Top Ten Halloween Night Certainties

10) One of your female friends will make out with a random guy… strictly for the Facebook picture.

9) One of your female friends will make out with a random girl… strictly for the Facebook picture.

8) One in five females will find themselves saying: “I don’t usually do this.”

7) One in ten males will find themselves saying: “This doesn’t mean I’m gay.”

6) One in ten females will try a certain sexual act for the first time because the guy “accidentally missed."

5) One in four males will get slapped before shouting: “I thought you said swallow!"

4) One of your guy friends will ask the girl in his bed the next morning why she is still wearing her demon mask… to which she’ll respond “I’m not.”

3) The Sarah Palin costume will be more overexposed then… Sarah Palin.

2) One of your guy friends will make out with a girl dressed as Sarah Palin… but will be thinking of Hillary Clinton.

1) I’ll have a 15% better chance of hooking up then a usual night, putting my total chance of hooking up at… 15%.

Welcome to the new digs

A girly shot goes to the first person to figure out where I got the title from.

And no googling!

The Random Dude

A couple weeks back, I’m hanging with a friend at a bar before we head to a birthday party. Moments after I arrive, a man walks over and introduces himself.

He is the random dude.

After some small talk, my friend (for the purposes of this blog, let's call him Bill) decides it’s time to leave and head to the party. Bill asks the girl he was talking to if she’d like to join us and she accepts his offer.

That’s when the random dude turns to me and says:

“Just so you know, I’m not driving tonight.”

Needless to say, hearing these words was alarming and disconcerting on multiple levels. As I turned to give Bill the extended stare/distress signal, the random dude spoke again:

“So is it cool, then?”

I decided to play the ignorant card.

“Is… what… cool?”

He quickly answered.

“You know… If I came along.”

My worst fears had been realized. In just seconds, we were approaching a social DEFCON FOUR situation.

I had to think fast.

“We may not be coming back later so I don’t know if I’ll be able to give you a ride home.”

Without missing a beat, he responded:

“That’s why they invented cabs.”

Apparently this was no ordinary random dude.

So now I’m sitting alone in my car with the random dude, waiting for Bill and the girl.

As I fumbled with the radio, the random dude broke up the awkward silence:

“Do you want to see a picture of a dead body on my phone?”

I’m not sure what was more disturbing, that the random dude had a picture of a dead body on his phone or that he wanted to show it to me.

Fast forward to the end of the night and we’re driving home.

Both Bill and the girl are now slightly to heavily intoxicated and I’m guesstimating the chances of them hooking up to be over 94%, mainly because when I drive them back to his place she will realize that she can’t drive home in her state.

In conclusion, the logistics, normally the most daunting obstacle of the LA bar hookup, were near perfect. It would almost take an act from god to screw this up.

Or perhaps a random dude.

Midway through the ride, the random dude turns his head and shouts:

“Hey, isn't that your apartment?!”

Apparently she had made the mistake of telling the random dude where she lived. She looked up.

"It sure is! Do you mind dropping me off and I'll pick up my car in the morning?"

I reluctantly pulled over and, as the girl opened the door, the random dude turned to Bill and noticed his look of utter disdain.

“Wait… You like her right?! Maybe, you should walk her to the door!”

Bill cringed as the girl had yet to exit.

An ackward smile ensued and then she was gone.

I immediately stepped on the gas and the random dude looked at me.

“Oh God. Did I just cock block?”

I responded.

“Only literally.”


If you're wondering what the Superdome in New Orleans was like during Katrina, stop by the Trader Joe's in Santa Monica on any Sunday afternoon.


And finally... Spotted Friday night at South in Santa Monica: Six tight V-neck wearing dudes huddled around a single fruity cocktail in a fishbowl, simultaneously sipping on six pink straws.

In other words, they were sipping away both their drink and what remained of their heterosexuality at the same time.

The hottest girl in my class

While moving an old suitcase today, a crumbled piece of pink paper fell to the floor. And even before I picked it up, I knew exactly what it was.

In college there was one task I'd make sure to accomplish at the start of every semester. It wasn't buying the right textbook or studying the lesson plan. It was deciding who the hottest girl in each of my classes was.

This accomplished two independent goals. First, it immediately narrowed down my crush prospect which helped pass many tedious hours, especially in the doldrums of "Environmental Geology" and "Intro to Socialist Nihilism." (I still haven't figured that one out.) Second, I knew right away the one girl I'd never speak to the entire semester.

In the winter of my senior year, in one of my communication classes, that girl was Sara.

Sure enough, I had spent the entire semester thinking about her, yet hadn't said a single word to her. And so, on the last day of classes, moments after the professor wished everyone a happy new year and said goodbye, I turned my head and watched as Sara grabbed her books.

And then I did something most unexpected.

I spoke.

At first I wasn't sure if I was talking specifically to her or simply out loud. She was probably thinking the same thing as she looked over, slightly confused. But then she did something most unexpected.

She smiled.

We walked out of class together and she invited me into her car. And unlike the last time, when it was a graying professor in a van, I didn't foresee a hospital visit and counseling if I accepted the offer.

For the next two hours we sat in her parked car and talked. By the time she turned the key and finally drove me the two and half blocks home, the city was dark. She pulled over beside my apartment and smiled once again. And then she did something even more unexpected than the two previously mentioned unexpected things.

She ripped off a piece of a paper from her notebook and scribbled her name and number.

"Call me." She said.

And so I did. And we went out a few times over the next few weeks. But this isn't a story about a relationship or even a story about a girl I once knew. No…

This is a story about a moment where the hottest girl in my class gave me her number.

And that's what I'll always remember.

The box of porn

Whether it's packed underneath your bed, stuck in the back corner of your closet or hidden under the loose floorboard five paces from twelve feet across the second red dot on your back wall... if you're a male who hit puberty before DVD's and the internet, somewhere in your room exists a dusty box labeled "Memories of Grandma."

But inside the only grandma that can be found is the one getting double stuffed, possibly by a midget or ebony princess.

I'm talking of course about the box of porn. Depending on when your collection began (mine dates back to the fall of 89), inside this living time capsule of sketch exists a decades long compilation of wondrous filth.

In preparation for my upcoming move, I happened upon my own box this weekend while cleaning out my closet. As I turned on Beethoven's symphony number 9 (the Herbert Von Karajan composed version) and proceeded to slowly open the box, a tear slid down my cheek.

Seeing the early 90's work of legends like Jasmin St. Claire and Wendy Whoppers, I felt like I was in my own version of "A Christmas Carol." The last twenty years of my life were suddenly flashing before my eyes.

And for a moment I wondered what to do with the box. Maybe it was time to say goodbye to the past and move on to a bright future filled with HD. But then I thought of the one day when I would sit my own son down and hand him this very box, just like my father did before me and his father before that.

And while that statement is not entirely accurate (both my father and his father never gave me any porn and/or a porn box of any kind) I can think of no better father son bond. (Unless of course, my son turns out to be gay in which case the moment might get a tad ackward.)

And so, as I wrapped the box with a fresh piece of tape and changed the fading label to "My African Vacation," I said goodbye to Jasmin and Wendy.

For now.