I'm Having More Fun Than You (14 page)

When I go headlong into the night, there’s always one foe who’s determined to make me wish I stayed home: the bouncer. My all-time favorite bouncerism is when the guy says he can’t let anybody else into the bar because the fire marshal will shut the place down. I never imagine some bean-counter posting capacity signs, but rather a burly fireman with a giant hat, an axe, and a hose running up to the bar yelling, “We got a call that this place is full of dudes!”

Sometimes I wonder if bouncers have a certain quota of people they have to throw out of bars in a given month. Seriously, why isn’t there a bouncer code of conduct? If you get treated unfairly, there’s no recourse, save for writing a nasty review on Citysearch that just makes you sound like a petulant douche. Bouncers should be moved from bars to stadiums and airports, where they could eject inebriated fans of the opposing team and unceremoniously pound on idiots who still don’t realize they have to take their shoes off before going through the fucking metal detector.

Just like certain restaurants have a BYOB policy that allows you to bring your own wine, clubs should let you bring your own bottles of liquor. You would still pay for beer and mixers, as well as a small corkage fee. Admittedly, this idea would never fly, but at the very least let’s stop referring to paying five hundred dollars for a bottle of Absolut as bottle “service.” It should more accurately be described as getting torn a new asshole but at least having a booth to sit down and rest it.

I just don’t think I’ll ever get used to going out in LA. On one hand, I respect the fact that there are some lounges here that are so exclusive they don’t even
have
a line—either you get right in or you never get in. At least they’re upfront and don’t waste your time. On the other hand, just when I think I’ve got LA nailed, she bitch-slaps me in the face. It’s a Saturday night, I know exactly where I’m going, exactly what time to go, and exactly whom to ask for when I get there. Then I roll up in a cab only to see a red carpet, spotlights in the sky, and paparazzi everywhere because the club is closed for a movie premiere. Fuck me.

PUB LIFE

Some of my buddies used to play Erotic Photo Hunt, which is an electronic bar game that shows you two pictures of naked chicks and challenges you to find the differences. Then one day the local bar changed it from Erotic Photo Hunt to regular Photo Hunt. Suddenly we were counting how many petals were on the daisy a little girl was holding and it just became weird. However, the electronic novelty that all bars should be required to have is a photo booth. These amazing devices enable you to hook up with a chick in private, without having to leave the bar, plus you get the pictures as proof. Try doing that with Buck Hunter.

Do good architects consider themselves above designing bars? I can’t think of any other structures that are laid out so poorly. Most seem to sport the “hourglass” shape in which the front of the bar connects to the back via a narrow channel barely big enough for a single red blood cell to pass through. Plus that’s the way to the bathroom. Where there’s one toilet for two hundred wasted people. And it’s broken.

Let’s take all of the bathroom attendants out of bars in LA, New York, and Miami and, like bouncers, put them in stadiums and airports where they’re desperately needed. It’s a waste to have attendants manning bathrooms in bars where their sole purpose is to provide obnoxious kids a cleaner surface to blow lines off of.

You’ve never seen a guy prouder of himself than when he’s pissing in the bar bathroom with no hands. Every time I go in there, guys are unzipping at the urinal, putting their hands on their hips or behind their heads, and exulting in what they have accomplished. Other guys, however, get enraged when someone takes a shit in the bar bathroom. They stamp around yelling, “It fucking reeks! I’m gonna find the guy who did this! ” You want to find the guy who took a dump in the bar bathroom, huh? I’ll tell you who it is—it’s the happiest guy here.

LADIES’ NIGHT

Occasionally, I’ll be hitting on a girl in a bar and just know I don’t have a shot. Things will be going pretty well, and then I’ll ask, “Can I get you a drink?” And she responds, “Actually, I don’t drink.” Sometimes she’s just trying to get rid of me, but when she’s actually being serious about not drinking, I’m devastated. I mean, how am I supposed to take a chick home if she’s sober but I’m wasted? That’s like trying to beat a team in football when they have your playbook. I just want to shake her hand and say, “Well, it was great meeting you, but clearly this isn’t working out. I’m gonna go find someone whose decision-making abilities are a bit more impaired.”

