Match.baum

Last weekend was epic. O-Dawg and I decided to fly up to Chicago to visit our dear friend Baum. What I came away with: (a) an eight hour hangover that set in mid-Monday that only 60 hours of binge drinking and three consecutive 6:00AM mornings could provide (b) a newfound respect for the city of Chicago and the thousands of beautiful woman that live there (c) pure Baum The Wine gold.

Thursday 5:45PM ET Hartford/Springfield Bradley Intl Airport -
6:50PM Southwest flight 845 non-stop to Chicago Midway Delayed until 7:30PM

I promptly pull a one-eighty and head directly to the blackbear saloon airport bar. I order a bud heavy and 10 buffalo wings.

The bartender has crazy tattoos and starts talking about how she hires the best Japanese tattoo artist in Manhattan to complete her $5,000 masterpiece of body art. She has that pregnant pooch fupa, black-dyed stripper hair, and piercings to match. I would clearly have sex with her, but I want her to shut up and serve me beers.

6:15PM - 3 Beers Deep, flight is delayed another half hour.

… 4 more beers pass…

8:00PM - This is the final boarding call for flight 8:45 non-stop to Chicago Midway

FUCK. I have buffalo wing sauce all over my face. I throw money on the bar and begin to run to Gate C1 for my flight. I am a little drunk and realize I have to piss really bad. I look at the traileresque southwest line and see that there are some jokers still in it. I sprint to the adjacent Men's bathroom. Swerving in I almost knock a father away from his baby changing station and let it fly. Instant relief. I feel great. The perfect combination of grease and beer.

I saunter onto the plane only to realize that I am the last one to board. The only seat available is between two fat men in one of the earlier rows. There is obviously no baggage space. FUCK. The stewardess takes my bag and says… I’ll put it in row 21. Thanks a lot bitch. I jam into my little middle seat for take off. I reek of booze, sweat, and wings. By the look on their faces, I can see that my neighbors are not thrilled.

We take off and eventually the magic lady with the drink cart comes by and asks me what I want. I say coca-cola ( I know, a pussy move but I was exhausted and I wanted to stay awake). I immediately fall asleep with music blasting into my headphones.

9:00PM CT - I wake up to rude tapping on my shoulder. “What gives?” I say with drool dangling off my lips. “Sir, please stow your tray table and turn off all portable electronic devices.” Ohhhh. I look down and see my full plastic cup of coca cola. I slam it, hand the bitch my cup, and turn off my shit. The passengers look at me with a confused… what the fuck is wrong with this guy look.

I deplane the B-737 after getting my bag which can only be described as the trail-of-tears and head curbside to meet the Baumeranian. Some guy is already asking me if he can borrow my cellphone to make a call. Fuck that noise. This town already sucks. Baum rolls up in a stereotypically backwoods-gay liberal car like a Subaru or something and I hop in. I scream, “Kick the tires and light the fires motherfucker LET’S GET DRUNK!” Baum laughs. A woman standing on the curb waiting for her ride gives me a, “YEEEAH!!!” Maybe this town isn’t so bad.

9:20PM - We get to Baum’s apartment in Wicker Park and crack open a brew. I meet one of his roommates who we’ll call Stan The Man*. Baum lives like a pauper and doesn’t have cable. We leave Stan to his episode of 'Malcolm in the Middle' while we head to this neighborhood spot Baum likes named ‘Crocodile’. Sounds brutal. I’m fucking in. You're fucking out.

I order a bourbon and coke and Baum some sort of local beer that he would drink. The bartender is a hot blonde so I overtip her and I am still sober. Got a keep em coming right? All of a sudden some other hipster trendo woman comes over and dumps two personal pan pizzas in front of us. “What the fuck is this?” I say to Baum. He explains you get a free pizza with each drink if you want it. Awesome. The pizza sucks but whatever, its fucking free. It had a 100% melted cheese consistency that burned the roof of your mouth and fell off as soon as you picked it up. It also had that floury roller-skating rink crust.

