Thursday, March 29, 2012

Fun Times With a Meth Addict at 37,000 Feet

A lot of people hate to travel.  It's seldom you find someone who enjoys the stress involved in getting around the country for business.  Even people traveling on vacation stress over the portion of the trip that involves getting there and getting back.  I guess I'm wierd, but I love traveling.  Yeah, it's a pain in the ass getting through security, but as long as you get to the airport in plenty of time, it's usually not a huge deal.  Then the fun begins, if you allow it to.  It's easy for a "type A" personality like me.

I like to get to the airport nice and early.  There are no better places in the world to 'people watch.'  When I'm at my home airport, either Boston's Logan International, or Providence's T.F. Green, I don't really interact with anyone.  I put my earphones on, pop a klonopin, and sit my ass down at the gate and check out the crowd.  Human nature forces my eyes to look at hot girls or people who look interesting.  The very same human nature forces me to check out shady looking people at my gate and size them up.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't do this.  Political correctness can kiss my American ass.

When I travel for business, I almost always have at least one stopover if I'm flying anywhere over a couple hours away.  I also usually fly alone.  If I can find someone cool to talk to while I'm waiting for my next flight, I do it. Why the hell not? What do you have to lose?  I board my departing plane and hope like hell an attractive female winds up sitting next to me.  It doesn't necessarily mean I'll hit on her or even do anything more than smile at her.  Maybe I do and maybe I don't.  I'm usually pretty good at judging people. If I say hello and it seems like she would like to be left alone, I pick up on it and leave her alone.  I know personally at times I like to be left alone myself.  If it's not an attractive female, I hope that an interesting individual sits next to me, male or female.  I just don't want to be stuck next to a completely annoying person who won't shut up even though you do everything BUT tell them to shut up.  I also prefer not to sit next to someone who's fat and/or smells like my old high school football locker.  Sorry, just human nature.  There's nothing worse than looking up the aisle and seeing a sweaty, fat dude who's breathing like James Gandolfini and looks like he's going to collapse worse than LeBron James does in 4th quarters of important games.  He keeps walking down the aisle, getting closer and closer, looking at the aisle numbers, and you cringe and pray that he walks past.  As long as he passes by or sits several rows ahead of you, the first leg of the journey will be at least tolerable.

When I get to my first stopover, I make an effort to have some fun. I enjoy meeting people.  It makes me happy to meet people who enjoy conversation.  It's cool to converse with people from different parts of the country or who have much different professions or family situations or accents as mine.  There is no place better suited to meet people from all over than an airport, for obvious reasons.  Another reason it's easy to have fun at airports is because it's easy to start a conversation.  "Where ya headed?"  "Going away or coming home?"  "What do you do for work?"  There are literally countless ways to begin a conversation at an airport.  I'm a pretty confident, like I said, type A personality, so I'm generally not shy, but there's something about an airport that makes it even easier to talk to people.  It makes me even more comfortable and confident.   Throw a drink or three into the mix at a concourse bar, and I could become best friends with whomever I'm speaking to in under an hour. 

My accent is generally brought up within minutes of first contact, if the person is from outside of the northeast.  For the amount of times in my life that I've been asked about my accent, you'd think I'd be annoyed by it by now.  This might be true except for the fact that my enjoyment of attention trumps the fact that I've been asked to demonstrate how those of us with a heavy Boston accent say words that end with an "r" millions of times.  I proudly carry my accent around the country and I'm happy to use it to my advantage, especially as a conversation starter with females from the south, or midwest or the west coast, or wherever.  People find me interesting, and I generally find other people interesting.  I love learning about other areas of the country and the cultures behind each region.  I like to talk sports with people who like different teams than I do.   I love to learn about different professions and I dig telling people what I do too.  I love to brag about my kids and show pictures of them.  Sometimes I'll lie completely about who I am and what I do, just to see the difference in people's reactions.  I don't do that often, but it's fun to mix it up every now and then.  I suppose it depends on who I'm talking to.

When I talk to a girl, who's clearly on meth, with her constant scratching, gaunt face, and skin that's practically peeling off, it's not so much fun.  It was the end of a long travel day, and I had been drinking, and thus I was feeling especially friendly.  So too, was the methhead.  She approached me and we struck up a conversation.  We had fun times throughout the plane ride (she sat with me since it was a mostly empty flight) and continued drinking on the plane.  We parted ways at our stopover in Charlotte, NC, and somehow she wound up with my phone number.  She literally texted my phone a week later, spouting some story about how she was stranded at a hotel and had no money and could I put it on my credit card?  Let that sink in for a minute.  A meth addict, (allegedly) who I met once, had the nuts to call me up and ask to use my credit card.  My response:  "I can't, I spent the last of my money on some crystal, sorry."  I never heard from her again.

