Alex McVeigh’s posterous

I went to lunch last Friday at a local mall, with some of the folks from the office. This jerk was sitting next to us, a few seats down on the long, cafeteria-style tables.

Why is he a jerk? No, not because he's Asian, but because this guy was talking in the loudest voice you could imagine, about the most inappropriate stuff.

All he was talking about is how drunk he likes to get, with the occasional story about a chick with surgically enhanced...uh...assets. Keep in mind, this is a mall with professionals, children, not to mention the young African-American lady sitting right there.

This guy puts high school seniors who steal wine coolers to shame. "Oh, man, I was so wasted last night." "I can't wait to get off work, I'm gonna do like 30 shots as soon as I get off," and other assorted horse-assery.

I'm not a violent person, I'm not even a very high stress person, but I wanted to cave this a-hole's skull in with a pepper grinder after about five minutes of listening to it.

After 15 minutes, I knew about every single drink this guy had ever had. As well as trips to strip clubs, shots in hotel rooms and road trips just to find random bars. I can feel my blood pressure rising as I'm typing this.

Plus, he had a nickname for everybody. It was "Kev," "J Dawg," or "Stevie."

He ended every story by saying, "good times, good times" and not in an ironic way, like me and my friends sometimes do.

If case you're curious, this was that prick's plan for the weekend. Tonight, heading to the bars at Bethesda, get hammered. Saturday, drink all day then head to a party. Sunday, drink all day. Monday, get wasted after work at happy hour.

I hope he drives home and meets the business end of a bridge support.

I walked by this sign the other night, and the inner jackass in me
wanted to walk in to the office and ask, "so just how mighty is your
fan?"
 
(Rimshot)

Ah, shuffleboard. As far as bar games go, it's your three-seed, behind foosball (greatest game in the history of mankind) and pinball, but ahead of darts, pool, and those stupid trivia games.

The only crappy part about this particular shuffleboard game was the bar it was in. I went after the baseball game to Arlington, where yuppie horse-assery is the name of the game. It was iPhones and jerks wearing their class rings as far as the eye could see. Not exactly my type of crowd.

Went to the Nationals game last night, as you can see from the picture above, which was taken from the bar in center field. The curse continues, as this was the second game I've been to, and the second major celebrity that has died while I've been at the game

Walter Cronkite died last night and Michael Jackson died the first one I went to. Now, here's the bad news. I've got seven more games in my package, not to mention that I will probably go to some more random games, like tonight's.

My pick for tonight's celebrity death? Hillary Clinton. A guy can hope can't he?

Anyways, here's a quick little tidbit about drinking at a baseball game. I have yet to go to my seats at Nationals Stadium, I usualy just hand out at the centerfield bar, or we hang out on one of the concourses and get a good view of the game from there, not to mention ou're much closer to the delicious, delicious beer.

My dad taught me something once that I never forgot. He told me that in a crowded bar, if you know you're going to be jackeying for position the entire night, you drop a fat tip on the bartender the first time.

So after waiting a few minutes at the bar, the bartender came over, and I ordered a cold Miller Lite, which was $7.50. I gave him a $20, and told him to keep the change. Because that's just how I roll.

Next time, there's a crowd of people, and he immediately comes over to me, ignoring several hot chicks (though I wasn't), in favor of serving me another one.

Here's where it gets awkward. I had just been to the ATM, and I had only $20's. So I give him another one, and he gives me a look that says, "for me too?" And I had to stop him, like, "No, not this time." I still gave him a $5 tip, but some of my glow was gone.

But it all paid off in the seventh inning. You see, they stop selling beers at the end of the seventh inning. There was two outs, and I was still waiting for a beer. The crowd went absolutely nut when a Nats player hit a single to extend the inning, and the beer sales. It was the most excited they got all night.

The inning ended on the next pitch or so, but my man still came through with two (count 'em) TWO, frosty beers which would last me the rest of the game.

I love happy endings.