Around 11:00PM - We clear a few more drinks and a couple more pizzas and decide to meet up with his buddies at a sports bar in Lincoln Park. This place is good. Fratty with a hint of cheese-dick and some pretty cute girls running around. There are about a hundred televisions and his buddies have posted up at the bar. We meet up with his buddy that we’ll call Dirty Clothes*. We instantly get three shots of Jameson. This night is going to be good. I want to stick with bourbon and coke until I am informed that it’s dollar beer night. Jesus, is everything in this city free. Typical Obama. I mean this is Chicago, I should have known. A few more shots and a few more beers and one of his buddies tells me about how he slapped a kid with no arms in a bar who spit on him the previous night.

At this point I start to wonder… If Baum’s friends are so cool, why is he such a self-hating lesbian? Anyway, then the let the BOMB slip. Or should I say BAUM? “Hey Smasher,” Dirty Clothes says to me, “Did Baum tell you how he met his girlfriend?” I say, “Why No?” As my eyebrows perk while a jackpot slot machine noise rings in the back of my subconscious. “He met his girlfriend on match.com.” AHAHAHA HAHAHA. I am rolling on the ground with laughter. I mean I am literally pissing myself. I scream, “I KNEW IT!!! WHAT A LOSER, I BET SHE IS A TRANNY WITH A WIFE AND KIDS” not even knowing that he had a girlfriend at all. This has instantly provided me with lifelong entertainment. I tell Baum that he has made a big mistake… not for dating a woman on the internet, but for ever letting me find out about such a thing. The rest of the night is internet jokes and making fun of him. I hit on a girl with elephantitis of the lowersection which I don’t realize until she stands up but probably should have known looking at her beastly ogre wing-woman.

2:00AM - We head back to Baum’s place with Dirty Clothes and meet another one of his buddies there. We drink on his back porch and play catchphrase until 6AM and pass out.

Friday 8:00AM - BUZZ!!! BUZZ!!! BUZZ!!! Doorbell rings.

I wake up to a lovely half asian woman creeping by me on her way to the kitchen. She says, “Sorry.” I say, “Hey there, Thank you,” in an attempt at a sexy voice even though it sounds like little demons are having a cage match on the inside of my throat. I look down and realize I have no pants on and have been using a bath towel as a blanket all night. I then find out that this is his other roommate Cindy* and that she has been away in San Francisco on a Buddhist retreat in a convent for the past month.

Poor woman. The first thing she sees after returning home is a half naked man sleeping drunkenly on her futon. Welcome back. Life is shit, get to know this. I go back to sleep.

2:00PM - Baum and I scrap going to the cubs game on account of our devastating hangovers and decide to recover by going to his dad’s apartment on the gold coast to sit in the cool air conditioning while licking our wounds. Baum has it in his head (probably from US weekly or some other womens magazine) that he has to get a bucket of blueberries to cure his hang over. We get the fucking blueberries and go to his dads. We both pass out on the couch until 6:30PM.

6:30PM - We wake up and talk to his father... Who must have been horrified at the sight of two grown men passed out on his sofa during the middle of the day with buckets of weird fruit all over the ground. Seriously, how weird is that.

7:00PM - We pick up Dirty Clothes and head back to Wicker Park. During the car ride we make fun of match.com and talk about Baum’s strange tendencies like devouring whole buckets of fruit. “They have anti-oxidants,” Baum exclaims. Dirty Clothes replies by saying, “What the fuck is an anti-oxidant. I love oxidants. I am anti-anti-oxidants. Fuck it. I am pro-oxidants.” I agree 100%. Fuck Baum, that oxidant hater.

Around 8:00PM - O-Dawg arrives in Chicaca. We start hitting the bottle and prepare to have some people over to Baum’s apartment.

10:00PM - We are well lubricated when the ladies start showing up. I won’t have to use code names since I remember none of their names basically. There are probably 15 people at Baum’s. We’re drinking casually and all mingling. Three of the girls have on black dresses and black shoes. Maybe this is a Chicago thing, who cares, it looked good.