The road can be a lonely place.  I miss my friends and family if I'm away on business for a long period of time. It's easy to get homesick, but if you make the most of  your opportunities to make new acquainances and have interesting conversations, it can dramatically reduce homesickness. 

I've clearly learned, at least in one such instance so far, that sometimes you gotta be careful, too.  If someone is walking around like they have contraband squeezed up their asshole, you might want to move on to the next person to converse with. 

And there's my travel tip.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Thank You For Not Aborting Me, Mom

It's been a pretty wild ride so far...my life, that is.  I've lived all over Massachusetts.  I've traveled all over the country.  I've met too many incredible people in my life to even count.  I have the best family and friends anyone could ask for.  Perfect kids.  I mean that literally.  My kids are perfect.  If you disagree with me, you can go choke yourself.  My ex wives aren't even that bad, as far as ex-wives go.  I've been in a lot of relationships with (mostly) decent women.  I love my current girlfriend and I love my current job and I'm very happy.  What if I was never born?  How many people would have been affected over the last 3 decades?  I sat here one day and tried to think about it, and it can't be quantified.

I took my mom out to dinner the other night to thank her for having me.  Is that weird?  I felt it was appropriate.  My mom said she never thought twice about her decision to have her first child.  She was 21 and my dad was 19 when I was born, meaning they were about 8 months YOUNGER than that when they found out I was on the way.  Shit, I would have lobbied for abortion if it was me, so I can't and won't blame anyone for feeling the same way.  I promise you my dad's friends probably told him to try to talk my mom out of it.  That's what I would have done.  As it turns out, I was in fact born, and I've led a pretty good life.  My parents brought me up well and taught me to be a man and now they're grandparents and everything turned out alright.

I still wonder, and will probably never know, what went into the thought process.  Did my mom REALLY know right away?  Was it a split second decision?  Was the decision leaning one way and then swung back the other?  How greatly did my grandparents influence the decision?  These are some things that are never talked about.  They're merely "what ifs."  But seriously, what if?

Maybe my parents never get married.  Maybe they don't even stay together for more than a few months or a year.  My sisters and brother are never born.  My kids and my siblings' kids are never born.  Maybe my parents each go on and meet different significant others and have two completely different families.  My very existence could be the reason countless other people were never born.  The relationships I've had in my life never happen.  I never meet all the incredible people I've met in my life.  I never even exist, and so on and so forth.  I could go on forever.  It's pretty trippy though, right?

The point I'm making, and maybe this isn't the right medium to do so, but I will anyways, is that my mom saved my life before I even had lungs.  I was a mere zygote.  I'm trying to pay her back.  She's in her early 50's, and she needs NEW lungs.  She's sick.  The thing about my mom is that she doesn't want to bother anybody.  She doesn't want to "put anybody out."   She seems to have forgotten that several decades ago, she was the reason I was born.  I think sometimes that no matter how many times that I tell her I don't mind driving her to her appointments and getting her out of the house and talking with her on the phone that she still thinks it bothers me.  I tell her and tell her and tell her.  I verbalize to her that she's my mom, and I'd do anything for her.  So now I'm putting it on here, so she can see it in writing and other people can see it in writing. 

It's my turn to help save your life, Ma.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Females and Their Levels of Crazy

Let's face it everyone.  Women are fucking crazy.  I have not met a single one that is not crazy on some level.  They're not all BATSHIT crazy, but every one of them who I've met in my life, and there have been a lot, whether they were/are acquaintances, friends, girlfriends, wives, sex buddies, etc.  EACH ONE OF THEM have been crazy on some level.  I'm going to attempt to narrow the crazy categories here in this entry.  I implore each of you out there, (at least the dozen or so that will read this), to put the women in your lives in one or more of the following categories.  I promise you'll find one or more that match.  By the way, girls, don't read this and think I'm an asshole, because even YOU all can admit that you're fucking nuts, one way or the other.  What category do YOU fall in?  The below are in no particular order of craziness.  Without further delay:

Lovestruck crazy:  Not all levels of crazy are bad, so I figured I'd start with a relatively positive form of crazy.  Some women are so in love with their man, that they say and do things that are a little off.  An example is getting a tattoo of a guy's name on them, or even initials.  Carrying around a vial of blood, a la Angelina Jolie with Billy Bob Thornton.  Women who mean well, but crazy nonetheless.

Anal crazy:  No, not like that.  I mean way too detail oriented.  Women who pay attention to every detail that no normal guy could possibly hope to keep up with.  "Remember your 4th cousin is having a Christening in two weeks, so don't make any plans for that Sunday."  "You used the debit card to buy an egg McMuffin and didn't write it in the checkbook."  "Make sure you pick up double A batteries on the way home from work."

