My First Police Station

Last night at around 11:00 i got a call from bellend telling me there was a late night poker game at the fratastic house in half an hour. usually i would not attend a midnight-2am poker game on a wednesday, but i was feeling spicy so i went. i was playing Godfather and lost track of time, so around 11:45 i got dressed and went downstairs. i opened the door and slammed it behind me. upon hearing the door slam, the sketchy dude who was hanging out in the bushes by our front gate took off in the direction of north avenue. i saw the guy but was more freaked out that a dude was clearly doing something he shouldnt have been like 20 feet away. also, paranoia started to set in and i hung around the front door until the coast was clear and made my way back to the driveway.

jonnys driver side door was open and his dome light was on. i looked inside and it was the same messy car and the stereo face was still there (the #1 thing i look for, due to past thefts). i locked the door and closed it, thinking jonny was an idiot for leaving it open. but then i realized that the two events couldnt have been a coincidence and decided to put in a call to jonny.

i told him how i found his car and obviously he didnt leave it open, so i told him to check it out when he got back from his lady friend. then i left and played poker. at around 1 am, i got a call from yan asking me details of what happened. his car had been broken into and his work laptop, ipod, and digi cam (all in the same bag) were MIA. a police officer was on the scene and he and yan had checked out the car and the surrounding area for any clues like CSI... unfortunately, unlike tv, there was nothing there. so i told him what i saw:

- 6'0 black dude
- older, maybe 30-35 because he had graying hair (peppered, is what cops call it)
- purple and turquoise jumpsuit like your florida grandpa wore in the 80s
- carrying a blue duffel bag
- heading towards north ave.

when i got home at 2 am jonny was shell shocked. i know the feeling... some bastard has broken into your car, gone through all your shit, taken the most valuable piece, and is absolutely nowhere to be found. its like an empty angry swirl of emotion that you cannot do shit about, even if you want to find the guy and fuck him up in the worst way. he was thinking of all the shit he had to do in the morning and obviously the files IN the computer were gone forever. also, his tax shit and accounts and worth were all in the case. if this dude was an identity thief, jonny was basically fucked. proper fucked.

so this morning, jonny misses 2 calls and when he calls the number back, its our neighbor about 5 houses down and he found the laptop case in his yard... no sign of the computer. this idiot had broken the ipod and left that and the digicam in the case, along with the papers. anyway around 9 am i am looking out my window and see two cops roll up to our front door. jonny goes down there and then he calls me down there. the white cop asks me what i saw, and i tell him those details and the time and all the shit i just told you all.

the white cop looks at the black dude and he's like, i think weve got the guy... IN THE CAR OUTSIDE! what the fuck man... he's outside right now?? how in the hell did you find him. anyway they pulled the guy out and had him turn away from me (since thats how i saw him anyway) and it was straight up the exact same dude. 6'0, older, peppered hair, and of course the clutch detail: purple/turqoise jumpsuit. apparently he was a homeless dude and had been going to get some breakfast when this witty white cop recognized the matching description and hauled him to our place.

at this point they asked both me and jonny to come down to the station (despite work) and fill out a report. now this is where the story gets kind of shady... i mean i hate cops, but if they are doing shit that benefits me instead of hassling me, i obviously reverse my feelings and think what theyre doing is awesome. its a love hate relationship im sure most of you are familiar with. i will insert here that i think ATL cops are really not as bad as the overall population of cops. i mean there is so much crazy shit going on in this city that they dont have time to write traffic tickets unless you really fuck up badly. to date i have never gotten a speeding ticket in ATL and i am a fast fucking driver. they have bigger fish to fry and in this case, i was right in the thick of it.

so since this guy was squatting outside our house, and the car was on the other side, and there were two break ins on our street the same night, and this guy matched the description, but wasnt seen in the act of breaking and entering, the cops really didnt have too much on the guy. i mean he may have had some outstanding warrants in cali, and obviously there arent too many black older dudes with purple and turquoise jumpsuits, it was 99% him... but since he wasnt near the car or witnessed breaking in, who knows whats going to happen. the missing laptop with his fingerprints all over it would be the nut.

