The End is Here

Ever since I started working full time I have seen some changes in me. For starters I haven’t slept past 10:00 am in months even if I’m out till 6 the night before. I’m definitely more care free about little money issues that would typically result in an argument with friends. One change that has severely bothered me is this absolute decrease in my creativity. I don’t know if it’s from just working long hours, running out of stories or just an entire change in my priorities, but I haven’t been able to come up with shit to write in quite some time now. In fact I haven’t even been able to find the motivation to write until tonight. This entry will be the final post on this blog, as I have simply been unable to find the desire and motivation to write for this some may call smut filled product of the information age. I do not regret sharing the stories of my life from my days of impulsive indulgence at college, if any you found them amusing and they made you laugh then I am glad. If any of you saw any of the movies I have recommended solely because of this blog then I am even more proud for I find movies to be truly the last great genre of art in our culture. I want to thank everyone who has ever mentioned to me that they have read this blog and were entertained by it. I started this blog almost a year ago and a little more than 365 days later I find myself calling an end to it. The last thing I will say is to all of you who have ever considered writing, to do it. Writing is the greatest form of expression and it can help you find out a lot about yourself, find closures to unanswered questions in your life, or just overall be a fun thing to do in your spare time. Those are some of the reasons I began writing and created this blog, (that and because 4 straight days of being around Fat’s ex drove me to the door steps of insanity).  So to sign off I like to use a quote from one of my favorite Eminem songs because it defines my entire mindset when it comes to writing, comedy and at times life:

To all the drugs that I’ve done, yeah I’m still gonna do,
To all the people I’ve offended, yeah fuck you too!
To every time I reminisce, yeah I miss my past,
But I still don’t give a fuck, ya’ll can kiss my ass.

Sincerely,

Andy Mark

My 1st Show

I know I have been slacking on the stories lately, you can attribute that to working full time, laziness, or just writer's block whichever you prefer I don't give a shit. However I have been able to keep up the stand up comedy gig at least every now and then, including my first show two Sundays ago in New York City. I haven't felt nervous like I did that night, before going on stage, and being on it since I first started doing stand up. Overall it was one of the most extremely fun and satisfying experience of my life, and below is the link to my performance. Enjoy mofos.

if the video isn't working here's the youtube link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDYawBOpPSg

Irene, You Dirty Damn Whore Part 1

Right now I’m sitting in the guest room at my cousin’s house in Bear Mountain. It’s my 1^st Saturday in off in two weeks and it was going to be one for the ages. My dad won tickets to the Jets vs. Giants preseason game. I know preseason is fucking gay, but I’ve never been to the new stadium, and these were tickets to the mother fucking Lexus club! What’s the Lexus Club you ask? I have no fucking clue, but the face value of the tickets was $350 sooo ITS GOTS TO BE LEGIT. I envisioned stuffing my face at some swanky company box suite, while simultaneously drinking as much beer as I can, flirting with the waitresses who would totally dig me cuz I’m a beautiful bastard, plus obnoxiously reminding every Giant fan that Matt Dodge was their punter last year. As a true diehard Jets fan I can’t describe to you how excited I was for this, and then the shit hit the fan. Hurricane Irene fucked it all up for me, and this is how it went down.

I started working my first full time job the first day of August. It sucked some serious man cock my first two weeks. My mind was so fucking warped at that time, that the first night I got drunk after a day of work, I threatened to burn Fat’s face with this chick’s cigarette. Then again that was mainly because he was welting on a bet to drive my drunk ass to Taco Bell so that would have been my reaction regardless.

Anyways this job has had me working about 10 hours a day and sometimes Saturday but the money’s good and I’m a whore for the dollar so I deal. I have however found myself losing it at times, like yesterday I was trying to figure out how to methodically kill myself at the BJ’s kiosk I was stuck at all day. I had planned on connecting my belt to my tie, and hanging myself that way, but after flirting with some hot moms, the suicidal thoughts passed. That’s basically how my WORK day ended Friday, which was depressing when I look back to how it started out. My manager actually owned up to a bet he made with me earlier that week, which resulted in him buying me a bottle of Jack Daniels, needless to say it was a fantastic start to the day. Unfortunately this would be the sole high and highlight of my day, as this day would soon just get shittier and shittier. The shit-storm began rolling in when my department head pulled up the numbers from Thursday. I thought I was set to have a big day, because I had a lot of appointments going out that day. To make a long story short my job is to go around places like BJ’s and successfully set up people with appointments for free estimates on their windows or roofs, if the appointment (which will be referred to as “sets” for now on) takes place, and demos I make commission. I had four going out on Thursday and NONE of them demoed. This really pissed me off, but that’s just the way it is at that job.

