Pursuit of the American Dream...
I know many of you (none of you) are wondering what I've been up to the past few hours. Suffice it to say that I have been in pursuit of the American Dream. Here's my account of tonight's events:
At around 6:00, Merk, Justin, and I decided on dinner at the noodle place in Silver Spring. All went well at first (Cashier: "That all?", Me: "Well, can I get a Corona?", Cashier: "Can I see some ID?", Me: "Nevermind. Can I get a Coke?", Cashier: "Hahahahaha"), but they were out of chopsticks. Justin swiped some from the Chinese place a little further down and we were good to go!
With an hour to kill before parking became free, we wandered about and decided to enter Borders in search of attractive Asian girls. We found none. But in our quest, who should give me a call but The Wang! It was a most interesting proposition: he had failed to meet Tristan and was waiting outside his home, afraid to go in. Our trio was set on renting a video to watch at someone's pad tonight and persuaded our Wangish fellow to rendezvous with us at The-Video-Store-Formerly-Known-As-Potamus.
Alas, we concluded that our Borders search was useless. Merky purchased an Italian-English dictionary and we explored the astroturf just outside the parking lot. Said I, "This would be a great place to have sex at 4:00 AM". Said Merk, "That's one more thing for my to-do list." Ha ha ha!
The time now was 7:54 PM, and parking was not free. Thus, we turned around and drove up all 7 stories (a rather suspicious pair of hispanic persons in a pimped-out ride followed us up to the 6th floor and I feared they would steal something or offer to mow our lawns if we made one wrong move =O ) On the roof, we drove a couple donuts, triple-parked, and looked over the edge. Several minutes later we concluded that we were stupid to have done so and fled the scene. The time: 8:15 PM.
Wang, meanwhile, had been pacing around in front of his house sipping a can of Diet Coke. He gave us a call and stated that he was interested in going to the carnival (an interest he and I pursued last Sunday until we realized the carnival was closed on Sundays). I fed him a String of "I dunno"s and "dude"s and "how much does it cost"s with no interesting responses before enquiring about hot Asian girls he may have seen when driving past it earlier. He said something I couldn't understand, but I interpretted it to mean the best. We immediately headed off towards his place of residence.
As we neared his house, we saw the familiar shape of one Nick Wang standing in his driveway. We zipped past and turned down a sidestreet. Then we turned around and zipped past again while he looked on with a most vacant expression. Justin masterfully made a U-turn and we turned into his neighbor's driveway while Wang looked on from directly across the street.
We scampered over to the Wangmobile and set off to the carnival with thoughts of whatever. I leant Nick a dollar for parking and we picked the emptiest spot at the end of the row. By the way, Nick, if you're reading this you owe me a dollar.
Our first startling realization was that the gravitron cost 5 tickets. Not knowing how much this was in American money (and not having a conversion chart handy), we sought out a ticket booth to exchange currencies. Our second startling realization was that tickets were 40 for $30.00. I donated another 10 bucks and Nick 20 bucks and Justin 17 cents. With our page of 40 tickets, we made our way to the gravitron which was placed conveniently at the opposite end of the carnival. It was here that we made our third startling realization: that it would cost 20 tickets for the four of us to ride. We tore our ticket sheet in half and made our way into the belly of the beast...
The lighting was dim and the atmosphere was one of fear and terror. In the center was a seat for the operator, above which were posted firm warnings commanding us not to try to have sex or roll over or play dead. The experience was delightful. At a couple g's, all the blood rushes to the backof your head and you're plastered against the wall, like plaster that is on a wall.
We were so overjoyed that upon exiting the gravitron we about-faced and spent our remaining tickets on another go. Afterwards we were so blown that we stumbled back to the car and remained so until we arrived back at Nick's house, when Justin turned, wretched, and got a very bad headache. We entered and fought off the dog and sat down to some apple juice and Diet Coke. Justin took an Asprin and we were off once more to return to our end our adventures.
At some point on the continuous Columbia Pike within the closed interval of Nick's house and Randolph (find c using the Intermediate Value Theorem. Now!), the apple juice rushed to my head faster than my blood had done shortly after the ride. I rolled down the window, and told Justin into the right-hand lane. No sooner had the words left my mouth when I shoved my head out the window and they were followed by a messy lot of unpleasantness. We continued driving and the car behind us switched lanes. I repeated the process.
Then a lot of boring crap happened that culminated in me taking a rag and wiping off the side of Justin's car (sorry Justin =( ), and apologizing to Merk (sorry Merk =( ).
As you can tell, dear reader (notice how pretentious I can be!), I had a blast. If it were less expensive I'd suggest doing it again some time. Damnit, my head hurts so much right now.
