My sister, Mary-Ivy-Laura (yeah, it’s a triple name), is obsessed with reality TV shows. One of her new favorites is a show called “Southern Belles of Louisville” which follows the lives of 5 women in Louisville, Kentucky, who have grown up in the lap of luxury. My sister likes it because she relates so well to the challenges that these headstrong women have to overcome, such as finding a date to a charity black tie event, starting their own business using their father’s money, and realizing they are 35 and don’t have a real job. Tragic, I know, but this show provides her with hours of entertainment. I sat down to watch a bit the other night and became fascinated with this girl, Hadley, who stars on the show as the “girl next door” who “has a history of dating the wrong kind of guys and making poor career choices”. Apparently, she’s “mired in a low paying dead end job as a personal assistant” and is trying to “grow up and discover what she wants out of life”.

Oddly enough, some friends and I were going to be in Louisville that weekend for a wedding. I made it my goal to meet this girl and take her away from the squalor that she lived in as a personal assistant/D-list celebrity. Forrest, Tripp, and I arrived in Louisville on Saturday, knowing that if we went to the most popular place in Louisville, we’d probably run into Hadley. After the rehearsal dinner, we got a cab to take us to a place called Fourth Street, a block full of bars which can only be described as an alcoholic’s dream. We had to have our IDs checked just to enter the block, which infuriated me because they should have known who I was.  

Ready to get blackout, we decided to enter a random bar, where we had to pay a $5 cover (I felt so common). It was there that we found buckets of some sort of liquor/red bull mix which Tripp purchased immediately. We threw back some shots because we weren’t comfortable being “just drunk” around new people in a new place…..we needed to be blackout. The bartender was a pretty hot blonde from somewhere who was working there for some reason (I wasn’t listening, I was too busy drunkenly staring at her …..eyes). I was confused as to why this bar employed really hot girls as bartenders instead of middle aged men who live by themselves in shitty apartments. I realized we were in a dueling piano bar when I saw the two pianos and the two piano players “dueling” with each other. Sick of the shitty songs that the crowd was requesting, I went up to the piano player, slipped him a $100 and told him to play Hootie and the Blowfish. He immediately agreed, and said something that sounded like, “I’ve never seen a $100 bill before!” under his breath. They say money talks, that night it sang (all the Hootie and the Blowfish songs I wanted to hear). Most of the bar cleared out after they played “Time” for the fourth time in 30 minutes. Seeing the level of talent decrease so rapidly made us think the bar was closing. Realizing there wasn’t any talent left; we turned to the hot bartender and asked what time she got off, because she was clearly going to come home with one of us. She said the bar usually closed at 2:30 but the other places stayed open until 4:00am. This news hit me harder than finding out that Michael Jackson had died. “4:00am?” I asked. “Yeah, 4:00am,” she replied. “But I had planned to be blackout by 2:00am, just like normal. How am I supposed to function for 2 more hours in my current state?” I asked. She must have thought I was kidding about drinking for the sole purpose of blacking out, because she just laughed and poured us another shot on the house. Well, good night and good luck. I wasn’t going to go home at 2:30am just because that’s what I’ve been trained to do 3 nights a week. No, I was going to make this town my bitch and show them that we could handle 4:00am (turns out we couldn’t handle it).

As I stumbled outside, I ran into a familiar face. I knew I’d seen this guy somewhere before. So I just went up to him and managed to say, “I….know…you….” A look of “Oh, I get this a lot” came across his face and he stopped to talk to me as if I were some sort of fan of his. Sensing his ego swelling, I set him straight, “Easy man, I just said you look familiar. Who the fuck are you?” I asked. “My name’s Russ. I’m on that show Southern Belles,” he replied. That was it. “Oh shit!!!!! Yeah man, my sister watches that show all the time! Where you headed to? I’m from ITB and don’t know where to go around here. What’s open until 4:00am?” I said, a bit too excitedly. “Come on, I’m heading to this place next door,” he said, as he led us to a new bar. We got in the bar and he got mobbed by some girls, which made me think he must just be a hair stylist on the side or something. There’s no way these girls were interested in this douchebag.