The torrential down pour of crap was just getting started, I was hoping they would put me in a location close to home on a Friday, some place like Freeport. You know where they stuck me that day? Riverhead, the worst fucking location there is. Riverhead licked nuts for two reasons; First off you can’t walk around the store talking to customers casually, because you’re basically chained to a company kiosk at the exit of the store, which makes it a bitch to set people up. And second Riverhead is all the way at the end of the FUCKING LIE, and takes about an hour to get to. So I head out there a little bit agitated yet still optimistic. I didn’t get a single set not one. I was there till fucking 730 and then decided to give up and bounced. Now I am physically exhausted, extremely disappointed and motivated to completely finish my free bottle of Jack Daniels that night.

I invite the guys over to drink and hopefully head out to a bar the last night before the hurricane hits. Once I got home I see my mom packing a ton of shit up and talking about evacuating. Now the shit-storm that was my day has turned into a Category 5 shit-hurricane. I try to calm my mom down and assure her the news was blowing the storm out of proportion. This rush of logical reassurance worked temporarily, until my town gets issued a mandatory evacuation an hour later. That was it that was the final straw; my mom insisted that we leave for my cousins place upstate, for the next two days.

We get up the crack of dawn the next morning, pack all our shit up, try to flood proof the house, keep all the electronics elevated, and then finally flee from my home. It is official I am a refugee, should of known all those Hurricane Katrina jokes would come back to haunt me. By the time I post this I’ll know if I have a home left, or if this was simply the most overhyped storm of all time. All I know is as of now I am a mother fucking refugee.

I wrote the above bit on Saturday morning, it’s now Sunday night and the storm is over. There was some major damage in parts of my town but my house remained unharmed. Ironically my cousin’s house where we were staying at had a power outage. I found out that my house never lost power, so basically the place we evacuated to was worse off than my house. This motivated my dad and I to leave a day earlier than we planned to while my mom stayed. It also led to what was one of the most epic ride homes I have ever had. That however is a story for another day.

 

Smoking Hookah With The Drus

One of the best experiences of my life was when I participated on the Taglit Birthright trip to Israel. I wrote a brief reflection post on this blog about that trip a few weeks after I returned, in which I described the truly deep impact Israel left on me. On a side note if you have the privileged opportunity to participate on the Birthright trip…take it, enough said. For this post I want to share a short story of one of the most entertaining nights I had when I was with the birthright group. This was a truly unique experience that was only made possible by pure chance, motivation to booze in a foreign land, and being at the right place at the right time.

It was the third night of the standard Birthright trip and we were staying at a new Kibbutz out in a desert area of Israel. I unfortunately cannot remember the name of this Kibbutz because I’m a schmuck. Up to this point we had been up for two straight nights boozing, partying, getting to know each other through the use of the great drinking game Kings, hiking, sightseeing, and other various activities. Not to mention a 13 hour flight from which I was still recovering from. When we got to our resting spot in the Kibbutz we were given new roommates. My new roommates were Translator, whose nickname is derived from the story I’m about to share. He was a good dude, a little quiet, but someone who was very easy to live with and get along with. My other roommate was Scalp one of the craziest fuckers I have ever met in my life, at first he reminded me of Slayer from his mannerisms and the fact that he looked and sounded just like him, but the main difference between Scalp and Slayer is that Scalp was an absolute maniac. The one event where this whole insane perception I have of Scalp came to be (in my mind at least) was when we were in Jerusalem. On the second night there the whole group was boozing hard, Scalp especially, and the guy decided to let everyone shave his head, then he went out on his own and explored the streets of Jerusalem BY HIMSELF. I will say this for Scalp though, the guy had a good heart he wasn’t a bad dude, just completely out of his mind.

