04/03/2005 - 2:01 p.m. | they aren't all good entries.

Let's try and make this brief, shall we? HA! HA! No, really. We'll try! Um, Becky, her brother, and his girlfriend came over with Smacko and Shanks to watch the game with us. And the occasional round of SNES "Family Feud." Shelly and I, the two least interested in the game, ran out for wine and pizza (THE STREETS WERE EMPTY), and I more or less did not pay attention unless they switched to coverage of our dead pope. And showed the same stock footage of people crying. OK, this one I understand even less than usual. The pope was old and crazy and did not like gay people or abortions, and people are acting like their grandpa died. On the plus side, I can finally haul out my surplus of dead pope jokes.

No, I don't really have any dead pope jokes. I was just being silly. The pope loved breakdancing after all.

After the games, plan was that we would wait for Kyle to finish playing Uniball and then go over to Geo's Chill & Grill for karaoke. Kyle didn't want to stop playing Uniball, however, and there was no karaoke that night, so we needed a serious alteration of plans. Instead, we ended up hitting most of the rinky dink bars in downtown Urbana. It was a lot more fun than you might imagine. The best place of the bunch (and possibly Smacko's all time favorite) was The Embassy, a small middle-aged single person bar. They had a fairly decent band ("House of the Rising Sun?" OH HELL YES "Long Black Veil?" MORESO) and old people all dancing and Smacko's lesbian teacher from IMSA and this one fat couple making out and free credits in the arcade bowling game and (clearly Smacko has his reasons) they didn't card us for drinks. More or less we got tossed. Shanks bought us some lemon drops from the oddly-alluring bartender, and I was actually able to choke it down without crying like a woman. Thank you, Shanks! We appreciate your efforts!

Crane Alley would be fun to play pool at, I think, the Bunny was deserted and creepy, the Office is like a less crowded Murphy's (in other words, mostly strange looking grad students with the occasional tolerable person here and there; awful shrieking girl going "I-L-L!" and waiting desperately for a response), and was there more than that? The mostly deserted Rose Bowl Country Western Bar would have been fun, as Shelly and I got up and danced around wildly to the band's rendition of "Wipeout," but they had some shady practices there. They carded us, but I feel like they would have served us drinks anyway. We didn't order any, however, so they used our age as an excuse to kick us out. We climbed this crazy spiraling staircase somewhere and then headed back to the Embassy to finish off the night.

We were all in pretty good spirits (rather, soaked in pretty good spirits - ha!) when Smacko decided to stop and take a piss on a building. Not a wise move. Cop car pulls up, and it turns out it's the guy who busted Missy last time she was down. Fucking A. Cobb. Actually, he was a pretty nice guy every time, but he recognized Smacko and pretty much had to give him a ticket in this instance. That's one thing, but we all know how the police love to congregate. Another cop car pulled up to the intersection nearby and came over all happy with its lights flashing and whatnot. Two cops got out of the car - I recognized the one from... one of our encounters with the police (Either burning the cup, last fall's party, or Smacko trying to break into Altgeld to piss - the latter, I think), but the other was a newbie prick with something to prove and a quota to fill. I mean, clearly Smacko had been doing something suspicious, but as far as they knew, the rest of us were just standing around waiting for our friend, trying to be friendly and make small talk with the cops, and the young one all of a sudden decides to get up in our business as well. Totally unwarranted. I guess the thing to do would have been to not actually answer their questions, but we did, and they asked for our IDs. I took a gamble and pulled out Sean D. Mills, leaving my knees to quake for the next ten minutes or so. Luckily, he just checked I was 21 (22, rather - snort) and gave mine back. The others, however, all got drinking tickets. Not as expensive as Champaign's, luckily, but still $135 that no one needs out of their budget. So that kind of shat on our spirits. Smacko's going to talk to his dad to see if there is any way they can get out of their tickets, but outlook is not great. Damn it.

Did I go ahead and mention that Smacko spray painted "COCKS AND BALLS" on the building next to us, his future home? No, I didn't think I had done that.

Got home and I crashed on the couch watching cartoons while Shelly researched her ticket some. Today: Over the course of the night, I had misplaced my glasses and spent the whole of this morning trying to find the damn things. It was awful. I mean, I have a pretty good memory for details, sober or not, but to stumble around blindly looking for clues puts me in a real foul mood because I almost use a logical repetition. My phone is always in my pocket, my glasses are always beside me when I sleep. But I was a little detective, using my browser's history, my phone's dialed calls, Shelly's camera, and a recollection here and there to pinpoint that I must have left them in the house with me, probably when I went to sleep. They were all wrapped up in a blanket, and I was relieved as hell. Unfortunately, by the time I found them, work had already long past started, but I'll just make up the hours later on, I think. Later on, I got a call from eMall. He was all annoyed that I didn't meet him on Thursday, and I was like, "What?! You said Thursday, 8 PM, IHOP, and I was there for 45 minutes." Finally, he checks his little schedule book and realized he wrote (and told me) IHOP but meant Holiday Inn. Oh, this is really inspiring some confidence. There is another meeting tonight, but I have tests to study for and only the vaguest of directions, so we'll see how that pans out.