Cocktails

I love wine.  I had a fling with tequila between the summers of 2007 and 2008, but wine has been my only long-term relationship (with alcohol).  The closest thing I've ever come to drinking cocktails were Tequila Sunrises (during that bout with tequila) and the Jack-n-Cokes I get every time I'm at a bar.  They're simple, sweet, and alcoholic.  Who could ask for more!

This year for Annie's birthday (the day the Maya calendar supposedly ended), we fought through a blizzard to take The Art of the Cocktail at The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe.  Only our group of 4 (us and her parents) and 2 other guests actually made it to the class, so we did it at the bar of the Manzanita instead of in the Living Room Restaurant.  There we had their two top bartenders giving us the secrets behind their most popular drinks.  I got pretty drunk... I think it was the altitude.  We took the recipes home, tweaked them to our tastes, experimented with friends, and now I'll list the recipes for the 4 cocktails that got us through the holidays.

We bought all of the tools necessary to make these cocktails, like a cocktail shaker, jigger, & strainer.

Since I'm using a jigger, all of my proportions are in ounces, but yours could just as easily be in tsp or Tbsp or shots or whatever you want.  That's the convenience of proportions, so I'll just leave them as such.

Annob's Sidecar (this makes 2)
1 Cointreau
2 Simple Syrup (if you want less sweet, make this 1)
2 Lemon Juice
4 Brandy
Shaken and strained into two dry martini glasses, or in our case, a wine glasses.
(If you're feeling fancy, use 1 orange for 1 lemon and drop a spiral of orange peel in the glass.)

Annob's Moscow Mule
2 Vodka
~6 Ginger Beer (usually I split a can/bottle between roughly two drinks)
Stirred with a cinnamon stick, leaving the cinnamon stick in the glass.

Annob's Margarita
1 Cointreau
1 Lime Juice
1 Orange Juice
2 Simple Syrup
3 Tequila
Shaken and strained into a salt- or sugar-rimmed glass.

Annob's Keeneland Breeze
2 Bourbon
2 Cointreau
6-8 Ginger Ale

It's shameful for us to take any credit at all for these classic/standard drinks, but we did play with the recipes we were given.  You could order a Sidecar, Moscow Mule, or Margarita at just about any respectable bar, and who knows, maybe they'll be better!  Keeneland Breeze is a cocktail from the Keeneland horse-racing track in Lexington.

As far as the cocktail recipes are concerned, all fruit juices are fresh-squeezed.  Lime and lemon juice are completely interchangeable.  You can even replace the orange juice in the Margarita with lime.  Cointreau can be replaced with Grand Marnier with little distinction in taste.  I just like to keep Cointreau around for when I make buttercream.  The cheapest Brandy you can find works for the Sidecar, we use Christian Brothers VS (the same brand I use in my Sangria).  You can use the cognac of your choice, as well.  We use Bulleit Bourbon and Absolut Vodka.  I've used 1800 Reposado for my Tequila in the past, but currently we're using Espolon Reposado.  Goslings is the standard Ginger Beer, but I'm really digging Regatta for its extra fresh-ginger spiciness.  It might be too much for some, though.  Finally our simple syrup is just half sugar and half water.  No boiling required.  Just use warm water, shake it up, let it dissolve for a few seconds, shake it up again, and drop it in the fridge to remove the cloudiness.

I'll be honest, I hated vodka until I discovered the Moscow Mule.  Also, we bought a muddler to work on things like lemon drops and mint juleps, but we focused on these 4 drinks instead.

Cheers!
~RoB

To Jail or the Hospital?

I've made a friend in Lexington that I have a strange connection with.  I wouldn't consider us very close, and we haven't really spent that much time together, but we have similar personalities.  He's an asshole in the same way that I am.  We're both smart, dirty-minded, and quick to add our opinions about things.  Usually in the form of a pun or sarcasm.  The biggest difference is that he's cheap.  I don't really have any money, but I'm still not cheap.  Well, he's moving to California this week.  So, we wanted to give him a night out on the town before he left us.

I've actually been having stomach issues over the past couple of weeks, which actually forced me to go to a clinic at one point.  Because of this, I haven't been drinking lately.  Thankfully.

This was roughly the same group of people that drank heavily for St. Patrick's Day, and we all know how that turned out.  The cheap friend who got everyone kicked out of my favorite bar in Lexington, The Penguin, is the same guy that I described at the beginning having the same personality as myself.  I don't know if he felt he had to live up to his last performance, or if he just doesn't have a limit switch.  The mantra we decided on before going out was: "nobody goes to jail, nobody shows their tits".

