Tales of Drunk Guy, Part 2: The Crackhead

Batman has Robin, The Lone Ranger has Tonto, Han Solo has Chewbacca. Side-Kicks, Second Bananas, every mythic character has one. So did Drunk Guy. His was The Crackhead.

This all came flooding back to me this past week. We were having some work done, and we had to let the people have access to our back stair case. So while I was back there letting them in, it dawned on me "Oh Yeah, this is where The Crackhead used to smoke crack." It wasn't the only place, but it was one of the faves.

It's amazing to me now that all of this seemed normal when I started. That I was unable to see the cracks in the foundation. Sure now I can look back and say, "That made perfect sense, " but at the time it was more along the lines of "That's odd, but okay."

Drunk Guy and The Crackhead worked in the same department and sat right next to each other. They bonded I guess by smoking cigarettes out in front of the building. TCH or "The Crackhead" ( I am lazy typist, so what!) said he was Drunk Guy's superior. He said a lot of things, cause he was a sociopath. He said he was 25 (he had just turned 21). He said he flew F-14's in the Iraq War. He said had been a cop. He said he has worked in the industry for years. He also claimed to have slept with and fired one employee depending on the conversation. (She was a prize too. She would sleep in the back room cause she was out late with her boyfriend who just got out of jail). Out of the blue one time he claimed he was a Department Manager, a surprise to everyone, especially the President of the company, who never promoted him to that.

But absolute power corrupts absolutely, and thus was the case for TCH once he promoted himself to Department Manager. It started off small. He missed an appointment and was unreachable for hours (cause he was smoking crack). He sweated profusely when it was 71 degrees inside (cause he was smoking crack). He spent hours in the bathroom (cause he was smoking crack). [Once so long I was asked to go in and "check on him." I reported he was in a stall, I refused to inquire further.] He once borrowed the car of someone who worked in another office and disappeared for three hours, much to her and her husband's chagrin (cause he was smoking crack). I once went with him to get lunch, on the way back, he went to go drop off something real quick. He came back 2 hours later (cause he was smoking / buying / selling crack).

Through all of this Drunk Guy was "his brother" as he told me. Although they did have their tiffs, one that culminated with TCH carving in the men's room "Drunk Guy is a Fag" right above the toilet. Also Drunk Guy tried to move one weekend, the only person who would help him was TCH. They proceeded to almost get into a fist fight, and nothing got moved.

Yet all good things must come to an end and such was the case with TCH. See we started missing blank checks around the office. Come to find out TCH came in over one weekend and took a few. He made them out to himself and was cashing them at the Currency Exchange across the street. Not that he would have gotten away with for that long, but he didn't help matters by billing almost a $100 cab ride from the office he had JUST stolen checks from to his parent's house about an hour away.

So once TCH was exposed,he was fired. Drunk Guy was heartbroken. They shared was I can only assume was a heartfelt conversation in TCH's car, as TCH returned the laptop he had somehow convinced the office to let him take.

His sidekick was gone. Yet in a moment of clarity Drunk Guy did say this to me:

"I may be a drunk, but at least I'm not a crackhead."

Words to live by.

Jason

The Reader: The Reason People Hate The Oscars

There are two types of movies that win Academy Awards. One kind where you watch an Oscar winning / nominated film and you say "that was really good." The other is when you watch an Oscar winning / nominated film, you get about 48 minutes into it, and you say, "This piece of shit won an Oscar?!?"

Trust me, I know the Oscars are not a popularity contest. If that were the case what ever movie made the most money would win Best Picture, and Michael Bay and 80's era Steven Spielberg would be sleeping on a bed made of little gold men. (Well Michael Bay probably does anyway, cause he is a weird fruit.) They are supposed to be based on some kind of artistic merit... I think.

Each year I try and watch as many of the Oscar nominated movies as I can. I was really good this year, I think of all the movies in the top categories, I have seen all of them. Saw Frost / Nixon (should be boring but its not), saw Benjamin Button (Obviously), saw Milk, saw Slumdog (my pick to win, it was really good). And then the last one was The Reader which unfortunately falls into the category of "I can't believe this piece of shit is nominated for best picture!"

God! What an overly long, boring, dry, self involved, self important, soft core porn, piece of shit this movie is. I love Kate Winslet. I think she is great. In all my Oscar pools I was gonna vote for her, then I saw this movie. She should have been nominated for Revolutionary Road, which is hard to watch, but I'd take it to desert island and watch every day to keep from ever having to watch The Reader again.

This movie is just ridiculous. The first half hour belongs on Skin-A-Max. It is just her and this kid screwing and then stopping to have him read her a story. (See THE READER. Did it hit you over the head hard enough?) I am no prude, I enjoy nudity, but the nude scenes in this movie were like the ones in Showgirls, after a while they get annoying. Its like "Really, she is naked again."

So she is this illiterate with a thing for 16 year old boys, they break up. She disappears and the kid sees her again in law school when she is on trial for being Nazi Prison guard. An illiterate Nazi prison guard, with a thing for 16 year old boys. She is on trial and ends up getting a harsher sentence then the other lady Nazi prison guards because she admits to writing a report about killing 300 Jewish women, that she didn't write. I know, I know "but Jason, she can't read, how could she have written that report?" EXACTLY! She goes to jail for life cause she too ashamed to admit she can't read! The lesson here: learn to read, and that's one to grow on.