Now getting back to the story…After dinner everyone settled into their new rooms. Scalp and I are down to keep the party going where as it seemed the majority of our group wanted to stay in for the night and recover from the aforementioned list of activities. However this did not discourage Scalp from trying to find something to do that night besides rest. He easily convinced Translator and myself to follow him into the night. We grab a few of our wine bottles that we had purchased from the Golan Heights Winery the day before and headed out.

We walk past one “cabin” on the Kibbutz where three men not from our group were smoking hookah. As soon as we past them they invite us onto their deck to join in the hookah. Without even discussing it Scalp ran onto the deck, grabbed a hookah hose and began smoking. Translator and I figured we might as well join them after all it was outside in the middle of the Kibbutz. The three guys were very friendly and hospitable, but they really didn’t know that much English, which is why Translator became the MVP of the night. Translator was able to speak the Hebrew/Arabic or whatever hybrid language the guys were speaking pretty damn well and was able to act has the interpreter for the evening. Quite frankly if it wasn’t for Translator, that night would have never played out the way it did.

The three guys belonged to a group of people in Israel known as the Drus. The Drus are a sect of Islamic people who live in Israel and are loyal to the country and I believe have participated in the Israeli army as well, and still maintained their Islamic beliefs and traditions. They had a one hose hookah that was hitting very well and smoothly. While smoking with them I popped open one of my wine bottles, the Drus brought out some glasses and we had an intercultural cheers with our new friends.

The Drus also had their stock of booze as well and shared it with us. After maybe an hour or two of boozing and hookah smoking, We go from the normal “getting to know you” conversation to teaching our new friends (through Translator of course) some of our favorite English words like pussy and cock, and the Drus taught us similar sophisticated words in their language as well. Every time somebody who looked like a chick walked by in the distance one of them would scream “I HAVE BIG COCK FOR YOU!!” or Scalp /I would scream out the Hebrew version of that sentence. We were all dying in laughter and proceeded to drink and smoke more as you can see.

We were running low on booze so two of the Drus went to get more booze and Scalp went with them. At first Translator and I didn’t think much of the situation but then we looked at each other as if to say, what the fuck just happened. A rule of the Birthright group was to never leave the spot where the group is staying, for obvious reasons especially alone. Scalp did not follow these rules, and got into a car with two people we had literally just met three hours ago. Translator and I continued to smoke the hookah and engage in friendly conversation with the one Dru who stayed, while thinking the whole time that Scalp may end up being either: 1) Killed 2) Kicked off of Birthright or 3) Abducted and then killed. I suppose you can blame this paranoia on the media, my own prejudices or the fact that Israel is one of the most conflict ridden areas of the world, take your pick. After what felt like an eternity later Scalp returned with the other two Drus and more fantastic liquor. Once they returned more friends from the Birthright group had gotten word from Scalp about the festivities and came by. Now the Drus were shouting “I have a big cock” to the girls of our group which I found exponentially more entertaining. The girls were cool with it after all they were getting free hookah and booze.

Towards the end of the night the communication between us and the Drus went down like this. Scalp would shout out what he thought was perfect Hebrew to the Drus but was really just drunken gibberish, Translator would try to umm…translate…what he was saying, and I would sit there and say the only Hebrew word I knew “Tov” which meant good.

Once all the booze was gone and both Scalp and one of the Drus were sufficiently shitfaced, aka passing out, we called it a night, and parted ways with our friendly hosts. That whole night really opened my eyes to the true kindness of strangers. I mean it’s not like they saved our lives while putting themselves at risk, but still these complete strangers who didn’t even speak the same language as us welcomed us into their home with open arms and a freshly packed hookah. To me that is the ultimate act of kindness. 

Translator in action

Scalp trying to speak Hebrew

One hell of a night

McMandy vs. Pearl Street: Round 1

The downtown capital district of Albany was always a mystery to me for the first two years of Albany. Mainly because they were all 21+ bars and I was too cheap to buy a fake ID. It really wasn’t until junior year that we started checking it out occasionally and not until senior year that we began to go every Saturday. The one area of the downtown capital district I’m referring to is Pearl Street. Pearl Street is like New York City except smaller, closer together, and A LOT CHEAPER. Turn the right corner on Pearl Street and you can find anything (subtle Sin City quote FTW). The story I’m about to share about Albany’s version of Las Vegas Boulevard is about my first official visit to that magnificent street of debauchery, which of course took place my freshman year and of course involves McMandy.