Shots were had at the first bar.  Shots were had at the second bar, a tequila bar.  Drinks were flowing as soon as it hit midnight, since their house margaritas got quite cheap.  At one point, sparkly eye shadow was brought out and applied to my eyelids, with the ring finger of the girl who owned the makeup, since that's, apparently, the appropriate way to apply eye shadow with your fingers.  I was notified by this same girl that the superpower that matches my personality would be invisibility, since I wouldn't have to wear pants.  So true.

We progressed onto The Penguin, which was tempting fate in the first place.  The first thing that was ordered was another shot.  This time, it was a shot called The Cody.  It's whatever the bartender feels like pouring into the glass.  Apparently, our bartender just got divorced, 'cuz he was on a mission to fuck somebody's life up.  From what the largest person in our group could see, the bartender poured in Jagermeister, Bicardi 151, Gin, Everclear, and a few other un-identified liquids, a recipe that bear-man drunkenly repeated for the rest of the night.

Like I said, I haven't been drinking lately, and I wasn't really keeping up with the crowd tonight, but I decided to suck it up and try this concoction.  As I was shooting it, my body stopped me about 1/3 of the way.  I couldn't finish it.  It was the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth.  I've never bitched out on a shot.  I assure you, you would have also.  Within minutes, the 3 people that were able to put their shots down were nice and drunk.  Then the night got interesting.

Drinks were still flowing.  Dueling pianos were... dueling.  The bar is great fun, which is why I like it so much.  It was great to enjoy it as a fairly sober customer, this time.  Fishbowls were purchased, over-enthusiastically.  Dancing was had.  Cider was flowing.  Before long, everybody in my party was just about blackout drunk, aside from one other girl, who lost her house keys at the tequila bar and got at least one drink/shot behind in trying to find them.  So, I just got to enjoy the cheap guy getting handsy with another girl in our party.  Drunken ramblings.  Big smiles.

We've all been there.  We know things can't go this hard for this long and not start to make a turn for the worst.  The cheap guy started getting a little too handsy.  Although the girl that was dancing with him didn't mind, she wasn't really coherent enough to really make that call herself, so we started playing all kinds of games to calm down that situation.  The lights came on.  It was roughly 2:30am.  The bar had emptied out at some point, and we were going through the motions of collecting our party and our possessions and heading to the door.

The cheap guy, at this point the drunkest person in our party, was starting to get obnoxious.  He was calling everybody in the party the same name.  He made a turn for the bar, which we all started to be wary of, since we figured he would mouth off to the bartender and get booted out of here.  Instead, he got served.  I'm told that he actually told the bartender that he was Bruce Wayne, asked one of our friends to confirm that, and still got served.  Love this bar.

I was on my way out as he started yelling at the bartender and at our group of friends.  Something about getting laid tonight, just with less class.  I just peaced out, and left other people to deal with him.  At dinner, I notified everyone that I held no responsibility to anybody except Annie, even though I was going to be mostly sober for the night.  I look through the window, and I see the majority of my group dragging the drunk cheap guy out, slightly against his will.  They got him outside, he's still running his mouth, albeit mostly incoherently, and he's making it more and more difficult to keep him moving out of the range of the bouncers.  One friend managed to get a trash bag form The Penguin staff before departing.  We managed to drag him down the block a few store-fronts before things really got interesting.

He managed to get a hold of a parking meter and start hanging on for dear life.  He wouldn't budge, regardless how much he was begged or physically nudged.  Then it became apparent that he was having trouble with motor skills, and the shortest girl in our party, who was primarily holding him up, started asking for help.  The whole party got together and convinced him to sit down on some steps.  Our largest friend, bear-man, a 6-foot-something bear of a man, was sitting next to him.  We all huddled up and set plans for cabs and money and getting everyone home safely.  We turn around, and scrawny, drunk, cheap guy is strangling the also-drunken Crossfit monster.

I managed to drag drunk cheap guy off and rest him up against another parking meter.  The party split at this point, since bear-man decided that if he hung around any longer he was going to have to show the skinny drunk guy how bad the decision to try and choke him was.  Short girl begged me not to leave her holding up drunk guy by herself, but the rest of the party went to make sure bear was ok and going to get home ok.  Drunk guy started losing his grip on the parking meter, and short girl couldn't take any more weight, so I told her to drop him.  Maybe busting his knees or his head would wake him up a little.  She didn't like the idea, but since I wasn't going to help, she didn't really have a choice.  Down he went, face down, sprawled out on the sidewalk.  And that's where he laid, un-phased and still mumbling.

