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Lou Pickney's Online Commentary

Dollar You Call It

Tuesday
April 15, 2003

"Is the Upper Decker going to make it on LouPickney.com?"
-John Pouncey

For the second straight year, I've come back from Mississippi State's "Super Bulldog Weekend" with a sore throat. Bad times. And what's worse is that I know antibiotics could start working right away for me, but I have to wait until tomorrow to go make an office visit. Forget the $20 co-pay, just give me the prescription and let me start getting better.

But I suppose that would be too easy... Damn complicated medicine. So for now I'll get by with Sucrets and orange juice.

There's a club in Starkville called Rick's Cafe Americain that has a Saturday night tradition known as "Dollar You Call It." Almost everything in there is just one dollar, from beers to shots to mixed drinks. Now, as you might imagine, this brings out quite a crowd, and the place gets packed early.

I'd been to Rick's once before, to see the band Sister Hazel in concert in October 2000. So I knew it, but it had been awhile.

By the time we arrived, it was around 9 PM. The line was long; we spent about 10 minutes waiting to get in. A guy up by the front in a shirt that said "You don't have to be Chinese to see my wang" lamented that he only had $3 (the cover was $5). We went inside, and not 30 seconds later a young man stumbled by, flanked on either side by a friend, his head buried in a black cowboy hat. He'd gotten sick inside, less than one hour after the club had opened. Yep, "Dollar You Vomit" was on.

We started things off right -- with a shot of Jagermeister. From there my brother Matt recommended a "Jagerbomb", which is a combination of Jagermeister and Red Bull on ice. The two liquids blended together exceptionally well, creating a tasty and quite potent mix. Unfortunately, Rick's charges an extra buck on Dollar You Call It for Red Bull (which I found a bit silly, but whatever).

By accident, we'd left J.C. Cuadra behind at his house (I figured he had found another ride, but unfortunately that hadn't happened). He finally joined us about a half-hour later (along with his cute blonde hookup Delina) and joined in on the drinks.

J.C. is one of those people who is great to have in just about any social setting. He throws great game, is good at making people laugh, and is pretty good at radaring in on quality women. At one point that night he hollered at some girl, telling her she was pretty. She said, "You're just a drunk guy." J.C.'s response, without hesitation: "A drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts." Well said.

I consumed a number of Jagerbombs. John Pouncey was running a tab at the bar, which by the 10-11 PM range was ridiculously slammed. It made the crowd at the bar at the Slightly Stoopid concert earlier this month look tame in comparison. Luckily, two of the people working as bartenders were Bailey and Jenni Overstreet (who I went to high school with), so the crew was able to get their drinks much faster than the other people crowding around. They put orders in for me, which worked out quite well.

Later in the night I heard that the line to get in had stretched to the street and that they'd finally cut off people coming in. Matt said he'd been to Rick's hundreds of times and had never seen it that packed.

Matt cautioned me about the Jagerbombs, warning that too much liquor could be bad. And remember, I'd been drinking beer since the early afternoon. But, hey, the Jagerbombs were flowing down smooth.

Things got a bit fuzzy for me around this point. I know that J.C. and I scoped out the dance floor and that there were some good times for me with some of the women out there. I ended up in a Rick's pic with J.C. and Delina that I saw online the next day that I didn't remember posing in (it was taken late in the game). But, contrary to Matt's prediction earlier in the day, I managed to avoid throwing up. I know you wanted to know that last tidbit.

From there we walked to a couple of people's places who lived nearby. Sleep was sounding like a good idea to me, but we had to hunt some folks down. At one point we met back up with Pouncey, who was in full John F'n Pouncey mode. He told us his bar tab was $90 at Rick's, which I found absolutely astonishing. I'm still not sure how it got that high. I mean, we threw down quite a few Red Bull drinks, but I think he had a couple of leeches on his tab. Regardless, at that point in time he was in no condition to drive, so luckily one of the crew managed to acquire his keys and drive us home.

