Nightmare on Johnson Street

Last Friday was a chance for DC to say goodbye to Hollywood as he headed to the left coast for work for the next four months. DJs Itchy Mitch and Big Nick took their show to the basement of Cafe St-Ex for the night.

For me it was a fairly uneventful night, due to a combination of having been up since 5 that morning and being drugged up on allergy meds. M had a couple of friends in from home and they left around 1AM to head back to her place.

I don't get service in the basement of St-Ex, so when I left around 2:30 my phone literally blew up with text messages. After locating the pieces of my phone and reassembling it complete with text messages, I scrolled through some messages from M:




Yeah - M and her friends had an eventful ride home. I got the details the next day.

Locale: Johnson Street in Arlington. An example of a typical house on this street.

Cast: Three friends walking home;
One hairy, naked guy playing with his tra la la.

Scene:

The three friends are walking home from the Metro and notice a hairy, naked guy standing between houses casually pulling the pud. Cue the three friends skedaddling home to report it to the police.

Transition to M's house with her on the phone with 911:

M: "My friends and I just saw a naked guy masturbating on the street."

Dispatcher [based on M's telling of the story, I'm picturing Wanda Sykes in this role]: "Ok. Where was he?"

M: "Ironically, he was on Johnson St."

Dispatcher: "Now I don't think that's ironic at all. I'm glad you said that. We'll send somebody over there to check it out right away."

End scene.

Generally just one of witnessing an overly aggressive Metro make out session or seeing a girl puking her brains out from a moving car is enough to make a trip home memorable. (Un)fortunately the bar has been raised.

Fired Up Friday: Sandstorm

This week brings the 2009 edition of the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. I'm not racing there this year, but a story from my first year racing in St. Catherine's fits the Fired Up Friday criteria.

For those of you who don't know, Canadian Henley is the end of the summer racing season. Rowers are serious about the racing there, but they are just as serious about blowing off some steam after a summer of two a days. The mix of high school teams, club teams with collegiate and newly post collegiate rowers and coaches yields perfect conditions for a sh*t show of shenanigans.

The regatta is based on a little island which has a boathouse, a clubhouse and an empty tract of land that is converted into a rower-filled campground for the duration of the regatta. The regatta hosts a party every year. It's open to all competitors and is reasonably well supervised, which means that it's mostly attended by HS kids. But the party also has a bar which means it also attracts a handful of 20-somethings. My first year racing at Canadian Henley, my teammates and I were that handful.

I entered the party to see two giant projection screens set up playing music videos. The party demographic definitely skewed on the younger side, but that didn't stop a couple of teammates from enthusiastically accepting invitations from HS girls to dance ... and to make out on the dance floor. Being the nice guy that I am who is totally afraid to tiptoe into the DMZ of Statutoryrapeistan, I declined a few dance invitations and proceeded to the party bar.

After hanging at the bar for an hour, I ventured back to the dance floor to try and rally the troops to leave and head to a proper bar. I made it to the dance floor just as Darude's "Sandstorm" started playing:



The first teammate I saw was one of our coxswains - a girl who had just finished her freshman year of college. At the start of the evening, she'd let us know that she wasn't much of a drinker but had finished a bottle of cinnamon whiskey by herself for the evening festivities. I nodded hello to her as she was drunkenly dancing with her back towards a guy I recognized as one of the parking lot attendants on the island. The guy saw me, flashed a gold-toothed grin in my direction and then groped the sh*t out of the coxswains chest on the dance floor.

She seemed oblivious to it, or at least didn't really acknowledge it. I did a passable impersonation of a home plate umpire by pointing at her, giving the "you're out" signal, and then hustled her off the dance floor. I walked her back to the campground, poured her into her tent for the night, and then left to meet some teammates and head to the bars.



I looked kind of like this minus the chest protector and face mask.

TMI Thursday: Useless Superpower

Once again it's Thursday which means it's time to share too much information. Nothing completely outrageous this week, just a story that I rarely never share. Which of course means a public forum like the internet is the best place to share it for the first time.

