Chapter 254

I woke up around 9. I read a bit, put on a chill dubstep compilation, and cleaned the bathroom. When the girlfriend left to go have brunch with her friends, I could change the music to an album by Kill The Client, a furious grindcore act from Texas I hadn’t listened to in a long time.

I watched a documentary about Bert Kreischer, by a YouTuber who goes by Porsalin. I’ve seen a few of his long-form docos, they’re entertaining and very acerbic, shitting on the stand-up comedy or web entertainment personalities they focus on. Kreischer is a bit of an obnoxious figure on that West Coast comedy circuit, roughly associated with Joe Rogan, the only thing I knew about him was his viral stand-up bit about getting involved with Russian mafia types on a college trip, which I found very, very, very stupid and not funny at all. But then I just moved on with my life and didn’t pay attention to all his podcasts and junk TV shows. It’s kind of weird that Porsalin would dedicate so much time to dive so deep into the life of an innocuous, forgettable entertainment figure, hater energy is real. Still, great documentary, every time I see Porsalin or Beige Frequency drop one I click and watch.

I went for a late lunch of Muslim noodles. The first place I walked into had two separate fucknuggets watching dogshit at high volume on their phones, so I walked out immediately. The second place was closed for the afternoon. So I went to a third place and had my fill. No fucknuggets in the dining area, the only sounds were coming from the kitchen and the toddler playing in a fenced crib by the counter.

Then I rode my bike to the bowling alley. Damn right! I didn’t even know my city had a bowling alley. A few of my British pals organized this group outing, and there were two new guys who just started working here a few weeks ago. Being the extremely mature person I am, I asked the guy at the counter if we can input names in the computer instead of using the default “Bowler 1, Bowler 2, Bowler 3...” and wrote a bunch of vulgar funny names in there, but refrained in the case of the new guys. Being British and seemingly very easy-going, there’s a big chance they’d find it funny to, but I still wrote their real name or some innocuous nickname.

We played four or five games, it was quite fun. One of the alleys goofed around, trying some stupid moves like snapping the bowl like a NFL center or kicking it down, but mine was quite competitive.

At 6 o’clock, I rode back home, grabbed my gear and headed to the gym. I’m still questioning the pertinence of going to this new space, which is much smaller, but the Italian blue belt pointed out that there’s a big speaker with an aux cord, so we can put our own music. That sweetens the pot quite a bit! I put on a Crucified Barbara album (awesome, awesome hard rock) and one by Sizzla (awesome, awesome dancehall reggae) and we went through a few drills, preparing for the upcoming tournament in October. More on that later.

I plan on going on a health plan starting Monday, cutting off beer for the next two months. So might as well go patronize the local microbrewery as a farewell to the nectar of the gods. I first went to buy a massive portion of chicken at a Sichuan restaurant, which was coincidentally next to the other microbrewery, the one I went to yesterday, so I went and got a pint of IPA while the poultry was being cooked. It was delicious, and cheap too, at 16 yuan only. Then I rode to the next stop of my informal pub crawl, meeting the girlfriend there after her dancing class. The place was full, every table surrounded by boisterous drinkers, they went a long way since they ran it from a trailer parked in the pedestrian district! In fact the place was so full they ran out of pint glasses, and the pony-tailed brewmaster had to go fetch a few boxes. I had a wheat beer, nothing too strong, just something pleasant to sip while eating my chicken, and the girlfriend had the NEIPA. On two occasions we had strangers coming and asking where we got the chicken, and I gave them a piece.

Then we stopped for a quick drink at the main expat bar, it was packed, including some old pals I hadn’t seen in a while. I had a few chats with them, and when my whisky was empty, a giant Norwegian filled my glass with gin-tonic, from the bottle and mixers he bought. It was tempting to stay late but I also longed for a shower and an early enough night of sleep.