Since we were in San Marcos, Texas, and everything is overrun with college kids, David’s apartment complex was more of a multi-level house party. And since the bars closed at midnight in San Marcos, our after hours always consisted of apartment complex parties. We would constantly just follow the music and drunk chatter from one party to the next. It didn’t matter if we knew anyone we could just walk through the door with some beer and go:

“HEEEEEEEEYYYYY!”

It’s like a drunkard’s password. We would just say that and we could stay and party, no questions asked. Well on this night, we we’re still drinking beers trying to look out the window and scope out a party to go to when we heard a girl on the phone outside of David’s apartment. and this is what we heard:

“Oh my God, I’m at this party and I was dancing next to this wall in the back and this guy just came up and started fingering me and then he ran away.”

“Yeah, yeah I’m okay.”

“The weird thing is, I kind of liked it.”

We didn’t end up going anywhere else that night. We stayed in just wondering what the hell was wrong with that girl and worrying about the whereabouts of the fingerer. We we’re a little unsure about what to do with the information we had just heard. If we called the police would they question the girl, get a sketch artist and warn the town of the fingerer? Should we spend the rest of our night hunting down the fingerer? If we spooked him, would he turn his fingers on us? We weren’t willing to take that chance.

We decided to lock our doors, drink more beers and play some Wii golf. We weren’t really in the mood for the type of parties going on at the apartment complex that night.

The Final Beer

9:31 pm

10:27 pm
Well hello what’s this?
That girl at the bar is absolutely checking me out.
I knew this would be my night.
And Ross actually told me NOT to wear the tux.
Loser.

10:41 pm
Finally, she’s coming over here.
What took her so long?
Probably intimidated by the tux.

10:42 pm
“Hello Miss, I’m Gavin…”
“Great to meet you Qammie…”
“I’d love a shot, thank you so much…”
Oh no, she got some in her hair
“Oh no, you got some in your hair…”

11:09 pm
This is turning out really well.
She’s hilarious.
Uh oh. She’s about to spit up again.
Poor sweet angel.

11:34 pm
“You’re really cute too…”
“Seriously, I mean it…”
“Like a young Elena Kagan…”

11:55 pm
Shoot, almost closing time.
I need to seal the deal with Qammie.
She’s in no position to drive.
I’ll ask if she wants to stay at my place.

12:01 am
She wants to go to another bar?
It’s after midnight. Everything’s closed.
Did she say 2 am?
My God.

12:21 am
This bar is even more packed than the last.
Where did all of these people come from?
Don’t they have plans in the morning?
Yardwork? Brunch with mom? Anything?

12:31 am
“Qammie, this is great. I’ve never been out this late…”
“Wait till I tell Ross about this, oh wow…”
“I’m sorry, I don’t smoke. And are you British? You hide you’re accent very well…”
“Qammie?…”

1:04 am
“Another crantini please…”
Here’s to another one that got away.
Hurts so good.

1:47 am
This is wild.
I’m not even tired.
Too bad this place is closing soon.

1:56 am
W-w-w-w-w-w-wait.
There’s ANOTHER bar close by?!
And it’s open all night?!?!?!
Time for G-Spot to end this night with a bang

2:19 am
A lot of truckers in this place.
Weird.

2:37 am
I’m not exactly hungry, but that pie does look delicious.

2:58 am
Where are all the chicks?
It’s just trucker after trucker.
What a bologna-fest.

3:16 am
One more piece of pie, then I’ll go.

3:32 am
Definitely time to leave.
Those holes in the bathroom walls were a bit unsettling.
Plus, I feel a little over-dressed for this place.

3:33 am
We’ll get’em next time Gavin.
Next time.

Inside the Mind of Gavin ep. 1

Inside the Mind of Gavin ep. 2

Stunning 4 bedroom flex now available in the darkest street corner possible in a neighborhood nowhere near Williamsburg. But you’ll love it. It’s just a stone’s throw away or as we call it in your neighborhood, “a dead man’s chance” away from Williamsburg. Technically, the place is a 400 square foot opium den but we called it a 4 bedroom flex to get your attention. You do have the option of building three other smaller rooms to house any mice; and you should since you’ll definitely have them.

I know I said pictures available upon request but there are no pictures available. Mostly because the place is a shit hole and I don’t know how to photoshop out the police tape or blood. Oh, wait, found a pic. I’ll send it to you. It’s low res and blurry and shows a corner of an unfinished room, but you get the idea.

The best news about this place is there’s no broker’s fee. You will however be paying a discovery fee which in essence IS a broker’s fee. The only difference is that it doesn’t go towards my “office,” instead it gets me a rock of coke that I will snort later after my shady investments fail. Also great news is that that I’ll be picking up said rock a block away from your house at the cultisac or as it’s known in the community, Murderer’s Alley; so if you like to party, you’re in luck!