And remember, as LiLu always says

***Alright, folks, you know the rules. Join us all in humiliating the crap out of yourself every Thursday by sharing some completely tasteless, wholly unclassy, "how many readers can I estrange THIS week??" TMI story about your life. Or hell, about someone else's!***

Due to a quirk in the housing lottery I ended up in a freshman dorm which had private, in room bathrooms. Depending on your point of view, I was spared from having to share a hall bathroom or subjected to the additional burden of being responsible for cleaning a private bathroom.

Due to another quirk bad luck in the housing lottery the next time, I was again stuck in a dorm for sophomore year. It was a different dorm - one with hall bathrooms. Also key to the story is the fact that the doors to the dorm rooms closed and locked automatically and that my roommate was often out of town on the weekend.

This led to my discovering a previously unknown skill. It's the type of skill that is so uncannily reliable that it could be classified as a superpower. It is also a skill, however, that is so limited in scope and applicability that it is practically useless. I think most people have a handful of skills and talents that fit this definition.

Over the course of that year there were about a dozen times when I would arrive home after a weekend night of drinking a not unreasonable amount of beverages. I'd clearly remember prepping for bed and tucking myself under the covers, yet I would awake to find myself sitting in a bathroom stall.

My only guess would be that after an hour or two of sleep my lower intestines issued the call to exorcise some demons. My brain and nervous system, in an attempt to maximize the amount of slumber, only brought online the absolute minimum number of systems to propel me from bed to bathroom. Apparently the minimum did not include full consciousness.

Naturally, I was always a bit disoriented remembering falling asleep in a comfortable bed to awake sitting on a toilet, but the skill I discovered was that my unconscious autopilot would always remember to bring my room key. So automatically locked door and frequently absent roommate aside, I never found myself locked out of my room after an early AM nap in the can. I can hardly save and/or take over the world with this superpower, but it saved me from a huge inconvenience on several occasions.

R.I.P. Lower Back

JFo's Lower Back, 4, died this morning on the Potomac River.

After a sluggish warm up characterized by late catches from the rest of the boat, an inability to get the rate higher than 33 strokes per minute and general heaviness, Lower Back took its own life halfway through the first piece of a 2' on/2' off workout. JFo's Lats and Quads reported hearing and feeling a "pop" mid-drive from Lower Back's last known whereabouts in the stroke seat. Although JFo's Vocal Chords called for the piece and workout to end immediately, efforts to revive the Lower Back at the scene through stretching were unsuccessful. A dockside memorial service was held immediately upon landing.

Lower Back is survived by Glutes and Hamstrings. A replacement Lower Back is expected to be functioning by Saturday.

In lieu of flowers please send ice packs and Aleve.

********************************

And a quick "News from Home":

Bridge jumper survives leap and jellyfish

By Matt Sabo

GLOUCESTER - Extreme sports, meet extreme stupidity.

It seems two York County residents who had been drinking decided early Monday to get a little crazy. Their first thought, said Maj. Darrell Warren, of the Gloucester County Sheriff's Office, was to swim the York River.

But presumably that just drew a collective shrug from the two drinking buddies.

The second idea actually got off the ground, so to speak: Why not jump off the George P. Coleman Bridge spanning the river?

Warren said the men described it as an "extreme sport" type of activity.

From about nine stories up, just 10 feet on the Gloucester side of the York River, 20-year-old Matthew Leccadito jumped into extreme sports history. The other unidentified extreme sports participant apparently sobered up right quick.

"His other buddy says, 'I can't believe he did it,'" Warren said.

Not only did Leccadito jump, but he lived to tell about it.

Passing motorists saw Leccadito's leap around 12:35 a.m. and called 911, which spawned a search-and-rescue effort involving Gloucester and York counties, the Navy, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission and the Coast Guard — including a helicopter.

About 8 a.m. Monday, a Navy harbor security boat crew from Naval Weapons Station Yorktown spotted Leccadito clinging to a buoy between the bridge and Wormley Creek, said a Navy spokesman.

Leccadito was bruised and "covered from head to toe with jellyfish stings," said Warren.

But he was otherwise in good shape.

