The Little Engine That Couldn't

You don't get another chance

Life is no Nintendo game

--Eminem

Philly, philly, philly.  The last time I came to Philly I just blasted out a couple messages on facebook about which bar I would be at on which night.  That had a success rate of about 50%.  In other words, I went the entire trip without seeing half of the people I meant to.  This time, I figured, I would just make individual plans with everybody.  Well, that didn't work either.  I think I have more friends in philly now than when I left, where friend is defined as either someone who wants to see me when I visit, or someone who gets offended if I don't invite them out for drinks.  I think the main problem is that I can't keep track of them all.  This trip I still missed like half of them, and a lot of my plans fell apart.  I originally wasn't going to post this...and I have no idea what I was going to write here.

Whatever the case, next time, I'm just going to book my flights and tell people when I'm in town, and see what happens.   So here is my trip summary.

[Where is the horse and the rider]

Friday night I had plans to go salsa dancing but the people I was going with bailed on me.  I texted a bunch of people and to my surprise Kristen actually responded.  I met up with her and her friend Laidback Colleen, who I so named because she doesn't throw a fit regarding the pronunciation of her name.  They were out to celebrate Laidback-Colleen's successful bar exam, or something.  She wants to do copyright law but doesn't know who Lawrence Lessig is.  Sitting there at the martini bar, I realized that both of those girls were quite attractive and I would have loved to make out with either of them but my hopes for anything like that were dashed when they spent half the night describing their perfect mate:  The Mountain Man.  Picture Aragorn, son of Arathorn, standing on the deck of a corsair ship, shirt open to the wind, and he is chopping wood, but unlike the movie or reality he is cleanshaven--babyfaced, even--and also loves sports and doesn't take long to get ready.  For a super dressed up occasion he maybe throws a button-down shirt over a sports jersey.  Here is an artist's rendering of what a mountain man might look like:

I took a look around at the male clientele in the martini bar and wondered what made the girls want to drink there.  More importantly, this is basically an opposite description of myself.  I don't take long to get ready, and I do shave, but I am no mountain man.  I'm tall and thin and look like I was assembled with pencils and my apartment doesn't even have a damn fireplace.  Plus, I know pretty much nothing about sports.  I mean, I know which ones I like to play.  Watching others do it is boring.

We parted company and I went to Brasil's by myself.  They put a new lock on the men's room door.  The old lock had a problem where it didn't actually lock and people would walk in on you.  I discovered that the new lock has the same problem.  There was this girl there that seemed kind of into me, but I blew it, mostly out of old habits.  Then I walked back to center city and slept alone after watching a movie where these guys kidnap some guys and hold them in a chemical factory, but there is a fight which causes one of the chemical canisters to open, and suddenly everyone in the building gets knocked out and when they wake up they can't remember if they are the kidnappers or the ones who got kidnapped.


[Heaven holds a sense of wonder]

I met up with this girl I know, and started to think she was the girl of my dreams.  She told me she isn't dating or kissing anyone for like 5 years.  I'm still thinking of a...uh...anything.


[It all comes back to you]


Met up with Ariana one night.  She is super hot.  I don't know if she is one of the one's that got away because I don't know if I ever had a chance with her, but I do know that I didn't really try and she has a boyfriend now.  She also told me that it was too bad she didn't know I was in town friday night because she and her friends had an awesome time staying up until 4:30am drinking all over town.


[When its just me and you on the dance floor]


I had been hoping that Betsy was single and interested by some miracle but those hopes were dashed when she showed up to the wedding with her boyfriend.  Even worse, she looked gorgeous;  it sucked.

The wedding was in an awesome chapel.  I know this because as I was ushering I rarely made it halfway down the aisle before the person I was escorting mentioned what a great/lovely/wondering building it was.  What can I say?  People are suckers for old stone buildings with no bathrooms.

During the ceremony I stood next to the dais, and in between trying not to pass out (I am apparently physically incapable of standing still for an hour in a hot, stuffy church without getting lightheaded) I imagined someone in a somewhat princess-like, not necessarily white, dress walking down that aisle, alone, to me.  Then I pushed it out of my mind.

I hate weddings, or more specifically, being in them, because weddings have many, many, many many many single points of failure, and if you are a groomsman, any number of them could be your fault.  I managed to survive the wedding without screwing anything up, and later received unwarranted praise from family members for whatever it is that I did that day;  all I technically did was show up and put on the tux.  Maybe I simply looked good in comparison to a certain other groomsman who didn't bother picking up his tux until the day of the wedding (ref: single points of failure).  Then again, I was late to this gay picture-taking thing where the photogropher takes pictures of the guys while they are getting ready.  This part of the wedding process was new to me.  Who wants pictures of that?  Thats like me asking a friend to take a picture of me sticking my arm out of the shower curtain to give a thumbs up on my first day of a new job.  I could possibly understand it if all of the guys were in some old hunting lodge, lounging around in our suspenders, smoking cigars and sipping Ketel One against a backdrop of wood panels and stuffed dear heads.  But we weren't.  We were a hotel room at the Sheraton at 707 Lancaster Ave wearing some lovely cream-colored ties, while random girls popped in and out to yell at me for ignoring their calls.

I also got bitched at by a number of friends, mostly Mulan;  a lot of people I know seem to have been born with a visual impairment that causes them to think I am frowning, or even scowling, when actually I am not.  I don't know if it is congenital, or hereditary, or what, but I don't want to sit next to Mulan at any more weddings.


[the devil himself could be pulled out of me]

Yeah, then at the wedding afterparty, which was really more like fifteen-drunk-people-in-one-hotel room, I met a girl who made club-style dancing enjoyable.  I didn't know that was possible.  Unfortunately, it made my life here seem that much more miserable when I got back.  I've lived here one year and 9 months and I'm still meeting more attractive girls in philly than here.  WTF?