Some guy comes up to me and says, “Wow, you have great hair.” Well that’s certainly a way to start a conversation with a stranger. I am instantly suspicious and avoid contact. A lovely woman in a white dress sits down next to me and I say, “Baum is this you girlfriend?” Hair guy says, “No, that’s mine!” I should have known. She’s way to cool and good looking to be Baum’s girlfriend. Anyway, at least I know hairguy is safe to talk to at this point.

11:15PM - Baum’s girlfriend shows up with another friend. She does not look 27 like Baum thinks she is. I think this is a grown ass woman. I think she even has kids. Baum is such a sucker. What a fucking idiot. HAHA. To his credit, she is hot and I start reevaluating this whole internet dating scene. Only for a second. Then I realize I am not a loser.

I then turn my attention to her hot friend who seems to not be wearing pants. Granted, she did have a really long shirt on and probably was wearing shorts but I think this is awesome. I walk up to her say, “Hey, you’re naked. Awesome!” She avoids me for the rest of the evening along with Baum’s girlfriend. Baum has obviously warned them. I can smell the terror pheromones being secreted out of their sweat glands. Anyway, I have eyes for black dress girl with vented sides.

12:00AM - We decide to go to this trendy hipster bar called ‘Debonair.’ It is pouring outside and I did not bring a raincoat or umbrella. I covertly sneak under blackdress vented sides girls’ umbrella with her. She’s cool and lets me share it while using her dress vents as a grip on the slippery terrain.

I instantly love this joint. No cover of course. There is sick techno blasting from the speakers while the dance floor is illuminated with different colored LCD panels and one monster screen with weird images of fruit getting bursted and highlighted words scrolling along to the beat of some fresh cut-copy. Truly lights and music.

I first go to the bar with another black dress girl and ask her what she wants to drink. She pulls a sly move by telling me it’s national tequila day which could be true but probably wasn’t. She knew I was falling for it anyway. I get eight tequila shots and we order some cocktail riders.

We post up at a table and absorb the weirdness. I look over and see some hipsters on what looks like child playground or carousel horses in the middle of the bar. Apparently this is normal. Like everyone else, I dismiss it. We keep drinking and hanging out when I hear a song I really like. At this point I decide to mosey on over to the dance floor. I then see this fucking hipster fool dancing strangely and touching himself on the face and on his emaciated belly. He has a heroin-boy sidekick complete with bad haircut, black cigarette pants, and suspenders over his baby gap white tank-top. I instantly walk up to him and start dancing even more strangely. He counters. Before you know it I am challenging some hipster in my khakis and loafers. I am full out. I dance the fuck out of this fool. Sweat is pouring and I am intermittently taking shots of Jim Beam that some random dude keeps buying for me and O-Dawg because he thinks we are funny. O-Dawg is concerned that the man will try to touch him later. I am oblivious.

As we start to wind down some hipster girls think this is awesome and start to join in. At which point, one woman goes over to heroin boy and starts poking him repeatedly in the ass. Hmmm? Strange I think. I then notice she is double-fisting dildos and stabbing people with them. I am so drunk I think this is normal and like before dismiss the whole incident. It was later confirmed that this was in fact a bachelorette party. Only, I couldn’t tell the difference because all hipster chicks dress weird-as-fuck anyway. We go outside. I see a spitting image of Baum only he is Asian. haha:2:00AM - We then leave the bar at closing and head back to Baum’s for more drinking. We stop at a gourmet 7-11 to get more beer where I pick up a McRib sandwich that I buy for Baum later because I know he will be hungry. I contemplate bringing it back on the plane and sending it to HAWK*:

I have completely lost black dress girl and it ends up being Baum, O-Dawg, Dirty Clothes, Baum’s girlfriend, Stan, one of his friends, maybe some other people I can’t really remember and myself. We all go up on the roof and get rowdy. People are jumping on adjacent townhouses and making all kinds of noise. Stan is so drunk he is just crushing beer cans and slapshotting them into other people’s faces. This is hilarious.