Jealous crazy:  This is one of my least favorite categories.  You're in a relationship with a woman.  You've been completely faithful for the duration, yet you're not allowed to even glance at another woman without hearing relentless shit about it for days.  And forget having any female friends, even ones that you've been friends with for 20 years longer than you've known this particular woman.  Make sure you delete any and all emails from anyone with a vagina, even if their coworkers or an electronic marketing person from Proflowers.com or something like that who you've never met.  DO NOT leave your cell phone unattended, because you WILL have phone numbers that will either get deleted, you'll be questioned about, or both.  You might as well put any plans you have with any female friends out of your mind, because it's not happening.  By the way, these ladies are even jealous of their best friends.  Guys in a relationship can't even be friends with the woman's girlfriends without getting grilled.  "Do you think Jane is better looking than me?"  You're gat-damn right she's better looking, everyone knows it, including your woman, but you can't say yes.  And when you say no, you get daggers stared through you and a "yeah right, why don't you just say it!"  Or something along those lines. 

Sex crazy:  This one is pretty self-explanatory.  These girls will do everything and anything in bed.  Shit that freaks even the freakiest guys out.  I'm talking girls that enjoy being slapped and choked and called words that I'm not even comfortable using in this space.  I don't have to get further into this, but you get the idea.  Some guys are very into these types of things....to a degree, and that's totally cool. But THESE girls go above and beyond kinky.

Insecure crazy:  These women, no matter how many times you tell them they're beautiful, it doesn't matter.  These are the, "Do these pants make me look fat?" girls.  There's no right answer to that question, are you shitting me.  "No baby, they don't make you look fat."  Their answer: "Why are you lying, if they make me look fat, just tell me!  Why can't you just be honest!"  I don't have to tell you how it goes if you answer, "Yeah sweetheart, but it's fine, just buy a different pair."  Yeah right. That would go over as well as asking a terminally ill 10 year old what they want to be when they grow up.  By the way, it doesn't matter if insecure crazy girl is a 115 pound supermodel or a frigging dumpster fire who knows damn well that they look fat.  There's nothing, as a guy, you can say.

Openly embarrassing in public crazy:  When you're at the movies, and it's an epic drama like Lord of the Rings, and your date cries at the end when Sam almost drowns to stay with Frodo, and your date is literally sobbing in the movie theatre, that's a little bit off, don't you think?  Turning a small disagreement into a loud argument during dinner at a restaurant is not cool.  Keep that shit in until you at least get to the car, ladies...that's not too much to ask.

Drama crazy:  Women who make mountains out of molehills are another one of my least favorite forms of nuttiness.  These types of crazy can turn a simple text, taken out of context, and turn it into a full-on battle.  An example of this could be a text that says, "Hey baby, I don't want you to feel obligated to come, but my buddies are having a party tonight.  I know you said you were tired from work, so if you want to stay in tonight and just see me tomorrow, that's cool."  Their response...."So why don't you want me to go out with you and your friends?  It doesn't really sound like you want me to go and that's pretty shady."  WHAT!?!?  How that question could be misconstrued so badly can only be through the mind of a drama crazy woman.  The manner in which she was invited out was apparently not up to par, even though the intention of the asker was good.  Guys in this situation can not, and will not, win this argument.  Make no mistake, this WILL turn into an argument at least, with the potential of a full blown brawl.

Road rage crazy: This goes for both men and women, but it seems that the "gentler" sex gets just a notch more angry when they're cut off. The difference between male road rage and female road rage is often times the fact that the woman who becomes road enraged, is the one whose fault it is that a traffic situation occurs.  Women are worse drivers than men.  I suppose there's no way to prove that, but it remains my STRONG opinion.  No matter how wrong they are in a traffic situation; however, the other individual is at fault.

Breaking stuff crazy:  There are fights.  There are arguments.  Every couple has them.  Guys are at fault generally just as often as females are.  But is there a need to smash several dinner plates during the course of the fight?  Don't get me wrong, if there is ANY kind of physical harm directed towards a woman, regardless of her crazy level, than that guy is a piece of shit and deserves to be in jail.  No man should EVER cause physical harm in any way, shape or form to a female.  It's just not right.

I'm calling your wife crazy:  Just kidding, if you are cheating on your wife, and the girl threatens to call your wife, that's your own damn fault, haha!

Don't shit where you eat crazy:  This level of crazy can be partly the man's fault.  But relationships in the workplace, though challenging, should be kept separate from work.  Don't air your man's dirty laundry to your coworkers, who you both have to see on a daily basis.  Don't threaten to go to your boss, and the boss of your boyfriend, in order to make him look bad.  That shit is unnecessary, and crazy!

