Gin and Miss Lily's Kickass Birthday

In a word, WOW!

What great way to kick off the holiday season. First off, gratitude goes out to Shelley, for taking Gin's shift, for keeping us shit-faced, and for doing it all with a smile. Well, at least until 5 AM when she launched our collective ass from the premises.

To Miss Lily: You look great! The baby is cute as heck. And I didn't think it was possible, but you made up for 9 months of sobriety in one rocking night. It had been so long, we had forgotten how you were when you drank. And you were awesome.

To Gin: You rock. You have brought fun and lightheartedness to Friday's at 1762. It was a treat for all of us to celebrate your 29th birthday with you. You have a good friend, who watched us all become drunken fools while she suffered with sobriety and a sore shoulder, all in the name of getting you and your man home safely. Mad props to you Mortgage Lady!

There were a lot of faces at 1762 last night. Some old, some new, some I haven't seen in awhile. The best part is that all of them were smiling. Even if things aren't perfect or going according to plan in "real life", which is what I like to call life outside of 1762, when we come together for an occasion like this, all of that kinda goes away for a little while. We can say that it is the intoxicants, but I say it is more than that. The crowd here, when we mesh, we really mesh. As someone mentioned last night, we are a diverse group. I say it is our diversity that makes our bar better than any other that I have frequented. How can you ever be bored at 1762? Diversity keeps our bar fresh.

So many flashes of images from last nights festivities:

Most Disturbing:The Owner cupping his fuckcake. Peppermint and I gave witness to this. Certainly not for the squeamish

Best Music: Anything not played by the Metal Head young guy. Nice kid, but I found myself wishing for deafness when he fed the Jukebox. At one point, we were all hating the music, and with our collective mental will, one particularly painful Judas Priest song abruptly ended. He cried foul. The rest of us rejoiced.

Best Plan: As I mentioned earlier, Gin and her crew had a responsible designated driver. Nice work youngsters.

Best Fight: While we have all witnessed larger scale battles from these two, Shelley and The Owner got into a customary name calling, spit flying, drink throwing melee that affected all in the immediate area. Personally, i woke up with swimmer's ear this morning.

Least visible hair highlighting and stubbiest fingers: PP, you take the cake here. Let your hair down, girl! And those gloves. You have got to be kidding. Seriously though, why did you have them in your bag? Ladies feel the need to take the strangest stuff with them. Ah, but I digress, fodder for a future post.

All right, enough out of me. When I started this thing back in August, I was hoping that some of you other loudmouths would chime in and contribute in the form of comments and replies. So far, no one but dave and myself have commented on anything (OK, one other person made one comment), but there is no way I could have seen everything that occurred last night. Comments can be anonymous. Please cut me some slack here. I am writing this with a wicked hangover, double vision and everything. I look forward to reading your take on the events of the night. You know who you are. Start WRITING!!!

Upcoming EVENTS

Friday, 21DEC07 - Come down and celebrate Miss Lily and Gin's birthday! I believe this is Lily's first appearance at 1762 since giving birth!

Saturday, 22DEC07 - The Holiday partying continues with a Christmas Karaoke BASH! - CANCELLED - we are all too fucked up from last night!

See you all at the festivities!

Help Wanted. Again.

Gin has retired (ALREADY??) from her Tuesday day shift but will be keeping her Friday nights.

Local bar, day shift. Must be tough way to spend 8 hours. Pretty much dead from open at 11AM until happy hour "crowd" dribbles in 'round 5ish.

What can be done to make dayshifts more appealing to potential 1762 employees? Have an idea? I would love to read some suggestions.

Winky

Went by 1762 to watch the Met game tonight. When I walked in Mets were up 7-2 on Washington in the 5th. Bottom of the fifth Washington goes up 8-7 and never looks back. Mets lost 9-8. Why do they always find a way to choke down the stretch?

The dart team had an early season bye tonight and were hanging around practicing. This is a serious group. They all have fancy darts that they carry in fancier cases. I think the darts do everything but throw themselves. I think that Gin's set even plays MP3's. Oh, check out her shoes next time you see her. You'll see why.

Lily was hanging around for a bit but bailed out kinda early. Apparently she had an appointment for a foot massage at home. No wonder why she has been in such a good mood. It's all that pampering she is getting at home.

Filsy popped in. Haven't seen him in a while. He brought in a purple Yankee banner suitable for framing for The Owner, who as most of you know is somewhat of a fanatic about his baseball team. I don't think he noticed that it was purple.

Let's get back to where I came in. I took one look at Shelley, who for the rest of this post will be known as Winky, and immediately noticed that her left eye was two sizes too small. It was a lot puffy and a little red. I thought that maybe she got popped by an angry 1762'er.

Winky claims that the damaged optical apparatus was the result of a traumatic cosmetic accident. Using a freshly sharpened eyeliner pencil, Winky attempted to draw those "beauty rings" around her eyes.

The pencil was too sharp, a little sharper than Winky, and she managed to snap the point of it off in her eye. The point floated around in her eye socket for some time before she was finally able to remove it. I think she washed it out with some topshelf booze. Don't tell The Owner. She is not wearing any eye makeup at the time of this post. While attempting to beautify herself she instead disfigures herself. Ah, the irony!

I found out about some upcoming parties and will be sure to post details as I get them. Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc. Yep. It's that time of year again.