I think there should be a law against UPT—ugly people touching. Have you ever noticed that the ugliest couple at the bar is always all over each other? And they both have all these weird pimples and rashes and shit? Listen, I know you’re excited to have finally found the only human on earth actually willing to go down on you, but I’m gonna vomit in my fucking beer if you don’t stop slobbering on each other.

If the situation at the bar is dire and I’ve gone through my list of usual booty texts, sometimes I’ll drop a line to a one-night stand from like three years ago. If she never responds, I automatically assume she’s engaged. But sometimes she responds right away to tell me she actually
is
engaged. The message is always something like: “yeah I was just tired of going to the same shitty bars and getting drunk every night like an idiot. so what’s up w/ u?” And I sheepishly put my BlackBerry down and order another twenty-five-cent pitcher.

PUT IT ON MY TAB!

I was partying it up after a show in Chicago when I accomplished a first for me: I had two different tabs on two different cards open simultaneously at the same bar. Some might call this reckless. I call it “building credit history.”

Whenever I end up at a campus bar while on tour, it’s an opportunity to relive my glory days. I was once at a bar at Northwestern that was having a special that was something like $2.50 for a thirty-two-ounce beer—essentially, a shitload of beer for very little money. I ran up a $175 tab. Turns out that when I’m back at college, the cheaper the special, the more likely I am to buy rounds for everyone of everything
but
the special. So essentially the exact opposite of what I was like in college.

Even when I’m in a situation where I can’t pay with a credit card, I still manage to throw money away for no reason. Once I drunkenly tossed a crumpled-up hundred-dollar bill at a recalcitrant cab driver. Which would have been obnoxious enough had I not added, “Say hello to Benjamin McKenzie.” I’m pretty sure I meant Benjamin Franklin—whose face is on the bill—and not the actor who played Ryan on
The OC.

PARTY LIKE A ROCK STAR

Two of the maxims that I try to live by are related: work hard and play harder, and go hard or go home. In other words: take care of your responsibilities before getting absolutely destroyed; but if you’re
not
gonna get absolutely destroyed, don’t even bother showing up at all. Let’s face facts: I’ve been out of college for eight years. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still party like a rock star. I really look at myself as a twenty-first-century Peter Pan: it’s not, “I won’t grow up” it’s more like, “I will grow up—as long as I can still throw up every other weekend.”

Whenever someone says to me, “I don’t have to drink to have a good time,” my response is always, “Well, I do.” Have you ever been sick or the designated driver and gone out with your best friends in the whole world when they’re drinking but you’re not? It’s not fun
at all.
Not even a little bit. I try to pretend like I’m having a great time but secretly I can’t wait to get home, strip down to my boxers, and just watch the shit out of my DVR. I think that going out with your buddies when they’re fucked up and you’re not is actually detrimental to your friendship, because you realize what jackasses they are. I’m looking around thinking, “Good thing I’m not like that when
I’m
drunk.”

Ever say goodbye to everyone after a long night and then get halfway down the block only to realize you forgot your jacket? You always have to go back, acknowledge the weird looks everybody’s giving you, respond to irritating little gibes like, “Hey! Back already?” then reclaim your jacket and hoist it skyward while doing a half-lap around to demonstrate to the gathering crowd that all is well and you’ve simply returned to retrieve the North Face you now rue ever having purchased.

As the hour grows later and later and my friends and I grow drunker and drunker, I become increasingly vigilant about which bar to head to next. As soon as it passes 1 a.m., I always start suggesting bars closer and closer to home. I’ll say, “How about that lounge at Hollywood and Ivar? No? OK, what about that new place on Santa Monica and Fuller? No? OK, OK, how about that bar on Melrose and Harper? How about that, huh?” And my friends are like, “Karo, there’s no bar there. That’s your apartment.”