That's when the cops pulled up to The Penguin.  They talked to the bouncer, and one cop turns toward us.  We have no time.  Drunk guy is going to jail, and he will not cooperate with us.  So, I screamed at him to stop running his mouth.  I dragged him into a little, dark doorway leading into a closed store.  I roughly flipped him over, picked him up, threw an arm over my shoulder, got the short girl under the other one, and we started scurrying away.  As soon as we stepped out from the doorway, the cop was about 3 feet to our right.  We just started walking away from him.  Granted, it looked more like 2 people holding up a stiff in the style of Weekend at Bernie's.

"You guys going far?" said the cop, now right behind us.  "Nope, just around the corner," the short girl quickly replies.  On cue, and almost over-top of the correct response, drunk guy turns his head to clearly pronounce, "To Jail!"  I almost punched him out.  I sure as hell wasn't going to jail.  Our Weekend at Bernie's charade continued up another block, around the corner, up another block, and off of Main St.  The cop was apparently satisfied enough with our handling of the situation.

At some point, short girl's husband, over-excited drunk, came back and tried to hail us a cab.  It stopped, looked back at drunken, half-dead Bernie between us, and sped off.  We got skinny, drunk guy about one more block before he started actin' a fool.  He decided that he needed to fight me this time.  It was almost comical.  I just held onto him tight until his fit ended.  At one point he whined, "Why am I so weak right now?"  I'm not sure sober he would have had much more leverage.  I should probably continue on calling him scrawny, drunk guy.  He finally gave up, and we realized that we had only made it about 3 blocks in roughly an hour.  No cabs were going to take us home, so the only option was for me to get my car and drive us home.  My car was probably 6 blocks away.  Maybe more.  Dragging him there would probably take us all night, since he continued to get worse.

The last crosswalk we were in, he gave up and we just dragged him to the next parking garage.  I made sure everyone was ok with the idea, and ready to handle him, then I took off sprinting toward my car, by myself.  I was parked just past the courthouse, with the large fountain and bright lights illuminating its steps.  I ran to my car, pulled out of the garage, followed the labyrinth of one-way streets, and finally pulled up in front of the parking garage I left them.  I got out of my car and stepped into pure pandemonium.

I saw over-excited drunk running around in the parking garage waving one hand over his head clutching the large garbage bag and holding the other hand over his crotch.  "I'm gonna piss myself."  So I left him to find short girl, holding Humpty Dumpty on the ledge as he's vomiting up shredded chicken and alcohol.  Her mascara was tear-streaked and smeared to the sides of her face as if she were wearing a Bat Girl mask.  (Later, she admitted to getting overwhelmed when she realized that if he tried to attack her, she had no choice but to hurt him severely, since she wasn't capable of holding him off like the last two guys did.)  She notified me that a few cops have passed by, and each time they just held his head up and pretended like he was fine.  We let him puke and drool and slip in and out of consciousness until he seemed to have the bulk of what was coming out of his system.  We were at the base of the stairs to this parking garage.  Randomly, other drunken people would come by and either ask us if we were ok or make some comment about how they've been there.

Over-excited drunk shows back up with a bag of pee, only to comment on how he should have saved the bag for pukey-face.  A few times, drunk guy would yell "RUN!!" to a passerby.  One tough guy decided to turn around and get all, "from what? You?"  We had to politely ask him to please forgive him and give us a break.  I can't remember quite what happened, but I do remember the drunk guy exclaiming, "I can't control gravity" as he tipped forward off of his wall and landed in his pile of puke.

We decided this was the best chance to drag him to my car.  We did, getting puke all over each other, and we threw him in sideways.  He refused to pick up his legs, and told us just to break them.  I was happy to, since I was fed up, and I started shoving and maybe even kicking.  Drunk guy yells, "I don't trust him, he's going to kill me!"  Wife climbs in on the other side and asks drunk guy if he trusts her.  He did, so she yelled, "Get in the Fucking car!!"  It felt like 8 hours, but we were finally in the car, and we were heading home.  Over-excited drunk was nervous that he had never seen someone this drunk before, but I told them I would tell them what to watch out for since he was crashing at their house.  (At Michigan, the rule-of-thumb is that you don't take someone to the hospital until they shit themselves.  Probably not the best metric, but it hasn't backfired on us yet.)

I pull up to their apartment, get out of the car, walk toward his door, and the wife starts screaming, "he's not breathing."  At that point, Annie calls my cell phone.  She's made it home with drunk girl that got felt up, via a taxi that was taking drunken bear home, but realized that I have the only house key, since I have the car.  As this conversation is happening, I have pulled open unconscious drunk guy's mouth, pulled his tongue forward from blocking his breathing, stuck my finger into his throat to do a throat sweep (darn right I'm American Red Cross First Aid / CPR / AED certified!).  I punched him in the chest a few times, it's hard to do chest compressions when I'm on the phone.  "Get back in the car, we're going to the hospital.  Annie, we have to go to the hospital, I think drunk guy stopped breathing."  "Well, can you swing by and give me a key, Angel is going crazy?"  (Really, Annie?  I'm about to drive someone to the emergency room, and your drunk ass wants me to swing by with a key so you can take a nap?)

