Daily Loaf

P.Diddy's Pants-Less Pillow Fight

The Super Bowl is not a game. It’s a national holiday from moderation, offering sanctuary from dieting, sobriety, and sense. It’s a celebration of all the things foreigners despise, and secretly envy, about Americans: extravagance, overindulgence, consumerism, and idiocy. So, when you hoist your Natural Ice and Stuffed Jalapeno popper as a reality star sings the national anthem before kick off, you are saluting all those Americans who died so that you can enjoy yourself without feeling guilty about getting drunk mid-afternoon on a work night.

This past Super Bowl I was confronted with the difficulty of being surrounded by a group of friends unmotivated to drink beer and watch football. Considering that I didn’t have enough time to report these communists to homeland security agents, I had to motivate them. Some I was able to convince with promises of miniature Kegs of Coors Light, borracho nachos, and football shaped cakes. Others I had give up on as David-Beckham-loving-soccer-fan-bastards. And still others required something more, a themed Super Bowl party.

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Watch the Creative Loafing Street Team endure a nighttime challenge that includes mysterious clues, creepy motorcyclists and dead camera batteries. See how they make out!

“Dude, she pissed my bed. Twice!”

These were the first words I heard this morning. Travis, my oldest friend, was calling me in a rage after dropping off the bedwetter at her dad’s place. It seems with each year I return to Austin for Christmas, such calls have become more frequent. It’s hard to say exactly what changed. Our sexual escapades used to start out so innocent—“Dude, that smoking hot girl at the bar just brushed her ass against me. She totally wants me.” Now, the tales of our sexual adventures usually begin something like the story of Travis’s bedwetter: “When I first met her, I thought she was a prostitute…”

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Would you hire this man?

“I need a huge favor tonight,” scrolled across my cracked cell phone screen.

It wasn’t unusual for Joran, Creative Loafing Marketing Director, to ask for strange favors. Just last week he asked Emma if she would pose nearly nude at a wine tasting while a body artist painted grapes over her pasties. What worried me was the fact that he didn’t include what the favor was on this exploratory text. Considering that we were hosting Beer Club that night at Skipper’s Smokehouse, I was optimistic that the favor involved beer sampling or helping the Bud Girls get dressed for the event. Such hopes died twelve minutes later when the next text came.

“Can u bring a cake and a speedo to beer club tonight?”

The cake had to be for Joran’s wife, Jennifer, whose birthday it was, but the Speedo? I was lounging in my St. Pete hangout, Kahwa Coffee, at the time and felt the need to confirm with the barista Catherine who was used to dealing with absurd requests from male customers like, “We should get some coffee sometime.” For her the text wasn’t cryptic.

“He wants you to bring his wife a cake while wearing your fancy Speedo and doing your little booty-shaking routine.”

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Here are some Street Team pics from this year’s Wine Rave event – ART XTC, held at the West Tampa Center for the Arts on November 22.  

And many more here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenhammill/sets/72157609810143939/

 

“My girl is dancing at Penthouse tonight,” Chuck confided in me, though I suspect I wasn’t the first to hear his confession.

He was trying to convince me to accompany him to the club after CL’s Wine Club event at Whole Foods. Chuck even had three attractive girls with him, one or more of which supposedly really wanted me to go. The only thing more intriguing than nude dancers is women who enjoy watching nude dancers. There was also some talk of Chuck buying lap dances for his lady friends. I figured after a few beers, I too might have been included in Chuck’s philanthropic efforts.

Normally I wouldn’t need much convincing to drink and watch surgically enhanced nudity in motion. The trouble was that I brought a lady of my own, Penny, to the wine tasting, and was uncertain how she’d respond to such an invitation. It was hard enough convincing her that a wine tasting at a health food store would be cool.

To be honest, I too was a bit skeptical of the choice of Wine Club location. But, I changed my mind after watching a steady stream of patrons looking dressed for some expensive gym class involving whale songs and giant inflatable balls. The place was a depot of people wealthy enough to live healthy, active lifestyles, and look great well into middle age — the kind of people who have developed a taste for wheat grass and goji. This is not to say the store didn’t have its share of normal people as well as the token old white dude dressed in a silk robe and wooden clogs like an Asian wizard. Read the rest of this entry »

Being a reasonably fit, attractive, and ambiguously straight man, I’ve long assumed that I held a certain power over gay men looking to convert me — like a kind of gay kryptonite. I imagine myself the male version of that attractive girl friend who does all the things the boys do — booze, ballgames, and talking shit — but who never lets guy friends in her pants. So, it was with a certain amount of arrogance that I pranced over to Czar this Saturday to the after party for CLIP (Tampa’s gay and lesbian Film Festival) only to be turned away because I was not on the guest list. I blamed this on Kelly and her lack of a penis.

To be fair, my name is rarely on the guest list at events I’m scheduled to work. I probably said something like, “let me have my people call your people.” The doorman gave me a courteous smile before popping inside to get his boss.

I tried to maintain my cool by fluffing my hair and ignoring a guy in line who was carrying on like a drunken sorority girl; he was stumbling in his heeled shoes while calling his friends bitch and yelling about how hot he was.  Read the rest of this entry »