Before I even left to go out tonight I planned upon 'blogging about the psyche involved in a game of pool. Almost no activity with as little significance relying on the outcome is taken so seriously; watch people playing billiards (men, specifically), and no matter how much joking is going on, when a guy is lining up a shot, he may as well be mustering all of his concentration to pass a field sobriety test. Everyone acts tough, everyone acts like they're good (despite refuting this out loud, they all approach the game like a seasoned pro), and, with the exception of a handful of people, everyone is about on the same level. One in one hundred people may be one sigma better than the rest (ok, 16.5 in one hundred, statistically speaking, but you get my drift.... watch out for my driiiiiffffttt!), but, all in all, in a standard pub setting, it's usally evenly matched. And as far as acting "good" (you know exactly what I mean, as in, focusing each shot as seriously as JAG's face gets when he's dancing with a girl (sorry)), 99 out of 100 people seem to carry themselves in this manner. I do it, you do it, just accept it and move on. The point is, er, was, that people are fairly similar in their pool capabilities. Or so I thought before heading out tonight to "shoot some stick, dude" (please just leave that one alone). I was wrong. In fact, I am terrible at pool. I'm in the one sigma group to the other side of average. I had a german girl who could hardly speak english come up and tell me I was "not very good at this game" (I had just sunk a striped ball for the other team). Alas, it only means practice and wasted $2 coins to become more proficient --- but more proficient I shall become!
Anyway, we played against this set of two girls, and upon introductions, I for the life of me could not understand what one of them was saying. It was a backpackers bar, so this was to be expected. I nearly asked her if she were from Latvia or something. Nope. England. Of course. I swear to you this was the worst bastardization of the english language I've ever heard. She was from Liverpool, which apparantly is notorious for having a "unique" accent, but I literally understood about 15% of everything hemorrhaging from her mouth for about an hour. She was like a cross between Brad Pitt's "Pikey" character in Snatch, and the homeless guy around Charles Village that I refer to as Agammemnon (he's been seen and heard shouting an alien language at newspaper boxes). But she was mean! Like Mrs. Kiem, my 90 year old elementary school librarian. We had to argue a couple of times over scratches (only because she called one, in a friendly game no less, on my partner whose shirt had brushed another ball about as far as detectable by CERN, then said that we would call the same thing on her....so we did), and it was like debating with a an autistic ukrainie version of Jack Nicholson in anger management. And she was in my head, making rude comments, and she could whistle through her teeth, reminiscent of a fucking narwhale. I swear I through the chalk at her upon her request. Oh, and we lost. But in a close game, no surprise, because no matter how bad I am, everyone is exactly the same at pool.
One final note: there are many TV's at this place, showing sports from around the globe (and by sports I mean soccer, so I take that back and say outdoor child's birthday games from around the globe). A couple was hooking up behind the TV and knocked it off it's perch to careen onto the floor, thereby revealing their hijinx and forcing them to seek shelter in the nearest bathroom. Good times.
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