As of Friday, January 25th, I, Dick Masterson, have completed my very own Dick Masterson’s 2008 Man Challenge. Much in the way a Phoenix rises from it’s own ashes just outside of Scottsdale, I write this update as a manlier man. And I too am covered in ash, which I will explain in a moment.
For those of you who don’t remember the specifics of my Dick Masterson’s 2008 Man Challenge, I’ll do the manly thing and summarize them below at the speed of a motorcycle blazing by you at 120 miles an hour.
During the year 2008, a competitor must:
1. Not get a girlfriend
2. Go to a hooker
3. Get ejected from somewhere
4. Drink a bottle of Scotch
5. End or prevent a marriage
I’m not going to get into the specifics of each one here — suffice it to say that two were done at considerable expense and with great enjoyment — but to commemorate this occasion and to give manspiration to those who may be on their first or second challenge, I would like to tell the tale of my final obstacle. This is the challenge I saved until last because I knew it would be most difficult. This is the one I completed only last weekend.
3. Get ejected from somewhere: +1,000 Man Points
Last night, I was ejected from an Argentinian grill for smoking indoors and refusing to fight the bartender. In hindsight, the latter contributed much more to my ejection than the former.
The bartender is a unique creature in the nocturnal urban wilderness. He is the opposite of the bouncer, and in all respects master of his domain. The bartender has but one goal in mind and it is a manly one: remain the King of the Hill. With that, all else falls in line. Were he to fail in this charge, alcohol would sell for pennies a glass and the floorboards would be torn up by drunken maniacs. The hot lady-bartenders would likely be carried home as trophies. Lord knows I’ve carried sillier and uglier things home as trophies. I once carried a miniature golf flag pole home as a trophy. And before that, a curtain rod.
By refusing a challenge of fisticuffs, you are essentially usurping the bartender’s power.
It started late in the evening with a woman beside me who wanted to smoke. It was raining outside and being a woman — and especially a woman in Los Angeles — she had no time for anything naturally occurring, elemental or otherwise. With a cold stare much more fitting on a woman half as drunk or twice as old, she asked me how long I thought it would take management to appear were she to “light up” at the bar.
Obviously, she was asking rhetorically. Women don’t have the prerequisite of balls to take such a bold step against the law for the sake of exploration. That’s why women have higher car insurance premiums than men. They don’t want to know where the envelope ends. They’re rather think we exist on a big fluffy pillow than a piece of office stationary, but rest assured that there is an envelope and it does have an edge.
“Let’s find out,” I said. As a man, I enjoy the sticky sensation of finding that edge.
The Anti-Smoking crusade is one done in the name of womanliness. It reeks of womanliness, first of all, because it requires absolute complacency and cooperation in order to enforce. Taxes work the same way and so does marriage. No bar could afford to evict a hundred smokers, and no police force could fine a thousand bars who didn’t. Also, quit being such pussies. That’s the second reason anti-smoking is womanly. Smoking is manly as fuck.
It took a surprisingly long time for management to rain down on the two of us like a greasy ton of bricks — about 80% of a cigarette long — but the damage was not done until I asked the bartender to pour a drink for himself as well. In order to make up for all the silliness.
I believe his response: the throwing of a soot-covered coaster/ashtray, was intended to be a warning shot, but I did not interpret it that way at the time with either my arm or my lap or my pants. After two beer bottles were broken and I refused to fight about it, I was ejected by security.
I don’t fight over women and I certainly don’t fight because smelling foul is now illegal in the same parts of the world that frown on prostitution. That’s unmanly. I will, however, make a mess. Nothing unmanly about that. And before anyone says that being a problem in a bar is a loss of Man Points, let me say the following:
One: I did have sex with that woman; and two: several weeks ago, at the same bar and grill, the manager called the police on a drunken, fat slob of a lady-pig who had caused a scene after being rejected by someone in a mesh trucker hat who was still well out of her league. At the same time, the manager closed down the bar and kicked everyone out. A bar can go fuck itself if it thinks I’m getting a DUI because some fat cunt can’t handle getting turned down for the millionth time in her life. What’s one more lonely night to some fat broad? What’s one more Fun Size bag of Cheetos? Nothing.
Hit the treadmill.
Dick Masterson’s 2008 Man Challenge