I assumed he was about to start giving out fashion advice, and not wanting to be douchey by association, we quickly went to the bar to get drinks by ourselves. On our way, we lost Tripp to an empty booth, which was understandable considering he had taken down numerous shots and 4 of the gallon sized liquor buckets at the previous bar. It was getting pretty late, and Forrest and I needed a pick me up. We headed to the bathroom, where the strangest thing happened. There was a guy sitting on a stool handing out paper towels and offering mints, gum, and cologne to each person when they had finished washing their hands. I took the paper towels from him, grabbed some gum, and said no to the shitty cologne before noticing the basket of dollar bills next to the sink. I suddenly realized he was doing this for money. I didn’t have any small bills, as you know all know, to avoid coming into contact with money that a homeless person may have touched, I don’t carry any bills lower than a $20(have you ever seen anyone give a homeless guy a $20? I didn’t think so). I also try not to carry anything less than $100 bill these days to avoid getting swine flu. Not wanting to appear poor, I pulled out my credit card and asked where his credit card machine was. He stared at me like I was retarded. I told him I’d get him a jager bomb later, and Forrest and I exited towards the dance floor. If this place was anything like Felson’s, (it wasn’t) then the dance floor was the place to be.

That’s when I ran into her, yes her. It was dark, but I would recognize her anywhere. Right there in front of me was Hadley, the D-list reality TV star next door. Being a socialite myself, I don’t get nervous in front of famous people. I know just how to handle them. Just like the time I made NFL Hall of Famer Michael Irvin leave Felson’s by repeatedly asking him if he wanted shots, I approached Hadley and began my routine. “Hey, You’re on that show, my sister loves that shit… You wanna take shots? I’m buyin’ shots. You want shots? What kinda shot do you want? I’m buyin’ shots, what do you want?” I said. Startled, she replied, “Ummm.. jager bombs?” What are the odds that this girl would have chosen the exact shot that I had planned on buying her regardless of her answer? It was meant to be. We took a few jager bombs (I thought it was odd that they served them in an actual glass as opposed to an 8 ounce clear plastic cup, but I took them anyway) and really hit it off. I could tell she was into me, obviously. I gave her my business card (which just says my name and “ITB Socialite” as my title) and said, “Come back with me, I can take you away from all of this.” To which she replied, “What are you talking about? What is ITB?” It was 3:45am and I didn’t have time to explain the glorious life she was about to have as my new girlfriend. I quickly changed topics, “Are you on Facebook?” I yelled over the blaring techno music. Before she could answer, douchebag Russ swept in and made her get up on the bar.

Apparently, his role on the show is the “best friend who still wants to bang her but can’t because she’s dating other dudes.” So it was fitting that he would try to sabotage our first night together. I had no help, as Forrest was in his own world on the dance floor and Tripp was sitting in a booth by himself, non-responsive to my demands that he “get the fuck up and come make me look better”. Realizing this conversation was over; I decided to play hard to get with Hadley. By “play hard to get”, I mean I’ll probably Facebook the shit out of her, and then see where things go from there, since she was obviously so into me.

By now the bar was closing and I was too drunk to know what to do with myself. I managed to gather Forrest and Tripp and we got a cab. The next thing I remember, Forrest and I were getting out of our taxi without Tripp. Figuring he was just too drunk to move, I opened his door to drag him out. He was conscious, but claimed that we were at the wrong hotel, a clear sign that he was blackout. I went into the lobby and asked the guy at the front desk, “I’m in Room 227, what’s my name?” Confused, he stared at me (probably because I was wearing shoes that cost more than his car) and responded “Excuse me?” I tried to explain myself, “I’m staying in Room 227, what is my name?!” Finally having figured out what I was asking, he looked in his computer, “Um sir, 227 is occupied by an Anne Hayes, are you with her?” What was he talking about? “Anne Hayes? Who the fuck is that? And why is she in my room?” I asked. I was pretty sure I hadn’t ordered a prostitute (yet), because we normally wait until we’re settled into our room before looking for Craigslist prostitutes on our iPhones (they have an app for that). He asked to see my hotel key, and sure enough, we were at the wrong hotel. Apparently, there is a Hyatt Place East and Hyatt Place West, and we weren’t at the right one. We went back out to the cab where Tripp was still in the backseat mumbling that he told us he, “knew what he was fucking talking about”. We yelled at the foreign cab driver for not being able to understand what we had drunkenly told him when we first got in his cab half an hour earlier. After a long argument, where we threatened to have him deported, he finally took us to our hotel, a mere 15 miles away. We got back to our rooms, passed out, and woke up just in time to be late to the wedding luncheon at 12:00pm. I apologized to the groom for partyin’ and told him that there was a good reason we were out until 4:45 am. Overall, we had an incredible weekend and I’m one step closer to bringing Hadley back to a world where she won’t have to have a job and won’t be forced to go to places like Fourth Street ever again.

