Thanks to my new friend Socialite, I have been discovering how many fun things there are to do! She has this calendar and is on tons of event lists, which she RSVPs for and then puts on her social calendar so she never misses an event. This weekend was the Bus Loop. It’s like a pub crawl only on trolley cars. Being a non-drinker, I’ve never been to a pub crawl before, so when Socialite sent me the invite for this one and I saw that Designated Drivers were welcome, I jumped on the Trolley.

It was so much fun… and it started at 6pm so I didn’t get home so late that I had a sleep deprived hangover. The first stop was basically a zen garden style bed and breakfast. It had great atmosphere and we beat the other 300 people with orange bracelets to the bar so Socialite could get her drink and we could walk the grounds. That’s when we befriended the Lollypop Kids, who would be our go-to guy friends for the rest of the evening. I named them that because Socialite and I were towering over them in our heels and a couple of them had drunken alter-egos that actually enlarged the size of their head. So their nickname is two-fold.

The next bar was very Venice Beach. It was an artist bar and people graffiti on the building. It felt like I was in someone’s house who gutted the place and put a bar in. All the crap that was in the house had been thrown out in the yard. There were also pool chairs lined up as if there were a pool.

The ride to the third bar was fun. People were two drinks in and singing on the trolley. I didn’t have to be drunk to chime in for Living on a Prayer, although upon arrival, I disliked third bar instantly. In we walked to be greeted by two Philadelphia Eagles banners. B-Bye! But Socialite wanted her free drink, so I put Metallica on the Jukebox and made the best of it.

The fourth stop was a beautiful restaurant on the water. Socialite got her free drink and we went to sit at the outside bar. Her friend met us here and the Lollypop Kids were wrecked. I don’t know if it was the cheap liquor or if they were buying extras at every stop. I was starting to feel like a zebra in a lion’s den, even if I was a head taller than all of them.

The fifth bar took me back to my metal days and NOT in a good way. The place was filled with smoke. It was awful! And the crowd was a direct reflection of the air quality; old haggard men with long stringy hair, biker facial hair, shootin’ pool, drinkin’ beer, and smoking! Yuck! We didn’t stay long.

By now, the trolley drivers obviously had had it with our singing and blew us off, so a big group of us decided to walk over the bridge to the next bar which was Mexican, hence, cheap tequila drinks for everyone. RCG is thinking to herself, after all the cheap wine, mixing it with cheap tequila is not going to end well for people. And I was right. So we pushed on to the final two bars on the loop. They were overcrowded and under inspiring.

Socialite needed food, and me being me can always eat, so we headed down the street to an open aired bar where they serve good burgers and have great live bands… this night was the exception. Not on the burgers, they were good, but the live band… well can you really call a guy on a keyboard and a singer a band? They did, and they called themselves, wait for it… Hot Rod, because he was a Rod Stewart impersonator.

Here’s the thing, just because you look like Rod Stewart if he were twenty years older, still strung out on drugs, with a sock shoved in his pants doesn’t mean you’re an impersonator. To be that, you’d have to be able to SING! This guy was killing cats with the notes he was trying to hit. He was destroying beautiful songs, although you wouldn’t know it by the way the 60-year-old women were climbing on the tables to dance with him. Every once in a while an audience member would get up to sing with him and would be SO much better, I’d pray that he or she would grab the mic and finish the show.

In the end I suggested that he dye his hair black and impersonate Alice Cooper or The Scorpions which his cackly voice was better suited for.

All in all, good times! Next week Mutts and Martinis…

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