Circle of friends crazy:  Is it just me, or do women love to bash their men with their girlfriends?  You can be made to look like a complete asshole to an entire group, without even doing anything wrong.  "Can you believe John didn't have flowers sent to me on Valentine's Day?  Yeah, he brought me out and spent $200 dollars on dinner and wine that night and bought me diamond earrings that he had the waiter arrange to bring to me in the desert, but NO FUCKING FLOWERS!! All of YOU had flowers sent to work!!"

Domestic abuse crazy:  Remember when I said to never hit a girl if you're a dude?  THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S COOL FOR GIRLS TO HIT THEIR MEN!!  It happens, though.  And when the guy remains calm, doesn't hit the girl back, even leaves their own home, but calls the cops.  THE GUY is made to look like the complete asshole.

I'm always right, even though I'm wrong crazy:  The unwinnable argument.  This is separate from all of the above.  This is an argument of facts.  John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. FACT.  Unless of course, this know-it-all crazy lady says otherwise.  These types of crazies have decreased with the advent of instant technology such as smart phones, but it still happens.  These women will argue to the death that the sky is red.  Sometimes, looking up the facts on the Internet don't even matter.  "Well whoever wrote that article must have gotten it wrong."  Now the Kennedy example isn't the best, but it's the only one I could think of just now.  Usually the argument in question is regarding some kind of obscure fact.  It's just a shitty feeling, KNOWING that you're 100% right about something, but regardless of how hard you try to convince the woman that you KNOW you're 100% right, it doesn't matter.

Holding your heart like a hand grenade crazy:  Buy me a ring or I'm ending things.  You could be poor as hell, not ready for marriage, recently GOT OUT of another marriage, or a myriad of other things.  If this type of woman wants to get engaged, it's either happening, or your ass is out the door.

I want a baby crazy:  See above.

I'm pregnant crazy:  I've fallen for this bullshit once before, but never again.  You're ready to break up with a girl, and during the emotional breakup discussion, it's conveniently revealed that the girl whose heart your breaking is suddenly pregnant.  Really?  You waited until I'm breaking up with you to reveal that you're pregnant with my baby.  This is a level of crazy I never quite understood....or at least, understood less than any of the above.  What is the woman trying to accomplish by lying about her being pregnant?  Is she hoping to win back the man in that instant, only to what?  Fake a miscarriage?  Or is the woman just trying to give the guy a heart attack as some type of revenge for breaking up with her in the first place.

Passive aggressive crazy:  A male can come home from a 10 hour day at work, followed by a 2 hour commute, and he wants to take 20 minutes to sit on the couch and decompress.  "Ya know what, you sit down, I'll do the fucking dishes."  This is followed by slamming glasses down and shutting cabinets with authority, guilting the exhausted man into helping do the dishes.  At this point, unfortunately, the damage is done, and it takes the rest of the night and possibly a gift in order to restore relations.  Unbelievable.

Clinger crazy:  Sometimes guys need guy time.  We understand if you want to hang out with your girlfriends.  If a relationship has trust, (which successful relationships MUST) then there should be no problem letting your guy go out with his buddies and watch a ballgame at the bar.  WE don't care if you go out with your girlfriends, quit busting our balls about having a "guys night" to play poker once in a while.

Batshit crazy:  Self-explanatory.  These girls are just completely off the reservation, especially if you date them and break up with them.  These girls threaten to kill themselves, call your mother to bitch about you, show up at your house at 3 a.m. pounding on the door.  Tell you they're pregnant, (see above.)  Finding out who your new girlfriend is and call her until she has to change her number.  She'll leave you 12 voicemails and 100 texts every single day.  She'll try to turn your friends against you, especially if they're mutual friends. These women will do things that could legitimately get them institutionalized.  How does one combat an indiviual who is so unhinged?  You can't really stop them, you can only hope to contain their craziness.  Change your phone number, get a restraining order if necessary.  Aside from that, time is your only ally.  DO NOT engage her back.  It will only pour fuel on the fire and it will snowball into a potentially life ruining situation.  If a batshit crazy woman, however, brings your kids into it.  All bets are off.  Get her arrested immediately.  These woman are absolutely capable of doing something like badmouthing you on your kids facebook page.  In other words, the women who fall into this category have no limits and no boundries.  There's nothing they won't do to demonstrate just how crazy they are.  If you have the unfortunate displeasure of having a woman with this caliber of craziness in your life, I'm truly and deeply sorry.  May God have mercy on your soul.

I could go on about sub-categories that fall under each of the above...and I'm sure that I've left some things out.  Listen ladies, I know that guys have levels of crazy too, but we are the more logical gender.  Call it hormones or whatever, but we as men have a level of common sense, that females often lack.  One more thing, this entry is for FUN. Don't take it so seriously, which leads to my final category.


Too serious crazy:  Calm the fuck down once in a while!!!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

"Vinny, I think I lit your car on fire."