the cops in this precinct were overall very cool and liked that we came down to cooperate. the problem was they wanted to be all coppy and honestly they didnt have much stone cold evidence to corroborate the misdemeanor of prowling with the break in 50 feet away. so one cop pulled me aside after they got my statement and was like "Listen, we dont have enough on this guy to book him on the felony... now is there any way that you may have left out a few details, maybe he was by the car when you saw him not in front of the house, or maybe you saw him just touch the car? even his shadow by the car... anything you can stretch your mind to think of would help us... its obviously him, we just dont have enough with your statement. this guy will be back if we dont get him now, and how often do you find the guy 8 hours after the crime wearing the same clothes? so just think about it...."

i hope you all read that-- it was a cop asking me to lie to put this guy away for the shit we all knew he did. and of course did i alter my statement to make it so? unfortunately somehow my scruples interfered and i could not lie to help everyone out. if these cops were good enough to find this dude down the street having breakfast in the same clothes he committed the crime in, they could find a way to pin the shit without me having to lie my ass off and abandon my morals (that could normally be sold to the highest bidder).

on the way out, the white cop who had originally come to our house walked us out and told me he agreed that i shouldnt have lied and it was an honorable thing to do. they would work on the case and try and make it happen, i might have to go to court to testify (eep!) and jonny of course still doesnt have his laptop.

scary shit right? plot twists, secret whispering, breaking and entering. anyway, here are some things i learned after being in the police station for 2 hours this morning:
- there really is a good cop, bad cop in every pair of cops.
- the Zone 6 precinct was the shittiest bureacratic building i had ever been in... it was like a hollowed out shell of the police stations you see on tv. i mean even taggert and bogomel had a better setup, and that was back in 1988.
- cops on CSI have all the top quality technology. cops in real life are still using WindowsNT platform and gateway computers loaned from pre-Y2K. their databases are all old, their forms are all still paper-based, and they were crowding around one monitor to do detective work.
- these guys must see a lot of worse shit... so i understand that they have a gray area for obeying the law vs. enforcing it, but to ask a witness to lie without directly calling it a lie is still bullshit.

So anyway, that was the 1st time ive ever seen the inside of a police station, minus that one time that 50 little 8 year old jewish kids got lost by their counselors in downtown indianapolis for the Pacers vs Bulls + Micheal Jordan game and went to the police station to wait it out. but overall, pretty crazy story. comments?

ps-- i was a kid, not a counselor, when that shit went down.

The Godfather (video game)

If you dont know how much i love video games, you dont truly know my essence. i have been stuck without an xbox 360 for months now... everytime i try to seek out a box, there are none to be found in our area code. no bother, i smell big shipments coming in soon before the PS3 is released. its all part of a strategy, you see....

Now i will shamelessly plug one of the most awesome 1-person shooter games that just came out....The Godfather.


First i would like to throw in a personal story, then i will cut to the action. a good buddy of mine is some kind of assistant producer for EA and his project happened to be this wonderful video game concept. adapting the gangster shootem up classic original movie into an action-packed, explosive, addictive, no sleeping or eating for awhile, badass video game. while i was in LA for new years long ago, one of the Coppola hippy family members and my buddy talked business about the video game... thats when i knew it was legit. a year and change later, after seeing the video game previews in the movies all summer, this game was released for regular xbox this past tuesday.

The video game basically centers around you, a new up-and-coming hoodlum who grew up in 1940s Little Italy. After your father is murdered by the Tattaglias, you start to become a little bastard and your mother leaves you in the care of Don Corleone, your Godfather. He sets you up with Clemenza and Tessio and other capos for the family. The goal is to become the Don of New York.

I have to say the flow of the game is very similar to Grand Theft Auto games-- it just has that gangster twist to make you forget that and realize you are right in the middle of the movie. You see Luca Brasi assassinated, you see Fredo cowering in the corner, Michael guarding his father at the hospital. You talk to Tom Hagen to get your advice and missions, and you report to Don Corleone himself when the time is right.