Spring semester freshman year, the day before our mid February break and I am looking for one more night of boozing before heading home.  None of my fellow Montauk Hall residents were down so I sought out a different group of associates who would be down to get fucked up on a Tuesday night. I contacted my friend from orientation Ging who I had partied with on occasion in that first glorious year at Albany. Apparently Ging and his floormates were heading out to a “new” bar being promoted in Albany’s capital district which was unknown territory to me at that time. That bar was called the Pearl Street Pub and they were offering free transportation to the bar, and incredible drink specials that night. Upon hearing this news I became extremely excited, it sounded so fucking legit and sounded almost too good to be true. Now according to Ging there was going to be a party bus that was going to pick us up from the quad, be supplied with booze, and take us all the way to the pub. Now I may have been naïve and stupid back then, but even I was skeptical about this, but I wasn’t going to complain, I was just down to roll with the night a matra of mine that will inevitably lead to my demise someday.

After shot-gunning a few cans of keystone light, Ging and I began to feel a good buzz. It was moments later that the “transportation” arrived. If you could have guessed it was not a luxurious party bus, but instead two dank vans, with Pearl Street Pub logos on them. Don’t misinterpret this, they didn’t look like rape vans, they looked like taxi vans but kind of rundown. Looking back I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, getting into those vans without question, I guess I just blindly trusted Ging’s crew in making good decisions, blame it on the booze.

We jump into the taxi like vans and started heading to the capital district. My bladder began to betray me, I had maybe four beers, and they were passing through me quickly. I’d been to the capital district one time before back when my dad and I were visiting Albany in the summer, and this was my first time going back since, so I had no idea how long the ride was going to be. With each passing minute the need to piss grew and grew. Finally I caught a break, the second van with the rest of our crew missed a light and we had to pull over to wait for them. I took full advantage of this opportunity and leaped out of the van and started pissing in the snow. One of the most relieving feelings of my life and although I was being yelled at by everyone in the van I could not give less of a fuck. Luckily I finished just before the second van caught up, so there was no delay. A few minutes later and we were not being murdered by the drivers, but being dropped off in front of the bar.

We arrive at the bar, show the bouncers our chalked/fake IDs and get into the place no problem, ah Albany freshmen year the good old days. This was my first time in a legit bar and I was blown away by this place. It had two bars with legit liquor bottles in stock, no Crystal Palace or Evan Williams at this place. There were plenty of space to move around and have actual conversations without screaming, and a big ass dance floor on the ground level. Considering  the only three bars I’ve been to before that night were the hole in the wall sensation affectionately known as Chubbys, my most successful hookup spot the shady Michaels, and a total shithole called Boogies, so needless to say this was the nicest bar I had ever been to in Albany.

There was a legit crowd in attendance, a much more diverse crowd than I was used to. It wasn’t the usual blend of freshman and sophomores from a combination of schools in the Albany area, but a lot more of an older crowd, which further feed my belief that I was finally at a legit place. The best part was that it was two for one drink specials that night. This usually results in an eventful evening for me, sometimes entertaining, sometimes shameful. Take a guess which genre this night fell under. After pounding down maybe 10 drinks, McMandy had officially broken loose from his minimal confinement within my twisted mind.

While McMandy, I aggressively flirted with almost every girl in attendance including an older woman who I think was part of the bars management, and was obscenely hot. She was nice to me probably because she was used to getting hit on by horny drunk bastards like me. I had no shot which I loudly informed everyone around me once she walked away.

I was in the bathroom when it happened. I stumbled into the bathroom to excrete some urine when I butted into a conversation with three dudes I had never met before. For some reason I thought they said kick the wall or we’ll kick your ass. Afraid a three on one beat down (that I cannot confirm was the actual scenario), I complied with their ‘demand’ (that probably wasn’t even made) and started kicking that absolute shit out the bathroom wall. I was wearing boots and kicked a fucking hole in the bathroom wall. Hearing the crowd reactions and the breaking of tile, two giant bouncers ran in grabbed me and threw me out of the fucking bar. I don’t think I was speaking English while I tried to negotiate my re-entry and as you can guess wasn’t allowed back in. I peed in an alley behind the bar, jumped in a cab with some girls from Ging’s crew who by a miraculous coincidence were leaving too and headed back to campus a defeated man.