If you're wondering why there is no exclamation point at the end of the title sentence, it's because the sentence is a direct quote, and it wasn't exclaimed.  It was a statement of fact, uttered as such, with no hint of panic or anxiety.  There was no tone to indicate the slightest bit of worry attached to what would normally seem like a worrisome scenario.  The statement was said with a Tom Brady-like coolness which, looking back, was actually quite impressive, in an eerie kind of way. 
At the same time it's the equivalent of walking home to your wife from a doctor's appointment, tossing your car keys on the table, looking at her, smiling, kissing her, and saying, "Hey honey, how was your day?  What's for dinner? It smells delicious. The doctor says I have AIDS.  Man, I'm hungry..."

Being in the private investigation industry can be interesting at times.  You never really know who you're going to run into and what kinds of shenanigans you're going to either observe, or occasionally be a part of.  On this night, the story lies not what happened with the particular surveillance I was conducting, or the guy I was watching, but what took place afterwards, on the ride home. 

I was tasked with obtaining some undercover video of a bartender who owned his own place, a martini bar in northern Massachusetts.  In order to get the best video in a low light situation, I had a camera that was hidden in a woman's purse, so I had to bring a female along.  It was a Saturday night, so my girlfriend was likely out triple-teaming some Mexicans or something just to piss me off, so I invited my sister Trid along.  She was much better company anyways, and she always wanted to come and do a surveillance with me, so this was perfect.  It also fit because Trid was a bartender, and is friendly and personable.  She would have no problem helping me talk to this clown and get him to tell us his life story.  The more information you can get on these types of jobs, the better.  Plus, I knew my sister would have no issue with tossing back martinis on my company's dime all night long, so, like I said, perfect fit.

I showed her how the camera worked and explained to her the game plan and told her that once we identified the guy, she'd have to go into the bathroom and start the camera, so on and so forth.  Everything went smoothly to start, we went in, found the guy right away, sat at the bar and rolled tape on him while I used my Jedi mind powers to trick him into thinking we were best friends while in reality I was busting him for fraud. 

(Side note, cause I've heard this before, I'm NOT an asshole for doing what I do.  It's my job.  I put a roof over my head and the heads of my kids. I put food on their tables.  If you are on workers comp or disability, good for you.  You should get every dime you're entitled to.  If you're committing fraud, good for you too, I don't give a fuck.  If you can get a away with it, awesome!  If you're cheating on your wife and she pays me a thousand bucks to go watch you and tape you cheating on her...not my problem.  Either don't cheat, don't be obvious about it, or don't give her access to your money so she can use it against you to hire a  P.I., dummy.  Same thing if you're claiming an injury.  Don't be stupid about it.  If you get caught and get your insurance money cut off, don't blame me.  Either stop being lazy and go back to work, or don't get caught.  That being said, I have several close friends and family either on worker's comp or disability.  Trust me, for an insurance company to get to the point where they hire a P.I., you have to REALLY be throwing up some red flags. My point is, don't try to fight me if we're at the bar and I explain what I do for work, it's just a job.  Now if I grab your girlfriend's ass and tell her I want to commit felonies with her, by all means, kick my ass...but I think my bar fighting days are over.)

Back to the martini bar.  Trid and I ordered a martini from the extensive list of martinis from our new friend.  We purposely didn't eat before arriving because if we ate at the bar, on the clock, I got to expense the food.  The other reason is because it would look more normal if we sat there all night if we ate some dinner.  Finally, and most crucially, having food in our bellies to soak up all the alcohol would clearly be beneficial.  And here's where our problems began...no food.  No menu.  Not even appetizers.  We had a small bowl of trail mix in front of us, and that was it.  Trouble.  We couldn't leave, we were invested.  The game was already on, the camera was rolling and I was punched in.  It's funny how alcohol seems to go down easier and faster as a night goes on.   With martinis, this seems to happen twice as easy and twice as fast.  Throw in the fact that we both have the last name McRoberts, and the jet fuel was officially poured on the bonfire. 

At one point, Trid had to change tapes in the "purse-cam."  I couldn't exactly bring the purse into the men's room myself and do it, so it was up to her.  "OK, Trid, you can do this." I staggered.  We were having fun trying out the different flavors of drinks over the last 90 minutes or so.  We had walked outside and smoked a cigarette so that I could try to explain the steps without the guy we were taping standing right over us.  It ultimately turned out OK, since she successfully changed the tapes, but it was a heart pounding 10 minutes or so as I waited for her to come out of the bathroom.  I was convinced something had gone terribly wrong.  By the way, if you're wondering why she didn't just do this in the car instead of a bathroom stall....good question.  The answer:  Alcohol.