You have a map of NYC circa 1940s and obviously there are little pockets of neighborhoods where all these mafia bosses live and operate. You extort businesses, shoot people, threaten people, negotiate deals, shoot more people, blow things up, bomb buildings, steal cars.... the more money and respect you make, the more skill your character has and the better youll do. You rise up the ranks and eventually take it all over.

Cool things that the Godfather has that GTA does not have:
- You get killed less quickly. you can build up your health so that one shotgun doesnt end your crime spree. longer lives mean longer playing before you get "iced" and yell FUCK at the top of your lungs to your tv set.
- Better plot and flow. In Grand Theft Auto, you tend to lose sight of the task at hand... suddenly youll have 4 stars and the FBI is chasing you and all you were trying to do was drop off a few cab fares. In Godfather, there are so many shops and stores and gangs and turf wars that you are always trying to extort without killing, or just go in guns blazing and take out every prostitute and bartender in your path.
- I think that badass things on television/movies should always become video games. Like 24 the video game should have sick features, helicopters, bomb disarming, explosions, interrogations, all that shit. i like how The Godfather kinda keeps it real with the standard pistols, shotguns, and maybe a tommy gun here and there.
- I love the execute feature in the game. There are like 30 different ways to execute a person, from splattering their brains on the barber shop wall, choking them to death with a wire, throwing them into a car, cracking their neck with the heel of your foot, etc... also the sound and effects from these actions looks so real and so nasty at the same time.
- The video game soundtrack has a lot of the original movie tunes, and i find myself whistling the godfather theme in my head while not playing for 6 hours at a time.

Things Godfather needs to have for the Xbox360 release:
- uhh... how about Xbox Live play? i think it would be cool to just have the map and leave it open to 1-5 players (families) if you want to enter a random game midway through, and there is a spot open on a map, you can. if you and 3 friends want to play together, you can invite them to join your map. you can go against the computer, each other, etc. there could be races involved, or just first to take over the most, or just continuous turf wars forever and ever.
- more cars would be nice, but i understand its supposed to be the 40s where people had either really boxy or kinda boxy cars. but vintage cars make GTA cool and stealing a badass car is cooler than stealing the same car over and over.
- Dynamic Turf Wars would be nice. if gangs dynamically took over each others businesses... so one day it might be Barsini, the next day its Tattaglia. i also liked in GTA that if someone attacked your hood you had time to go and defend yourself.
- Gang fights. it was also cool in GTA that you could bring a few thugs with you to a job.
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Overall, I give this game an 8.5 out of 10. its entertaining, it has a lot of shooting, the flow of the game keeps you playing for a long time, and oh ya.... ITS THE FUCKING GODFATHER, best movie ever. and now, i will sit and wait and watch my email bin.

The "Yes" Man. I'm Back, Byatches

i am not a yes man. sometimes i deny shit, veto restaurants, pass on activity suggestions, skance out of phone conversations, etc. i am officially not a yes man. i have several yes man tendencies.... no denying that. i am a chronic yes man to chronic. there is rarely a time where i would pass on greens. i can say i am also a yes man to poker games. this weekend i almost skanced out of one until raahk blew up my celly and at 3:30 in the morning told me i should come play, there's a live game with 9 people right now. thats a bunch of unlucky bastards if its 3:30 on a saturday and no one has some tight box clamped on their dicks, me included, so i said yes. (i was at the pony prior to poker, plenty of putrid pussy patrolling there)

and that leads me to talk about my other friends. i have one friend who is 100% officially a yes man when it comes to strip clubs. not only does he enjoy going, but he wants to spread his cash across a multitude of establishments across this fine city. it was an alright night for those interested, no camera phone pics at the pony... plus we got 3 seats and a table next to stage 1... quality viewing but very difficult for dancers to get over to your lap so you can pay them $20 to look pissed and uninterested while grinding on your kitty-killer. this kid does not even have to be asked "do you wanna go to ____?" if he's got a pulse and a credit card, he's saying yes.

swilly was always a yes man to cigarettes. even if its hartford connecticut in early january and you left your jacket in the car because its better to not have to deal with it in the bar and the law states that all places are smoke free, he'd still say yes to "cigarette?"