All I wanted was a delicious bag of Olde Tyme pretzels. I went downstairs to the vending machine, put in my 90 cents, and this is what I got. Stuck on the edge.

I didn't think this stuff actualy happened. You see it in the commercials, and you hear the horror stories, but you always shrug it off. And then it happens to you.

And don't give me that, "But Alex, there are clearly bags of Rold Gold pretzels in the thing below, why didn't you just get those?"

Becuase there is no better pretzel than Snyder's Olde Tyme Pretzels in the Hungry Size bag. They've gotten me through many an afternoon where I didn't have time to go out to lunch and I didn't bring anything.

The lady who runs the mailroom found me, three hours later, in the fetal position, sucking on my thumb, my cheeks damp with my own tears.Either that, or I went back to my desk, grabbed another 90 cents, and now have two bags of delicious pretzels, one for Monday morning.

Also of note, I hope you see that those were the last two bags of those pretzels. Lurking behind them are some heinous veggie chips, made of spinach, tomato, and pure filth. Or at least, that's what they taste like. I'd rather eat hot garbage.

Alright people, listen up. If there's two things in this world I love,
it's the NBA and pinball. And how often do you get to combine your two
loves into one piece of awesome machinery like you see above?
 
The answer is, "not often enough."
 
So people, my birthday is coming up in August, so start saving now.
You can find one here, for the low, low price of $4700. They're
practically giving them away!

No phortoshop magic here folks, that's Die Hard, the finest cinematic masterpeice of the modern film era, for only $5. It's practically stealing, much like Hans Gruber was trying to do on that fateful day at Nakatomi plaza.

Here's what you do. You purchase that movie (I don't care how many copies you own, you can never have enough), and you pay with a $20, and you demand that the cashier keep the change, because taking such a masterpiece for only $5 is grand larceny if I've ever heard of it.

And remember to always have tissues ready for the end. When Sgt. Al. Powell draws his gun for the first time in years to kill the half-dead terrorist that is about to kill John McClane, well sir, that's the very definition of a tear jerker.

Hold on, I uh, I think I have something in my eye...

Muffin tops available for sale in my lifetime? Amazing.

Looks like Seinfeld is coming to life. I would like to be the first to invest in a restaurant where you make your own pizza, not to mention an oil bladder system.

It's been a rough couple of days for your boy.
 
Monday, the Orlando Magic ripped out my soul by stealing Marcin Gortat
from me (if you don't know who Marcin Gortat is, then we should part
company here, because we have nothing in common).
 
The next day, my favorite radio station announced it was flipping
formats, leaving a few of my favorite personalities without a home on
the air, which really sucks.
 
In two days, the NBA, and now the radio, two of my loves, have turned
on me. As this rate, I will break one of my guitars today, tomorrow
Clive Owen, Ricky Gervais, and the cast of The Simpsons will be killed
in a plane crash, and by Friday, the world as we know it will be swept
away in the cleansing fire of a nuclear holocaust.
 
Quite a progression, wouldn't you say?
 
So I was shopping for groceries for the first time in a while
yesterday, and I came upon a heavenly sight.
 
A friend had recommended a particular brand of suds to me, so I picked
up the six pack that you see above, and decided to drown my sorrows.
 
The rest of the night consisted of turning the first picture into the second.

   

Click here to download:

Ill_be_bock....zip (126 KB)

Four beers are a lot for a Tuesday night, but what can you do?

When I was in college, I took a Jane Austen class to fulfill my "Women and Minority Writers" requirement. I had to read every singel Jane Austen book (six of them) as well as a collection of her short stories, and a biogrpaphy of her.

So it's safe to say I was Jane Austen'ed out. But we never read this little masterpiece, and I am in the process of preparing a lawsuit against my professor, because as boring as "Pride and Prejudice" was, the addition of zombies was exactly what it was missing.

Who knew that in addition to her gift for writing irony and the struggles of Victorian-era male-female relations, she had an uncanny ability to chronicle the ongoing adventures o the undead? Certainly not me.