Note: I sent Hadley a link to this post, so she’ll probably call me (sue me) in the next few days. I can’t wait to hear from her.

The new iPhone 3Gs came out last Friday, and of course I had to have it immediately. I would have pre-ordered the phone, but you can never count on the mail to arrive on time, and I loathe the post office. Since pre-ordering was out of the question, I knew that I was going to have to pick up this new status symbol from the AT&T or Apple store if I wanted to be able to show it off at the bar on the first weekend it had been released.

On Saturday afternoon, I left my house for the AT&T Store at North Hills, driving on Lassiter Mill of course. I walked in to an almost empty store and figured I had just picked a perfect time of day to go. I asked the guy behind the counter for myPhone and he told me they didn’t have any. Confused, I asked, “What? You’re already sold out?”
“No we don’t sell them here, you can reserve it here if you’d like,” he clarified.
I wasn’t really following this guy. Why did they not want to take the $299 (plus tax) that I wanted to give them?
I continued, “So I’m trying to give you over $300 right now, and you’re saying I can’t get what I want?”
“That’s right. I’m sorry sir, but you can reserve it and we’ll have it here for you within the next 10 business days,” he replied. This guy must have aced the one business class he took in community college.
“Uhh, well that’s not gonna cut it. I’m going out tonight and I’m not gonna be seen carrying around this piece of shit,” I replied, holding up my old iPhone.
“I’m sorry sir, you can try the Apple store if you’d like to get one today.”

I left the AT&T store in a mild outrage and drove to the Apple store in Crabtree Valley mall. As I approached the store, I saw that a line had been formed outside. I don’t wait in lines, so I walked up to the unattractive thing (woman) whose size literally allowed her to block the entrance to the store. I tried telling her who I was, but she just looked confused and told me to get in line. Bullshit. She’s clearly not from around here as evidenced by the fact that it was 7:00pm on a Saturday and she was working the door of an Apple store. This was probably the most attention this woman had ever gotten. I’m sure more guys came up to talk to her during the 30 minutes I was in line than in the past 5 years she’s spent online dating.

While standing in line, I couldn’t decide what was worse, the people that I was forced to stand in line with or the people that walked to the door to ask if this was the fucking line for the iPhone. No, we’re just standing here for the hell of it, get to the back of the line, jackass. A passerby asked the loser in front of me, “Is this the line for the iPhone?” to which the loser replied, “Yeah, it’s either that or a car payment, haha.” I was confused at first, then I realized that he was attempting to be humorous by equating the price of an iPhone with the amount one would pay for a car payment, which most people (commoners) would consider to be a large amount of money. However, the iPhone is only $299, so not only must this guy drive a shitty car, but his joke sucked as well. I thought listening to Dane Cook in front of me was annoying, until I heard a lady in her 60’s start dropping knowledge bombs on the people around her. “You know AT&T is the only carrier of the iPhone and a lot of people don’t think that’s fair. So people on Verizon can’t get the iPhone,” she stated. Thanks for the newsflash Katie Couric, none of the other nerds here knew that. This woman was about as informative as a journalist in Tehran. I was about to lose it on these commoners, when I was finally let into the store. I was met by your typical basement dwelling computer nerd, I know it’s a played out stereotype, but it never fails. His name was Gabriel, I’m serious. “What can I help you with? If you have any questions let me know,” he said. I had one question and proceeded to ask, “How much memory do the videos take up? I plan on blacking out every weekend and using the video camera to find out what I did the night before.” Gabriel stared blankly back at me, turned to the laptop on the table, and typed the question into Google. Seriously? For a dude named after a biblical figure that foretold a bunch of holy shit, Gabriel couldn’t answer my one simple question. He wasted some time looking for the answer before I told him to forget about it and give me myPhone. He went to the back and got the phone, along with that stupid hand held check out device. He stopped and said, “Ok, do you have any other questions?”
“Of course I don’t have any other questions, asshole; you couldn’t even answer my first one. Hurry and ring this shit up, I’m gonna be late for pre-gaming. Wait, what am I supposed to do with my old one?”
“You could use it as an iPod Touch,” he suggested.
“But, I already have one of those.”
“Well, you could sell it or give it to someone else,” he replied.
“Too much work, I’ll just throw it away,” I said.

