// dresden room 1 (2 of 8ish)
finally off the plane, i make a flurry of calls to my relatives and friends in and around la to set things up for meetings later on in the week. nothing better to do while i wait for my friend dan to pick me up. it's dreary with the night fallen at 8:00pm in la. i could be pissed about the rain and about missing an entire day in cali for a day in dtw, and i am.

instead of heading directly to dan's place for me to unpack and get settled, we head out to shik-do-rak, a great korean restaurant in k-town, for some grub and soju. after this, i finally unpack at dan's apartment which is next to nupac, an apartment complex owned by tupac's baby's mamma. while sitting around, we decide to go out to the dresden room for the nite.

the dresden room is a bar/restaurant near hollywood that has been featured in the movie, swingers. i didn't know if i was going to like it because i had a feeling that the place was going to be full of dorks like us who just go there because it was in a movie. no cover at the door immediately dropped all the possible regrets about walking into the place.

my lungs thanked the "no-smoking in public places" trend in california. my eyes weren't watering, and i didn't have to worry about contact-smoking a pack of cigs. bonus: there wasn't that smokey haze, so you could actually see things in the dimly lit room. this proved to be the key bonus later on in the night.

we found a nice spot at the end of the bar where the waitresses submit and pick up orders. cool thing was, this was the end of the bar that the lads from swingers walked in front of. dan ended up taking the bitch seat (the seat directly next to the waitresses' "staging area"), and i got the seat that was more open for approach.

i was enjoying my rob roys and gimlets, checking out the scenery in the place... to our suprise, there were some asian chicks there. further, the typical dresden chick seemed really down to earth. very promising. after awhile, the seat next to me opened up, and that's when the fun started. i can't remember what this lady said to us to get our attention, but she actually approached us first. aggressive. interesting. i was never in this situation before. but, when i turned around to see who she was, i saw a late 20's-early 30's woman talking. i really don't go for the older birds, so i did my best to show boredom. however, my friend, dan, doesn't agree with me on the age issue; he's currently in an estranged relationship with a professor at usc. ask him for the details.

there was the typical q&a session, but then, she suddenly asks us to use her cell fone:

lady: "can i use your cell phone to call my cell phone?"
me: "why?"
dan: "sure."
l: "because i need to check my voicemail to see if my friends have arrived."
m: "oh."
d: "you can use my fone."
l: "i feel really bad. do you guys have the minutes to spare."
m: "it's the weekend. we both have nights and weekends free."
d: "i said you can use my fone. please, use my fone."
l: "oh ok. this will only take a second."
<dan hands phone over>

so dan successfully gets the digits from this lady without even trying. it's a pretty passive-aggressive way for a lady to hand out her phone number to a guy she meets at a bar. so anyway, the conversation progresses nicely, and then the talk turns to what we do and (indirectly) our ages.

l: "so what do you guys do?"
d: "i'm a film major at usc."
l: "oh really? that's cool." (possibly with a sense of sarcasm)
<pause>
d: "no, i'm just kidding, i'm doing graduate school for computer engineering at usc. it's not a good thing to say while talking to women." (jokingly)
l: "that's really good for you. you can be very successful with that major. there's lots of jobs out there for it. there's a lot of women out there that don't mind that sort of thing."
m: "but usually those women tend to be gold diggers. and my boy dan deserves more than a gold digger." (my gold digger alarm went off when she made her comment)
l: "of course, of course. but what i meant to say that there's nothing wrong with a sensible major."

i was just amusing myself with the conversation at this point. i tend to be more blunt and honest as i get tired. plus, the drinks were espeically tasty; the barkeeps knew every recipe for my "old-man" drinks that i typically order. case in point, the bartender waiting on us took some of his time to show how they made an extra-dry martini in the joint. he simply clinked the vermouth bottle to the martini glass that was full of the good stuff. i'm sure ordering my drinks neat tipped him early that i didn't mess around.

so anyway, back to the lady. the lady inferred our ages from dan's explanation that he was in grad school at usc and that i was visiting for spring break from michigan. she mentioned something about her cousin still in school, and about 5 minutes later, she left to join her friends. the thing is, her friends arrived at the dresden for a good 20-30 minutes before she left us. had the age issue not come up, i'm sure danny-boy could have wrapped something up.

so anyway, i get back to drinking and conversing with a good friend that i haven't seen in awhile. we start to notice that marty and elaine uses the space behind us as a staging area of sorts before they go on to play their next set. during one of their breaks, dan takes his chance and introduces himself to marty, saying that we're both big fans. we end up talking with marty for a bit and shake hands with him and elaine. marty didn't seemed bothered by it at all, and he actually wished me a good time on my trip. i know, i know... but this was really cool since swingers is one of my favorite movies. i shook hands with marty and elaine. fortunately, we didn't come off as the total tools that we are by the fact that we didn't have cameras. next time i'm in cali at the dresden room, i'll offer to buy marty a drink.

the night progresses, and another lady sits down next to me. i glance over and it's another late 20's-early 30's lady. rats. this time, i don't care as much, and the lady, dan and i have a pretty good conversation about swingers of all things. the lady turns out to be an ex-wife of the love joys drummer. the love joys were a band featured on the swingers soundtrack and she even was an extra in the movie that made a scene. since she was married to the drummer dude at the time of the shooting, she actually knew jon favreau and all that stuff. it was really cool conversation, but again, it ended with us talking about what we do. and then she inferred our ages. and then she left.

maybe i should reconsider my stance on older chicks and be on the lookout for a sugar-momma.

nah... but i have come up with something that totally avoids the age and computer science issue if someone particularly fetching asks about what i do.