Whew. Long weekend, but a fun one. Last weekend was somewhat similar yet uneventful, really. Went out Friday to celebrate some breezy's birthday and had a good time, though not much happened. Met at a bar in SoHo – Boca, I think, which is amusing since that’s the name of the bar I ended up at when I went on a pub crawl in Kowloon this past Friday – and then hit Lan Kwai Fong for some more drinks. Nothing too amazing. During my walk home, I had the bright idea of picking up a bottle of wine at the 7-11 (along with some ramen and ice cream), so that comprised the end of my night – some ramen, some ice cream, half the bottle of vino, and a drunken viewing of part of the last Lord of the Rings movie at 3am. I’m glad I didn’t get to that goddamn spider part, though I probably would not have remembered too much; the next morning I woke way too early and had to watch part of it over again.

Anyway, yeah, that weekend was kind of standard. I spent most of Saturday feeling lazy and hung over, barely getting anything done, and much of Sunday was spent sitting in a terraced garden reading this great book by Tobias Wolff called Old School. The tale itself is actually not that amazing, but he’s a great writer – deft and economical use of language which makes the book eminently readable. It’s about a young man who wants to be a writer (along with several of his other school chums), and it’s always interesting to read a writer who is writing about writing – about the processes and desires and self-inflicted roadblocks and all that. The guy just knows how to use words sparingly and well. It was a nice afternoon, full of breezes and warm sun and little kids running around with one sneaker missing and things like that. On my way home, I bought a couple pieces of amber with insects in them, just in case my writing dreams do not come true. I can then build Jurassic Park.

So…this past weekend was slightly more eventful. Went out on that pub crawl on Friday night and accomplished the dual goals of exploring Kowloon and getting completely smashed. Lit up like a freakin’ Christmas tree I was! Brilliant, just brilliant! I’m getting’ all Anglified over here. Basically it was an outing led by a local woman, a Reuters reporter named W who wanted to show us some of the nooks and crannies that you don’t read about in the tour books. Kowloon is essentially still part of the SAR (Speical Administrative Region), so it's not fully Chinafied, but it's the start of mainland China and it's definitely got a more Chinese feel than Hong Kong - more gritty and freewheeling, a little less Western, but still quite vibrant and perpetually full of action. This is where some of the reporters go at 2am when they're looking for coke and shit like that - you can probably get robbed over there more easily, but at the same time, the performing arts center is over here and so is the fancy-pants Peninsula Hotel and Felix, a high-end restaurant at the top of the Peninsula. It's hard to describe - its difference from Hong Kong is subtle but still sort of present and detectable, like a heat vapor.

I met my buddy (and W's colleague) B at Spot Bar in Soho, along with his buddy Dom Killa, and we had a beer before heading to meet the main group at a restaurant in Kowloon, on Nathan Street. It was a big crowd and the meal was a feast. We had prawns, clams - both sweet and super-spicy – the spicy ones were the bomb - veggies, crabs that were literally buried in piles of crispy flakes of garlic, big long clams...damn, I can’t remember what they’re called...and some chicken for the suckers. So good. Just a feast, on a huge lazy susan. U-Godd was there too, a great guy with whom to be out drinking, and I think the group totaled around ten or so. Let me see here…yeah, ten. What a meal.

After dinner we headed to a local bar that was obviously a frequent hangout for W – she knew everyone on the shift – and we continued to throw them back. It was at this point that half a victor snuck into my system along with a red bull for good measure. I recall talking to this guy about politics a little bit and just going off on all these things that happened during the election, what we need to do to win, all this stuff. He seemed to be genuinely interested, but who knows? Perhaps Victor and I were just bending his ear. This crazy Asian cat named A-Spears wanted to take us farther down into the bowels of Kowloon drunkery, so we walked off this way and that and ended up at a sick, rockin’ karaoke bar on the third floor of some building on a side street. It was like a college party in there – trampy waitresses slamming down buckets of beer and joining the table, blacklights everywhere, music blaring, the mic going from table to table…part of our table even got into a local drinking game using two sets of dice; among the din of everything else, you could hear the dice being shaken and slammed down on various tables. It was, in a word, awesome. Everyone kept apologizing and asking whether we gwailos liked the place; I had no complaints. I mean, shit. You can go to some stupid hipster lounge anytime. I even took a look at the songbook but it was all in Chinese. No “Ballaholic” for me that night. I was talking about politics in the US (yes, again) with someone at one point and S said to me, “you don’t sound drunk enough!” to which I replied, without missing a beat, “It’s the vicodin.” I’m not sure what she thought of that, but since I’m not the dork who is fucking her, I don’t really care. Her remark – and my response – also had the added benefit of reminding me to take the other half, so it was all good. Brilliant, just brilliant!