I could tell from the horrified look on Gabriel’s face that this last statement had struck a nerve. The expression on his face seemed to say “God forbid anyone throw away an Apple product!! I can’t do anything to stop him. What would Steve Jobs do in this situation?” He nervously finished the transaction, trembling from the thought of someone throwing away an iPhone. I turned to walk out of the store and, as I tossed my old iPhone in the nearest trash can, saw Gabriel in the reflection of the glass storefront window with a single tear streaming down his face.

One dangerous feature of myPhone is that I can record videos and post them on YouTube immediately from myPhone. This is probably going to get me in a lot of trouble when I’m blackout and I post something incriminating. Another new feature is voice control, which allows you to play songs or call contacts by using your voice. However, this feature needs a bit of work. I was trying to call some girl for late night using voice control, but instead of calling her, myPhone just started playing songs by Bruce Hornsby. The only problem I have with the new model is that it doesn’t look any different than the previous version. How the hell are people going to know that I have the newest and most expensive model? Since myPhone does have a video camera, I guess I could just walk around taking videos constantly and then watching them immediately in front of other people so they could tell that I have the newest model. Overall, I’m satisfied with the purchase. I’ll be able to post a lot more videos of things that outrage me, as well as showcase a first person perspective of my destructive lifestyle. It’ll be a lot like that show “The Real World”, except I won’t be forced to live with strangers or have a job.

Only a few more weeks until Entourage returns for a sixth season on July 12. After last season, I wrote about how great it is that I can watch the same episodes over and over each season. Apparently, these guys agree. Thanks to Blog of Hilarity for the link.

For those of you that missed these, here’s a reposting of a few interesting topics;

1. RT @NewRaleigh: Raleigh, Top 5 Sober Cities: http://bit.ly/11CuVq This list is wrong, and I have the bar tabs to prove it. 7 minutes ago Whoever came up with this list probably just went to one of those hipster bars where no one gets drunk because they’re too busy perusing the drink list, looking for a good “pint” that they’ve never tried. Hipsters waste too much time “enjoying the taste” of their beer, which I don’t understand since I drink too fast to tell how many times “hops” have been added to my beer. Also, the tight sleeves of those child-sized hoodies worn by hipsters restricts the range of motion in their arms, which slows down their drinking and prevents them from getting blackout. My Classic Polo shirt allows me a full range of motion so that I can take shots much more quickly. The skin tight jeans normally worn by hipsters make it almost impossible for them to walk, thus preventing them from being able to take multiple trips to the bar to get more drinks. We should hold a charity clothing drive to get these fucking hipsters some clothes that actually fit, but then I guess they wouldn’t be fucking hipsters now would they? It seems that getting blackout isn’t so much about where you drink as it is the clothes that you wear while you drink.

The other day, as I was trying to get rid of a raging hangover, I began to watch “Poison: Behind the Music” on one of the zillion cable channels I get. Their story seemed so familiar, almost as if I had experienced it myself.

All of the sudden, it hit me. Just as Poison rose to prominence, faded away due to drug addiction, and pathetically tried to make a comeback attempt, Felson’s has had an eerily similar experience as a bar in Raleigh. Through it’s 15 years of jager bombs, fame, fortune, deceit, and success the bar has remained home to the overpriveledged; a place where everyone knows your double name as well as the roman numerals at the end of your name, where you can get blackout and make an ass out of yourself by losing a fight in the parking lot without being embarrassed about it because no one there was sober enough to remember what happened the next day. It’s been fifteen years, it’s time to take a look at the rise, fall, and halfway rise again of one of Raleigh’s most loved, and hated, bars. This is Felson’s: Behind the Bar.

In the mid 1990s a bar came on to the scene and sold tons of alcohol to 20 somethings who wanted a place to get blackout that was a step up from Crowley’s. This new bar quickly became a bastion for the overpriveledged who wanted to ensure that they would be surrounded by mirror images of themselves as they got destroyed every weekend.  Almost overnight the founders of the bar were strutting their stuff in Cameron Village with their high drink prices, outdoor events, and shameless self promotion. Leading the pack was the bar manager, who, “knew what he wanted, how he wanted it, and how underage he wanted them,” said a coworker who lasted with the bar from 1994-1998 before succumbing to the tragedy of having to get a real job. The bar manager never got that kind of attention back at home, growing up in typically suburban surroundings. At the age of 7, he was diagnosed with being a huge douche, which set him apart from other kids his age. Doctors told his parents that their son would probably be disliked for the rest of his life. He learned how to manage his doucheness, and in doing so, discovered his real interest was selling drugs to underage overpriveledged kids. In the early 1990s, at age 30, he finally hit the big time and signed on as the bar manager of a small establishment that would change his life forever. “They didn’t want me because I was cool or because I could get people to come to the bar. They wanted me because I was a tool and they could walk all over me,” he has stated in interviews.