When you’re living in this great new place you shouldn’t have any problems besides the occasional police kicking in your door asking why you are squatting. If such an emergency arises, however, feel free to call my “broker’s office” which will be a telephone number that will be promptly disconnected after our business is concluded, as I am only moments away from jumping in my Chevy El Durado and hightailing it to Mexico with your money. Not to worry though, your 1st month, last month, and security deposit will afford me the finest prostitute Tijuana has to offer.

Now before we complete this transaction, all I need from you is a background credit check which is a non-refundable $65 fee per person per application per diem. Which pretty much means whatever I want it to. In total, it comes out to an extra $2,900 that you’re not expecting. Also I’ll need W2 forms complete with social security numbers, I repeat WITH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS. I will not be using them for any devious purpose but I can’t speak for my alter ego Senor Tequila who is known to do wild and crazy things once he gets a taste of his “special medicine.”

If you’d like to schedule an appointment to view the place, just dial my pager number. Put 911 so I know it’s important and not just some other jerkoff whose looking for the money that I swindled out of him.

Can’t wait for you to check out the place! You’re going to shit your pants when see it!!

My neighborhood didn’t have a Sandlot. The kids never got together on a daily basis to play baseball. There weren’t any mythical dogs of monstrous proportions that we ran from in terror. There was no other-worldly-level-hot lifeguard that we fantasized about. We never befriended the once-terrifying old man in the spooky house.

In the movie, The Sandlot, all of those things happened in the course of one summer. Growing up (and still to this day) I loved that movie. I wanted so badly to be one of the kids in that neighborhood. I would have fit in with them perfectly. I was a fat little kid (who has since blossomed into a wonderfully-husky adult). They could have given me a nickname to compliment the rest of theirs. They could have called me “Big Al,” and The Great Hambino and I would battle it out for gluttonous supremacy.

But like I said, none of that stuff ever happened in my neighborhood.

No Sandlot:

In the movie, the kids had a huge, empty lot with a baseball diamond built into it where they would spend every day of their summer. We had a basketball court down in the woods, but it was right outside of Cravenna Oaks – the apartment community that was home to all manner of creepy adult and bullying 6^th grader – so we stayed away from it. There were the fields at Fairview Elementary that we could have used as our Sandlot, but none of us wanted to be at school when we didn’t have to, and the Rec-Pac instructors would give us shit for being there anyway. Instead, we settled for my basement more often than not where we played copious amounts of Killer Instinct and Primal Rage, which naturally resulted in…

Never getting together for organized sports:

Baseball was life for the kids in the movie. We could never decide on just one game to play (that is, whenever we left the comfortable confines of my basement). We tried playing kickball in the cul de sac across the street, but playing that game on a downward incline was never much fun. After The Mighty Ducks came out we gave Hockey a shot. We all bought sticks and pucks, and after about a week and half we realized that A) we all sucked and B) the knucklepuck was a damn lie. Football was our next attempt. We’d play in the front yard of Hank and Shawn’s house. It was a tiny yard, and certainly not enough room for a football game. Not to mention, Hank and Shawn were dicks. After I scored a game winning touchdown only to be met with a punch in the gut by Shawn (who was on my team), I decided to go back to the basement.

No mythical dogs of monstrous proportions:

Nine out of every ten dogs in my neighborhood were Bichon Frises, including my own. To run from those would be akin to crying your way out of a tickle attack.

No Wendy Peffercorn:

The Sandlot kids’ lifeguard was a goddess. Wendy Peffercorn was every pubescent adolescent’s wet dream come true. The lifeguard at my neighborhood pool was a bitch, a horrid, soulless wretch of a teenage girl. One day, during break, my friends and I were sitting on the edge with our feet barely in the water. She blew the whistle and made us stand under her chair, and forced each of us to hit one of the “YMCA” poses for the remaining 12 minutes of break. I was the “C.” My friend’s sister came and picked us up. When we told her what happened she screamed at the lifeguard. We were all pretty sure we were going to see our first girl-on-girl brawl. We never got a straight answer from her as to why she was such an insufferable pain in the ass to us that day. I do remember, however, that she was a fatty and the ice cream man was waaay past his normal time of arrival.

No scary-but-misunderstood old neighbor:

James Earl Jones’ “Mr. Mertle” was the terrifying old man who lived behind the Sandlot. The neighborhood was filled with tales of horror that originated from his property. His dog “The Beast” was on par with the Kraken in terms of sheer brutality and menace. But, by the end of the movie, it was learned that Mr. Mertle was really just a harmless old blind man who kept to himself. Not in my neighborhood. We had Mr. Costello. He wasn’t misunderstood. He was just an asshole, plain and simple. Mr. Mertle invited the neighborhood kids into his home in order to retrieve their baseball and view his collection of memorabilia. Mr. Costello would threaten to call the cops on us if we rode our bikes down his pipestem (that was shared with 2 other houses) one more goddamned time. And then there was Lawrence. He lived in the house at the bottom of my friend Jenny’s court. He was a convicted sex-offender. If anything ever ended up in his yard it stayed there, lest we risk our innocence.

