stripperless saturday

My old friend BNew is getting married in a few weeks, so we celebrated on Saturday with an all-day bachelor affair that covered 3.1 boroughs. Stop 1 was the Yankee game. It was hot as hell outside, but luckily Deion had us covered with some shade-heavy loge seats.

In the first inning, A-Rod hit his 500th homer. I got a (very blurry) picture but later I drunkenly deleted it. Here is the celebration right afterwards. The dudes on the team seem to genuinely like the guy, although Jeter was reportedly spotted on the bench doing sudoku while all this was going on. Rookie stud Phil Hughes got the start, and he was blowing 'em away for the first couple of innings. Stupid Chant Grandmaster Deion and I agreed that it's been a long time since the Yanks had a player with two such rhymable names as "Phil Hughes." It's exciting. We had "Come on Phil, you're the king of the hill," "Come on Hughes, make 'em sing the blues," "Come on Phil, toss that pill" and a bunch of others that showed promise.

The only problem was that Hughes ran out of steam early, and despite being staked to a big lead, let the Royals all the way back to 6-6. This led to a more somber chant:

Luckily, the Yankee bats kept pounding, and we walked away with a 16-8 win. After a stop at Deion's where we refueled our brains and bellies with liquor, it was off on an hourlong drive through the Bronx and Brooklyn. We may have even dipped our toes in Queens for a minute or two. Bachelor BNew was taking it easy on the booze and was nice enough to drive. We cranked up the stereo, opened up that hybrid engine and tore through the pseudo-highways and backstreets of America's finest town. I was pleased with myself for calling shotgun on such a long ride.

After we stopped at the Puma's house so Bnew and Puma could pants up for our fancy Brighton Beach dinner, we got back in the car. I nailed the shotgun call again after a spirited sprint with Deion, but he made a sexy face so I let him have it for our ride to Stop #2: Coney Island.

We met up with DLee outside the Cyclone at around 8:15. Coney Island was gorgeous: a bright, bustling scene full of people from every race, class and hairstyle. I couldn't get enough of it.

I pursued some of my own fun before we even hit the rides. Shit like this used to be easier, but now it's got an element of possible disaster that makes it more exciting.

The Puma muscled up to make sure the locals knew to stay back.

I was drunk. I was talking bullshit at a mile a minute and soaking in the greatness of Coney Island, NYC, USA.
We only had about 20 minutes to kill, which proved to be enough time for one thrilling ride on the Cyclone. That shit is intense, especially with about 8 beers inside ya. Ask Pete and Lara.

We had to hustle to get to Brighton Beach for our 9pm reservation at Tatiana's. Maybe we should have just eaten Nathan's instead.

We got to Tatiana's and there was some confusion about our reservation. Apparently they couldn't find it in the book. Probably my fault, but we didn't let it get us down. We sat outside and ate like kings for $45 a head. Deion put on a courageous display of vodkanian machismo and got a little sleepy as a result.

DLee ordered up some awesome food for all of us, and kept the booze flowing.

There are certain rules you should always follow in life. Never buy weed from a guy with less than two Pierres in his name, and stay the hell away from vodka with bears fucking on the label.
As someone who has stepped in and ruined many other people's photos through the years, I salute this guy.

We headed down to the beach after dinner, but it was cordoned off. No matter -- DLee is as spry as a 25 year-old.
My trip down ended with a grotesque Kerry Strug landing, but I was no worse for the wear, other than some sand in my pants and in the ridges of my cell phone. We coaxed a sleepy Deion down to the beach.
We briefly considered going in the water. That would have been dumb. I'm usually in favor of dumb.
Instead, we went back to Coney Island. It was less crowded but the regulars were still doing their thing.



Reason #1328 that Coney Island is better than your amusement park: they don't close the place down until all the customers have had enough. I asked 'em how late they were open, and the guy was like, "We'll see." We got back there around midnight and it was still kicking. We went for like 5 more cyclone rides and abused the hell out of each other on the bumper car circuit. We only got turned away from one ride due to intoxication, and it looked like it had a high probability of barf-inducement, so it was just as well. We were getting pretty ugly at this point.

Me and DLee went on Topspin. It was pretty fierce, although I was such a babbling lout at this point that I was acting like only a hero could conquer it. "Let's do this, people," I shouted down the line to a bunch of unimpressed teenagers.

On the way out, we rode the cyclone like four more times. Tickets cost $6 a person, unless there's no line, in which case you can ride again for $4 cash.

Happy Bachelor Party BNew, and here's to your future!

Thanks for putting up with everything with a smile on your face.

***

Excellent iPhone captions last week. 25 points to the winner, Isired, with his caption of "Yeeeaaahhh!! I got my 2008 paperweight today! Who's next?"

I liked 'em all, and inxe's simple "My life is complete" summed it up perfectly and gets 19 GP's.