my buddy nascar john up in nyc is a yes man to moes and joes when he was/is in town. loves $3 pbr, $5 pbr, hot wings, and the ridiculously sketchy old boozers that hang out in that bar.

mike d is a yes man to neighbors, but then so am i which is why its the only place we run into each other.

saff is a yes man to movie night, but only because she catches 5 minutes of every movie before she passes the fuck out... oh, except for real winners like National Treasure.

most of my friends are yes men for prop betting. if the odds are good and we think we have a winning shot, we will bet almost any situation. the outcome of a tv episode of 24, the time it takes to get through 3 lights on clifton, the over/under on how many zoomed shots of adam morissons nasty stache cbs shows, who will boot at the bar at the end of the night, etc.

i am pretty sure there are universal yes men out there. these are the people who say yes to everything. as far as i know, my buddy choo is the only true yes man i know. yes to any social activity. yes to any drinking activity. yes to any competition activity. yes to any restaurant. yes to road trips. the only thing he says no to is the one thing i always say yes to. which is ironic. yes yes?

ok...pretty much done talking about the yes man. moving on.
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File Sharing. now i know that most of the blogging community knows what this concept means, but to the people out there who are still in the frickin dark about this concept.... you know how you have itunes. and your computer has a ton of songs. but maybe youre kinda looking to expand your library? but you dont really know how to get other peoples tunes? well, there is a concept called FILE SHARING. if you use instant messenger, you can share your files with ANY of your friends. so if you have a buddy with good taste, and you both have a fast connection, you can 100% pick and choose what tunes you want from their library. here is how:
1. Sign on to AIM. make sure you arent using the beta version...it sucks.
2. go to the top of the thing, File --> Edit Options --> Edit Preferences
3. go down to file sharing
4. in the first box up top, find the location of all your music. (if you were smart, you would have one big folder with all your itunes and mp3s.)
5. choose your permissions...i would recommend display approval dialog for buddy list.
6. go into the firewall option. usually its the first one, but if this shit doesnt work then try the others.
7. go to someone on your buddy list. tell them to do these exact same steps.
8. click on the top of their IM under People... and there is an option "Get Files"
9. Pick and choose which tunes you want. hold ctrl-click to select multiple options.
10. let them get any of your tunes they want.
**This is extremely easy and well worth it if you know a ton of buddies with good tunes**
if you are on a large network, like say at work or school or if your city has wifi, you can download a program called MyTunes and if there are people sharing their ITunes, you can rip directly off their computer to yours. this is another easier option, since you dont have to know the person.

Last but not least.... i have a ton of dank tunes. if you want to exchange, holler at me.
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this years ncaa tourney seems to have had a ton of good games. buzzer beaters, upsets, bracket buster games, etc. every fucking year i am in the running for the win, and every year my bracket falls apart. i was one of only three people to put texas in the final four... if it was Texas UConn in the finals, i would have won it all. but i kinda like seeing teams like UNC, Duke, Texas, Kentucky fall by the wayside. Did you know that George Mason's school website got more hits this week than the total hits in the entire existence of the website? thats pretty cool.

if you filled out a bracket on a yahoo or espn pool, peruse the people who are the overall leaders.... amazing! that some of the top guys took #11 george mason to the final four, not to mention a #2, #4, and a #3. little history lesson for you... last time there were no #1 seeds in the NCAA tourney, my man Denny Crum took the #2 Louisville Cards all the way in 1980.

