Welcome to the S#!@ Show

I’d like to think this weekend represented the best chance I’ve ever had of dying. Why? Because I was headed to upstate NY for Doh Boy’s wedding with the Stan Man. Stan is the one person who actually gets me nervous about hanging out and drinking with because he’s the only one who pushes me to whole other levels of drunkenness. We like to recreate the Bird-Wilkins shootout in ’88 every time we go out. And this had a higher potential for debauchery because A) it was an open bar and B) we didn’t have to go to work the next day (we’ll usually do an after work happy hour that ends around 11-12 at night. Work the next day is rough). Let’s get this shit show on the road.

The SS started off poorly. I had taken Friday and Monday off. I ended up working 5 hours on Friday. This put us behind schedule already. Further putting us behind schedule was going four miles in an hour and a half on an interstate in Pennsylvania. They apparently decided that it was a good time to paint the road and reduced it down to one lane. We were so far behind schedule in fact, that we had to make a pit stop in Scranton, PA to get some liquor because we would be cutting it close in finding an open liquor store by the time we got to NY. Because neither of has ever been to Scranton and probably never will, Stan Man decided to ask for directions. So yes, he did ask a 17 year old working at Wendy’s where the nearest liquor store was. She was only too happy to oblige and we had a liter of Gentleman Jack for ourselves should we get further delayed. That might have been the classiest thing I’ve ever witnessed. I saw him ask the girl and had to ask him, “Did you just ask a teenager girl where to find a liquor store?” I’m surprised Chris Hansen didn’t show up out of the Wendy’s bathroom.

We finally arrived in upstate New York around 11 and with no idea where we were going. Thank God Stan had had one of those GPS navigators because if not, we would have ended up in a cow farm. We showed up at this bar where everyone went after the reception dinner. It was here that something happened that only happens when you hang out with me. Since I haven’t seen Doh Boy in like 3 months, it made sense that I completely ignored him upon walking in to focus on CNN and ESPN on the tv’s because someone at the bar had said the magic words: “Did you see what it said about Pacman Jones? They found him dead.” I was immediately transfixed on this and realized that I didn’t want the moment I wanted to hear Pacman Jones was dead was in a rural bar (I was surprised that I had a subconscious desire of where to hear this). Eventually, I determined that someone had misinterpreted Pacman Jones’s statement “Pacman is dead” in his press conference saying he wanted to go by Adam (which he will not be called in this blog). Oh, and when I did talk to Doh Boy, he informed me he was quitting his job and moving to Angola. Yes, the Angola in Africa. The one that Charles Barkley elbowed in the chest during the 92 Olympics. You can’t get more random than that. Compared to that, following Pacman seems normal.

By the time I had gathered myself after figuring Pacman out, everyone was heading out. Luckily we still had the Gentlemen Jack and a 12 pack of Yuengling that we had picked up upon entering New York (Me and Stan Man are like the Boy Scouts of drinking, always prepared). We went to the house we were staying in with three other people. It was pretty random: a weird chick, a gay guy, and the coup d’resistance, a guy from either Kurdistan or Kazakhstan, some former part of the Soviet Union that is now a –stan. We immediately hit it off with the Crazy Russian, which he was referred to the rest of the weekend, because of our copious amounts of alcohol. Before going to bed (read: passing out) we finished what we had brought.

Saturday was the wedding day, but also the day of a soccer match between the Netherlands and Russia. Since nothing in my life can go according to plan, Stan Man had money on Netherlands winning Euro 2008 and of course the Crazy Russian was the usual crazy European soccer fan. We ended up showing up late to the wedding (with a six pack minimum in each of us), leaving immediately afterwards to go back to the house to watch overtime, and showing up late to the reception (but still with more alcohol in us than any of the other guests). For the record, Russia won 3-1 and the Crazy Russian kept making fun of Stan Man in his broken English, which highly entertained me.

As for the wedding, I think I hit either a high or low note in my life when I was seated at the table with Middle Schoolers. Within 20 minutes of talking to me, they had their first taste of alcohol in their lives. That seems about right. (In all honestly, I had nothing to do with it directly. The caterers had filled their glasses, the best man gave a toast, and they just wanted to fit in. And one goes to the other, “Well that was my first taste of alcohol.” It just seems appropriate though that they did it with no inhibitions after talking to me. Or after talking to me, they had no desire to continue drinking. One or the other. I’m like Fox News here, I tell a story, you decide how bad of an alcoholic I am).

There was also very little potential here. The only girl in her 20s was with the gay guy, who was protecting her like a hawk for some reason. Probably because the only guys in their 20s were me and Stan Man. It got to the point where the second best option I had was Doh Boy’s (who is 38) older sister. I wisely passed on that. We went back to the house and me and the Crazy Russian talked about American policy for 2 hours. I’d like the record to show that I out drank the guy who wouldn’t shut up about how at Russian weddings everyone gets a liter of vodka (said exactly how you would expect a Russian to say “a liter of vodka”) a day. He quit and went to bed before me, so I win. I love how I’m becoming a competitive alcoholic. This should bode well for me in the future.

Upon waking up Sunday morning, Stan Man decided that yes, he did want to go to Niagara Falls (2 hours out of our way) because, “I will never be back in Upstate New York ever again and if I do, I’ll be in a body bag, so this is my one chance to visit it.” Whatever, he was driving and I’ve agreed to things with less logic than that, so we were off. We saw the water for 5 minutes, then went got lunch and headed home. Being that I was involved in this traveling, it would not end well. We ended up on the Pennsylvania Turnpike getting a flat tire. Stan Man was so paranoid that we would end up dying or getting arrested this weekend that his first reaction when this happened was that the police had sent a helicopter to come get us. And of course, this happened in the middle of nowhere PA, 20 miles from the nearest exit and with a storm rolling in. Luckily, we got the flat changed without dying. We ended up getting home around 2 am Sunday night. 8 am, my phone starts ringing for work, when I have clearly told people I’m off. So for the record, I took 2 days off and ended up working 8 hours between them.