3:30AM - Dirty Clothes, O-Dawg, and I embark on a covert double black ops secret mission. We must hack into Alex O-Bauma’s Match.com account. Jackpot. We get into his account and start laughing hysterically. I am dying. He is so pathetic. It hurts my ribs to laugh so hard. I go into business mode and start taking screen shots of this so I can later email them to myself. But, as I am about to do this, Bauminator has overheard the ruckus and quickly puts an end to our fun. He deletes all the pictures signs out of his account and makes us vacate his bedroom. He can never stop me. I later crept back into his room took the photos out of the trash and managed to get one off before he found me again. For your pleasure (Click to enhance. Baum comments circled and numbered in red, mine are blue):


1. “4 New Matches” - Baum couldn’t even match his fucking socks. God I wish I had time to find out what these fucking beached whales look like.

2. “Chrlorophyl??? More like Borophyl…” - Where to begin? Jesus. I was laughing so hard when I saw this. Not because it is a funny joke, but this is the type of thing that Baum thinks attracts women. I assume this is the facebook equivalent of a, “Status Update.” I don’t know what kind of loser bitch would see that and think immediately to herself… ‘Now that’s a keeper.’ Come on Baum. Even you are better than that. You’d be lucky to get a date with a tree you wop dego. Clorophyl??? More like suck dicks for free…

3. “Online Now! 24-year-old-man” - Oh no he isn’t. haha. I was having so much fun at this point. He’s really just a little boy crying out for help. I am here to expose that crying and to embarrass him for being that little boy.

4. “Relationships: Never Married” - Nor will you ever be as long as you prowl on the internet you loser.

“Have Kids: No” - Not on me, but I think there may be some in the basement next to my collection of plastic fuck dolls. What a loser. Baum, You can sure-as-fuck bet that your girlfriend does. Many of them. What I would give to see her profile… and her husband's too.

“Want Kids: Definitely” - What kind of fucking response is this. Definitely? Jesus. Baum is actually using this thing to start a fucking family. If I were a girl I would run for the hills. A maybe or a yes just wouldn’t do. Baum had to say definitely. I hope some girl tricks baum into getting her pregnant so he is stuck with his internet love child. I hope your kid sees this one day baum so he can learn from the mistakes that you made.

“Ethnicity: White/Caucasian” - I amazed he didn’t just write definitely again. Or make up some slang term for someone with Mediterranean origins. Like sepharditalian or homo.

“Body Type: About Average” - What the hell does that mean. I mean I thought the whole point of these things was to lie to make you look better. Or else you’d obviously be able to get a date without having to strike out in the chatrooms only to go ten rounds with your hand pussy and call it a night. If I were Baum, I probably would have said. “Currently thin with a propensity to get fat off white clam pizza,taco bell, and blueberries”

“Height: 5’10” (178cms)” - No tricks here. I just love the fact that it also lists you in centimeters. This is in case you want to order a girl from Korea.

“Religion: No Answer” - god would disapprove of your dating habits Baum.

“Smoke: Occasionally” - Now if that’s not a lie I don’t know what is. Baum smokes like Michael Phelps on race day. Fuck that noise. What a liar. You are a heavy smoker sir.

“Drink: Social Drinker” - He always did drink like a little bitch. By social he probably means that he goes out back and rubs his own pee in his mouth.

5. “About me and who I’m looking for: I don’t where I’d start/end so I’ll let others do the talking:”

Um… I never got the memo. I would have gladly contributed.

“Me:
Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you’re really looking for are the 64-color box, though I’ve got a few missing. It’s ok though, because I’ve got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle.”

You instantly have a LIFE FAIL. HAHA. The minute you say the word periwinkle to a woman you deserve to die. This doesn’t even make sense. What the fuck is all this crayon shit. I thought it was chocolates. 8-Bit, 64-Bit. Are we talking about Nintendo Cartridges? Because, that is the only shit I come away with looking at that nonsense. I hope someone from crayola sends you a nasty letter. You’ve got a lot more than a few crayons missing Baum. Goodluck my friend.

6. “EMAIL HIM, WINK HIM FOR FREE, GET HIS NUMBER” - Yes!!! Ladies do all of this tonight. His cell phone number is: (312) 532-4583. Ask for the Friday Night Special. NEW LIMITED TIME OFFER - Guys get the same deal for only $9.95 plus extra. The more the merrier. Sorry, No children under 18.

