Last night one of the cocktail waitresses at Reid’s club was celebrating her birthday, and I tagged along. En route, we stopped by the house of one of the bartenders. He’s this huge white guy named Chuck. We had a few Millers over at his place with his two roomates.
About 20 minutes later, I found out his last name is Norris.
“Dude that is cool,” I said. “And that’s all I’ll say, because you would have already heard anything else” (and yes, I did want to ask if they’re called earth-downs instead of push-ups when he does them).
So we head out to this Russian restaurant called Matryoshka, which turns into a club at night. We hung out for a bit.
Later in the night, Chuck Norris says that we should go to a country bar.
“You ever been to a Country bar, Eric?” He says.
“What? What the hell is that?” I ask. I mean, I’m assuming it’s a bar that played country music, but I’ve never heard of it before.
Reid tells me that he’s gone once before. “It’s the craziest thing,” he says, “there’s times where everybody lines up and dances the exact same two-step!”
I need to see this for myself. So 15 minutes later, we’re pulling up to a place called Stoney’s, that’s in a place called “The Antique Mall of America”. Neither of which I knew even existed. The sign for Stoney’s was in neon, with the name framed in a huge shape of Texas state.
We walk in. The place is huge. Again, the place is huge. If I had to draw some sort of comparison, I’d say the place is about the size of a hollowed out Long’s drug store back in Hawaii. There are two bars on either side of the place, the dance floor and mechanical bull are on one end, and on the other end are beer pong, video games, three or four small bowling lanes, and the bathrooms. The waitresses and dancers all wear black leather bikinis and chaps, and there are about three huge metal tubs full of ice and beer so you can still buy a drink if you’re too far away from either of the bars.
Okay so, I mentioned the place was huge, right? The place was also packed. Full of white people, and a few black people. And me and Reid, who were the only two asians there.
My mouth was wide open. I was still trying to get a grip when the first country song started playing.
It was like everyone was paid to do this, but in front of my eyes, the entire dance floor (which itself was the size of the entire area of some clubs) rearranged, you know like those huge people-formations they did in the Beijing Olympics? And everybody did the same dance. They took the same number of steps in the same direction, they all jumped at the same time, clapped at the same time, and turned to face the same direction at the same time.
Needless to say, I was overwhelmed. I felt like I was in another dimension! The next few hours were basically me staring at the dance floor with my mouth open, with Reid, who was also having a blast and could not stop laughing the entire night, and Chuck Norris, who towered over us and seemed pretty entertained about how amazed we were.
Get this - different songs have their own different dances, too. Some look like the electric slide, but there’s another one where people start going around in a huge circle.
I couldn’t take it any more and asked these two fat chicks how the hell everybody knows what to do.
“I’m not sure if you can tell, but I’m Asian.” I said. “This is my first time here, I’m still blown away and feel like the time I went with my ex girlfriend to Catholic mass, everybody started speaking in unison, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Where does everybody learn all of this?”.
They told me that if you actually come earlier, like around 7:30, they have lessons, and with some songs, the DJ actually calls out the steps. Apparently, there’s also another Stoney’s up in North Las Vegas.
We got out of there a few hours later, when things started to die down. I told Chuck that my mind was blown open and I was exposed to new worlds, like I just watched an entire day’s worth of Discovery Channel.
At 4am, we were back at Reid’s place, watching TV in his living room. I was eating soft taco’s from Del Taco and Reid found “Pound Puppies” on TV and blasted the volume up to 80 (max is 100). Lori woke up and was not amused. Or maybe she was a little. I don’t know.
I crashed again on their aero bed, and got home around noon. Lucky for me, Reid doesn’t start work until about noon so he can just drop me off on the way over. I just finished eating oats again for lunch, and as I predicted last night, I’m now sitting here today, questioning everything I saw and wondering if it was all just a loud, crazy, awesome nightmare.
The end.
(ps: after Wednesday night’s hijinks, I realized that I needed to take it easy and drank a lot less this time around, which is why I was able to remember last night’s events in greater detail).
In other news, I just finished reading The Numbers Game, and left feeling underwhelmed. I guess if I never paid attention in high school stats, it would have been a more eye opening experience. But whatever. 
