Looking for an ENTOURAGE

So I'm listening to the Doors drinking a glass of red wine thinking about Entourage as I type away on a random Sunday night. Not my Financial Statement Analysis Class, no not even International Finance, not the ex-GF that kicked me to the curb last week, or the fact that I feel pregnant right now from a long week of dubious debauchery that would make Charlie Sheen proud. Nope...just Entourage. I had not seen the show seriously since I lived in Hollywood with a crew of compadres that I miss ever so much in my sometimes lonely nights in an apartment located at the far East corner of the world. Entourage is much better than I remembered, but I still got another kick in the crotch...WTF! I will get into the glove slap via Johnny Drama at the end of my post but first some highlights of most likely the most infamous week of my being here...

I went out, I mean OUT Monday, Tuesday, Friday, & Saturday night with some fine folks from: Costa Rica, Germany, Spain, Denmark, France, KOREA, and who knows where else.

In the early evening on Monday I bumped into the CEO of Asian Operations (who I randomly met three months ago and had lunch with to talk football) for an American car-repair company (that I will not name but it is a large-scale corporation) & charmed the pants off of his monstrous mustache. So now I'm off to visit him on the 7th-9th in Qingdao, and may be able to pull off a job out of this upcoming misadventure. I am good in these sort of meet-and-greet situations as I cannot stop talking period, and don't get intimidated or nervous. I would prefer to come back to Beijing, but this may be too good to pass up.

To celebrate I met up with some Tsinghau students at "Propaganda", I know irony can be quite ironic (phrase coined by Craig Benner), and I wore a jacket that says "Hey Panda" on it with a panda that looks like he is in some sort of a street gang. Most likely the Crips, or possibly the Mexican Mafia. Women love Pandas, if my jacket didn't get a Red Bull Vodka spilled on I would be sporting it tomorrow morning and most likely have a Hugh Hefner style orgy by twelve in the afternoon. I'm hanging these days with quite the globalized crew, and my amigos Alejandro & Kai were nice enough to zip my jacket all the way up so I could not breathe while I was tying my shoelace. Instead of panic, I decided to spin around in circles and then attempt to dance which made a mockery of Pandas, The Orient, and myself. FYI- Propaganda is the modern man's destitute bar where drinks are cheap, but the level of sophistication is right around a kindergarten class. My kind of place. Next morning was not so pleasant.

The following day I did my thing and eventually ended up hanging out with "The King Of Tsinghua Facebook" Phillip, my former soccer amigo Alejandro Dos (he was the other non-local on the soccer pitch when I went down for the count), and our friend Makele (this is not the right spelling of her name) from Belgium. I bumped into a Mom & Daughter crew from Panama and we managed to steal the daughter from her beloved protector. Later that night I told a story that involves the most just flat-out awful prank ever created in the history of mankind. So hilarious, but just wrong. Even worse it has been pulled by "The Three Amigos" (my travel posse) in both Italy & Brazil. I think the clip is still saved and may be on YouTube somewhere.

A few days later I gave a presentation in my Economics Class that went off incredibly well, especially since I winged pretty much the whole thing. I volunteered to give the entire presentation for my six team-member group in order to not have to do any actual real work, and I did a song & dance that even "Milli Vanilli" would give me props for. To celebrate I decided to actually do something positive with my life & sign up for daily three-hour Chinese lessons for the next five weeks. Of course I broke out my "Kung Fu Bear" Student ID card upon entering and was a huge hit.

On Friday I brought it back like it was 1999, and hit up a club called "Bling" with a bunch of students from the language school. I am one corrupt S.O.B. as I'm most likely five years older than the mean age of the birthday party that I was invited to but still borderline crashed. I am a horrible dancer as is, but with my crippled-ass knee it is borderline impossible to mack & stack at clubs these days. Give me a bar/restaurant where I can crack jokes and I'm all good, but take me out to the dance-floor and I'm like the red-headed step-child drunk on whiskey at the Prom without a date. I met a girl from Kazakhstan (no joke) and things were looking well until she got a look at my handicapped mating dance and bailed on me in a matter of minutes and was soon thereafter making out with the drunk Mexican birthday boy. Overall, the night was pretty sweet because the crew that I first hung out with when I first came to Beijing was in the house,... and these guys bring the pain! I missed hanging out with the O.G. Beijingers too, except one of the crew went to the University of Texas and for that I will forever have animosity towards him. I went to USC for undergraduate, and Henry brings up the USC vs. TEXAS game every time I see him and it is not so easy for me to deal with. I still despise that game and wish I could erase it from my memory.

On Saturday I was gonna keep it mellow but decided to call my bro from Korea J.K. who invited me out to a casual party. There was nothing casual about this party as Koreans drink their faces off. One of the dudes at this party was an Aussie who is a Bacardi Rep out here in Beijing, and gave me the low-down on the city which I wish I had six months ago. This Aussie gets paid to go out to bars and make sure peeps are sipping on his stuff, and he took us all out to some legit bar called "PUNK". J.K. was a bad-ass wing-man and we had a loco time. The ladies from Korea were so friggin' sweet, they danced all night & drank like politicians. What a fantastic night...

Now it's Sunday & things are back to pseudo-normal. Got up, lifted weights & went for a swim, Chinese lessons, and doing the pirated movie thing. However, I uncovered an ancient treasure that happens to be Entourage Seasons 1-3. I had watched some of it, but had about eight hours of pleasure on my flat-screen waiting to get some love. And I did not go Mormon, I went all out and could not stop like Gary Busey at a motivational speaking convention. Back in the day when I lived in Hollywood we had a ton of close friends we nicknamed "the homies" that would gather at my crib every Sunday night to watch Entourage together on my forest green couch. These were the good old days. All day I have been reminiscing about these days of glory, sometimes being close to shedding a tear as I'm far away from any kind of entourage. If I get three phone calls in a day I'm popular according to "Matthew Atkinson in China" rules. So as every episode went by I kept thinking of the good old days: J.C. & Ballgame Jr. doing WWIII in the living room, Nino Brown & I going to war on the PS Deus, Agnew's wild world of amazing outfits, Pete the Greek, The Famous Grouse, Laro, Don Cheech, Roach's fantastic Halloween party when I dressed as Don Zimmer and got harassed by a bunch of Dodger Fans. This was a time that can never be duplicated as I'm losing my touch and a little bit of my hair. And when it was all about to come to a very emotional close in the final six minutes with Johnny Drama looking for his "Vikingquest" crush...the DVD FROZE! I did everything. Cleaned the DVD player, the DVD, and again & again to no avail. MF'ing Drama!

MF JOHNNY DRAMA!
Thadeus (old nickname from the infamous day of Hollywood)