Tuesday
The Rocks trivia team Kopechne's Revenge (comprised of me, Gregerson, Chenandler Bong, and Gregerson's friends Nick and Andy) toppled the competition to take first place. The victory was bittersweet, however, as it was Andy's last trivia night before he moves to Cincinnati, where he will take bar review classes with the goal of passing Ohio's bar examination this July. I begged him to rethink his career path, pleading for him to "look at me and tell me if I look like a fucking happy person, you selfish son of a bitch." I fear for his well-being.
Wednesday
Goni and I went to the Sox/Indians game, where we had the pleasure of sitting in a box for free. Aside from 2 Jermaine Dye home runs and a Sox victory, the obvious highlight was when a foul ball off the bat of A.J. Pierzynski came screaming into our box, caromed off some woman's chest, bounced off a hi-top table behind the seats in the box, and fell softly into my outstretched hand, after which I raised both of my hands and let out a primal, "Yeaaaaahhhhh!" Apparently a chest bruise was enough of a souvenir for the woman because she flatly refused my offer to take the ball home for herself. Thus, I am now the owner of my first major league foul or fair ball.
Thursday
Along with 23,000 of my closest friends, I ran in the 3.5-mile JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge. I guess I shouldn't say "ran," since it was almost impossible to run due to the number of people, but I did travel 3.5 miles on foot in the great name of corporate greed.
Friday
After work, a large group of us headed up to the Hop Leaf for Christoff and Lutzow's birthday celebration. For those of you unfamiliar with the Hop Leaf, it is located in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood. A water tower with a Swedish flag lets everyone know that Andersonville's allegiance is still to King Gustav. There is also a sizeable lesbian population in Andersonville, although, as far as I know, there is no corresponding water tower with a money shot of Portia de Rossi.
You may recall last year's shit show at the Brauhaus. While there is no "das boot" at the Hop Leaf, there are hundreds of beer choices, many of which are in the 8-9% alcohol by volume range. In addition to the many excellent beer choices, I was pleasantly surprised at how good the food was. Everyone at our table of 10 raved about their food, and I was no exception, as I had ordered the grilled boar chop, which comes with a ragout of boar shoulder. It was orgasmic. Having never had boar before, I can honestly say that from here on out, I will eat nothing but boar. While waiting at the bar for a table, several of us ordered the Belgian-style "mussels for two." If you were to look up "scavengers" in a dictionary, there should by now be a picture of Christoff, Lutzow, Jessie, Katie, Gregerson, and me weeping openly as we abolished mussels from the corner of the bar at the Hop Leaf. Also, while there, I was informed by Dan Weeser* that the new Indiana Jones movie involves aliens. Nice work, Lucas. I think I know what he was trying to say: "We're the aliens, man. We're the savages." I can't wait to see the next two Indiana Jones movies.
After we had our fill of high-potency beer and wild game at the Hop Leaf, we all headed south to Will's Northwoods Inn for some regular beer and some darts. Tamales and popcorn were eaten. Beer was drunk. Darts were aimlessly thrown in the general direction of a dartboard. Chairs were knocked over on accident, twice. Good times were had.
Saturday
Saturday brought with it yet another Sox game. I was to attend the game with Crazy Legs Hirst and his friends Hans and John (no relation). Before the game, however, I met up with Mr. 6000 and Mr. 10,000 for some tailgating. For some reason they were not dressed up as Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton, Jr. Nonetheless, I found their company enjoyable.
Consider sitting near me next time you head over to Comiskey. Around the 6th or 7th inning, Nick Swisher lined a foul ball down the left field line. It bounced into the crowd, causing a 400-pound middle-aged man to fly several rows to tackle a twentysomething female sitting in the row behind us, causing no one to catch the ball, causing the ball to roll right under Hans's seat and into his hands. Then the 400-pound man sat in the row in front of us for about 10 minutes, apparently believing that Hans was going to give him the baseball because, you know, mauling a young woman somehow meant that Hans was indebted to this man.
After the game, Crazy Legs, Hans, and John headed to a bar of some sort, and I headed home because I had to go to a birthday party of a friend of mine named Heather who was in my Second City show. The party was at Blue Stem, a martini bar on Irving Park just east of Damen with a female bartender (who may also be the owner) who took martini orders in a soup-nazi-like fashion. The menu had as many different martinis as Denise Huxtable had hairstyles. One, however, was less favorable to the martini nazi than the others. When one woman tried to order an appletini, she was told "no" and that the appletini should have been removed from the menu. There was a noticeable lack of Australians.
