Life Is Changing

It's been over 2 and a half years since I originally started this blog, and certainly it hasn't been fluent, as I have been very inconsistent with making post, I retired for a while and then I came back, but then I kinda didn't really post at all, then I made another comeback which well, ended almost 7 months ago and while many things have changed in all that time, many have stayed the same. Since starting this blog, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, I've joined the 30+ club, Twinkies went away, then they came back, the space shuttle program was shut down, I gave up drinking, I started drinking again and I'm sure plenty of other billions of things that I'm not mentioning. Meanwhile, sky is still blue, the earth is still round, water is still wet, I'm still chasing after my dream girl, whoever that maybe if she even exists, I'm still representing the gangstas all across the world, still hitting them corners in the low lows girl, still taking the time to perfect that beat and I still got love for the streets. Ok, some of those last things might have been Snoop and Dre from 14 years ago, which I actually don't know if they are still doing, Snoop Lion, what the hell is that? and where the hell is Detox Dre? Where the hell is Detox? It's becoming the new Chinese Democracy. Sorry, got side tracked, which I still do all the time, but there was a point to all this and that is this: "Change is Inevitable, Growth is Optional" which is a quote from John C. Reilly, no wait, sorry John C. Maxwell, or maybe I saw John C. Reilly play John C. Maxwell in a movie, either way, the point is made and a good one. So, the biggest change coming for me in the blog era is my move back to Needham, so while that is change from living in Brighton, not sure it's growth, but sometimes you have to take a step back in order to get a better view of what is in front of you before you can move forward. Kinda at a crossroad right now and we'll see what happens, but feel like there needs to be some major changes, especially with things that have just been stagnant, shit or get off the pot, am I right? But there is a reason for this post, and it's not really to discuss the future, it's to celebrate the past and take a look back at The Kilsyth Years:

95 Kilsyth Road, Apt 1, Brighton MA

Well, Wonder Years, close enough, by the way, speaking of dream girls earlier, Winnie Cooper, come on, yeah, and she's still hot, I may have already covered this before, I'm not sure, but either way, meanwhile her real life sister who played Becky Slater on the show, not so much. Sorry, totally got sidetracked there, see still happens. Anyway, let's jump in the old wayback machine and take a trip down memory lane, let's start all the way back in the year 2010. Now, some of you may know this and some of you may not, but I wasn't always supposed to move into 95 Kilsyth, in fact it was an already establish living place for about a month prior to me moving in on Saturday October 2nd, and the debauchery began almost immediately, within minutes of officially moving in I was handed a beer, of which I arrived with many and was getting drunk on The Porch and pregaming for Harpoonfest, something that would become an all too common occurrence over the next almost 3 years. Also hung out with a lot of cool people during this time many of which I met for the first time at Kilsyth, some despite them knowing some of my friends for many years prior, apparently I didn't get out much before moving to Kilsyth, many of these people I met early on in my Kilsyth experience at our housewarming party where I proceeded to get iced with a a 22 of Smirnoff Ice, then was on the beer pong table for like an hour, then passed out and missed half the party. To this day, I still can't keep their names straight, "So, wait, your Pan and she's Pam. Oh there is no Pan, well then who the hell was I just talking to, and how am I supposed to cook these pizza bites? Wait, there's no Pam either, well then these pizza bites are getting stuck to whatever we end up cooking them on." Ok, so that conversation probably didn't go down like that and I may have changed the names to protect the innocent or not so innocent in some cases, Flair and Jim know what I'm talking about and don't get me started on Jan who thought that I was Craig and years later would fall into a cooler, none of them are probably reading this anyway. We did have plenty of other parties, that I didn't pass out and miss half of though, and some of the people at those parties that I met, I might have actually kept their names straight or possibly not, who the hell knows, but as time went on I got better at parties, just needed to figure it out. Over the years we had countless parties, didn't matter if they were planned or not, or even imaginary. Super Bowl Party, Day Before Super Bowl Party For No Apparent Reason where keys ended up in the freezer, Rapture Party, Reunion Pregame Party, Halloween Party, Classy Party, Quatro de Mayo/Kentucky Derby/ One Fund Benefit aka Cinco de Derby or Quatro de Cinco for those AD fans out there, Pauly Shore Day, Carl Weathers Day, Cuba Gooding Jr Day, Urban Ladies tribute to Black History Month, Fantasy Sports Draft Parties, Portions of a Bachelor Party, Second Saturday, three, count them, three Yankee Swaps, Birthday Parties, Birthday Party After Parties, Frankenstrom Party, Blizzard Parties, Hurricane Parties, Tornado Party, Lockdown Party, ok maybe those last 5 weren't exactly parties, but all those things did take place while we were living there. These parties don't even include the random, just for the hell of it Porch Parties that we were always having, in fact The Porch is gonna get it's own section.