While it's unclear if the cost of the search will come out of Leccadito's pocket, there are no charges pending at this time, Warren said.

"There's not many," Warren said, "that jump off and live."

Efforts to find Leccadito for comment were unsuccessful.

My thoughts on this -

1) This sounds like a Southeastern VA version of "The Hangover" gone horribly wrong.

2) I am incredibly disappointed that they didn't find the jumper for comment. Shouldn't he at least provide a "I'm invincible!" sound bite for the press?

3) You know that off feeling you sometimes when coming to after a night out and you realize you're alone and in a place you don't remember falling asleep? Well imagine how much worse that feeling must be when you come out of your drunken state to realize you're clinging to a buoy in the middle of a river and being stung repeatedly by jellyfish. If the jumper were to claim, "I'm never drinking again" after this episode he would be the first person who has made that declaration that I have ever believed.

Planes, Boats & Automobiles

A.K.A. A Question and Answer Session with Pics from the Past Two Weekends

Two weekends ago:

Club Nationals was in Oak Ridge, TN, which of course begs the question:

Q: What's the best way to avoid spending 8+ hours crammed in a car with four other people?

A: Have the early race and a teammate who owns a plane.

Once at the course, I found Razzleberry Labs was serving low fat smoothies, which of course begs the question:

Q: What type of animal do you want people to associate with your healthy concotions?

A: Pigs!


I stayed at the Doubletree Hotel in Oak Ridge which turned out to be a pretty awesome hotel - accommodating staff, in-room refrigerator and microwave, restaurant with cheap breakfast downstairs, friendly bar staff who let us bring our own pizza in and watch TV, several functions including a 20 yr HS reunion complete with a guy whose date looked barely old enough to be his daughter - which did not beg the question, but answered it nonetheless:

Q: Where does one of Oak Ridge's silver-haired sirens take a gentleman caller on a date?

A: Burchfield's, but only if you roll up in your Pepto colored VW Bug.

I'm pretty sure on the way home she pulled the old "I ran out of gas" routine.

One night several of us decided to hit up Oak Ridge's finest all you can eat Chinese buffet, which begs the question:

Q: What is the most appropriate dinner wear for Chinese food?

A:


Note: This shirt is straight from Narita Airport in Japan. It's a XXL. I normally wear a L. Guess sizes run a little smaller there.

And soon enough it was time to fly back home, which begs the question:

Q: Besides getting home six hours faster than everyone else, what's the best part of flying home?

A: The view







Last weekend:

I drove with M up to Boston for the Cambridge Boat Club Centennial Regatta, which involved 9 teams racing a stake turn relay on the Charles River. The relay included 5 legs of an eight and a quad racing four miles each and two doubles and a four racing two miles each. Each team included twenty rowers, half men and women, and the average age for the team had to be at least 45.

It was an epic struggle to assemble a team meeting these requirements. We managed to pull it off and I rowed in the eight.

The rest of the team included rowers of varying experience and skill. And this woman may or may not have been involved.

The second epic struggle involved picking up a rental car and big league fails by my credit card company, bank, and the rental car company. In short, renting did not happen and I borrowed Hollywood's Explorer for the drive, which begs the question:

Q: Did you discover any stowaways in the vehicle?

A: Yes.



We crashed at M's 'rents house in suburban Boston for the weekend, which begs the question:

Q: What sort of non-shenanigating fun places are there to go in suburban Boston on a Friday night?

A: A furniture store that looks like it was entrusted to Billy Madison, and includes:

- an animatronic Green Monster eating a Yankees uniform clad mannequin



- jelly bean representations of famous Boston landmarks,


- an ice cream shop,


- a trapeze school,


plus a big screen TV store, a laser light show, and, almost as an afterthought, an IMAX theater.

The race started Saturday at 10AM. It was a scratch crew and, as mentioned before, involved racing a four mile leg of a relay which is over three times longer than the 2000 meter races of the summer, which begs the questions:

Q: What is the last thing I would yell halfway through a four mile leg of a stake turn, relay race?

A: I'm on a boat!!