Rick Pitino

As you all know, I am a huge Louisville Cardinals fan. Last year when we were one win away from a Bowl Game and undefeated season in football AND made it to the Final Four in basketball, i was halfway there and living on a prayer. But after this years entrance into the Big East, i have been a little steamed at our entry year's overhype bullshit. I mean, i knew coming into this basketball season we werent going to be as good as last year, but i thought Palacios and Dean could give everyone a run for their money-- plus Padgett transferred and would start this season... things could have continued on the way they ended last year. But when your conference schedule looks like this: WLWLWLWLWL, you arent doing so hot this season. hell we barely got an invite to the big east and we were supposed to be in the upper eschelon of big east ballers. i think this was a transition/initiation/whatever the fuck you wanna call it year for the Cards, and I'm sure we'll pick it up again next year when we arent throwing in 4 freshmen and a senior halfway through a 36-9 rout in the first half of a basketball tourney game. (you can only do that when youre on the WINNING end of the scoreboard)

Regardless of the fact that we were definitely preseason hype with a cushy soft non conference schedule through december, i think Pitino finally realizes that the gimme games in the beginning dont mean shit and almost hurt you more than help you 'gel' as a team. that said, i love pitino and petrino and would never say a mad note about the two amazing coaches we keep around year by year scared they will jump the shark and peace out to better opportunities. but everyone loves saying that pitino loves the Garden, loves NYC, loves the big city lifestyle, etc etc. When the score was 39-16 at the half, i started drawing the following picture...

imagine the new york times editorial cartoons, and i think my caption is pretty good although i am sure you can think of more. basically i was so miserable and slumped over from embarassment and anger that i thought someone should talk about pitino being from frickin KENTUCKY and going up to the big city which he looves soo much, and getting laughed out of town:

(click to see enlarged, good quality cartoon)

Its Kinda Hard Out Here Fo A Pimp...
in other news, whilst looking for pitino pictures i found one of the fucking funniest hate sites.
Look how much time these other dooshies had to mock Pitino. (link)

wow its 4:20, perfect timing to peace out. i cant apologize for being a slackass anymore. if you have ever bound template columns to datagrids using a dataset pulled from the SQL Server stored procedures, you know what kind of tremendous pain i am in. and if not, ask my coworkers why they love coding so very much.

last thing: if anyone can decode the following anagrams back into my coworkers real name, you will get a big cookie. HINT: He's an Indian.

JAGUAR HAIR MARK SHRUNK
HANUKKAH JAR RAM RUG SIR
SARAH HANG JURA KIRK RUM
SARAH RAG HAIR JUNK MURK

Spicy Weekend

I know, its already fucking March 06 and i have written like 10 blogs this year. but i have been slaving away for the Man so dont bust my fucking balls. I have long abandoned the idea that I can constantly come up with one main topic and write an entire thesis on it.... therefore, i bring you the spice that was my awesome weekend.

Choobs was in town after a biz meeting in SC... whenever choo is in town, we always do tons of fun shit. After college, when i would return home to the ville, i realized that all of my high school buddies were soft drinkers and no one could handle partying like i was doing at emory. as a result, nights often consisted of going to grab dinner and a drink, then being tucked away in bed by midnight on a frickin saturday night.... thats just ridiculous. i mean i can still be buddies with them, but they dont have the same cravings for liquid and herbals that my ATL friends do. it was this past christmas that i realized what kind of friend Choob is: the 'Yes Man' friend.

choo will say yes to any activity. if choo were a blood type, he would be O positive. he can chill, he can curl, he can watch tv, he can watch any sport, he can play any sport (except baseball, for some reason), he will go to a casino at fucking 1 am when everyone else has dismissed the idea and he will get you a coke if it looks like youre about to pass out at the table. he will throw darts, play pool, drink heavy, order late night food, kick ass in beer pong, kick ass in trivial pursuit, slaughter people in team trivia, etc etc. the kid is an ideal friend because he will do whatever the fuck YOU want. i mean ya it would be nice to get a controversial opinion or a veto every once in awhile, but the point is that in the great words of Ice Cube, he's "down for whateva".

Friday night a group of 8 dudes headed to hibachi; i called for nakato because of its proximity to Smith's Olde Bar but Edo in toco hills was the call. When the 8 of us sat down at a table, directly across from us was an entire table of black people and 1 white dude. Lets be honest, you dont see that too often in a hibachi place off north druid hills, so instantly the gears started grinding. How funny would that skit be on the Dave Chapelle: the Lost Episodes series. The little asian lady comes out in a kimono and asks the family what they want. Chicken, Chicken, Chicken, Chicken, Chicken, Chicken, and some Chicken...that sounds delicious ill have that. you can take it from there... i just know this setting would be funny for a chapelle show skit.