So we're heading to the hospital.  Over-excited guy is drilling me on what's going to happen to him, and if he will get in trouble.  I explained that they could charge him with public intoxication, but that it rarely happens.  However, if he decided to start swinging at a doctor, or if his flailing injured a nurse, then his ass was grass.  Somehow, drunky heard us and started begging for this not to go on his record.  Wife, who was slapping him in between frantically yelling his name and checking for breathing, mentioned that he actually looked like he was coming to.  In order to avoid incidents and potential criminal charges, the husband and wife team vowed to stay up with him all night and make sure he was ok.  Drunk guy was calling us all by the same name still, but he changed it to the name of over-excited guy, so maybe he was coming around.  I busted a U-turn.  They decided they could call the ambulance if necessary.  Phone call, "...bring me keys..."

We pulled back up to their house, we carried him inside the house, and he even asked us to let him go up the first flight of stairs himself.  He managed, but only because the couch is right in front of the steps at the top.  Straight forward, down on the couch.  Phone call, "... bring me keys..."

Drunk guy decides he needs the bathroom and gets up himself.  I explain to the couple about what positions to keep him in, most importantly not to let him pass out on his back.  How to check for breathing, etc.  Phone call, "...bring us keys..."  I'm on the stairs, about to leave, wishing them luck when Boom! the drunk guy falls in the kitchen, straight onto his head, no hands out to break his fall.  Fuck him, I did my part, so I left.

I drove home.  Not a single phone call.  I figured they gave up and broke a window.  I pulled into my dark driveway, and they weren't sitting at the front or back porch.  I walked up to the back porch, opened the screen door, and started to unlock the dead bolt.  From behind me, I hear moaning, see beings start to lift themselves up from the ground, and zombie toward me, arms outstretched.  Turns out it was Annie and the girl that got felt up, who had passed out in our back yard.  Felt-up girl passed out on top of the picnic table.  Annie on the ground.  (She later found a bunch of bug bites on her legs.)

I was still revved, so I offered to drive felt-up girl home, who was starting to look on the sober side herself.  It had, at this point, been about 3 hours since I had last seen her.  Annie stumbled inside, set down her bottle of water, and stumbled off toward the bedroom.  I drove felt-up girl home, windows rolled down to suppress the puke smell permeating the car, and I returned home.  I grabbed the pet stain and odor remover from under the stink, and I cleaned the interior of the car.  I went back inside and stripped down my absolutely disgusting clothes, dropped a line on Facebook, and jumped in the shower to get all of the puke out of my hair, off my skin, and out of my sense of smell.  Finally, at roughly 5:30am, I fed my dog breakfast, and I passed out beside a deep-sleeping Annie.

The next day, between hashing things out with Annie and meeting everybody except scrawny, drunk guy and felt-up girl for Sunday dinner, a full picture of the night developed.  The group not stuck with scrawny, drunk guy ended up at a pizza parlor.  It's likely they were actually eating a pizza on the steps of the courthouse as I went sprinting by to pick up my car from the garage I had parked in at the beginning of the night.  (There have been many jokes about me pulling a scene from Scrubs and stopping to enjoy pizza with them while leaving the married couple to deal with drunk guy themselves.)  The water bottle Annie had at the end of the night was from the pizza place.  That group got to see two guys get into it at the pizza place after one accused the other of cutting.  They also had a random incident with a lost, drunken person, but without a doubt, had a calm, pleasant night compared to us.

The couple that had to stay up all night with drunky didn't appear to have any more major incidents.  We had apparently gone through the worst of it together.  There was one moment where his face got stuck to the inside of the trash bag that he was drooling into, and they had to help him not smother himself.  There was also a pretty spectacular moment where he had his pants around his ankles and his head buried in the toilet when he exclaimed that he was going to get laid tonight.  His odds weren't really in his favor.

One person said something that really nailed the whole night down for me.  We were inches away from losing drunk guy to the police.  Hell, if things got really crazy and I ended up going to jail, I would have had sparkly eye shadow on for my mug shots.  Plus, Annie made it clear that, though I said I only claimed responsibility to her, she was the person that I took the least care of.

What age does your group of friends have to be before nights out on the town don't create blog posts this long?
~RoB

P.S. Nobody went to jail, nobody showed their tits.  Not for lack of trying.