This was the beginning of a battle of wills between my primitive alcohol fueled alter-ego and one of the best party spots in town. Countless times Senior and Junior year would McMandy come out on Pearl Street and have his share of victories and defeats. Victory meaning I survived without incident or got ass, defeat meaning I get kicked out of whatever bar I went too or ended up puking the whole night. At the conclusion of that night freshman year, it was Pearl Street 1 McMandy 0

My Last Bender

Well college is officially over for me. The physically reckless, self-joy driven and laid back lifestyle I had at SUNY Albany is over. McMandy is dead and buried. Then again I’d like to consider McMandy to be similar to one of those killers in horror movies. The ones you think are dead at the end of the flick but they always end up coming back to life for the sequels. Anyways, the weeks leading up to the end of this chapter of my life were intense to say the least.  Those weeks were filled with tearful goodbyes to the good friends I’ve met over the years, with a pessimistic yet realistic mentality that I’ll probably never see a good number of them ever again. An absurd number of ‘last times’ seemed to be constantly experienced as well. Last lecture I’ll ever sleep through, last time eating at a favorite local spot, last time drunkenly stumbling out of a bar to get a beef patty special at 2 am. Another ‘last’ which is what the following post is about, was the last binge drinking bender I went on.

               

Now if you know me or have read the stories in this blog, you know I like to drink and by drink I mean drink a lot. I don’t consider a bender one night of heavy drinking, a bender in my mind (and what I believe in the majority of people’s minds) consists of several boozing sessions throughout the day of simply pounding down booze. Honestly though, my benders at Albany were a seldom few, just the annual Kegs and Eggs, and a few random times throughout those four glorious years. Three weeks ago I was invited to a BBQ that was being hosted by the communication honor society that I am a part of, I know…very impressive. The thing I loved the most about this group and the communication major itself (besides the lack of difficulty) was that it was 90% chicks, and a good portion of these girls were smoking hot. The only other club I was a part of in Albany was the wrestling club/team, so as you can imagine this new guy to girl ratio was warmly welcomed. Any BBQ in college is really a BeerBQ and that’s exactly what this gathering of the brightest minds in the communications department was. I showed up around 1 pm, and that’s when my final bender began.

When I first got there the head of the honor society was still getting things ready, the keg hadn’t arrived yet and only a few people were there, one of which was a cute redhead I hit on a few times before that day, needless to say it was a little awkward. Then again I was in the ‘I don’t give a fuck stage’ at this point in time so it didn’t bother me. All I fucking wanted to do was booze and booze hard. About a half hour later the keg arrived along with more girls from the group and their friends. I was told it was going to be a ‘members only’ BBQ so I went alone, but I had no beef with the additional female guests. Once the keg began to flow I strategically stationed myself at the mother fucker to insure I got as much as possible. Also this is a preferred signature move of mine, as I wrote about in a previous post The Importance of Running the Keg 101. I also was filling up people’s cups which I liked for two reasons, 1. It was a good way to talk to the girls there, 2. It beat the shit out of grilling which because I was one of the few guys there would have been my responsibility. Judging by how shitty the grill was and all the smoke drowning the poor bastard trying to start the thing, I’d say I made the right call.

After about an hour of literally nonstop drinking I was feeling a good drunk and started to socialize with the girls there. I hung out with this group of juniors who were all blonde, played sports, and really damn cute. I was digging these girls, besides the qualities mentioned above they were all really friendly and down to earth. I thought I may have had a shot with two of them, but then the inevitable bombshell was dropped on me. They ALL had boyfriends, and because they were nice girls I knew they were probably faithful too. This caused me to start drinking heavily again, I still was hanging out with them, but the fact that they were all taken depressed me. It always seems like all the good ones are always taken and these girls were a solid example of this unfortunate reality.

Looking back considering the majority of the people at the BBQ were not heavy drinkers I think I may have took down half the fucking keg. An exaggeration maybe, but all I know was I was absolutely abusing the fucking tap for the entirety of the BBQ. Around 5ish the BBQ died down and I had managed to inappropriately flirt with EVERY girl there so I felt it was time to leave, with the intention of going home, passing the fuck out for a few hours and drinking again. That was my plan until Harry drove past the bus stop.

