International Ridiculous

I spent four months in Italy last year and have many, many ridiculous stories from that adventure.  One in particular makes me laugh however, and I plan on sharing that one with you.  It took place on St. Patrick's day, the international day to be as ridiculous as you want to be.  Megan and I, as per tradition goes, made sure to have plenty of alcohol and had everyone over to our apartment to celebrate before we ventured out to the bars.

So it was the regular group of people we spent time with: myself, Megan, Adriano, Lupi, John, Andreas and a few others filtering in and out through the night.  The ridiculousness starts with the amount of beer with bought for the evening.  There was a brand called "Spoken Beer" that we could purchase for under 1 euro for a large bottle.  We bought 70 of them.  Unnecessary?  Yes.  Worth it?  Absolutely.  Then we went on a tour de Perugia in efforts to find the materials necessary to make a beer bong.  Traditions can't die simply because you're in another country!  So our insane funnel is ridiculous situation 1.

Eventually we had to succumb to the fact that they didn't have typical funnel making materials.  So we improvised.  We bought a two liter-sized coke bottles, a garden hose, and duck tape.  And I gotta tell you, it was a pretty amazing contraption!!  Ghetto, but it worked so we weren't complaining.  So everyone is at our apartment, drinking and having a good time, and Megan I do something pretty typical of us.  We run into the bathroom to do what we call "secret funnels."  I'm not sure why we do these, I think something about them being a secret just makes them funnier.  Mainly because they are clearly not secretive since we run into the bathroom with the funnel and beer.

Upon coming back upstairs ridiculous situation 2 occurs.  All of the boys in the apartment decided to take off their pants and act like nothing was different.  Not being sure how to react, we just laughed and kept on drinking.  It was pretty cold, but they were troopers and kept their pants off.

Now we had Italian neighbors who didn't like us very much.  I think a big portion of that was cultural differences.  For example Italians typically don't have company to their homes, they usually just go out and meet their friends in the city.  Americans like to have friends over to their homes for drinking, dinner, just spending time together, whatever.  So they probably didn't enjoy that we regularly had friends over, and most likely hated that we had 10+ people drinking at shouting on that night in particular.  So ridiculous situation 3 occurs when one of our neighbors starts banging on our door and SCREAMING at us in Italian.  Of course Megan and I had no idea what they were saying, but our friend Adriano did.  So she yelled at us threw the door, we yelled at Adriano not to let her in, and Adriano yelled back at her in Italian.  All we could understand was the word "NO!"  Over, and over, and over again.  She it went something like this:

Girl: FJSFAKJDGSFHSK!!!!! (Italian yelling)

Us: DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR!!!!

Adriano: HFSLJDKLDSFH!!  NO!  FHSJLFJSK!!  NO!  DJSFLHSFU!!  NO!

After that settled down we decided to do a few more funnels and head on over to the bar.  At which point Adriano feel down the steps in a drunken stumble.  While this isn't particularly funny, the fact that he literally complained about it for the rest of the night non-stop kind of is.  Sorry Adriano, but you were fine.  But all we heard was "Ahhh, I broke my back!" for hours.  He maybe had a bruise.

Then as we are getting ourselves ready to leave, the boys put back on their pants.  (Yes, they were pants-less this entire time).  When my favorite, and most ridiculous part of the evening occurred.  Megan and I realized that our friend John was a bit drunker than the rest.  Drunk enough that we could play a prank on him.

So we took his pants and hid them.  We blamed someone else.  And we convinced him that it wasn't a big deal to walk the streets of Italy and go to very crowded bars in nothing but boxers.  And he agreed.  So we spent the rest of the evening laughing hysterically at all the people who just stared in awe at the drunk American who wasn't wearing pants at the bars.  It was a St. Patrick's Day for the ages.

So remember, everyone is ridiculous, including American's living in other countries.

Party Like a Rock Star

This is throwback story from freshman year.  Since we were under 21 and sadly could not go to bars, we were regulars at house parties.  Some of our favorite house parties were the ones thrown by an MIT fraternity.  Now I don't exactly remember how we met the MIT frat boys, or how we ended up invited to all of their shindigs, but I do remember that they knew how to throw a great party!  At least twice a month my friends and I dug through each others closets for an outfit most fitting for whatever the theme of the night was, strutted our asses across the city, and partied with a bunch of smart, shy boys that were essentially terrified and intrigued at the same time.  We may have given Northeastern girls the reputation of being partiers, but what can I say, we were!