But the movie is STILL not over yet, cause the kid has to grow up to be an emotionless Ralph Fiennes who was in the "I can't believe this piece of shit won an Oscar film: The English Patient." (seriously after over 10 years I have yet to find anyone who enjoyed that film.) So Ralph starts sending his illiterate Nazi with a thing for 16 year old boys former lover, now in old age make-up apparently applied by a blind high school drama student with a "C" average, books on cassette while she is in prison. That's is right he is sending her the literary equivalent of a mix tape.

So he does this for ten years and in doing so SHE LEARNS TO READ! And after twenty years in prison she is about to get released. But at the last minute, she hangs herself. And why? Cause she couldn't handle the modern world, with ya know being able to read now and all. The movie then prattles on for like another 20 minutes with Ralph giving some coffee tin to a hot Holocaust survivor. UGH!

All in all, the moral of this movie, while Nazi war crimes are bad, not being able to read is much worse.

I hope Meryl Streep wins.

Jason

Tales of Drunk Guy, Part 1: Work Excuses

I hurt my heel this weekend. Not sure how. I got a haircut and walking back to my apartment it started hurting. It's weird but I am old, and well crazy things happen when you get old.

My thought this morning was I should call into work. Mostly cause most mornings I look for a reason to call in and usually never have one.

But my calling in is a little more difficult because my company HAS heard every excuse in the book. It has heard every excuse, because they used to employ Drunk Guy.

Drunk Guy worked here a few years back. Somehow he got loaded between the time he got off the train until we walked in the door. He smoked like a chimney, horded soda, drank Vodka from a Gatorade bottle and saved meat juice. He did all this at work. He once was so wasted he wrote out his resignation and offered it to the President of the company, who for some reason refused it. Makes you wonder who was crazier.

Drunk Guy trained me, so its amazing I knew enough to keep my job, but I have. I started in June of 2005, and between June and Labor day he did not work a full week. At least one day a week he called in and each excuse was crazier than the next. It was amazing, mostly that he wasn't fired before he actually was. By the way, he did work a full 30 days without calling in, a fact he bragged about. "I can't believe they passed me over [for a promotion]. I was here every day last month". He then called in "sick" on the 31st day.

Here are some of his best excuses:

• I had to refill my mother's air tanks
• I got the runs.
• I have a headache and I just can't imagine looking at a computer screen all day
• My navy buddy showed up at Midnight with a six pack
• My neighbor let her dogs out at the same time as mine.
• I gotta go to rehab (he was only gone for 5 days)
• I'm moving and my movers didn't show up.
• My cousin was in a car crash (found out later, this wasn't true)
• My relatives are coming into town and they aren't here yet

And my favorite... this happened while the White Sox were in the World Series.

"I am too drunk to come into work today"

By the way he was still employed here for another 3 months after that.

So my piddly little "I got a strange heel pain", is just not up to snuff. Not nearly good enough. I will have to try harder.

Drunk Guy set the bar very high.

Jason

Couples Game Night and Vandalism

So yesterday was pretty good day. First all it was like 58 degrees, which for Chicago is like it being 80. I realized I haven't seen the dead grass outside since November. It also means that our ice tribute to Close Encounters of The Third Kind created by our heater exhaust pipe is numbered.

Not mention, I got my bi-annual haircut. Paid on where I am doing my auditions for next week, for my upcoming project. Ate a Einstein's Bagel which I was for some reason really excited about. My girlfriend got a video camera which I figured out has a wire that I need for my said upcoming project, that I will relentlessly plug on this blog, with a link to others.

And not to mention... WE RULED AT COUPLES GAME NIGHT!

We got invited to a big game night tournament by one of my girlfriend's co-workers. We won big. First round I played Rummy and she played Mexican Train and won that handily. I picked Rummy cause when I go see my Mom, we play. My step-dad is like a Rummy savant, really good. Its like playing Yoda. The only other game he is that good at is Yahtzee, which I played in the second round. I came in dead last at the Yahtzee, but that is because we didn't finish our game. My girlfriend played Pass the Pig, and did okay at that. Oh well.

But where we excelled were the couples challenges. And why? TV trivia. Famous couples from TV. It was a 15 point gimme. Sam and Diane, David and Maddie, Edith and Archie. It was ridiculous. Then the next couple challenge... Movie trivia. Needless to say, we ruled that too. Someone made a catty comment that we only won because we "don't have kids". Well if using the time I should be spending raising children, is spent gaining trivial knowledge to win prizes, well then I will just stay childless.

So we moved on to the final round well ahead of the other two couples. We could have tanked that final round, but we nailed that as well. We were the grand winners. Got a nice certificate, some sparkling cider, nice gift basket. All and all a good day.

It is amazing how fast things change.

Around 12:30 Am, my girlfriend hears glass breaking. She wakes up, turns on the lights, looks around. None of our apartment windows are broken. Which is good. I might add I only have a vague recollection of this, as I slept through it. This is the reason she sleeps with a baseball bat under her side of the bed.

But then this morning we find this. Someone had smashed the window to our building's laundry room. Nothing was taken, and the window is too small to even get in. But it was freaky, and even more freaky that is was actually something and not just my girlfriend's imagination.

So it just kind of sucks that this was the end to our evening. And now it was not the night we kicked ass at Couples Game Night, its the night some one smashed the window RIGHT outside our apartment. Its times like this I hate people.

Someone, besides me this time, needs to say they are sorry.

Jason