ROB BASE & D.J. E-Z ROCK - It Takes Two (#38 - 10/29/1988)
How well I remember it: 10 (Who doesn't know this song?.)
How well I liked it then: 10 (Party club song of the day.)
How well I like it now: 10 (It is impossible to sit still when this song is on. I defy people to listen to it and not start moving around.)
What should be the first universally known song on the list. I mean really, if you haven't heard this one before you live under a rock. There are people that rank this as the greatest hip-hop song of all time. It's been sampled in 20+ other songs.
Anarchy the person at the time was a blend of
John Cusack from The Sure Thing,
Jason Biggs from American Pie, and
Ed Helms from The Hangover. 99.999% of the time I am quiet and pretty reserved. But that other 0.001% . . .
In almost everyone's life, at some point there is a night of unbridled drunkenness, stupidity, and debauchery . . . a What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas kind of a night. Well, this is one of those stories where Anarchy went totally off the rails, off the chain, and off the reservation.
Our story starts at an apartment on campus (all girls). One of the things I am not proud of in that time frame was pretending not to know how to play Tetris, challenging a female to a game, making a bet on who would win, and basically getting them to go out on a date if I beat them. If they won, I promised to help them with their homework, a project, or something along those lines. I made such a bet on that particular day, beat a girl in Tetris (or should I say "young woman" since that is more PC these days), and she invited me to a party that night. I didn't know her very well, but I thought she was also pretty quiet, laid back, and reserved.
At the party, I had a few shots of liquid courage and started having a good time. I got pretty loud, started telling jokes, told some funny stories, did some impressions, etc. and pretty much took over the conversation. Also known as I let my hair down. About this time in the proceedings, I had an urge . . . a premonition if you will, that for some unknown reason, I KNEW that I could throw a nickel across a roomful of people into a drink all the way across the room that was sitting on a table. Don't ask me why a felt that, but alcohol makes you thing strange things.
I was in the zone and just knew I could do it. To anyone that has played sports, there are times when you are just on fire and you know you can't miss. I played baseball and there were times I just knew I was going to hit a home run. There were times playing basketball I just knew I would make every shot and could hit 10 or 12 shots in a row as far as 30 feet away. This was such a moment.
This got talked up over and over and I started making bets and people started making side bets as to whether I could actually do it. People were giving odds and wanted to know how many tries I wanted (ie, make it within 3 attempts). By this point, I was probably at Stage II in
Larry Miller's Five Stages Of Drinking bit and spent 20 minutes arguing against artificial turf. I was feeling no pain and took all the bets. With an entire party of people watching, I proceeded to launch the nickel from 30 feet away. Release . . . rotation . . . SPLASH. On the first try.
At this point, Tetris girl asked me to help her get some food from a different apartment, so we briefly left the party. We were both a little tipsy, she started flirting with me and pinned me against a refrigerator, and she asked how many other girls I had pulled the Tetris maneuver on. Then she asked me how long had it been since I last, well, you know (sorry . . . this place is PG now). Without any hesitation, I uttered perhaps one of my best lines of all time . . . "In 10 minutes, the answer will be 5 minutes ago." Use your imagination from there.
We went back to the party and I was feeling no pain. Lots more alcohol is consumed. The rest gets blurry. At some point, the party at school got broken up, so we moved the party off campus. We were at the home of one of the rich kids from school with a killer sound system.
YOUNG MC - Bust A Move (which I was surprised didn't qualify as a OHW) came on and I jumped on the kitchen counter and started dancing and singing with a bottle of rum in one hand and scotch in the other. It Takes Two came on next and I apparently went nuts and started dancing on top of a grand piano and led the charge in everyone going nuts.
After getting high fived by a bunch of people for getting people even more pumped up (the place was hot and packed), I needed to get some air and went outside to their pool . . . to find Tetris girl performing intimate acts with more than one person at a time and getting cheered on by like 100 people. That was my last quasi-sober moment that I can remember.
The next day like noon I remember waking up at a different house in someone's basement in a pile of clothes in the closet of someone's laundry room. A scantily clad young woman had come in to do a load of laundry. I asked her where I was. She helped me up and gave me a giant hug and a kiss and said I was an absolute wild man. She was wearing an unbuttoned men's button down shirt and nothing else. A minute later, the garage door opened and a car drove it. Seconds later she introduced me to her fiance. The whole things was barely even a blur (and will be continued in the next write up).