"Where's the Schnapps?"

One reason that our recent Michigan trip was so long was because I was a groomsman in a wedding for 2 of my closest high school friends.  They started dating sporadically the summer after high school (I like to think I had a big part in them getting together), and now they're married!!  It was a fun wedding to return home for, and I thought I'd detail some of the more interesting points of the whole proceedings.

Angela Gerber Photography

It started 2 nights before the wedding, when I went with the groom and his family to pick up our tuxes.  At one point, the fine chap whose store we were renting tuxes from offered us beers while we were trying on the rentals.  The groom and I laughed it off, yelling outside that people should drink up.  It tuns out that the guy was politely standing outside of the dressing rooms speaking only to us, and nobody heard him offer beers.  So, we kind of unknowingly ignored him, which is way awkward retrospectively.  The groom's father also made some comment about how gay the guy was.  Well, at some point, guy had his hands all up in my slacks trying to fix the fitting, so that image entertained dad very much.

The next night was the rehearsal.  I'm pretty sure it's the smallest, country-est church Annie has ever seen, let alone been in.  The quote of that night was "the organist couldn't be here because he's pulling wheat."  Classic farmtown convo.  The Best Man is the groom's much younger brother, who was hidden from us for most of his childhood.  He really likes me, as the person that made it out of Monroe and all the way to L.A. He said he was freaking out about his speech, so I told him to send it to me, and I'd give him some feedback.

And the day of the wedding started quite usually.  We all met at the bride's grandfather's, since we'd be driving around in his classic cars to get to the ceremony and pictures.  It was in his driveway that a mosquito was caught sucking on my new tattoo.  It was also the first time that I got to go through their shed of classic/antique (mostly Nash) automobiles.  It was pretty cool.  Oh, and one of my best friends who missed the rehearsal and all of the plans due to another wedding showed up already in his tux.  We'll call him G-raffe.  The rest of us had our tuxes at the church, and we were planning on going out to breakfast in comfortable clothes.

So, we all sat at Bob Evans and had breakfast, alongside one of us in a full tux.

On the way to the church, we realized G-raffe had brought a flask, but didn't fill it yet.  So, in a line of classic cars, we had to try and figure a way to get to a liquor store without the rest of the procession following us.  We managed to pull off with only one person following (bride's father, whom we told that G-raffe had to pee really bad), but the place only sold wine and beer.  Not acceptable.  So, instead, we drove to the church, dropped off dad, accidentally missed the driveway, and drove to another nearby party store to fill the flask with rum.  We claimed we were just showing off the car.

Skip ahead 2 hours.  We're all tuxed up.  All of us, this time.  The groom's mother walks in with smelling salts.  She's really worried that the Best Man is going to drop in the middle of the ceremony.  So I stuck one in my inside pocket, in hopes of saving the day if Best Man goes down.  Then we're off taking a ton of photos, like this:

We finished and headed off in a shaded area with picnic tables, behind a big wall blocking us from the parking lot and church.  G-raffe pulls out the flask, swigs, passes it to me, I swig, and then nobody else would even touch it (don't even get me started on the utter lameness of half of these guys).  That was until the groom's dad came rolling around the corner.  "Where's the Schnapps?"  I'm pretty sure he didn't know that we were flasked up, but it was a classic line, well-deserving of some rum.  The bride's dad may or may not have partaken, also.  The groom's dad went on to tell us about how he got pulled over on the way there this morning.  The cop ended up following him all the way to the church to confirm that he wasn't lying, but it's really no surprise.  The groom is always late, and has a plethora of speeding tickets, so I could see it being a little genetic.

The wedding was great, but really hot up in that full tux.  It was so ridiculously hot in Monroe for the first weekend of October, and I was dripping mid-ceremony.  At the end, I poked G-raffe and asked him if I had white stuff around my lips.  It always happens when I get really dehydrated.  He just looked at my lips with 'what the fuck?' face, which meant I did, so I had to vigorously wipe them on my sleeve before walking down the aisle.  I also spent the first 2 minutes of the ceremony trying not to giggle.  Something about uber serious situations does that to me.  I picture the maid of honor letting off a little toot, or the flower girl falling over, and then it's 5 minutes of me trying to keep my shit together.  I also may or may not have grabbed G-raffe's ass a few times.  And 'swiped a credit card'.  ;)

Throughout the pictures afterward, we had to keep returning to my rental car to 'check on the baby'.  I had stolen a cooler from the ringbearer (they stuffed it with is lunch) and had filled it with pre-mixed Jack 'n Cokes.  We shoved G-raffe and the bride's cousin, we'll call her Lately, in the rental, and Annie drove our slowly-getting-intoxicated asses back to the bride's grandfolk's and then on to the reception.  Not before I peed in an ancient outhouse at the grandparent's.  (They have plumbing, but it's there as a shout out to old times.)