THE PORCH

Fewer places could bring so much joy, so much happiness, so much drunkenness, so much everything and more. If you never experienced The Porch, well, I just feel sorry for you, it was like a stroll down the beach on a perfect summer evening with a beautiful sunset in the distance and that guy/girl that you love holding your hand, I'm guessing, that's never happened to me, I've witnessed others doing this as I've taken my dog for a walk at the same time and probably ruined their moment, but I could imagine what it would be like. Except instead of sunset it's sunrise, cause it's 5:30 in the morning and you are still cranking some classic rock and slamming down beers, you're drunk out of your mind, the fridge has only those random beers that no one knows whose they are or how long they have been there and you decide, yeah, maybe it's time to stumble to bed, except you are still up in Tollbooth Willie and you can't for the love of God get past that toll, and maybe that guy/girl that you love isn't there or maybe doesn't exist, but your best friends in the world are belting out some Van Halen with you, while the neighbors from upstairs or somewhere you can't even see them are yelling at you to shut up. But that's not even where the glory that is The Porch lies, it lies in the fact that at 5:30 in the afternoon the day before you went out there to have a couple drinks to pregame before you made your way out for the night, and that my friend became your night, and it was probably better than anything else you could have done that night and you loved every minute of it and didn't regret it at all. That was what The Porch was all about, The Porch didn't judge you, The Porch loved you and gave you that sense that things were going to be OK. Wow, I just got a little emotional there, I need to regroup myself, here watch a video:

Ok, I'm good. The Porch had everything you could ever want, Lights, Table, Chairs, Bar, Grass, HDTV with cable, Music, Dancing, Singing, a Grill. Sure when it rained it would get really wet and not be usable, but hey, life isn't all butterflies and rainbows, occasionally you couldn't use The Porch cause it was covered in snow or it was freezing, but when you could you would take full advantage of it. The different games that we played out there, Slap Cup, Beer Pong, Flip Cup, Civil War, Three Man and countless hours of Tollbooth Willie and other card games. I could go on and on about The Porch, and I already have, and I will more, did you know that The Porch has it's own Facebook page? you didn't? well what the hell is wrong with you? You should have already liked it ages ago, shame on you. Jerry Gunastretchuout Jones likes it and that's really the only endorsement that you could ever need. Ok, I think I've said enough about The Porch, honestly probably could have done a whole blog post just on The Porch, but at the end of the day Kilsyth and The Porch go hand and hand, so it had to be this way. But there was more craziness that didn't just involve The Porch.

95 Kilsyth had it fair share of everything, there were plenty of laughs, and yes while many of these were due to the gasleak that we were convinced that we had and the countless hours of watching Channel 8 due to said gasleak, which by the way just in case you aren't aware, there are no rules in a gasleak, there were plenty of other things that took place in our years there. Whenever I wasn't ranting and raving like a drunk lunatic at 3 in the morning for whatever reason, and yes typically it was due to failing miserably with some lady I was attempting to woo, but not always I often had other reasons but sometimes there was just no rational reason at all (and as a side note, if you for whatever reason have not had the pleasure of listening and watching one of my rants, you are missing out, I'm actually a little concerned about what is going to happen now that I'm going back to Needham, not sure who I'm gonna be able to rant to anymore, this could cause some issues as I may end up exploding due to not unleashing the rant within. Also, when I typically rant, usually there is a little bit of humor in it, as I don't really get angry, rarely do I ever get actually angry, very few people have really ever seen me angry, let's just say you wouldn't like me when I'm angry, I don't like me when I'm angry, please don't make me angry, but ranting Greg, for some reason people often find comical, even if I'm being completely serious about what I am saying, go figure.) Well, when I wasn't doing that I was busy breaking things, strangely you would have thought that I would break things while doing these rants, but no, I broke the couch early in the day on March 18th, 2012, while being hungover from St. Patrick's Day and a little depressed from striking out with the ladies I'm sure, I decided to sit on the arm of the couch as to not to disturb our resident couch guest at the time as we tried to understand what was going on in the movie which we had come across entitled "Cotton Comes to Harlem":