In Every Break Up There is a Winner and a Loser

From: M
To: JFo
Date: July 27, 2009, at 9:01 AM
Subject: get a load of this

so this is [my friend's] ex-bf:

Lets fuck - m4w - 24

---

Reply to: pers-email@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}
Date: 2009-07-10, 4:43PM EDT

Looking for NSA sex. I am fit, attractive and know what I'm doing when it comes to sex. STD Free, looking for the same. Hit me up with a pic and tell me what you want.

• Location:
  
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1234567890

i am so not joking. check in the win column for her breaking it off with him.

TMI Thursday: Embarrassing Photo Edition

As LiLu always says

***Alright, folks, you know the rules. Join us all in humiliating the crap out of yourself every Thursday by sharing some completely tasteless, wholly unclassy, "how many readers can I estrange THIS week??" TMI story about your life. Or hell, about someone else's!***

A couple of weeks ago Mb tagged me in her Keepsake Award post. Having just moved and thus having sifted through most of my belongings in the process, it seemed like combining a response to the tag and a TMI post would be a good idea. This is not that post, however.

I am delaying that post until:
1) I actually figure out what in the world a "keepsake award" is;
2) I have the time to do a decent job with it; and
3) I design a less girly looking graphic that goes along with it.

In the meantime here are a few pictures that I dug up when packing for the move that were never meant to see the light of day. So clearly they were meant to be posted on the interwebs.

Please excuse the quality. Since these pictures were taken on a little thing called "film" and I don't own a device to digitize them, I opted to ghetto scan them a.k.a. take a picture of the pictures with my digital camera.

I like to call this masterpiece "The Night Mardi Gras Evened the Score". After two nights rolling fifteen deep through The Boot and Bourbon Street until daybreak and exerting our dominance over this thing called "Mardi Gras" by throwing beads as hard as possible at Jason Alexander's head at a parade and generally upping the jackassery level in an attempt to max it out, only to discover that such a thing is impossible, we faced the prospect of having to be at the airport at 5 AM for a 6ish flight back to DC. We decided to stay out the entire night and make the most of the trip. The lack of sleep caught up to me that night and I needed a quick nap at this cozy little place.




Things to note about this picture:

1) It was taken near the end of my Hawaiian shirt phase;
2) I am being mauled by some chick showing off her tongue ring;
3) I am apparently wearing a "headband" made from the elastic waistband of a pair of underwear;
4) Blond hair from my first and only hair bleaching is present; and
5) The grain alcohol and Kool Aid in the background go a long way in explaining this picture.





And going really old school with a picture of my awesome haircut at age 3. This was taken when visiting the zoo with my 'rents and g'rents but before I tripped, fell and skinned my knee near the rhinoceros exhibit.

If you still need to kill time to hasten the arrival of the weekend, be sure to check out all the other TMI posts linked at LiLu's spot.

Fired Up Friday: Ding Dong Song

The song featured in this week's Fired Up Friday was specifically requested by Fun Boy. And given it's role in the events of last weekend, it deserves to be included.

Last Friday a group of us went to see the 7:35 showing of "Bruno". Based on the mixed reviews of the film, we decided that a couple of pre-theater drinks would help enhance the humor level. We ended up at Chadwicks. While there Fun Boy let me know that he liked the inaugural Fired Up Friday post and that he had a recommendation - Gunther's "Ding Dong Song".

I confessed that I had not heard of the song but would look into it.

We soon made our way to the theater where Mr. Teriffic and B-rockstar and saved us a bloc of seats. Fun Boy entered the room greeting
these guys in an absurd faux-Austrian accent. We discovered that we were one seat short and Fun Boy, still speaking with the accent, asked a group of three to move down one seat. A woman from the grpup replied, "I'll move but only if
you stop talking it that ridiculous accent."

It was still several minutes away from showtime so Fun Boy pulled up "The Ding
Dong Song" on his phone and passed it along for M and me to watch.

Thus, M and I watched the following video at full volume in a crowded theater:




For some reason M was moved by the awesomeness of Gunther's mustache embarrassed by the soft core feel of the video and attempted to block the screen from potential casual observers behind us.