When we reviewed the tape later that night or the next day, it was a comedy of ridiculousness.  On the beginning of tape 2, the first 5 minutes or so was flashes of video from inside the bathroom stall.  The back of the door, the toilet, the floor, and my sister's face were stars of the show.  Drunken confusion was the best way to describe her expression.  There was no sound on the tape, but at one point she appeared to be talking to the camera.  It was as if she was asking in desperation for some help with this task.  This was a task that would have been difficult to accomplish in a spacious office setting with a blood alcohol level lower than 1.6 coursing through the operater's veins.  Someohow, she managed to pull it off.  I think my sister works best when the levels of pressure and alcohol both go up.

When Trid finally emerged from the ladies room and made her way back to our seats at the bar, we had another martini waiting for us....this one was on the house.  We had mind fucked this loser into not only committing fraud on camera, but now giving the people who caught him free drinks.  What a country!  As the night went on we were literally trapped there.  I had to put in a certain amount of time due to my work obligation.  There was nothing to do BUT drink martinis.  They didn't even have beer or anything we could switch to.  We were both supplementing our drinking with water and we were nursing each martini, but the guy was so proud of his new little shop and his gay little drinks that he INSISTED we continue to try.  "You guys HAVE to check this one out, it's called strawberry balloon knot!" or "Here, have this one next, I call this one mint chocolate glory hole!" On and on it went.
 
Eventually we settled up but since I was working, we couldn't just go home and pass out.  We had to sit out in my car and wait for him to leave so I could document that he was, in fact, the one to close the bar.  So in my little Honda we sat, drunk off our asses, waiting for the guy to close up shop.  Well over an hour had passed between the time we finished our last drink and exited the bar to the time the guy finally walked out, closed, and locked the door.  This was huge, as it at LEAST allowed a little time to go by before I had to make the hour long drive home.

Our job was done.  It was a success.  We got the video I needed, we learned everything we needed to know about the guy, his family, his pets, his neighbors.  I even knew his B.M. schedule.  During the time we waited for him to close the bar, I frantically wrote down notes, since I knew that I'd forget everything he said the next day.  I got all my notes together, put them on the floor of my car near my sisters feet on the passenger's side, and off we went.  We had a fun ride home, especially because the adrenaline was going and my sister thought it was cool that we got so much video and we were laughing it up and having a grand 'ole time.  She worked the purse-cam to perfection, even at the end of the night.  She took it very seriously and did a good job documenting the guy's every move.  My sister is a smoker and when she drinks, she's a SMOKER.  Hell, I was even smoking cigarettes and I don't even smoke.

As we made our way towards downtown Boston on I-93, in the middle of a conversation about who knows what, Trid, smile on her face, uttered the words that are the title to this entry.

"Vinny, I think I lit your car on fire."  Just like that.  After a moment of this registering in my brain, I looked over.  Sure enough, my car was on fire.  Not smoking, though there was plenty of that too, but real life flames on the floor of my passenger seat.  "Put it the fuck OUT dude!!"

Trid had sandals on or some kind of open toe situation, so her attempts at stomping out the fire were not where they needed to be.  It doesn't take a surgeon to figure out that when you have a fire inside your car, while you're drunk driving through a major capitol city at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night, there's no 'half-assing' putting the fire out.  I tried to pull the car over, but it wasn't an area that was conducive to such a maneuver.  I'll spare you the explanation for this, you'll just have to trust me.  I pulled into the right lane and slowed down.  I helplessly watched my little sister try to extinguish a flame which probably seemed bigger than it really was.  We had been drinking all night, it was pitch black, we were traveling at 65 mph, and it was in a very confined area, so who knows.  It could have been very small, or it could have been the Hindenburg.  The size of the flame, ultimately, was irrelevant.  Finally, I grabbed a half-full bottle of water from the center console and dumped it on the fire and my sister's feet.  That seemed to do the trick for the most part, but there was still some pieces of paper that were glowing.  "Get them outta here Trid!"  She rolled the window down and tossed a handful of burned paper out the window.  It would have made for quite a site for a state trooper, had one been around to witness this scene.  Luckilly for us, there wasn't.  "Shit, WAIT!!"  I just realized that the papers were all of my notes and the case information for the entire night.  We salvaged what we could as she carefully went sheet by sheet and put out any glowing pages using the parts of her jeans near her shoes that had been drenched by the water bottle.

Miraculously, we were able to piece back together the night and re-write our notes when we got home.  I was actually able to even make out some of the words on the charred, soaking wet pieces of paper.  We could NOT stop laughing.  A night that was sure to end in us passing out at our dad's house, turned into us laughing hysterically about the entire night and drinking Captain Morgan's until the sun came up.  When it did, we went out to the driveway and took damage control.  Miraculously, aside from the smell, you would have never known there was a raging inferno inside the car mere hours ago.  Nothing had been burned aside from the paperwork and part of Trid's legs.  She turned out to be a pretty good investigator, especially for her first surveillance.  Aside from my vehicle careening down the highway, on fire, with it's two occupants loaded from drinking martinis all night on empty stomaches, it was a great success! We made a pretty good team.

