Encino Man

So one of my roommates from college, Dan, has a habit of drinking so much in one sitting that he literally de-evolves into a caveman-like creature, an alter-ego we've dubbed the Encino Man (a homage to the Brendan Fraser-Pauly Shore cinema masterpiece).

Dan transforms into this creature about every three months or so and when he does, it's like a sloppy combination of King Kong and Andrew Dice Clay. Similar to Homo habilis in intelligence, Dan's ability to reason goes down, while his desire to mate and break things skyrockets. One of my favorite Encino Man stories:

I was doing a reporting internship at a newspaper in Florida. My grandparents live in the same city as the newspaper I'm working at so I stayed with them at their place in a 55 and older community. Dan, along with two of our other friends, Phil and Andrew came down to visit over spring break.

One night we're out at the bar and it was a few days after St. Patty's Day, which equates to cheap-stale-green beer. After a while, I start to notice that Dan is really throwing them back. Little by little, he begins to slur his words and disengage in human conversation. Finally, he announces to the rest of us:

"Fuck it, I'm gettin' some tonight"

Enter the Encino Man.

It was only about 8 p.m. so the only single girl at the bar near our age was eating dinner with her family, but that made little difference to Dan. At this point, his eyes looked like a couple of glazed donuts and his mouth was hanging open like a broken marionette doll.

After oozing over to their table, Dan completely ignores the other seven people at the table (including her dad) and zeroes in on their college-aged daughter. Nobody knows exactly what was said or if it was in English or some kind of Neandrathal dialect. What we do know, is that the conversation lasted for about 75 seconds, a lot longer than we expected, before Dan grunted away unsuccessful. Shocking, I know, because girls LOVE flirting with guys in front of their dads.

More tomorrow...