When the group of HS girls seated directly behind us began to giggle uncontrollably, M asked them whether they were laughing at the video. They responded that they weren't even watching it, but now they would. Immediately, their giggling kicked up a gear.

As we continued to watch the video, a guy seated in front of us got in on the act.

Guy: "Are you guys watching gay porn?"

Fun Boy: "No, we're just watching 'The Ding Dong Song'."

Fun Boy then explained the "plot" of the video and exchanged a few more words with the guy. For some reason their conversation ended when Fun Boy told him, "Just go to YouTube and search 'Gunther Ding Dong'."

TMI Thursday: I Know That Girl!

a.k.a. It's a Small (Rowing) World After All

Since I am in lovely Oak Ridge, TN for the USRowing Club National Championships, it seems appropriate to share a rowing TMI story.

In case you didn't know -

As LiLu always says

***Alright, folks, you know the rules. Join us all in humiliating the crap out of yourself every Thursday by sharing some completely tasteless, wholly unclassy, "how many readers can I estrange THIS week??" TMI story about your life. Or hell, about someone else's!***

There are several coincidental connections between M and myself. Some of them are fairly minor - our last names are synonyms, we work in the same industry - but the rowing community and its minimal degrees of separation provided the biggest coincidence.

M doesn't row, but her brothers are rowers and various other family members have dabbled in the sport. M's older brother rowed at the same boat club where I row, albeit when I was on hiatus from there so that we did not know each other. Through her older brother, M made several rower friends at the club. So when M and I met last fall, at a boathouse party inicidentally, it turned out that we had several mutual rower acquaintances.

At the end of last summer, shortly after M moved to DC, her older brother moved away from DC for work. He and his then gf, who was also soon moving away from DC, ended things amicably rather than dating long distance.

Soon after I met her, M explained that soon after moving her brother met a new lady during training for his new job. And things were progressing quickly. And by Christmas they were engaged.

M remains good friends with her brother's ex and was worried when and how ex would get the news about her brother's engagement. Fortunately, she did not have to be concerned for long. M's dad called
her at work on New Year's Eve and opened with, "You don't have to worry about [ex] finding out that your brother is engaged because he got married this morning."

Her brother's eloping proved to be a major topic of
conversation that night. The next morning, we were still discussing it and I asked M what her new sister-in-law looked like. M logged into Facebook, navigated to the in law's profile, and then her eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets upon seeing that the in law had changed her last name on her profile.

Her profile picture appeared to be a Halloween costume so I asked M to open a normal picture. M clicked on the 'Photos of In Law' and the first to open showed three people - a girl I presumed to be the In Law, M's brother and third person whose face I recognized.

Me: "I know that girl!"
M (in a mildly dismissive tone): "Sure..."
Me: "Yeah, that's C. "
M: "Yeah - that's the In Law's sister."

At this point I explained to M that after graduating college I coached for a college club crew for a year. I shared an apartment with the two other coaches who were only a year older than I.

Towards the end of that year, the head coach/my roommate started secretly to not-so-secretly dating one of the girls he coached. At first nothing seemed out ofthe ordinary. The girl was the team captain and was helping the coach with some team related duties. And then it seemed to progress slowly. Maybe they'd grab a meal or run a general errand together and then she's crashing at the apartment and they seem to be hanging out all the time. It just seemed like a weird situation to me.

In the few years that had passed since then, I didn't give much thought to that situation. That is until M opned up a picture of her In Law and told me that the girl I had previously known as a team captain/coach dater was also the In Law's sister.

Post script to this coincidence: A couple of weeks into the new year, the sister friended me on Facebook and added this personalized message:

"Hey, remember me? I used to sleep on your couch."

Love Thy Neighbor

The property lines of Hollywood's lot are a tad confusing:
Fig. 1 - Hollywood's House and Yard and Adjacent Properties




HW = Hollywood
NDN = Next Door Neighbor and
NDN2 = Next Door Neighbor 2

On the top and left side of Fig. 1 runs an alley.

