother’s dick. Yup, that’d def be the low point. But don’t worry, it wasn’t in person? Ugh. Then his friend called our mom to tell her about it? I need another vodka shot…
Sunday: I have absolutely no idea what went down Sunday night. I think I got drunk in Cambridge??
Earlier Sunday: I definitely recal a fiasco involving me driving my brother’s convertible through town to get to the Trader Joe’s cause we needed an excessive number of cases of 3-buck-Chuck to promote our excessive drinking without the excessive fee tacked on by The Most Over-priced Fucking City in The Whole World, aka Boston (also cause 3-buck-Chuck is the best wine ever! Well, considering the price-point, that is). We were additionally in need of bottled water, cause my bro is the only living member of a 21st-century first-world nation to have ever contracted something called “giardia”. Yeah, that’s right, he drank the Boston tap, which it turns out is filled with raw sewage, and now has a permanent poop parasite living inside him. I do not now drink Boston tap. Ok! Wine, water, and something to mix with gin have been acquired…
Have we ever driven in Boston? It’s like… Actually I can’t describe it. It’s kinda like driving in the third world, except the people are a lot meaner and the streets make a lot less sense. It’s no wonder Ben Affleck could lose the cops in that movie The Town, I don’t actually know how anyone’s ever reached a destination by car in the city. I mean, I know it’s old, and they built it on a river n shit, so they can’t have straight streets (I honestly think this is just lazy pig-headedness, but whatevs), but still! We’d decided that you need 2 people to drive any single car in Bean-town, as the first must manage simultaneously to: never stop honking, constantly rampage over stupid fucking college kids in unavoidable hit-n-run incidents, and swear vociferously out the window (obscene accompanying gestures optional), thus leaving the second free to navigate. If possible. My solo trip to the store did not go so smoothly as this… So let’s just skip on to Tuesday, I think.
Tuesday: So Jballs is on some date or something, and I’m doing work. That’s right, my job does rock, really, but yes, I’ve still brought my fucking laptop on this trip of death. I’m, let’s say, 20, 25 hours in for the week (although I will in no way vouch for the quality, coherence, or sobriety of the documents I have been producing) and… Virus! Dead! Computer is completely gone. Like, won’t even turn on. At this point I try everything. GeekSquad wants like, $300 for a house visit (and trust me, this piece of shit is not worth $300). Reboot does crap. Crying likewise does not seem to be affecting the health of my machine. As a final resort, Marky Mark the ever-useful roomie suggested we adjourn to Our House, the shit-hole frat hang-out down the street.
It turns out Marky Mark is soooo correct, cause the second we walk in we realize: Tuesday is karaoke night! Worth much much more than a functional laptop and the past week’s worth of work! Now, Our House is not, shall we say, classy. It’s not even “acceptable”. Its carpet has absorbed what appears to be the better part of all the beer ever brewed in this beer-guzzling town. Who the fuck “carpets” a bar anyway? Also, this being FUCKING BOSTON, drinks are still ridiculously expensive. We do not care about any of this, however, because we will be singing the Peas. I mean, we needed a duet! And if these 4 stupid college kids are dumb enough to be in Our House on a Tueday, then they are SO getting serenaded.
I should probably digress here. Some people, in various parts of the world, have heard me sing, and I sincerely apologize for their trauma. One person in the world was so traumatized by my “singing” that he threw a lit cigarette at me, had the music turned off, and boo-d me off the stage. I do not particularly blame him, as I have also heard (via video) myself sing. My fiancé has forwarded his cause of Not Hearing Nina Sing so far that he actually acquired and incubated the scariest death-flu I’ve seen in a while to get out of my last b-day karaoke event. But fuck that! My computer’s dead! I’ve been drunk for 5 days! I’m fuckin singin the Peas, damnit!
Wednesday morning: I awaken. I am not… feeling so hot. Unfortunate, what with the Dropkicks being tonight and all. It seems that I have, however, somehow managed to resuscitate my laptop? I’m pretty sure I fixed it with my iPhone? I don’t really recall how this worked (it took a lot of gin to get me to sing again (which yes, yes I did) after the reception we got with… see? I told you it’s all a mess. I think we may’ve sung Shut Up? That may very well be a lie though), but the fuckin thing is functioning anyway. Success! I feel that calls for some 3-buck-Chuck. So it’s 11am, whatever, we’ll be off to crowd-surf soon enough anywho…
To be cont’d…
offatthewrongstop 