One night in specific stands out as being extra ridiculous.  The theme was one that asked for trouble from the get-go... Rock Star.  And once you put on those shades, leather, chains, and lot's of black, your inner ridiculous rock and roll goddess was out and ready to play!  Upon arriving the night wasn't much different than any other Saturday night.  Drinks were consumed, music was played, friends were made.  Same old song and dance.  As the night carried on we found ourselves in one of the bedrooms, just being silly.  The boy who lived in that room came to join us.

He believed that since it was his room, we should hook up with him.  I'm not really sure about this logic, but it was his belief.  One of my friends actually did make out with him, but one girl was apparently not enough.  So when he went for it with another friend, and she turned him down because she had a boyfriend, he called her a slut.  Again, I am not following his logic of not making out = slut, but whatever.

If you know me, I do not take people insulting my friends lightly.  So I proceeded to get into a fight with him.  It went something like this:

Me:  Don't call her a slut, you asshole!

Him:  Shut up, you blonde-hair bitch!

Me:  Tell me something I don't know.  Go un-pop your collar you f%!$ing douche!

Him:  *kicks us out of the party*

Which I guess he had the right to kick us out.  But we had our vengeance.  When gathering our belongs we may have taken a thing or two of his.  For example his big bottle of vodka and pack of condoms.  We kept the bottle for us, as a prize.  But we handed out the condoms to couples making out telling them to wrap it up.  Yep, we become the elusive and mythical condom fairies.

So remember, everyone is ridiculous, including sexually frustrated frat boys.

AAAHHHH WHITE PICKET FENCE!!!!

This is story is a classic from 3 years ago.  It was my sophomore year and I decided to throw a party in the crappy, run down, perfect for college apartment I was living in at the time.  As per usual with parties I had my closer friends come over early to drink before the rest of the attendees arrived.  Among the people coming early was a girl named Christina*.  Now Christina and I were never that close, but she was close with my other friends so along she came.  

Now some back story on Christina is needed for this tale.  She is A) a homebody, B) desperately wants to get married and have children IMMEDIATELY and C) kind of insane.  So in the beginning of the night there was probably only 20 people at my apartment, equal ratio of guys to girls, perfect scenario for her to talk to a guy.  Instead, she disappeared and did not make her reappearance until later when the party was in full swing.  I repeat, she is single, wants to meet a guy, but leaves during the time when meeting a guy is the most feasible at this particular party.

So the night goes on, people are getting drunker, and behavior is getting a bit wilder.  Not unlike any other college party.  I go into my room to grab something out of my closet and this is what I found.  On the floor of my walk-in closet is Christina, curled up in the fetal position with my blanket around her, mascara streamed all over her face from crying so much, and literally screaming at the top of her lungs.  But she wasn't screaming words, oh no, that would be too normal.  She was just screaming.  For apparently no reason.  During a party.  In my closet.

Amanda* is in there attempting to take care of her/console her to no avail.  I discover from Amanda that the reason Christina is so devastated is because she's single.  It was literally as if this girl had just found out someone had died she was so distraught.  May I again remind you that she was AT a PARTY with many, many BOYS!!  But instead of talking to them, she was in my closet.  Screaming.

At this point, I frankly don't care, and just go back out into the party.  All of a sudden like a hurricane Christina goes running as fast as she can past us.  Amanda is in hot pursuit of her, trying to convince her to stop or at least slow down.  Christina sprints out of the apartment, down the stairs, and out into the street.  Screaming the entire time.  Amanda is running after her cursing and wondering what the fuck is going on.  This continues for, without exaggeration, a solid hour.

Christina runs down the street, up the street, up my stairs, into the party, out of the party, down the stairs, to the street again.  At least point she is obviously drawing quite a bit of attention.  And I must say, there is nothing more attractive to a man than a hysterically crying, shrilling screaming, hot mess of a woman devastated about being single.

I should have made this girls name Sybil instead of Christina.  Needless to say, she didn't end up coming to any of my parties again.  But she did give me an excellent story to tell.