I couldn't handle the fact that everyone had an American accent (read: I was booted because I was not served an appletini), so I grabbed Jester, threw her over one of my shoulders, grabbed Tracey, threw her over the other shoulder, and sprinted down to The Store to see the Brothers Gemkow perform some sort of rhythmic incantations. Crazy Legs and John were also there and had powered through the evening. They were attempting to play pop-a-shot. As expected, Crazy Legs pulled his usual ghosting, disappearing without informing anyone.
Sunday
Sunday my dad came into town to have some lunch. We took advantage of the nice weather by hitting up the Southport City Saloon's beer garden. I think all but one of the six of us at the table ordered a corned beef-based dish. My corned beef hash was pretty good.
To counteract said hash, I set up my recently purchased Wii Fit. As in real life, my balance is deadly, my soccer ball heading abilities are easily matched, and I ski jump like a fucking Fin.
Drenched in sweat and in need of copious amounts of finger food and booze to cool me down, I headed to Alex and Alex's unnamed wife's apartment for their annual BBQ. I ate my weight in deviled eggs. As with last year's BBQ, the conversation turned to queefing or, more specifically, the sound of a queef. I still contend that it's a "thhhhhhh" or a quick "pht!" or a "hssssssssssssssss." Christoff still bitterly contends that it's a high-pitched "queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeef!" No one else really seemed to add anything to the discourse.
Cyndee and I had a delightful conversation about pro-life protesters who have those huge, adorable signs with pictures of aborted fetuses. Frankly, we view those signs as offensive, not because they picture dead and bloody human fetuses, but rather because the signs are deceptive. You see, the pictures on these signs are clearly not to scale. So we beg you to carry around a large permanent marker at all times, just in case you come across one of these signs, so you can write "NOT TO SCALE" across the top of the picture. Either that, or glue a dime to the sign and write "ACTUAL SIZE" with an arrow pointing at the dime. This way, people walking down the street won't be confused as to why the pro-lifers want to prevent the abortion of dangerous seven-foot-tall mutant fetuses.
As the scotch, sangria, and summer shandy began to dwindle, we all knew it was time. It's been a while. Too long. I mean, it used to be every long weekend. But it hasn't been a reality in so long. Rumors had circulated, and we all headed to the Vu. Not for grinding or Los Bandaleros. No no. This. Was. Hillbilly. Sunday.
That's right, John the Bartender -- former darling of the Burwood Tap -- has resurfaced as a manager at the Vu. Because Sunday night isn't the most popular night for a 4 a.m. bar, Hillbilly Sunday has been resurrected. Bring on the madness.
Minnie insisted on getting pushed in the back of the head before we piled into as few cabs as possible.
When we arrived, we were not disappointed. Behind the bar with his familiar Texas polo shirt was John.
Everything started quite nicely. People were hugging and taking upside down pictures.
But within a very short period of time, shit . . . got . . . crazy. Women started dancing with women.
And then women started playing Pacman, even though there were no floating yellow dots.
Gregerson felt the need to emulate Horatio Caine, prompting Christoff and I to go up to Gregerson and utter cheesy phrases such as "looks like that guy really . . . lost his head," "looks like I won't be needing to go the bar later . . . because we got a cold one right here," or "someone call a short-order cook . . . because this guy's toast," followed by mimicking the opening howl of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again."
John yelled for most of the evening, while Minnie continued to defy convention by walking around upside down. Some might describe her as a young Helen Gurley Brown.
Alex bit my wife's breast.
Touchdown!
And then the tambourine came out. Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!
Christoff was indifferent. I was unable to make anything but queefing noises (pht!), and Chandler's look suggests that he was pondering the old phrase, "Is that a bag of baby carrots in your pocket, or do you just have a severely deformed penis?"
As is Hillbilly Sunday tradition, Christoff and a Hillbilly Sunday virgin engaged in Tambouwrestling refereed only by green-shirted Aryan women. I had over $4000 riding on the virgin, so I was pretty in to it.
The virgin tried to gain an advantage by biting Christoff. As usual, Christoff resorted to his patented "creep you the fuck out" tactic.
John counted to fourteen, and it was declared a draw. Car bombs were consumed, we filmed a sexploitation flick, and then we all fainted, or so I'm told.
Monday
For much of the day, Jessie apparently felt like the people in the middle to the end of this video (thanks to Christoff for the link). I also spent much of the day with Brigitte Bardot. She wasn't up for going out, so we sat on the couch and watched VH1 Classic, which is by far the best station on TV. We saw Led Zeppelin in concert, Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (a great documentary by a metal-head anthropologist about the history and culture of heavy metal, which includes a very cool family tree of metal genres), classic Pop-Up video featuring various metal and hair band songs, and Ratt's Behind the Music. And then we made love.
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1 comment:
"Tambouwrestling"
Well played. Well played indeed...
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