My apartment at the time was only a few minutes away, and my sister's apartment was also nearby, but in the opposite direction.  I would have had to drive one way to drop Trid off, then backtrack to get home.  We were at my dad's house and there was a bedroom open, so Trid planned on going in there and my dad's couch was nice and comfortable, so I hit that thing about as hard as Peter McNeeley hitting the canvass.  I wasn't about to drive again on this day, even if it was only a few minutes.  As we made our way back inside to sleep it off, my girlfriend texted me.  "Where are you?  Why didn't you come home last night? I thought you were just gonna work and come home.  I got home at 2 and you still weren't here!"

My response: "Go fuck yourself."

Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Peter McNeeley Incident

I'll preface this by saying that regardless of how much of a pathetic loser Peter  "Hurricane" McNeeley is, he DID get in the ring with Mike Tyson in 1995, shortly after Tyson was released from prison.

Keep that in mind as you read through this, especially if you aren't familiar with Peter McNeeley. Now the Medfield, MA native DID get knocked down twice in the first round before his trainer stopped the fight. (Side note, he didn't throw in the towel, he actually JUMPED INTO the ring to stop the fight to pretty much keep his guy from getting literally killed!)

Every one of those in the crowd and the millions of idiots who paid $60 to watch Tyson's first fight out of the slammer, (including myself) knew that if the fight continued, he would have wound up like Apollo Creed in his fight against Ivan Drago...but he spent a couple minutes in a boxing ring with Mike freaking Tyson, so that at LEAST says a little something. Prior to the fight, McNeeley famously quoted that he was going to wrap Tyson in a "cocoon of horror."  The event was a joke, but the dude was actually NOT a terrible heavyweight boxer.  I don't follow boxing.  I think it's stupid, and the fights are rigged and it seems like it would have been cool to watch back in the day of Ali and Foreman and Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano, for a variety of reasons.  Today I'd rather watch MMA fights or Ultimate Fighting.  Now those dudes are badass.  There are some legit ass whoopings in those octagons, but I'm getting off topic.  "The Hurricane" had a decent record over his career, 47-7 with 36 KO's.  Not bad right?  He fought a bunch of shitty boxers for the most part.  Still, he participated in 54 total professional career fights between 1991 and 2006. So he made a chunk of change, which he could have still been living off of to this day.  The only problem is the dude is as dumb as a box of hammers. Trust me when I tell you that McNeeley being half a retard will be the main running theme of this entry.

In 1995, he was arrested and charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.  He got in a barfight...ok, whatever.  Some tough guy in Roxbury, MA was probably talking some shit, big Pete probably got sloshed and whatever....who cares.  His epic criminal career gets much better.  In March, 2006, McNeeley punched a guy in the face in Norwood, MA, where he lives, and stole $200 from his wallet.  He had to go to court charged with A&B because he stole $200.  Now in my mind, there's only ONE reason a person would risk going to jail for a quick $200, and that's drugs.  Let's call a spade a spade here, right?

A few short months later in June of the same year, McNeeley was arrested for driving....you ready for this shit?....a getaway car used in a robbery of a Walgreens in Stoughton, MA.  The police found $180....ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS!!!!!.....and a black fanny pack that had been stolen off the shelf from the store.  I am NOT making this shit up, I've seen the court records.  Hey Pete, next time you need drug money THAT bad, just ask somebody.  You're an embarrassment...you fought Tyson for chrissakes, now you're knocking off Walgreens for $180 bucks and stealing a couple hondos off a guy probably an eighth your size...unbelievable.  I actually had court on the same day as him in Dedham, no lie.  I don't remember what I was there for, but it was pretty hilarious to listen to this idiot try to explain himself.  Any of you out there who know me, if I ever get that desperate and pathetic, just end me.

This all leads up to my real life confrontation with this lunatic.

So my buddy B-Ride used to have this Ford Mustang, the early 2000 body style, which looked cool at the time, but not like the newer ones. We were driving down route 1, in Norwood, MA, McNeeley's "stomping grounds,"  (I just hurt a rib laughing so hard).  A tan, late 80's model Nissan Sentra pulls up next to B-Ride's brand new 2005 Mustang.  We had the top down and were just driving home and I must have made some kind of face towards this eyesore of a vehicle at a red light.

The speedy little go-cart proceeded to attempt to race us.  We could have easily driven away, but now we were intrigued.  What was this idiot doing, we thought?  We pulled up to a red light and the male driver was now screaming obscenities at us like they were the only words we knew.  I looked at B-Ride and we just laughed.  "Is this fucking guy kidding me?" I asked him.

