Is my life a bad '80s cop movie? 'Cause I'm too old for this shit.

It started on Thursday with what was just going to be a few beers with a couple of coworkers. Hey, why not, right? But after we left the brewpub we ended up at the Back Door, notorious for being named like a gay bar and pouring drinks so strong it makes my liver hurt to even think about it. Apparently at one point, after a few of those drinks, I threw ice cubes at my friend's date. I'm sure I was making an important point. Or maybe I'm just an asshole. Actually, it was a running joke; no harm done.

Friday night a friend from work had a birthday party, complete with two kegs of good beer (almost unheard of in the Bud Light-dominated realm of keg parties), a refrigerator full of jello shots and a stocked liquor cabinet. I had a ride home, which of course gave me a good excuse to drink a lot of bourbon. While there I encountered a lot of cool people and the most annoying drunk chick ever.

I know this sounds hypocritical coming from someone who chucked ice at a near stranger the previous night, but some people shouldn't be allowed to consume alcohol. For instance, if you're already stupid, and this particular young lady was amazingly dumb, booze will not make you smarter; it'll just make previously happy party-goers flee whichever room you enter.

When we left the party, we ate at Barbara Lee's Kitchen, a nearby 24-hour diner. I'm rarely frightened by a restaurant staff, but sweet heyzeus these people were like an open casting call for "inbred" roles in a Deliverance remake. Our order was taken by a girl whose eyes were so close together she blinked and her left eyelash became entangled with her right eyelash. The food was cooked by Eminem's retarded 8 Mile understudy, then served to us by Andre the Giant's female doppleganger, who communicated with a complex series of wheezes and grunts. I had a drunken desire to mate with her unibrow and give her a rare "pearl headband", but I refrained.

I had to work at 9am the next morning, and I'm pretty sure I was still legally drunk as I drove to the store. To say it was a long day is to criminally understate how fucking long a day it was. Let's just leave it at that.

On any other day I would have gone straight home and took a nap like a smart old man, but Saturday was the Original Highlands Art and Music Festival, one of my favorite hometown events. They close down part of Baxter Avenue so there's drinking in the streets, and I loves me some street drinking. I started the early evening by sitting at a table outside of The Tequila Factory, a new trendy excuse to sell overpriced drinks and mediocre Mexican food. I had some painfully average salsa and two kinda pricey but delicious margaritas as we listened to music and did some fine people-watching on a beautiful day. I'm sure we'll pay for this mild summer with apocalyptic ice storms, wind storms, and plagues of locust later in the year, but I've really enjoyed the relative lack of schweatyness.

Later that night, I discovered I could either pay five dollars for a 16-ounce Bud Light served by street vendors, or step inside one of the bars and pay the same price for a 20-ounce cup of delicious beer that doesn't make a mockery of the brewing process. Not surprisingly, I opted for the latter.

It was about 10:15 pm when I hit the wall. I was listening to a very good local band when I suddenly felt like I was going to collapse. It was time to go home and rest.

I didn't leave the house on Sunday. I sat around watching football. It was just what I needed.