Rather than having three roughly equally sized lots that extend directly from the house to the back alley, Next Door Neighbor 2 has a cute, garden-sized backyard, Next Door Neighbor (NDN) has a reasonably sized backyard with a six-foot wide conduit that accesses the alley and divides Hollywood's yard, and Hollywood has a decent sized two-part yard with access to both the side and back alley - one part of the yard being continuous with his house and the other part being an enclave separated by NDN's conduit to the side alley.

I find the structure slightly analogous to pre-WWII Europe with the separation of East Prussia from the rest of Germany by Polish territory.

Fig. 2 - Europe on the Eve of WWII



The analogy can even be generalized to most enclave situations between nations in that access to the enclave becomes a source of contention. In this case, Hollywood must walk across the six-foot wide conduit that belongs to NDN in order to access the rear portion of the lot. In theory, it's possible to access that part of the property by walking through the alleyway and entering through a gate in the back alley, but this is not a practicable long term solution. Thus, in order to enter the enclave of his backyard Hollywood has left a gap in two of his fences (shown in Fig. 1) allowing him to take the two steps across NDN's conduit into the rest of his property.

On his extended house tour, Hollywood gives a detailed explanation of the dramatic events surrounding access to the enclave. That is a story in and of itself. In short, it involves Hollywood proposing to NDN a land swap whereby NDN would trade the conduit for the portion of Hollywood's property directly behind hers. The square footage of the pieces are roughly equal and it would make both lots continuous with access to the back alley. As a show of good faith, he paid the legal fees associated to have the paperwork dawn up to effect such a land swap. NDN, however, refused to sign it. Instead she opted to attempt to bar Hollywood from crossing the conduit using such tactics as neighborly yelling, calling MPD, filing a restraining order against Hollywood and eventually taking him to court for a very quickly dismissed case. Thus, Hollywood is allowed to cross the conduit in order to access his backyard enclave.

Yesterday provided me with my first (sort of) first hand experience with this issue and I kept a running diary of it.

9:40 AM - Arrive at Hollywood's house to find tree service crew in full swing cutting down branches from a tree in NDN's yard that are overhanging into the continuous portion of Hollywood's backyard. Note that members of crew are hanging by ropes from the tree and swinging from branch to branch with chainsaws in order to cut them down. Also note that tree crew is crossing conduit as they are dragging cut branches to their truck parked in the enclave.

10:15 AM - Crew member knocks on back door and I answer it. He advises that they are having problem with NDN. I look behind him and see that NDN is standing in the conduit furiously photographing what is going on. Hollywood walks outside to talk with NDN. No resolution to the matter. The tree crew continues its work and NDN continues to take pictures.

10:36 AM - An MPD officer arrives. Hollywood walks outside to discuss the situation.

10:46 AM - Hollywood walks back inside and recounts the conversation.

After listening to NDN's explanation of the situation, the MPD officer responded with, "See, that's the devil in us. You two are neighbors and should be getting along. What if your house caught on fire tomorrow? You would want him [Hollywood] to call the Fire Department and rush over here to help you out."

Other highlights in what really sounded like a master class in mediation included:

"That was yesterday. What happened yesterday is in the past. You need to start focussing on today." - MPD Officer upon NDN trying to explain history of property conflicts to him.

Officer: "Now it looks to me like he [Hollywood] is just trying to remove the branches overhanging his property and there is nothing wrong with that."
Hollywood: "That's correct. Those branches are diseased and I'm trying to remove them before they fall."
NDN: "You don't know they're diseased. You're no tree expert."
Hollywood: "No, but the tree removal service has experts and that was their assessment."
Officer: "Ma'am, he's not doing anything wrong. You can continue taking pictures all you want but there's nothing I can do to stop him from having those branches removed. [pointing to NDN's vegetable garden] Now what are you growing back here? Is that squash ... and some beans?
NDN (considerably calmer): "Why yes ... and I'm also growing some tomatoes."

And then before leaving, the MPD Officer tried to get the contact information for the tree removal company because he needed some branches removed at his house.

1:30 - The tree removal crew completes its work and departs.

In the end, this little flare up was quickly resolved thanks to the Officer, but I expect that the overall situation is far from reaching a conclusion.