"See what he wants."  My friend pulled up to him so that I was a few feet away, his car to the right of ours and I saw what could only be described as a cross between a juiced up muscle head and a skinny little crackhead with bad skin, greasy hair, and snaggly-assed teeth.  Try to picture that in your head for a minute.  His entire appearance was a contradiction to physics.  There was a "lady" in the passenger seat too.  Undoubtedly the most inexpensive hooker in the northeast.  I put my hands up as if to say, "can I help you?"

He continued yelling, though he forget that he had rolled his window up, apparently, so I put my hand up to my ear, and then made the universal sign for "roll your window down" with my right hand.  Without missing a beat, he rolled down the window.  The funny thing about this is that he actually had to roll down the window in the manner with which you'd "sign" to roll your window down, haha!  That's how old and beat up this car was.  Old and beat up was a good description for this clown too.  Fitting, I suppose.

"Can I help you kind sir?"  I asked him.
"Why the fuck did you flip me off?"
"When?"
"Back there!!!"
"Don't recall that bud, you sure it wasn't somebody else?"

This seemed to infuriate him even further, but by this point the light was green, and we were off.  Our angry friend wasn't letting us off that easily though.  He pulled ahead of us, using all 50 horsepower in his Nissan, black smoke pouring out of his tailpipe.  Suddenly, he slammed his brakes and boxed us in against the side of the road.  I'll admit, this actually did make me uneasy for a brief moment.  You never know who has a gun.  It was 2 in the morning and he just blocked the two northbound lanes of route 1 in Dedham, MA.  He looked like he just blasted an entire 8 ball up his nose, and the busted ass hooker, (who may just as well have been his wife or girlfriend, who knows) probably just gave him a shitty blowjob because she couldn't unclench her jaw or something.  So yeah, it was unnerving for a second.

This asshole put his "car" into park, and I shit you not....he squeezed his ass through the window of the driver's door.  The only rationalization I could come up with was that the door was broken.  Why else would someone do that? Was he trying to make himself look more crazy, and thus, more scary?  We were now literally laughing our heads off at this dumbass.  He stopped us in the middle of the highway, screamed at how we disrespected him, squeezed his ass through the window of a car older than my little sister in order to come after us, and all we could think to do was laugh.  Anyways, here's heavyweight boxer Peter McNeeley coming towards me and B-Ride.  I'm about half my buddy's size.  You'd think, since, ya know, he's such a tough guy, that the Hurricane would at least approach the bigger guy if he's going to be confrontational, but of course he comes over to my side of the car.  Then again, he did punch a guy and steal $200 and also drove the getaway car in his big burglary heist of Walgreens while his buddies actually went inside.

"Do you know who I am!?!?!"  Pointing his finger in my face.  This whole thing was so out of nowhere that me and B-Ride just sat, stunned.  "Ummm.....I don't know, should I?" I responded.

"I'm Peter McNeeley!"  So I didn't recognize his face, and now, after he identified himself by name, there were STILL no bells going off.  I looked to my left for some help but B-Ride was just as confused as me.  I shrugged, "Ok Big Pete, can I help you with anything? You seem upset.  Did that lady just bite down on your dick with her tooth or something?  Her mouth looks like a set of keys."

He mumbled something in broken, drunken English and went on and on about how I flipped him off and us trying to race him and other such nonsense.  B-Ride, ever the pacifist, put the kibosh on any type of phyiscal altercation that would have taken place.  We could have engaged, but what good would have come from it.  The guy probably had Meth induced superhuman strength or something. 

At any rate, I have this inane ability to rationalize with even the most irrational of people.  With B-Ride's help, we gave him a worse mental beating than Tyson's physical beating.  After 2 minutes, Peter McNeeley had made two new friends, at least in his own mind.  We had him laughing and making fun of the hooker in his car.  We were having a grand 'ole time, right there on Route 1 in the middle of the night.  Finally, he looked up at us, gave us a smile that revealed his own lack of dental attention, and began to walk back to his lemon.  "God bless."  And he was off, out of our lives as quickly as he had entered.  Am I a better man for having known Peter "Hurricane" McNeeley?  Was our encounter a cosmic happenstance that I'll look back on fondly and think, "this is what life is all about?"  Will I tell my grandchildren that I met a great man one time and that I've never been the same since? 

No, none of the above. Absolutely not.  If natural selection has anything to say about it, this man will never procreate.  The gene pool can only be filled by just so many bad genes.  The funniest thing about all of this?  If he somehow finds out about this little blog entry, he'll feel so disrespected that he'll exhaust every resource he has, which is zero, to hunt me down and give me a good old fashioned beat down....until he finds me and I mind-fuck him so bad that we wind up playing Madden in my apartment or something. 

It's fun being smarter than most people!