Why is it that when a group of guys gets together, they only plan the initial activity and wing the rest? girls know exactly where they want to go, what to eat, where to meet up, etc etc. I am telling you we literally had our hands on the cardoor handles before someone asked "where are we gonna go next?" so to Smiths we went, where me and choo dominated yayayan and boozer in darts, then proceeded to get waxed in pool. How fucking hot is Sam, the little country waitress at smiths? and she smokes trees.... i want her pretty bad. thirsty mike joined us at around 12:30 before we headed out to thug night at MJQ. pit stop at home to drop thirsty's car off, not to mention grab a road soda and pack a quick bubbler before heading to the club. get more hammered, dance to prince and MJ and other funk.


i dont like me in this picture, but thirsty's tequila face was too good to pass up
get a call from raahk who was walking up and down ponce at 3:30 am on a friday night outside dugans. uhh dude.... ill be out there in 5 minutes...try not to make eye contact and DEFINITELY dont go inside and order wings. pick his drunk ass up and head home, where the action didnt stop. Stats put on some tunes, bowl packed again, and since there were 5 poker players in the room we had a little $10 tourney 2nd place keeps their money. of course i won that shit, i am the best poker player in the group.

next morning i am rudely awoken by 4 hungry mother fuckers. roll to Brewhouse to check out futbol and hopefully the hockey game, which they promptly changed back to soccer even though no one there was watching any tvs. as a matter of fact, the only group that was there was like 10 women about my age slamming drinks and talking shit and being like, aggressive type-A naughty girls at 1 pm on a saturday. they were dressed like L5P, but i could tell they werent just a group of 10 girlfriends who decided to squat a mile away to celebrate someones bday. I said to my crew I bet they were the Atlanta Rollergirls. sure enough, when one of them stood up and had kneepads on and took off her hoodie to reveal the Rollergirls logo, I was impressed with my keen intuition. Even though they looked so girrrrrrly, and could definitely kick my 5'9 and under crew's ass, i decided to ask for a picture with them. of course i was only thinking about this blog at the time, and the fact that i would potentially put my body in harms way for it should make you all proud. they were surprisingly extremely nice girls, and funny and witty ya know? so imma have to check them out sometime... in the mean time, here it is:


i would probably do ponytails, right below me. the tongue thing always gets me...
after a ridiculous portion of food and a bloody buddy, we had to just chill the rest of the day. later that night we went to bling bling lanes (cheshire) and bowled a rousing game of 2v2v2 bowling with $5 per person per game on the line. i was 0 for 2 despite the fact that i own my own ball. that kinda sucked, but i think the poor performance was directly related to the hour wait before the lane was available where we hammered 5 pitchers in a game of quarters. needless to say the crew was wicked cocked.


Timma! and Raahk are seen here, imbibing some champagne of beers


Yan and his lady friend, who proceeded to take all my money. Dude... its ok to emote.
after this little lady went home to bed, Timma was restless and he could smell the young dripping honeypot in close range. His bare vagina radar is literally the most honed out of the group, and he sensed that there were about 40 little whores who wanted to display their confections for dirty men to gaze upon, while jamming dirty one dollar bills in their twats, thongs, and other slits where money can be put. so we decided to close out the Masters.

although it was very difficult to accomplish, i got some real blurry shots of how an Asian man loves blonde girls with big boobs. i think its funny to watch your friends faces when they are getting a lapdance in front of you. some play it real cool, some take it too seriously, and some curly headed idiots just groan and make fellatio gestures hoping the girl forgets that her job is to take money and make you feel good about it. on a different note, it is difficult to take a discreet picture in a strip club where the vagina is 5 feet away, but i managed as well as i could.


this chick was about 30, but whos complaining about those areolas... not this guy.
anyway sunday rolls in and choo rolls out, life goes on. but i got to do basically every activity that i enjoy minus the whole coitus thing. who knows, maybe this weekend will bring that instead. jonny is out of town til friday, i am going to be skancin like a mother fucker this week.