B, meanwhile, spent part of the journey to this bar breaking up with his girlfriend. I was wondering where the hell he was, and I figured something along those lines was occurring. He found us, though, and got back in to the mix quickly enough.

Now’s the bad time, as Henry Hill says. Things are starting to get a little hazy on the recall tip, and I’m not really sure where we walked next except that I think it was to Knutsford Terrace, where there is a big long row of bars. We found one that was still serving - the Boca bar I mentioned at the beginning of the post – and managed to knock back a couple more before 4am rolled around and people started talking about cabs. A-Spears, B and I (and maybe Dom Killa?) grabbed one bound for Central and bid the rest of the folks farewell.

The only person who remained apparently unscathed was U-Godd. The guy is a warrior. He drinks redbulls and vodka or vodka tonics all night long and just maintains throughout. What many people do not realize is that Red Bull is the most expensive mixer you can order, so the bartenders adjust for that by actually loading up on the liquor. It’s a really strong drink despite the caffeine blast. He just pours them down and keeps on chatting. Great guy, really. He’s the guy that B and I went drinking with that night we went to Bar George, Pizza Express, and Loft 9. Brian and I were hammered by the end of that session and he was like, “See you guys, anyone need a cab, who wants to go somewhere else?” It’s like he’s got a little internal vicodin dispenser inside him that just keeps him stable and able all night. Who knows, maybe he does start to get a little fucked up and you just can’t tell since you are pretty lit yourself. B and I have remarked on that quality of U-Godd's composition many times, however, so maybe he can just hold it down like steel. He’s got a few years on us, too, so perhaps it’s due to more practice or something.

A-Spears dropped B and I somewhere in Soho, and I bid B farewell and just started walking blindly downhill. I found myself on some side street with all these little shacks and tents and stuff and realized that I was in the wet market. Like a street fair that’s closed for the night, the wet market and its little narrow alleys and nooks and shit can be kind of unsettling and full of foreboding – if, that is, you’re not completely shelled from the multiple sorties. It was prime gwailo knifing territory, and this thoroughly knifeable gwailo could not give a shit. You know what my big concern was? That I needed to piss, and that someone was sleeping in one of the shacks, guarding their crap or whatever, and I was going to wake them. The bladder won that little argument right there. Time to take this leak. Word. For like a full minute. Of course, being on a hill, the piss ran right down into the intersection, basically keeping pace with me after I finished and began my downhill walk again. Then I’m doing a rapid zip-up and a couple appears on the street to the right. So there’s me, zipping up, weaving alongside my friendly little pee snake…hmmm, I wonder what he was doing? The woman said something in Chinese, and let me tell you, I really gave a shit.

I headed to the 7-11 and bought a couple ramens, a beer, and something else. You know, I really, really wish I could remember what that last thing was. I want to say it was water, but…well…who knows what it was? I can’t believe I bought that damn beer, too. It’s funny to be in that condition where you are totally set, I mean completely, thoroughly drunk, but you’re like, “Well, I don’t think one more will actually make me throw up, so what the hell?” It’s like, that’s your measure of whether to have a beer – not if you need one, but if you’ll boot if you have one. Such odd logic at 4.30 or whenever it was. “Heeey, what am I going to drink with this ramen anyway? Oh, right, the Tsingtao…”

Anyway, I threw in Kill Bill 2, which sucks a little no matter how drunk you are, and watched Pai Mei stroke his beard about 40 times and checked out Uma Thurman’s feet a lot. I wonder whether Thurman ever let Tarantino suck her toes.

Went to bed around 6 and slept until 12.30. Sweet-ass sweet. I’ll tell you about Lamma tomorrow. It’s a more boring story anyway (not that this was incredible either, but whatever. It’s the best I can do with no coke whores and AKs).

Chucky