Bar Tuesdays: Season 3 - Week 6

Well, that was a wild one.

This week we had another double bar night as it was week three of our four-week mini-tour of Chinese restaurants. We’ve been doing bonus bars after the restaurants each week since they close at 10 PM. This week’s Bar Tuesday also happened to fall on Frito’s birthday, so we had to make Ye Olde Boulevard our bonus bar, as that is the place you go on your birthday. It’s sort of an unofficial rule of Bar Tuesdays. Plus, that place rules, so it’s always a treat to make a stop there. And as usual, The Boulevard didn’t disappoint. But we’ll get to that – first, let’s start where we started our evening, which was Jade Dragon:

As usual, there were Scorpion Bowls to be had:

Only Paul, Brent and Frito braved the Scorpion Bowls this time around. Tommy and Ryan opted for the Mango Mai Tais, David opted for the crazy:

And I continued my new trend of ordering something I don’t expect to see on a menu at a Chinese restaurant, just because it’s there. This week’s choice? Root beer float:

Some people (Michael) may have mocked me when I ordered it, but when it got around to him to take his order, what did he get?

You can’t deny the thrill of a good ol’ root beer float, my friends.

Or the thrill of wearing your drink umbrellas in your hair once the booze starts to hit:

I believe that occurred after Brent and Paul decided to suck down the shot of 151 that is in the middle of the Scorpion Bowl instead of adding it into the rest of the drink. That was immediately followed by Paul declaring, “Oh, your mother is a whore!” and then disappearing into the bathroom, but not before announcing his need to fart to us, the waiter who was walking by, and the other patrons a few tables over. C-L-A-S-S-Y, that is what we are. Thankfully, Brent didn’t follow suit with the whole farting business, but he did start to ask Michael some uncomfortable questions while Michael was telling a story about his mother. Brent: “Is your mother hot?” “Do you have any naked pictures of her?”

I believe that is the exact moment that you might want to decide to shut someone off from the alcohol for the rest of the night.

Anyhoo, the rest of our time at Jade Dragon was relatively uneventful. I enjoyed the boarded-up windows in the ladies room:

And Frito enjoyed some birthday presents:

After that, it was off to Ye Olde Boulevard, aka our favorite local bar and home of the greatest bartender in the world, Norma.

(Also home to our first photo shoot of this season. We didn’t do one this week, since we didn’t know if we could top David getting plowed outside the Boulevard.) In the few weeks since we last went to the Boulevard, they have gotten themselves a fancy dancy new jukebox:

It’s actually now the best jukebox of any bar we’ve been to on the entire tour. It’s one of the internet ones where you can download extra songs for another credit, but it’s got SO many great songs already loaded on it for the regular price that you don’t even need to search for more. However, when we did search for more, we found songs that we never find when we go searching on other jukeboxes. It was fantastic. I want to think it was the Scorpion Bowl and the following drink hitting Paul that caused him to sneak his way in and play And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going from Dreamgirls, but with him, you never know. And it wasn’t so much that he played the song, but that he then proceeded to serenade Lauren and then the entire bar by singing along with Miss Jennifer Hudson. I’m sure it was purely coincidental that four people left the bar during the serenade. And he sang the WHOLE song, people. Loudly. Norma even handed him a shaker top to use as a microphone:

(I love the umbrella wall in the background.)  Anyway - but what good are pictures, really? Here is some video I grabbed during the song:

Did y’all know that Paul is straight? He is. No, really.

Aside from that, we had the place rockin’ with some good tunes, and then all of a sudden, a few songs into the bunch that we had paid a lot of money for, a song started playing that wasn’t ours. And it kept playing. And playing. And playing. When it finally ended 10 minutes later, another song started up that we hadn’t played. That one kept playing. And playing. And playing. Then we looked at the jukebox and realized that we were being Phished.

Some bastard at the bar decided that he wanted to hear a bunch of live jam band songs, most of them by Phish, and that he would pay the extra money to hear all of his songs first. Y’all – being Phished is worse than being Loafed (Loafed: playing all of the really long Meatloaf songs and then leaving the establishment before they play, thus “loafing” everyone left.) The worst part is that this guy stayed around and swayed his head to these never-ending songs. It was MISERY. At least Meatloaf is fun to make fun of – these jam band songs just wore us down. They are NOT songs other bar patrons want to hear. And yes, we sometimes play songs that people don’t want to hear ourselves, such as MmmBop, but at least we sneak songs like that in between 2 really good ones. Plus, our silly ones are three and a half minutes long. And fun. Jam band live songs? They are not fun. NOT AT ALL. After over an hour of probably 4 songs – seriously, they all sounded the same and were about 20 minutes long – Norma had finally had enough along with us, and went to talk to the Phisher, who is a regular at the bar. I don’t know what she said, but bless her heart – she got the guy to agree to let us skip his songs. Yay! And you guys? There were about 6 more to come. He would have had control ALL night long with those things. Once the opening strains of Buckcherry’s Lit Up began, we knew we were back in business and ready to celebrate Frito’s birthday properly. At one point, Norma called us all over as she had bought us all a round of carrot cake shots in honor of Frito’s day. Do I need to point out again how awesome Norma is? Here she is, pouring the poison:

Paul gave a drunken toast to the birthday boy:

And there was birthday love all around:

Manda wore some kicking shoes for the occasion:

And also brought some homemade chocolate cookies, which automatically makes you the best friend to any one of us. Here’s Manda, getting her “you rock” props from Kevin:

Speaking of Kevin, he is the answer to this week’s installment of “What is Pam straddling?” Since we didn’t do a photo shoot this week, I had to find something else to straddle, so my friend Kevin had the honor:

The best part of it all is that while Kevin and I were laughing, Paul was sitting next to us, looking like a creepy homeless pervert, just watching and hoping something juicy would happen:

Sorry to disappoint you Paul. Most of the rest of the night was spent playing pool and the Touch Master, and just plain old having a blast hanging out with the crew and Norma.

Oh yeah, and then there was the moment when a few of us were rocking out to one Mr. Gavin DeGraw singing In Love With a Girl on the juke and then there was some sort of silence happening before the next song kicked in, which was not the best thing. And why is that? Because it was one of those moments where something loud ends that someone has started talking during and when the silence hits, the person talking ends up announcing something really loudly to the whole room. That person was me, and the whole bar got to hear me classily telling my friend, “I need an orgasm after that.” Awesome.

Towards the end of the night, I went outside for a few minutes and when I came back inside I was met with a number of sweaty men engaged in what can only be described as an all-out Ye Olde Boulevard Dance Party. This was probably foreshadowed earlier in the evening when Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy) came on the jukebox and Tommy and Paul immediately went into cowboy-dancing mode:

But that couldn’t have prepared me for being met with a group of sweaty, sweaty folks just getting DOWN. There was only one other guy left in the bar besides us, so what better time is there for a dance party? Even Norma was busting a move behind the bar. For some reason, Paul must have forgotten that as much as we love Ye Olde Boulevard, it is still a little divey, so it’s not the first place you should be dancing in bare feet in:

Yeah. But at the time, I don’t think Paul cared because he was a dancing fool. Look at how sweaty he was:

j

SEXY.

Frito and Tommy, on the other hand, stayed pretty dry.

By the time the dance party was winding down, it was just about 1 AM, so we had one final song and then finished a long night of fun, fun, fun (except for the Phishing). And that, my friends, is what Bar Tuesdays is all about: fun. And not being Phished.

Next week: Our final Chinese restaurant stop followed by a place ripe for a good photo shoot.

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