While the bar’s popularity grew during the ’90s, the fame wasn’t enough, they wanted more. The group decided to take some time off to figure out how to become even better. The bar was closed for what seemed like years (it was years). During these renovations, the bar found a home in a glorified hallway at Five Points. While this was a bit cramped, it didn’t matter; the bar’s patrons just got more blackout and did more drugs to compensate for the decrease in square footage.

Finally in 2005, millions of dollars in renovations later, they regrouped, changed names, and came back with a bang. The renewed bar exploded onto Cameron Village, selling millions of jager bombs, Bud Lights, and Miller Lites to the adoring socialites who could finally “take a lap” around the bar without just walking back and forth in a straight line, as they were previously forced to in the Five Points location. The bar aggressively hustled their way into the top spot, having only to compete with the Village Draft House. The bar hit its peak in popularity with the help of a young bar promoter from a local University who did everything he could to generate buzz about the bar. “Our image was the only thing we had that showed people that we were a different kind of bar. There were girls everywhere, on the dance floor, downstairs, upstairs, the bathrooms, the kitchen,” one employee stated. He did such a good job of making it a perfect place to get blackout, that some (I) went there for 4 months without even realizing it was a restaurant. The hiring of ex-NCSU basketball and football players to be “bouncers” was a welcome addition, as it made the bar appear to be very exclusive. Everything was great, until the gel heads came along and started showing up like they actually had a right to enter the bar. The bar started to charge a cover to keep these heathens out, but some suspected that things weren’t going well in other areas. Noted one observer, “I’m not saying there were financial troubles, I just find it interesting that they don’t make any money and still remain open.” Speculation mounted when the bar’s kitchen was “accidentally flooded” by the tenant in the building above. No one knew if the bar would make it through these troubled times. They had some issues with an ITB resident (me) who wrote a blog post voicing his concerns about the stability of the bar, but those issues were ironed out when they realized his (my) bar tabs were high enough to pay their mortgage. However, this wasn’t enough. The bar closed, sending hundreds into a depression. Some (me) spent countless nights locked in their rooms playing a playlist over and over of all the standard songs that were played at the bar (Murder on the Dance Floor, anything by T.I., Justin Timberlake, Soulja Boy, etc.), along with their (my) personal addition of “Closing Time” by Semisonic just to ease the pain. It didn’t work. The elite were forced to try new bars, some of which were actually solo projects done by a few of the original bar’s founders. These establishments never saw the same success as the original.

After some serious soul searching, the founding members came together to put aside the differences that drove them apart. The second time around they banded together for a common goal. “This time around it’s a whole different ballgame. We’re in it to prove all the doubters (their creditors) wrong. We can do this. We still got it,” said one of the longtime bartenders. The bar reopened a few months later and the party played on until the good times got ugly, really ugly, meaning a new wave of gel heads arrived. The same socialite blogger (me) took it upon himself to “Take Back the Felson’s” and with the help of his friends (Forrest) they drove the gel heads back to Gelwood South. For now… Felson’s is once again a safe haven for those who value a place to get blackout where they can have the same interactions with the same people weekend after weekend after weekend.

Through the years Felson’s has managed to create the same atmosphere that their bar patrons long for while sitting at work on Monday morning after having just spent the last three days there on a drug/alcohol binge. Felson’s has come back to life more times than Bret Michael’s career.

Tonight all are encouraged to attend a party to celebrate the 15 years that Felson’s has spent serving the overpriveledged. Headlining this celebration is a band called “Old Habits”, which is fitting, even though the word “habit” would be an immense understatement in describing my propensity to attend Felson’s three nights a week, fifty-two weeks a year. It would be more appropriate if they were named “Old Obsessions”. Being able to reinvent itself for 15 years, based on the theory of “survival of the drunkest”, Felson’s has proven that they are here to stay. Come out tonight at 7:00pm to enjoy the band and honor the legendary entity that is Felson’s.