I crashed at Harry’s place the night before, so I was running on very little sleep. However it was too nice of a day to sleep through, so when Harry asked me if I wanted to come to his place for more day boozing I was down. Harry was living the life this year. He was living with some good friends we’ve known since freshmen year who were also in a frat. Basically he was living in a frat house without being part of the frat. He experienced pretty much all of the benefits of being part of a frat without going through the torturous pledging process. Guys who were pledging that year thought he was a genius. I couldn’t imagine this happening with any other frat guys but the guys Harry was living with are pretty chill with the whole Greek life bullshit. What I hate about typical frat douches are the ones who let being a frat brother become their sole definition while totally ditching the person they were when they started pledging. That really wasn’t the case for these guys which is probably why we’ve remained friends over those four years.

Getting back to the story…at this point I am pretty fucking drunk so my recollection of what happened at the house is a little vague. I don’t remember anything to crazy happening all I remember was grabbing a couple of beers, chilling on the deck, acting like an idiot, unsuccessfully flirting with the insanely hot girls who were there (including Rock’s smokeshow girlfriend, which happened a few times that year) and discovering that I was completely sunburned. It was cloudy when I left so I didn’t put any sunscreen on, but my skin sucks and I was out in the sun for the past five hours so I was burnt to a fucking crisp. The pain was not as intense because of how drunk I was, but this severe sunburn ended up being the main reason for my departure.

When I got back to my apartment I was now officially shithammered, Fat laughed in my face because of how burned and wasted I was. After practically bathing in Aloe, we go to Subway; this was my first and will be my only time wrecked at a Subway. I struggled to stand up in line and get my order out of my mouth coherently, while making crappy jokes to the high school kid behind the counter. I devoured my fucking sandwich and was ready for a solid drunk nap. However it was getting late and Fat wanted to start drinking and head over to Scope’s place, which was the last thing I wanted to do. I took maybe a half hour nap before I made my first pre pregame drink. After slipping in and out of consciousness and drooling on my desk we headed over to Scope’s.

We get to Scope’s place where his roommates had friends visiting including two unbelievably hot chicks from Staten Island. I sat down with my drink and as you can tell from the picture I was hanging on by a thread.

Can't tell if I'm actually awake here

I manned up though and continue to booze, after all college was almost over, when am I ever going to drink like this again? Towards the end of the pregame Scope’s roommate AeroBee convinced me to shotgun a beer with him…bad move. Halfway through the shotgun, I dropped the beer in the sink, ran to the toilet and violently threw up what to me looked like blood but considering I’m still alive probably wasn’t. Scope snapped this picture right after.

Got to love college

After all of this I WAS STILL AWAKE AND DOWN TO GO OUT. The idea of going to Pearl Street in Albany on a Saturday night was all the motivation I needed. We get to the bar and I have a few more beers, after all it was two for one Bud Lights. I down the beers and hit on every pair of legs I saw only to once again get shut down in brutal fashion. How was this happening I mean look at me, who could say no to this?

Nevermind

One dude who was wearing a fucking suite actually tried to start shit with me because I was hitting on his girlfriend, what a whiny little bitch. Around 3:30 is when I hit my wall and my body literally began to shut down. I remember sitting at a table with everyone and not being able to do ANYTHING. I had officially reached my breaking point and my body performed an emergency shutdown in the middle of the fucking bar. I caught a cab, with Scope and one of the Staten Island girls, headed back to my place and finally pass the fuck out.

The next morning I think I was having alcohol withdrawal because my entire body was shaking at breakfast. I had boozed for almost 14 straight hours in five different locations and consumed an unknown amount of alcohol. The fact that I survived and didn’t end up in a fight or jail shocks me. That was my last bender ever and it was one hell of a way to begin the end of my college days.

Brief Break

Just wanted to apologize to the people who read this blog for not having any new posts in a while. Graduation is this weekend and shit has been crazy lately plus I'm a lazy bastard. I do promise to have more stories up in the upcoming weeks. For all of those who visit this site, I'd like to thank you, and hope that you keep reading.