Saturday, December 10, 2005

Hartford Shenanigans

Last night was one of those evenings that can never be recreated. The series of bizarre circumstances are just too hard to capture. However, I'll do my best to convey what happened.

R-dogg and I started the night at the Arch Street Tavern. I was really impressed with the place when I went there with the blog class. It's a chill place that doesn't succumb to all those terrible Hartford bar issues, such as lack of parking or overcrowding. So we decided to have a drink there.

The evening was kind of sad as we just sat staring into our beers. Hartford was dead. We were about to call it a night when our friend A-list showed up. She infused a new sense of need to go out in us.

After discussing our options for the night, R-dogg decided we could walk over to the new Hartford Marriot and have a drink at the bar there. My curiosity got the best of me, and so the three of us walked in the freezing cold to the Marriot.

Inside the hotel is a bar called Crush, which is kind of a hip martini bar. A-list described the vibe as a "swinger's club" and I promptly looked for the bucket to leave my keys. No such luck though.

We were sitting on one of their oversized couches, when R-dogg noticed one of the patrons was a local Hartford weatherman. I wasn't really too interested in that until I observed the skeevy way this dude was hitting on girls at least half his age. Unfortunately he neither had the looks or personality of Bill, so I was watching a local Hartford celebrity consistently getting shot down. It was a cold night.

For some reason, A-list thought it would be cool to have the weatherman come over and hit on her. She banished R-dogg and I to do our own flirting, which we did and sat alone pretending to be lonely. It's amazing what a woman can convey with mere body language.

As I was talking to a pretty blonde woman at the bar, I noticed the weatherman had slid his way over to A-list and was chatting her up. Being the consummate performer that she was, A-list was keeping the novelty going. The girl I was talking to noticed what I was looking at and wanted to know if A-list was my friend. I said she was, to which pretty blonde girl replied "you've got to go save her."

I'm no hero, and even if I were, A-list is one of the most self-reliant people I know. She can certainly take care of herself. So I had no intention of going over there and busting her spot. But the pretty blonde girl was insistent, even to the point of grabbing my arm and pulling me in to whisper "he's a total creep who hits on all of us." After that, I was sold on helping A-list, but I wanted to take it to the next level. R-dogg and I decided we needed to fuck with him.

I'm usually a very passive person. Normally I would let something like this go, but I was kind of buzzing and feeling empowered. So R-dogg and I decided I would need to play a role. In this case, I was the extremely jealous boyfriend who was an asshole. R-dogg's job was to catch it on video.

I strode over to where A-list and the weathercreep were seated and promptly slammed my fist on the table. I looked at her and said "I want to leave right now. I'm sick of this crap!" The corners of A-list's mouth perked, so I knew she was on board with my plan. She began looking meek and said "I guess" and began apologizing to weathercreepy. I took a beer bottle and slammed it down on the table, careful not to break it. There was no reason to get kicked out of there. To his credit, he got up, said goodbye and left. I later discovered that he had actually left the bar entirely, probably because of how scary I'd been acting.

A-list walked with me to the bar, where she thanked the girl who had suggested I bust the weatherman's spot. We sat down for another drink, but really the high point of the evening had been reached. After being invited to a party later today, we rolled out of the bar. As we were leaving, I burst out laughing, hugging my body as if it would fall apart. A-list and R-dogg burst as well, and all we could do was laugh.

A little bit later, A-list showed me a business card that the weatherman had given her. It was a fancy card that had his picture on it, his home number and a slogan that read "The Art of Weather." Nice.

3 comments:

e said...

Did you say video? Come one Brett, vlog it! I see a new direction for Nonsense (Now!)... video eposes on Hartford's night life.

Mattyd said...

Brett! I have know to know which slimy weatherman it was! Can't you be subtle and hint about his identity? Or paste a subtle picture of him on your blog?

BYW, I noticed that The Nine in Princes of Amber are listed as one of your favorite books. I thought I was the only person in the world who read all those books. I can't remember much about them now, but I do remember a few key things:

The hero's name was Corwin and he was a bad-ass with a messed up family.

There was a scene in one of the books in which Corwin and one of his brothers, a shady, probably- good-but-you-never-know one, are fighting on a set of stairs that only fit two people standing side by side. They literally fight an army on these stairs, two at a time, and I think Corwin's brother dies, but later we find out he's not dead after all. Loved the image of that scene.

Everytime Corwin took a break, he ate, and the food that the author described always made me hungry. Big pieces of meat and huge handfuls of warm bread washed down with milk or wine or beer or water. Warm bread and roasted meat... I probably put on 10 pounds reading those books.

Good post man, and Eric's right. A little video of the sights and sounds (and silence) of Hartford would be fun to watch.

Brett E. Lassoff said...

Part of the problem is that the video R-dogg took isn't very good. I also did leave some very unsubtle hints in their, and toyed with actually putting his name in, but decided against it. The last line is the biggest clue. Yeah, I also get hungry when Zelazny mentions those enormous slabs of meat.