We showed up to the wedding in fine shape.  And here's where things got interesting.  Open bar?  Yes please.  We continued to drink.  At no point was I really drunk, or anywhere near black-out like I had been at the last wedding I was in.  (Sorry, B&G!)  The Best Man won the speech battle.  I really thought the maid of honor was going to pull out all the stops (since she's super smart and competitive), but with the help of my speech, he kicked her ass.  #winning

At some point, somebody handed G-raffe a microphone and asked him to say a few words.  He kind of freaked out, thinking it was to the whole audience.  So, he called over Lately and I.  What a trio we were.  I'm pretty sure I detailed some things on that video that should have never been spoken aloud.  (Sorry, B&T!)  Then, on the spot, Nate and I made up a song and sang it, straight outta 'Whose Line is it...'.  I can't wait to see that.  It's gotta be epic.

Then Lately went on to steal the blog-worthy show.  At one point she was retelling an incident between her and an aunt of hers, who asked about G-raffe.  Her response was, "Yeah, I blew him like 10 years ago, but there's nothing there now."  She didn't know, but the bride's mother was standing behind her.  And Lately is far from quiet.  The bride's mother escorted Lately out to the hallway for a little 'picture'.  Lately had another great moment later where she was detailing how the flower girl was all hyped up on sugar and going crazy while we were trying to eat... or something.  The flower girl's mom was within earshot, and dragged the flower girl over to Lately to apologize.  Which was all kinds of awkward.  Lately begged the flower girl's mom (by the way, the bride's new sister-in-law) not to force her daughter to apologize.  That it really was no big deal.  The mom skulked off, but she sat at the main table with pissed off face for a while.  Nice job, Lately.

G-raffe & Lately may or may not be shown here, in the bottom left.  I'm the top right.

Other notable moments from the night were my dancing.  This blog set me up for really high expectations on the dance floor.  I feel like I fulfilled them.  There was one moment where I was in the center of a big circle gettin' jiggy wit it.  And killing it, if I do say so myself.  But when I danced my way to the edge of the circle, in came a green man.  Straight out of 'It's Always Sunny...', totally stealing my thunder.  It was entertaining, but scorned I remain.  There was also a fun moment in the photo booth with G-raffe where I was pantsless in a half-assed attempt at reenacting the creepy, tucked, mirror scene from Silence of the Lambs.

I guess there is one other quote that's worth mentioning.  An old female rival (both voted Smartest in 8th grade), whom we'll call Moo Mist, made this comment about the Best Man, who as I've mentioned we were hidden from for so many years.  "I mean, him and the groom look nothing like each other.  I'd fuck Best Man.  I mean, not that the groom is ugly..."  Paraphrased, but pretty spot on.

And I think that's about all I'm allowed to publish about it online.  Anyone seen that video yet?

Congrats, again, B&T!
~RoB

Royal Wedding - Day 2

If you haven't already, you should catch up with us so far by reading about Day 1.

I woke up with a little bit of a hangover.  For me, that means I'm super, duper hungry and I have to poop.  I don't throw up, I'm not out for the count, I may need a nap, but in general it's just that I need protein and some bathroom time.  However, the after effects lasted longer than I'm used to (into the early afternoon), which makes me feel like I'm getting old.  I've been told (by this girl) that we have harder and harder times rebounding as we get older, and I'm starting to believe it.

So, that first Jack&Coke at around 1:50pm didn't go down so well.  Why was I drinking at 2pm?  Well, we were at a Nebraska fan sports bar watching football.  In full Michigan garb.  Our game was about to begin.  Wait, weren't we in NE for a wedding today?  Yeah, but people keep scheduling their damn weddings on football Saturdays, so you have to work in some football whenever possible.  Anyway, the double Jack&Coke (it was only $1 more) didn't taste very good.  However, all of the shitty bar food that we devoured did, so it worked.  Though we were the clear minority, everyone was really nice, and most of the football on the TVs was going our way, so we just enjoyed.

Skip ahead to a trolley that was taking us from the Hilton to the church.  The church was cute and tucked into downtown.  Overall, the wedding felt super fancy schmance (word?).  It made me remember how different people dress between the two coasts.  A tie is pretty formal for a Northern Californian, and it was the extent of my outfit.  Yet, I was the only man not in a suit at the church.  (Heck, I had sneakers on.  There was dancing to be done later.)  It was the fastest ceremony that I can remember, and the preacher/minister/pastor/deacon? was pretty entertaining.  It was over, we were standing in the courtyard ready to throw petals, the bride and groom came out and loaded the party bus, and then the progression to the wedding needed to be figured out.

