Four Jiu Jitsu fighters walk into a bar…Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it? The punchline had something to do with someone emptying the contents of his stomach into a mostly empty Tostitos bag, so I’ll let you be the judge.
Last weekend, Special K’s buddy, Dave, was in town from Oklahoma City for a Jiu Jitsu tournament and stayed with us for a few days. Another common friend (and Dave’s former co-worker), JD, came down from LA and bunked in for the weekend, too.
On Saturday night, we rounded up a limo, piled the four of us plus four of Dave’s Jiu Jitsu teammates into it, and headed up to the Sunset Strip for an evening of random music at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, a Los Angeles icon where bands like the Doors, Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin once performed.
The whole night was a bit surreal… from the girl wearing the “I’m a Whore” t-shirt (JD and I poked each other at the same time with a pointed “Did you see that??”), to the off-key surfer boy band playing when we first arrived, to the drunk guy with the long hair whom the bouncers forcibly removed. More than once. The headliner that night was a tribute band called Led Zepagain (get it? Zep – AGAIN. So quaint.) with a flaxen-haired Robert Plant doppelganger and band straight out of the 70’s.
But honestly, the best entertainment of the night had to have been the random collection of Jiu Jitsu Oklahomans with whom we found ourselves.
The poor lads had mostly been starving themselves to “pull weight” (i.e. get down to the right weight for their respective classes) and as it turned out, one guy had only eaten a tablespoon of peanut butter and 100 oats each day for the previous five days before the fight – and he still got disqualified for being overweight by half a pound. That’s right, HALF a pound. As a result of the spartan diets leading up to this night, within about the first two sips of their drinks, the boyz were already starting to see double.
From Chad-O, we heard “I’m a writer-director, making things happen here in LA” about 20 times. He’d lean over and ask one of us what we did for a living, we’d tell him, he’d nod his understanding and then less than three minutes later, he’d ask again.
“So, dude, what do you do?”
“I build cars.”
“Sweet.”
Three minutes later:
“Hey dude, what do you do?”
“I, um, STILL build cars.”
"Sweet."
At closing time, we rounded up the Jiu Jitsu team (no easy feat since by this time, they were scattered around the bar, trying to get phone numbers and head-butting each other and anyone else who would stand still long enough) and took once last headcount before giving the limo driver the thumbs-up to head home.
Jiu Jitsu team captain, Ty, left most of the contents of his stomach on the sidewalk in front of the Whisky (classic), but between there and his hotel, he also made good use of the almost empty Tostitos bag from which we’d been munching on our way there. (At the same time, our Writer-Director friend -- who kind of reminded me of Silent Bob, actually, except that he never shut up -- broke out the bottle of Jagermeister, the smell of which almost made me throw up.)
At closing time, we rounded up the Jiu Jitsu team (no easy feat since by this time, they were scattered around the bar, trying to get phone numbers and head-butting each other and anyone else who would stand still long enough) and took once last headcount before giving the limo driver the thumbs-up to head home.
Jiu Jitsu team captain, Ty, left most of the contents of his stomach on the sidewalk in front of the Whisky (classic), but between there and his hotel, he also made good use of the almost empty Tostitos bag from which we’d been munching on our way there. (At the same time, our Writer-Director friend -- who kind of reminded me of Silent Bob, actually, except that he never shut up -- broke out the bottle of Jagermeister, the smell of which almost made me throw up.)
I'm not sure I'll be able to eat Multigrain Tostitos for quite some time.
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