and snap, my fat ass was too much weight and the leg breaks. However being the quick witted SOBs that we are a rock would replace that leg for the next 4 months until the couch was replaced by me, cause I'm also a considerate fat ass SOB. Before I get into what else I broke, I need to discuss this movie first, Godfrey Cambridge as Gravedigger Jones and Raymond St. Jacques as Coffin Ed Johnson two cops only a mother could love, yes, that happened, not sure what else to say other than that Redd Foxx was also involved and it has it's own theme song, and life as we know it was never the same, anyways... That wasn't all I broke, yes one day I was opening the fridge cause once again I'm a fat ass an was looking for food and snap one of the shelves on the door broke, still not really sure how that happened and after a few attempts at fixing, it was done for, this too I did replace, cause once again I'm a considerate fat ass SOB, and the jackass property manager sucked and never got back to us about anything, the damn toilet was broken pretty much the whole time we lived there, they made one feeble attempt at fixing it that didn't work. There were plenty of things that I didn't break while at Kilsyth, I didn't break any hearts, I don't think, and there was other stuff that got broken that I had nothing to do with, I mean, when your roommate owns a sword and you have a bunch of drunken idiots around, chances are something is gonna break, but hey, if all that sword broke was a ceiling fan pull chain and poor Sam Adams, and maybe made some marks on the floor and the doorway, then I guess it wasn't too bad. I can tell you this though I never broke anything with my staff, you hear me, nothing. We had our share of injures and falls while at Kilsyth, I'm pretty sure I got a concussion one night, did I already mention that, I can't remember, and many people fell, in fact I recall one night in particular were a certain individual fell multiple times, and while granted the first one he may have been thrown through a table by a girl half his size which he probably deserved let's be honest, the other 2 were all on him. There wasn't always good times at Kilsyth, I know I got bitched out a few times while living there and I'm sure I bitched some people out myself. We lost some folks along the way, lost some jobs along the way, lost a dog along the way, but hey, at the end of the day things were pretty good. I would also quickly like the mention the mantel, which was filled with the most random stuff you could imagine, a lot of which came from Dollar Tree, and somehow it went from being as ridiculous as it was to even more ridiculous based on nothing that we even did, let me explain. Probably the nicest thing that was on the mantel was an autographed photo of Aaron Hernandez, granted he was wearing his old 85 in the picture, but still, a solid item for the mantel as compared to the other items, so then of course I'm sure everyone knows the story by now, and it's still playing out, but based on nothing we did, that item went from being the nicest thing on the mantel to being questionable as to if it should have even been up there anymore. Now, one thing that could have been better were the other people the lived in the building, now most weren't terrible, but with the exception of 2, none of them were all that cool or friendly in the 3 years, granted could we have maybe reached out and been more friendly, sure, but we were the ones with the kickass porch setup, so if they wanted into the club, they should have came to us.

Now, there are many things that were discovered while living at Kilsyth, which while they won't go away with us moving out, we would have probably never discovered them unless we lived there and with me moving to Needham, not going to be frequenting them quite as often. The Saturday morning trips to Dunkin Donuts, the Sunday brunches at Cityside, eggs, the random nights at Applebee's getting served by Cosmo or the girl who hated cantaloupes cause it sounded like antelope. Fast Eddie making us whatever we wanted always in 15 minutes and calling us his friends, Ana Lucia's which was not actually the name of the place, but we never bothered to actually figure out what it was called. Chansky's, not really sure how to even explain the magnificence of this place, it is called a Market, but it's more of a convenient store, but yet it had everything you could ever want, with the one exception of hard alcohol, but you know what they had, dry cleaning and woven baskets for some reason which I never did figure out, they have their own T-Shirts and are currently celebrating 100 years. And of course, while there were plenty of bars in the area, and we probably could have gone to all of them plenty of times, we always seemed to keep going back to the place where everyone knew our names, well maybe some of them did, ok well mostly we knew their names, but regardless, that was of course Harry's. Pretty sure there was a stretch where if I wasn't on The Porch, I was at Harry's, this was probably when I was unemployed, but hey, I was still getting paid, so it was all good. Many fun times spent there, and not to say I can't go back, but it'll be a longer walk back to Needham then to Kilsyth, and that just reminded me of the infamous night I got locked out of the apartment, well, I'm not gonna get into that one now, if you don't already know that one and want to know, just ask me.

Before I finish this post and the sun finally sets on Kilsyth and The Porch, I just want to take a little time and acknowledge those that made this all happen, my partners in crime, Matt Lacob, Mike Grace and Matt Giorgio, if you read this, DID IT! couldn't have done it without you fellas, thanks. Also want to thank anyone who ever came to our apartment or The Porch, for a party or just stopped in to say hi, or any reason you had to be there and were a part of the experience that was the last 3 years.

Now, before I'm done I would be remiss if I didn't mention two traditions that started at Kilsyth and shall continue on, or at least I hope they do, cause they should. The first of which I actually wasn't even involved with initially, but as a tribute to Matt Lacob who lived at Kilsyth longer than anyone, it seems fitting, and anyone that has been to a recent party of ours may know what you have to do if this song comes on, either on purpose, or just randomly:

Anyone who just watched that better have been shotgunning a beer, this isn't amateur hour you know, cause if you are unaware, when that song comes on that's what you do, there may have been different lyrics that went along with it, but that's not important, like I said wasn't there when the tradition started.

Finally, and fittingly, a tradition that I helped start, unfortunately I have absolutely no recollection of this, possible cause I was way too drunk, or maybe cause I had a concussion or probably both, wait did I discuss this concussion thing earlier, still can't remember. Typically at the end of a party or long night of drinking, although sometimes just randomly during the middle of the party, whenever this song comes on the brooms and swiffers come out and it's time to do the Robot and clean.

Kilroy!

Kilsyth!

Thanks for the memories!