This was the most awkward part of the weekend.  The whole wedding party loaded the bus.  Then all the hip, young kids loaded it.  Everyone that Annie and I knew was on the bus.  Yet, there was a substantial group of people still loitering outside of the church, mostly the bride's family.  So, we just waited around for some sort of group motion toward the reception, by some mode of transportation.  I was positive that the reception was just a block away.  I kept pointing at the building I thought it was.  Eventually, we reloaded the trolley and made it to the reception without any problems (I was wrong and glad I didn't drag Annie to the wrong place).  However, there were a good 10-15 minutes of Annie and Rob standing around awkwardly and alone.

The beginning of the reception was a cocktail hour with, yet again, another open bar.  We met up with a friend from MI and proceeded to 'try' all of the appetizers that we're being served.  Some were 'tried' more than once.  Shit didn't get real until we walked into the ballroom though.  It was like walking into the new Aria in Vegas.  A huge chandelier winds down from the ceiling with the 6?-tiered cake centered beneath it.  It was beautiful and impressive.  There were so many money signs floating through my head.  (I'd be lying if I didn't say that I kept thinking about all of the money going by at every step of the process.  It didn't make me any more excited to get married one day.)

S&N initials were found everywhere.  It was a lesson in advertising.

Eating, drinking, first dances, cake cutting...  Finally, it was time.  I had told some of the locals about my dancing experience and how I was a Zumba instructor.  It was time to show off.  So I did.  I danced a ton for the rest of the night.  Whenever in similar situations, I have to take regular breaks for water and to wipe down my sweaty body.  (It's always a fun game hiding water glasses and napkins from the wait staff so that I can continue to use them... while they're told to pick them up.)  The Cupid Shuffle came on 2nd or 3rd, and I got called out by the DJ.  "I'd follow the guy in the tie."  I'm the guy in the tie.  There was one other guy there I saw swing dancing with his mother... or something, but he was my only competition.  It was all about ->this guy<-.

I danced with the bride's mother, an aunt, the groom's mom, heck... everyone.  Some dudes, too.  At one point I was starting to wind down (and the music wasn't helping), when a middle-aged woman approached me.  "I just wanted to let you know that you have quite an audience; you need to keep going.  You've been winding down a little, and I thought I'd let you know we're all watching you now."  Then she returned to her group along one of the walls.  This was right on par with the group of white guys standing by my table that fist-pounded me at one point when I was returning to my table for the water/napkin routine.

I've never Soul Trained.  There was talk, but it never got pulled off.  I was also told that I should try a back flip off of the main table.  I considered it, but Annie called me stupid and brought me back down to Earth.  At one point, a girl grabbed the mic and thought it was drunken karaoke time.  (This same girl had an epic moment where she fell in front of the bride and groom later that night in the hotel, was picked up by the groom, and started to be escorted back to her room before one of her friends found her and yelled at her for being dealt with by the bride and groom on their wedding night.  When the bride was telling the story the next morning, it sounded like a dream... but it wasn't.  It was hilarious.)

The reception ended at midnight.  We all lit sparklers to escort the bride and groom out.  Then, the cool, hip kids progressed to a late-night pizza parlor and sports bar.  Nothing significant happened after that, and we progressed back to the hotel without hitting any bars, and we went to bed at a reasonable hour.  Oh, we did have to walk by a mural twice during this portion of the night.  There was a creepy girl painted that stared into your soul, no matter where you were standing.  It still kind of haunts me.

The girl under the arrow.  I picked a weird angle so that she doesn't invade your dreams.

I woke up feeling spectacular.  That didn't appear to be the case for most of the other participants.  They apparently didn't burn the alcohol off by dancing like the rest of us.  There was one last group brunch before we all split to head home.

So, that was the wedding.  I really don't know if I could handle the attention that a bride and groom get for a whole day.  I'm happy enough blogging for attention, where I don't have to make eye contact or small talk or "practice hugging short people".  This was, hands down, the fanciest wedding I'll ever attend.  I'm very happy that I was able to be there for the bride and groom, and they seemed very happy to have us travel so far to share it with them.  I'm also happy that I met a bunch of new people that I very much enjoyed, and I've already started my Facebook pursuit of all of their friendships... for stalking at a later date.

Yet another wedding this weekend in Oakland!
~RoB

The last day in Omaha is summarized here.

Royal Wedding - Day 1

Annie and I took off to Omaha, NE, to participate in the wedding of one of my favorite people ever.  He's the groom in the pic below (not to say that his new wife isn't just as amazing as he is).