The next morning was definitely Ugh mode for me. I wanted to see a Mississippi State home baseball game, but the idea of going out in the sun to watch baseball at that point didn't appeal. At all. So in we stayed.

Pouncey ended up back at the house (not quite sure how though), and he proceeded to tell us that he gave someone an "Upper Decker". Now, for the uninformed, that is when you take a dump in the water tank of someone's toilet. Not the bottom part, but I mean the top water part. In essence, it would keep re-filling the toilet with tainted water.

It's a truly disgusting concept, but when Pouncey told us about it the result was unbridled laughter. He and I were literally laughing until it hurt. Jason Drew (Matt's roommate) thought it was funny too, but not that funny. I thought someone had given me some laughing gas or something, I mean I couldn't stop laughing. I tried, but then Pouncey would laugh which would get me laughing again, etc. It's like those old Bonkers commercials from the 1980s where someone would eat a Bonkers and then people would inexplicably start laughing uncontrollably.

Most of the day was spent watching the Masters on CBS. It was quite unusual to see it without commercials, and I'm not quite sure how CBS and its affiliates made any money on it. But regardless, it was an exciting event that went down to a playoff. Unfortunately for Pouncey, Vijay Singh didn't win (only kidding, actually Pounce was rooting hard against him, which in turn had my brother cheering for Vijay, just to piss off Pouncey). If Tiger couldn't win, I would've liked to see Phil Mickelson finally get his. Instead an obscure left-handed Canadian captured the green jacket (not to be confused with the gold jacket). Go figure.

Speaking of golf, Jason Drew and I played alot of Tiger Woods 2003 for the PS2. It's a fun game; I recommend it.

That night a bunch of us had dinner at this Mexican restaurant. Thanks to Starkville's strange laws, you can't buy alcohol on Sunday, not even at a restaurant (if they ever did allow it, I'd sweep into town and turn that vacant Shoney's on the strip into a Hooters in a nanosecond). In a funny move, Dustin (aka Dirty D) offered our waiter $20 for a Margarita in a styrofoam cup off-the-record. Unfortunately the waiter declined. He also managed to continually forget the lemon for Matt's water, and later actually laughed about forgetting (there went his tip from Matt).

Matt had to go study, but some of the rest of us went to the movies and saw Phone Booth. You'll recall that it was supposed to be released last fall, but the real-life DC area sniper spree put the kibosh on that. Several months were allowed to pass before this film's release.

Without spoiling it, let me assure you that Phone Booth is a worthwhile see. It keeps you on the edge of your seat for the duration of the film, quite unlike any other movie I've ever seen. The amount of tension involved was amazing.

Sunday night we finished the keg from the day before and watched The Ladies Man and Caddyshack on DVD. When midnight rolled around, we went back to Matt's bedroom (where he had been studying) and had him come do a keg stand to celebrate his 22nd birthday. What I didn't know until the next day was that earlier that night, along with dealing with his brutally hard engineering homework, Matt had broken up with his girlfriend Heather. Tough way to spend the night before your birthday, but I give Matt credit for not putting up with any more nonsense.

Yesterday Matt and I had lunch at Peter O'Patrick's, a nice Irish restaurant in town. Their logo advertises "Steaks, Chops & Seafood"; I'm not quite sure what "Chops" are, but the blackened chicken I had was excellent.

On my flight from Starkville to Atlanta, I sat next to a girl named Carla who said she was in vet school at MSU. We hit it off pretty well and chatted for much of the flight (which is a rarity for me, normally I sleep). When we got to Atlanta I'd planned to exchange info with her. But as I walked with her out into the main gate area, I realized that I'd left my boarding pass for the connecting flight behind on the plane. Figures that I'd be distracted by a woman. I had the security guard go get it for me, but by then Carla was gone. Easy come, easy go.

Now I have a sore throat and body aches. But I also have another weekend worth of fun memories from lively Starkville, Mississippi...


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