7. “Report a Concern” - I am very concerned. About this whole thing.

Anyway, we all keep drinking and have a great time until pass out at 6:00AM.

Saturday 11:30AM - Dirty Clothes and I rouse from our drunken slumber in the same room I slept the night before. This time I managed to keep my clothes on and avoid using my bathing towel. Unfortunately, I hadn’t really been asleep because Baum’s hot roommate was having a track meet or dance dance revolution competition all morning in the hallway.

1:00PM - Hung over and miserable, O-Dawg, Dirty Clothes, Baum, and I find a place to get brunch. We find what seems to be the perfect place. It is a restaurant called Blue-Line with nice patio seating replete with hot chicks and a plasma tv outside so you can still watch the cubs game. We start pounding bloody marys and wait for our food. Although in our hungover state I guess we didn’t put it together that the restaurant was aptly named for the fact that it is located directly under an elevated train stop. So, every 5 minutes an earth shattering rumble would explode from above further exacerbating my headache. Not to mention I had too many onion rings and once again felt like shit.

2:00PM - We return to the baumstrasse and decide what to do. Dirty Clothes bails in favor of a pool and his girlfriend. No argument here. We were supposed to go to the Taste of Lincoln street festival but this is clearly not happening. In fact we do not leave the apartment the entire day. O-Dawg and I proceed to crush silver bullets all fucking day maintaining an astonishing level of drunk while watching various movies in Spanish since Baum has no cable. I believe the highlight of the actual day was screaming Bill Pullman’s speech in Independence Day while giving rapid high fives ensued by testosterone induced beer chugging.

9:00PM - Baum finally peels the crust out of his vadge, wakes up, and we decide to head down to the Wicker Park Festival. This is a good scene. Thousands of hot chicks. We are starving but all the food vendors are closed so after watching some live New Deal (great band) and a few street beers we search for a restaurant. We stumble upon this strange place with outdoor seating. I am scared because the outside walls are painted with pictures of Kadafi, Che, and all your other revolutionary bullshit. We go around front and find out that this is actually an upscale Mexican joint. We say fuck it and go in.

10:00PM - I feel fucking great. I have polished off a bourbon and coke and have had a few bowls of margarita. This place is sweet. There are a bunch of drunk bitches at the table next to us with the stereotypical three or four gay man friends and a bunch of other people enjoying the lovely summer night. At one point one of the dudes is so drunk he falls out of his chair and into a bunch of bushes. The entire patio just turns and stares. This is one of the most awkward feelings I have ever had in a restaurant and it wasn’t even because of something I did. We crushed some ceviche, guacamole, and other standard Mexican foods and finish our little bowls of margarita served out of little Aztec men with salt for hair. The party next to us leaves but not before we talk to the hottest woman who introduces herself and explains how one of her other friends had to leave the restaurant because she already face planted into the fence. There are no ugly chicks here. I love this town.

11:30PM - We go to Baum’s buddy’s house for a little outdoor BBQ action. He’s got a sweet setup in Lakeshore and I’m feeling pretty good at this point. We’re hanging on the deck talking to some people at which point I somehow am sitting on the floor next to a pretty girl who is beyond blackout and rooting around in her purse searching for the mythical unicorn cigarettes that clearly don't exist anymore. Some other girl gets into a fight with O-Dawg because he called her city a ghetto or something. He probably raped her mother. Oddly enough, she throws a light up crayon at him. Hah imagine that. We talk more about slapping people with no arms, getting your taint spray tanned, and decide to go to another bar.

1:00AM - We get to this bar only in time for a couple drinks. It’s a good scene. There are severely drunk people outside screaming into cellphones. This marathon is winding down. We head back to Baum’s and drink at his place until 6:00AM.

Overall, Chicago is a great town with a lot to do. I didn't do any of it but I've heard it's nice. I recommend everyone make it out there this summer. If you do go, look up Alex Baum on match.com. He’s a good host, knows the city, and he’s great to make fun of. He also definitely wants kids, has an about average body, and only smokes occasionally.

Yours Truly,

Smasher