Good crowd tonight. Always liked Tuesday nights here.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned...

As I arrived last night Candy was leaving. Always nice to see her. She hands down wins "Best Smile at the Bar" award. We chit-chatted for a minute or two outside 1762. She had words of encouragement regarding this blog and also a couple of pearls of wisdom.

Once I went inside I saw Gin, who was covering for Shelly, and only two other patrons. One was Pregnant Lily, who as you may remember, both bartended and managed 1762 in the not-so-distant past. And her friend Peppermint Patti who I had met only once before, on her 30th birthday, which she chose to at least partially celebrate at 1762.

Apparently, Peppermint is Jewish and had celebrated the New Year the night before with her family. A touch of religious conversation started up about the absolution of sins to get into heaven. She tells us how she only has to apologize for her sins once a year and it is done by reciting a catch-all religious writing. The writing includes sins that have been committed "willingly and unwillingly". Well that's enough. You pretty much have all bases covered with that.

The Catholic version involves weekly visits to church to tell a priest your sins for the week. He gives you a penance. Could be 4 Our Fathers, 12 Hail Mary's, etc. Not so bad until you consider that the Catholic way involves verbalizing to the priest the actual sins committed. So they can go something like the following:

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been (length of time) since my last confession. I blah blah blah'd my best friends girl. I blah blah blah'd an 8-ball while waiting outside my kids school.

I think that it would be interesting to explore here what a couple of popular culture figure's confessions might be.

• "Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been 5 years since my last confession. I know that is a long time but I've been kinda busy. I have sacrificed the lives of American soldiers in the name of a War on Terrorism. I played upon the vulnerable state of the American public's psyche following the 9/11 attacks. I have entrenched my country in a war that should have ended long ago, if ever entered at all. America's interests are purely Imperialistic, as we seek to spread our influence to the farthest reaches of the globe, in a quest to expand our own economic profits at the cost of the lives of those that are weaker, poorer, and not as important as me and my constituents. I have allowed the death of men, women, and children to occur so that the elitists of the United States can further secure their seats of power." - President Bush

• "I have disgraced the sport that has made me a handsome living. I have cheated and diminished the integrity of the sport of professional football. I have unwittingly told every child that puts on pads in a Pop Warner league that your parents and coaches have been lying to you. Winning, is in fact, everything. It is not about sportsmanship. It is about cheating your way to the top to secure your legacy in the NFL." - Bill Belichick , head coach of the New England Patriots

As the night moved on Gin found that she had a nice little crowd brewing. Some new faces. Dino and his brother hung around for awhile. Played some much appreciated classic rock. Beats that screamo shit I endured here last week.

Chucky dropped in after work. We had a good chat on kids and growing as men as we go through the process that is fatherhood. He sounds like a great Dad, involved and tuned in to his child. I recommend that any new fathers at 1762 spend some time with Chucky and get some real insight into what it means to be a Father.

The Owner came by. He was in an upbeat state of mind. New bartender is working out. Staffing issues under control. Full bar at 2AM. Nice.

Finally, as a point of interest, Gin picked up Friday nights. Nice kid, get down and see her.

Short Stay

I ended up stopping in last night after all. Shelly was working, breaking in a new bartender. Nice kid. Familiar with1762 and its characters since she plays for the dart team.

Despite the broken AC, the temp inside the bar was comfortable. Both doors were open, fans a-blowin'. Lots of blow[in] going on from the looks of the runny noses and white residue in the dried mucus. Whatever. Not my problem.

The bright spot, at least for me, was having a perfect Big Buck Hunter Pro game. I nailed all 45 bighorn's and amassed a score of over 28K points. Hooray for me. I have noticed that one of the younger patrons, goes by "ANT", has been challenging my dominance of the game. I will have to stay sharp. I have definitely noticed that I am wasting $$$ if I play the game after more than 2-3 drinks. Definitely have the best reaction time when sober.

Here's a challenge! Beat me ANT! 15 perfect sites. Perfect streak to match...Hehehe I am such a kid.

In other gaming action, the golf game has been replaced by a bowling game. Shelly had something like 19 of the top 20 scores, and was second only to "ERL". I'll let you figure out who that is. Anyway, four of us played against each other. Me, The Met Fan, Shelly, and our other resident biker, Jon. I had played this game once before. Not wild about the controls, or lack of it. Jon and Met had never played before. And obviously, Shelly has some experience. When all was said and done, Jon took the high score on his maiden voyage, which apparently pissed Shelly off. Definitely a good 1762 moment. And it was appreciated as they have been far and few between.

The Limpin' Pimp made an appearance. He did his usual, let me buy the bar a drink thing. I declined because this guy is probably the littlest weasel and biggest scumbag I have met at 1762. Eff him. And his fucking money. And his fucking heroin. And his fucking arsenal of guns. And his fucking limp on his gangrene infested hoof. Wikipedia sleaze and there he is. Ready to hook your sister/daughter on junk for his own perversions. The story of Herrin, one of his heroin slaves from the Far East, I will save for another day.

Whilst at the bar I conversed with Croc via text message. Apparently he has been fired.

So, with the appearance of Gin, the new bartender, we can reduce the total number of hours per week for Shelly. The hour total stood at a whopping 95 hours. Gin is taking Tuesday day shift. So now Shelly is left with a paltry 87 hours per week, and still no days off.