I really wish that my neighborhood had been more “Sandlotic.” It seems like a child’s paradise in the movie. But my neighborhood was what it was, and despite not living up to the lofty standards of Benny the Jet and YeahYeah’s stomping grounds, it was pretty damn good. Baseball bores the crap out of me, anyway.

He’s lived on the South West corner of our building all summer.  I have a neighbor.  He doesn’t have a name because he’s just a damn spider.  He’ll be gone soon; the northern part of the continent he lives on wipes out life.

As the days get colder he expels greater amounts of energy to construct larger webs to capture food in his death rope. One day that spider won’t have the energy to crawl out of his apartment and up our shared wall to capture his meal; life will fail to mean anything.  He will lie waiting, exhausted, remembering the days when he was younger; able to build high above the ground.

He will pass along and become an element of something else in our shared neighborhood.

Swing That Music from alex aloise on Vimeo.

What’s that boss? You need to talk to me about what? People have been complaining about me solving all my office problems with a dance off? Well, there’s only one way to solve that problem and that’s… A DANCE OFF! That’s right! Oh, yes I did! Here we go! That’s right, that’s the robot, biatch! And right now I’m robo-bitch slapping your silly complaints right out of your hand. Oh I shouldn’t do that, huh? Well I guess I’ll just get down on the ground and grovel at your feet. This is me begging for mercy, oh wait, no it’s not, that’s me doing THE WORM!

Yeah, booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man, am I slaying it! Alright, by the look on your face and the apparent lack of dance moves overall on your part, I’m going to assume I won this one. Now if you don’t mind me, I’m going to moon walk my way back into my office and forget this little misunderstanding ever happened.

THE COURT ROOM

Hey there Mr. Fancy Pants Lawyer, with your vast knowledge of the judicial system and fancy pants. You might know the law but do you know THE RIVER DANCE!?! Yeah, see that!? Now try impressing this highly impressionable jury who are staring at me with what is obviously envy and admiration of said dance skills and could not possibly be contempt, disdain, or a guilty verdict. You, jury of my peers who looks nothing like me and whose very stare is piercing my soul, ask yourself am I guilty? Not of bad dancing of course! Obviously. Go ahead, lawyer, keep making your motions in this court, none can compete with the motion of THESE HIPS!!! AND NOW, THE RUNNING MAN!!!! Yeah, hahaha. Oh, look at these two fellow Village People dance enthusiast each dressed as the cop coming towards me. Hey, wait! Don’t be haters! Get your hands off me! I’m winning this thing! Aren’t one of you supposed to be dressed as the Indian! Stop it!

THE DARK ALLEY BEHIND A DENNY’S IN THE BRONX AT 4 A.M.

Well, hello there you thug looking ghansta. Boy did you walk into the wrong alley. Your crew of macho muscle bound thugs can’t help you now. That is unless they know how to piruet! Those brass knuckles you’re wearing will really be a drawback especially when you try to do this, JAZZ HANDS!!! That’s right, I brought it! That cynical laughter you’re making is no doubt a defense mechanism for the fear you are trying to hide of my unique and impressive dance moves. Hoho, you’re bringing out the big guns by literally bringing out a big gun! That revolver can’t help you here! Unless of course it can shoot out some talent into your stiff limbs. Man are you out of your league! And dumb! I mean, who brings a gun to a dance fight!?! TIME TO CRIP WALK!!!

Ahhhhhhh!! Ugghgh, oh, I see what you did there! You assumed that by shooting me you’d make me lose copious amounts of blood, thereby slowing me down. Well, think again. SASHAY!! Oooh, that was harder than I thought. Didn’t think that gun shot wound would take away that much away from my dance mojo. Oh, man that hurts. You win this round. Think I’m going to just sit this one out and take a quick time out. Ahh, there we go. Just a little nap and I’ll be ready to dance in noooooo tiimmmmmme… uggggghh…..

A FUNERAL

Here lies Dancy McGee. A man who never knew when it was an appropriate time for a dance off. In his honor, I ask that you put down your flowers and tissues and pick up the pace to this loud, techno music blasting over the entire graveyard. Now, get dancing! Ok, now you, hop on that grave and DANCE!!! Come on people, we don’t have all day!!! I have another funeral to attend at noon! Dancy, this one’s for you!!!!