So remember, everyone is ridiculous, including sophomores who just can't handle a party.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent, the not so innocent, and myself.

New Years Eve: Atlantic City Style!

I’m sure everyone out there has a ridiculous New Years Eve story.  It kind of just goes with the territory.  There’s lot’s of drinking involved, high expectations, and usually a lot of money being spent by everyone.  Sometimes that combination, particularly if some do all three and others only do two, can be deadly.  Or hilarious and ridiculous.  Let me explain.

My girlfriends and I, Amanda, Ruby and Kim to be specific, went to Atlantic City for New Years Eve.  So we already hit the high expectations factor.  Now don’t worry, all of our expectations were met and we had an incredible time.  However because we were in Atlantic City, everyone there had high expectations for the evening as well.

I think that the drinking factor doesn’t need to be explained.  Free drinks on the casino floor + 23 year olds who are seniors in college + my wild girlfriends = many, many drinks.  However we managed to avoid the third factor.  Incredibly we spent very, very little money considering where we were.  The bar we went to, Game On!, same owners as the one in Boston, had two deals.  We could have spent $100 + per person on table service, or $25 per person that included two drinks.  We decided that between pre-gaming and free casino drinks, paying the extra $75 wasn’t worth it.  Other people, as you will find out, did not come to such a logical solution.

After a few hours of dancing and being on our feet in general, we needed a break and wanted to sit.  We spotted an empty table.  And when I say empty, I don’t just mean void of people.  All other tables had bottles of liquor on it, cups, and party favors.  This table literally had nothing on it.  So we naturally assumed it wasn’t occupied, as tables in bars occasionally are.

Within 2 minutes a very drunk girl comes stumbling over to use in a sloppy rage, yelling incoherently about it was HER table.  She demanded we get up.  After laughing at her for a moment because of how ridiculous the entire situation was, we did oblige and left the table.  There was a table right next to it that was equally empty that we decided to sit in instead.  This didn't go over well with the girl also because as it turns out, it was also her table.  So after we laughed some more, she told us, "I paid over $400 for these two tables, so get up!!"  Our response, which only served to make her more angry, was, "Well, that was stupid."  Not the brightest thing we've ever said to an already angry drunk girl, but pretty funny.

So as her rage built her boyfriend came over to defend her honor.  And Ruby turned to him, and said every so sweetly, "You're girlfriend is a bitch."  As you can imagine, this did not help the situation.  After a bit more laughing on our part and yelling on their part we decided it was time to go back to gambling in the casinos.

Overall, very successful New Years Eve.  We won some money, drank some drinks, got into a fight, and did a lot of laughing.

So remember, everyone is ridiculous, including drunk bitches who pay too much for tables.

Pretzel, not pizza!

This is a short story, but a pretty entertaining one that lead to a saying that I think everyone will use.  Or at least should use.  The saying is pretzel, not pizza.  What it means, is something much more amusing.  Let me start from the beginning.

My one good friend, Amanda*, has some issues wearing dresses and skirts.  She tends to lose her femininity, and occasionally her dignity.  Her problem is that she forgets that she’s not wearing pants, therefore it is not appropriate for her to sit like a man.  So she starts cross-legged, or at the least with her legs together.  But that changes very quickly once a drink or two is poured.  Actually, strike that, the alcohol isn’t even necessary.  Her intentions are great in the beginning to stay a lady, but it doesn’t last long.

Sooner or later, we (myself and Amanda’s other friends) spot her from across the room with her legs in a not so lady like position.  And we have to shout across the room that we can take an up-skirt picture of her if we so choose.    But we wanted a way to do this subtly because we didn’t want to embarrass her.  So we had to come up with a code.

Now if you think about it, crossing your legs is similar to a pretzel.  And leaving them a bit open is shaped more like a slice of pizza.  Also, these two things are very easy to convey with yours hands.  (Crossed fingers v. peace sign on an angle)  So now, instead of having to shout, “Shut your legs, we can see your panties!”  We can shout “Pretzel, not pizza!!” with accompanying hand gestures.  Because let’s be honest, all sayings with hand gestures are much more effective and fun than sayings without them.

So remember, everyone is ridiculous, including panty-flashers at the bars.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent, the not so innocent, and myself.