All of these fancy cartoons are taken from the groom's blog.

The trip started with an invitation to the rehearsal dinner.  (Technically, I guess it started at 3:45am when the taxi picked us up to drive us to SFO.  After all, we had 2 cities to touch down in before we would eventually make it to Omaha [though we were on the same plane throughout].)  I guess checking into the hotel happened before the rehearsal dinner, as well.  We took a shuttle from the airport to the wrong Hilton.  Why the fuck are there two different Hiltons in downtown Omaha?  We also received a gift bag when we checked in, which excited Annie so much that she hasn't stopped talking about it.  Seriously.

Moving on.  I had never heard of general riff-raff being invited to the rehearsal dinner (or anybody outside of the actual rehearsal), but I'm glad they did it.  It was the first opportunity to meet people and family, and it was a good introduction to the high taste and classiness that the wedding would be.  We discovered that there were only a handful of people that we knew, and only 1 or 2 that I knew well (the groom was a friend of mine from U of M).  So, I had to come out of my shell a little and try to be social.

There was way more food than I expected, and it was really good.  (I ate just before going so that I wouldn't be a ravenous monster.)  The red wine was Flowing, with a capital 'F'.  Anytime somebody walked by, your glass was filled.  I probably drank something like 10 glasses.  After a slide show, we all congregated to the bar, and the Jack&Cokes started to make their appearances.  Then there was talk of progressing onto the next bar.  Which led to more and more bars, until we closed the bar at our hotel and I finally returned to the room with an already sleeping Annie.

Notable moments were:

Giving the bartender at some dive a $10 tip after keeping a tab open.  Alcohol was cheap, and we drank alot, so it was a fair tip.  However, he walked out from behind the bar to approach me as I was walking out, shake my hand, and thank me for the tip.  This is why I tell Californians that they have no fucking clue how nice we are in the Midwest.

A fight broke out at one bar right next to us.  The crowd splitting the multiple guys apart ended up pushing us into the bar.  We pushed back, and one of the groomsmen jumped in front of the groom in an attempt to shield him.  (Way smarter than my "punch him, pussy" cat calls.)  It was just this side of ridiculous, but the craziest part was the drunken redneck yelling "I'll fucking kill you, faggot!"  Who the fuck says the word 'faggot' anymore?  In my head I pictured him spelling it 'faget' or 'faggit'.  We were also surprised that they let him sit back down and continue drinking.  I guess it makes sense not to kick everyone out so that they can kill each other in the street.  Or maybe that's just how things roll 'round here.

Great Facebook statuses when I woke up:  "Alcohol is so cheap!" In Nebraska, True.  "What bar number is tjis?"  Fair question, but asking the same thing 12 minutes later is a bit obnoxious... and a sign that things are going downhill.  "Crazy dex happening in rhe 5040s. Come lisson!"  This was the last thing I communicated before passing out around 2am.  I thought I could hear some wild sex going on in my hallway.  I apparently thought we should all congregate outside of the participants' door and enjoy it together.  Note:  drunken texts are funny and between two people.  Drunken facebook statuses are funny and between 1,000 people.  Try to keep that math in perspective next time, drunken ~RoB.

Magically, a hotel shuttle arrived outside of one of the bars as we were all about to stagger home.  I have no clue who was in a right enough mind by that time of the night to make it happen, but kudos to them.  There were way more of us than the shuttle should transport, so the Super Groomsman (who shielded the groom) and I were going to walk back.  It would be an opportune time to start burning off the alcohol before taking off to nappy, nappy land.  They ended up shoving our whole party onto this little shuttle, which probably wasn't smart by any means.  I stood the whole way back.

My attempt at taking a pic turned into a fairly accurate representation.

Those people still going strong made our way to the hotel bar just before last call.  We ushered out a bride and groom, still in full wedding reception garb, cuz everybody within 4 states was getting married at our hotel in Omaha over Labor Day weekend.  Anyway, by this time there was a half dozen of us, including a girl that had fallen out of the shuttle onto the pavement at the Hilton, only to return in sweatpants and a renewed enthusiasm for drinking.  I had promised the Super Groomsman that I would still walk around with him before hitting the sack, but whiny messages from drunken Annie sent me up to my room with the groom when he finally decided to call it a night.  I found out the next day that the Super Groomsman managed to stay out an hour past that point, and he eventually returned to his room "smelling like a homeless person".

It had been a while since I've hit the hard alcohol, and Day 1 in Omaha was way more fun than I had prepared for!
~RoB

(Day 2 to come.  Day 3 is summarized in my last post.)