How fucking awesome would it be if you were a professional baseball player? I'll answer that for you: fucking awesome.

Saturday night was the 3rd anniversary party for insideSTL.com and I believe Tim might have mentioned it last week.

I was standing outside of the men's room telling some dude how it be cool if these girls parading around in lingerie would just kind of hang out in their underwear that way it would be easier to creep out without having to push 5 message boarders out of the way to look at some ass. Some dude agreed and then one of the aforementioned lingerie babes came up and tried to grab his crotch.

Some dude was Amanda Kennedy and he was there.

Along with Kyle Loshe, Todd Wellemeyer and Felipe Lopez.

All these guys seemed genuinely decent people. They chatted with some very normal* fans of the site and were generally happy to just be hanging out. (Sidebar: One of my roommates asked Kyle Loshe in the bathroom "You coming back to STL next year, bro?" Loshe responded "I can't invite myself back." Friend's response: "My penis looks to be prettier than yours..." I apologize personally for that, Mr. Loshe. He's not dangerous. As far as you know.)

Only when your a professional athlete you get to hang out at parties like the one on Saturday with millions of dollars hanging out of your pockets. Now being Pujols type famous has it's perks- most notably boatloads of money and shit loads of vagina (not that Pujols would, but he could, lets work under that assumption) But it's also a scene to get a Chalupa from Taco Bell, too. Kids want your autograph. Grown men want you to sign their toupees. Your day to day activity is filled with pathetic-ness that we can't even fathom.

But being Amanda Kennedy famous- now that would (of course) be fucking awesome. Dudes don't immediately recognize you (even ones that cover Cardinals for extra cash) and girls just want to touch your junk because that's what Almost Famous taught them. You can go to website parties and be the man or you can go shopping and not be bothered. Perfect amount of stardom. Where do I sign up?

On the other end of the spectrum, there's me. Aaron T Hooks. At the party, my guests were on the list. Lot's of people were on 'the list'. I was not on the list. And I had to borrow the 10 dollar cover charge from the valet guy. Hours later, the bouncer at the Pepper Lounge told me I wasn't good looking enough to get it and I had to sneak in through the side door. Hours before some incredibly nice man totaled my car parked on the side of the street and left the scene of the crime. Last year you'd never hear me wish I was Amanda Kennedy, but Saturday I came to the bone-jarring realization that Mr. Kennedy has a pretty sweet deal going.

In no particular order are more thoughts from the insideSTL.com 3rd Anniversary party, the weekend series against the Braves and one other thing.

Girls hate girls. This is irrefutable. They may say they have friends, but at the end of the day, one slight will turn them so quick... At least the Penthouse Pet judge was open about it. I believe the highest score she gave on a scale of 1-10 was a 8. Once. This was all for fun, but she later told me she thinks she's a 40 on the same scale. Multiple girls confirmed that she was wearing no panties and dyed her pubic hair blue. Let's hope that was in honor of the Rams pre-season win against the Ravens.

Women do love Felipe Lopez however. They probably didn't care about his lame throw to bust Saturday's game wide open from second base because they were too busy trying to figure out how to bang him. Again, the Penthouse Pet, with her blue bush, might as well have sucked the MFer off during the judging of the Lingerie contest. Many of the other women in attendance wouldn't have minded it. That's got to be worth something to the Cardinals down the stretch.

The Pepper Lounge after party was what it was. If you've ever been there it was no better or worse than any other weekend night at the Pepper Lounge. However, the doormen really went out of their way to be a dick to several people encouraged to go down to their establishment after the affair at Lumen. Not me necessarily- I got in just fine after some mild agitation of trying to sneak through the door from Nectar- but if you're getting shit from a STL club bouncer, just move along. It's not worth the loss of dignity in there. Really. I felt kind of bad.

If we never had Albert Pujols, or worse yet, Albert Pujols played on another team, would the Cardinals as an organization be worse off than the Rams or Blues? Let's be honest- it's not like the local economy is booming at the moment, but the Cardinals are not struggling where the other area teams are...everywhere. I know they thank the Lord almighty everyday for the Dominican Jesus, but do we, as fans, really appreciate his greatness? Maybe. But series like the one he had against the Braves makes you wonder what exactly is this man capable of. 

I'm sorry that Randy K of Team 1380 got axed over the weekend. I wasn't particularly a fan of any of his work, but he was actually a really nice guy to everyone. I like to spit on babies. Find work soon Randy.

The Olympics have ended and if we've learned anything from the 29th Olympiad it's that those people are real sensitive to me Chinee, me play joke, me put pee pee in your Coke pictures from Spanish National Teams. Which is actually too bad; Pau Gasol never looked so good~!

athooks writes every Monday for InsideSTL and regularly for CardinalsDiaspora.com