Danger is My Middle Name

This weekend was a series of ups and downs. Jester and I (and Harley, our possibly autistic dog) went up to Chicago. Apparently our departure from Dayton signaled to God that it was time to destroy my NCAA tournament brackets. By the time we got to Chicago, Boston College had pissed away their (and my) hopes of a Final Four run. With one Final Four team in my main bracket gone, I made the choice to root for Washington to take out UConn, since I had Washington winning it all in 3 of my 18 brackets. I think we all know how those brackets are doing.

I handed Jessie and Harley off to Ari (the taller twin), and I made my way to McGee's, a popular Lincoln Park watering hole, where one of my brother's friends was having a $25-all-you-can-drink-from-10-to-1 birthday party in a private room. I like a challege, so I went with Jameson on the rocks in order to get my $25 worth.

Of note: There was a guy there who was ranked #58 in the nation in the ESPN Tournament Challenge. After UConn ended my dreams of a purple-and-gold national title run, this dude had 7 of 8 Elite 8 teams (all but George Mason). I can't remember who he said he had in his Final Four, except LSU and UConn. Anyway, I was excited that I got to be in the presence of such a learned bracketologist. Then I found out he went to Hinsdale Central and I cut his achilles tendon with a broken beer bottle.

The night ended with me and Ryan "Pissed Off" Christoff going to LaBamba, where I dominated a steak super nachos. For some reason, I remember having a smug look on my face while doing so. I wish I knew why. When I woke up at 9:30 the next morning without a hangover, my nachos decision seemed wise. Maybe that's why I was smug: I recognized my own astounding ingenuity.

Saturday, Jester and Ari were going to a bachelorette party, which apparently involves getting makeup done and a whole lotta other shit that seems unnecessary when compared with the get-drunk-and-go-to-a-strip-club standard procedure for bachelor parties. Anyway, I took Harley to Christoff and Tradd's hizzie, where I would be staying that night. As an added bonus, Tradd was in Akron for the weekend (buying rubber I assume), so I didn't have to sleep on the very same couch from which I watched my projected runner-up (Texas) go down.

Before the game started, Encore blessed us with the opportunity to see Road House, the 1989 classic where Patrick Swayze is an NYU-educated bouncer who bangs Kelly Lynch on barn roof and cleans up a Missouri town run by a corrupt, rich bastard played by the same guy who played Jackie Treehorn in Lebowski. Road House has everything: totally sweet fight scenes, Jeff Healey playing the lead singer/guitarist in the house band at the Double Deuce, monster trucks, Sam Elliott without a mustache, and gratuitous nudity as only the '80s allowed.

Saturday evening, I met Morgan "Crazy Legs" Hirst and Jeremy "Uter Von" Widenhofer at BW-3 to watch the UCLA/Memphis game, which turned out to be an utterly terrible game to watch. Even though I had UCLA in the Final Four, my bracket had taken enough of a dick kicking that I was rooting for Memphis.

While at BW-3, at approximately 7pm, we saw a cat fight, or what is more accurately described as a near cat fight. No blood, no connected blows (as far as I could tell), but apparently one girl was distraught enough (read: a stuck-up Lincoln Park bitch who thinks she's entitled to everything) that she called the cops. Watching her explain her side of it to the cops was darling. Watching the cops not write anything down was funny. Watching her boyfriend stand next to her the whole time with a possibly angry or possibly bored what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-here look on his face was downright precious. Needless to say, Chicago's finest will be spending minutes on this case.

At around 9, we decided to go to the Burwood Tap (aka, my favorite bar in Chicago). The next 5 hours are somewhat of a blur. I remember the following: (1) getting pitchers of Smithwick's, (2) Greg "Roamin'" Bohmann showed up, as did Christoff, (3) Morgan insisting that we do Jager Bomb after Jager Bomb after Jager Bomb, (4) finding out that the Burwood now accepts credit cards (I'm still unsure if I took advantage of that), and (5) putting $5 in the jukebox to play 15 songs and learning that there is a little man that lives in the jukebox who only plays some of the songs I pay to play.

Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. I do know that Christoff, Bohmann, and I made the one-block jaunt to--you guessed it--LaBamba. I went with a steak burrito this time, which I ate without the same self-satisfied, shit-eating grin that I had the night before. I do know that the burrito had the same hangover-neutralizing effect as the super nachos, which I found out at 8:15 Sunday morning, when Harley woke me up after my 4-hour nap.

The drive home turned out to be more boisterous than usual. Granted, there were no tire blowouts or F-4 spottings, but there was one of the biggest upsets in NCAA tournament history and a hilarious conversation about baby names. Don't get any ideas: Jessie and I are sure as shit not having a kid any time soon. Frankly, a dog is enough of a pain in the ass at this point in our lives. Regardless, for some reason, Jessie and I have a habit of using car trips for heated and often light-hearted discussions about what we would name our kids when we have them in 10 years.

The names that we actually both like are few and far between, and they're not nearly as good as some of the other names we came up with (or have been suggested to us). For instance, Jessie suggested Austin. I said that was fine, but only if his middle name was Danger. She said that was fine, but only as long as we pronounced it with a "hard g" instead of a "soft g": dang-grr. That way, his whole life he could explain that, despite what it looks like, danger is in fact not his middle name. Here are some of the other highlights:
For boys:
-Jabbar LeMar
-Lamar Lemar LeMar
-Saddam LeMar (or Uday or Kusay)
-Osama bin LeMar
-Sandy Al LeMar
-Heathcliff LeMar (brother would be Riff Raff, and boy would they be some trouble-making cats)
-Sly Danger LeMar (Danger ("dang-grr") kept popping up as a possible middle name)
-Theodore Donald Kerobatsos LeMar (We would call him Donny for short, and every time he opened his mouth we'd tell him to "shut the fuck up Donny.")
-Ulysses S. LeMar (we would call him U.S.)
-Chester T. LeMar (the T stands for Themolester)
-Rutherford Danger LeMar (we would call him Ruth for short, with the "u" pronounced like the "u" in Russ. Of course we would also have a daughter named Ruth, pronounced in the traditional manner.)
-Hadrian LeMar (we would be sure he had a really kickass wall in his room)
-Vlad The Impaler LeMar
-Count Dracula LeMar
-Lion LeMar (This is an offshoot of the name that I would most want for a boy, which is Leon. Unfortunately for me and our future son, Jessie can't stand the name Leon.)
-Filbert LeMar
-Silvert Durango LeMar (When Jessie was younger, she wanted to name her boys Silvert and Durango after a railroad out West)
-Gila LeMar (pronounced Jeela -- this is the name that I suggested to my parents to name my brother. It was met by my parents with a mix of indiscriminate laughter and sincere disappointment)
For girls:
-Pootsie LeMar (This was my suggestion to my parents if my mom had a girl instead of my brother. As far as I know, it would have happened.)
-Grandma LeMar
-Bertha LeMar
-Gazelle LeMar
-Jiselle LeMar
-Iman LeMar
-Tyra LeMar
-Heidi Klum LeMar
-Twiggy LeMar
-Propecia Finasteride LeMar
-Allegra LeMar
Unisex:
-Skeez LeMar (or alternatively, Skiis LeMar)
-Grand Mal LeMar
-Ether LeMar
-Butch LeMar

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.