The Worst Bachelor Party Ever

As a rule, bachelor parties cannot be discussed with anyone outside of other males. As a female, the answer you will get when asking what transpired at bachelor party is the standard issue, “Not much happened. The girls weren’t that hot. We just drank a lot. It was fun, but not crazy.”

An addendum to that law (which I made up) is that Bachelor Parties cannot be discussed until at least eight years have passed since said Bachelor Party. I’ve waited long enough.

Eight years ago, Bob* (most the names in this story have been changed to protect Erik's wife from embarrassment) got married and I was his best man. I planned his bachelor party. This is the mostly true story of what happened that night.

There are three types of bachelor parties. The first type involves a bunch of dudes getting together, drinking and then blowing way too much money at the nudie bar. The second type involves a bunch of dudes getting together, drinking, hiring a stripper(s), and then going out to the nudie bar and spending way too much money. The third type involves a few dudes flying to Vegas and whatever happens between the time when the plane touches down to when you hitchhike back to Ohio with implants and an Elvis riding a unicorn tattoo.

I wanted to throw Bachelor Bob the second type of bachelor party. To properly plan a number two bachelor party, you hire strippers by either randomly going through the yellow pages, by endlessly searching the internet or you need to know somebody. I knew somebody.

Tom* (name not changed because he deserves the credit) worked with Bob and I. Before Tom came to our place of employment, he co-managed several nudie bars in the Columbus area. Sometimes I would meet up with Tom at the nudie bar and he would always have a super hot chick sitting next to him while other super hot chicks would walk by and kiss him on the cheek. Tom was not an especially good looking guy, but the ladies loved Tom.

Since Tom knew all these hot chicks, I thought that maybe he might know one or two that would wear very skimpy clothes to a party, quickly remove them and then sit and wiggle on bachelor Bob's lap. About a month before the party, I asked Tom if he could help me out. “No problem, Dougie. I’ll set you up. As a matter of fact, I’ll be the chaperone and you won’t have to pay anything additional.” (The chaperone is usually the 6’ 8” tall dude with the disgustingly thick muscles that shows up with the girls and makes sure you don’t touch the goods and ensures prompt payment in cash.) Tom pulled out his cell phone and hit a number on speed dial. “Hey Lisa, it’s Tom. Yeah, a good friend is getting married. Can you hook me up with a couple girls for his bachelor party? Great!” We were set. The word went out. Two strippers. No chaperone. Anything could happen.

About ten days before the bachelor party, I started to get worried because I had not heard anything from Tom. We had the location of the party picked out. We arranged for transportation. Everything was set except for the entertainment. I stopped Tom in the hallway, almost exactly where he had made the phone call two weeks earlier. Again, Tom pulled out his phone. Speed dial. “Hey Lisa, it’s Tom. You still got two girls for next Saturday? Great!” We were still set. Tom would pick the girls up on Saturday and bring them to the party.

I called Tom the day of the party. He would be picking up the girls at 8:00pm and have them over to the apartment around 8:45pm.

At the apartment, our friends were cleaning up. Bottles of liquor and mixers were arranged. The refrigerator and two coolers were filled with various beers. We hid a sheet of plastic behind the couch in case things got interesting. As an added bonus, we set up a video camera in an empty beer case. Hidden on top the TV, it had a perfect vantage point to the center of the living room.

Guests started to arrive and the bachelor was not far behind. We drank, smoked and reveled in our great friend and resource, Tom. Boobies.

Tom called around 8:00. He had just got to the place to pick up the girls. He was a little hesitant. His statement to me was, “One of the girls has a little meat on her bones, but she’s still pretty good looking. She’s experienced. The other girl is really hot.” OK. I can live with that. Meat on bones and pretty good looking means fat and ugly. But really hot means really hot. One hot and one not. I could keep one eye closed.

We continued to drink. Tom called and gave us a 10 minute warning.

The guys circled up in the living room. The middle of the room was cleared out. We turned on the video camera.

Tom called… they were coming up to the front door.

The first girl walked in. Hmmmmm.

The first girl walked in and I thought to myself, “Hmmmmm. Well, she is a bit fat and a bit not so good looking.” Not a problem. Save the best for last. Here comes the hottie. Then the second girl walked in.

Oh, SHE was the fat and ugly one. Oh Christ.

The room was dead quiet when Tom walked in behind the girls. “Hey! Let’s party! Get these girls a drink.”

The girls were dressed in various bits of tight animal skin prints and pink and stuff with sequence. Their handbags were made of similar mis-matched materials. These girls were not pretty. Not at all.

Now is a good time to salvage the party. Bring in “Doug’s Stripper Chart.” My stripper chart goes a little like this. Down at the bottom along the X axis, you got a range of looks from “I Just Threw Up In My Mouth Ugly” to “Super Freaking Hot.” Along the vertical Y axis, you’ve got a range of Whoreditude from “Only Takes Top Off” to “Sex With Donkey While Blowing the Groom.” All strippers fall somewhere within the chart. Sometimes you get really hot strippers that only take off their tops. It kind sucks, but you can plot a point outside of the average. Sometimes you get decent looking strippers that do crazy stuff with toys and then put ice down the bachelor’s pants. Plot it! And then sometimes you get what we had… ugly girls.
There was only one thing that could save this party. These girls would have to be off the charts crazy. I waited for them to bring a donkey in the house.

There was no donkey.

What happened that night was the most pathetic bachelor party ever. The girls went upstairs with some alcohol to “change.” They asked for weed. Someone had a little and gave it up. Fifteen minutes later they came back down. They pranced around the room collecting dollars from guys. Before any clothes came off, they ran back upstairs to smoke some more weed.

They came down again ten minutes later and the guys chanted, (we were drunk and I was one of them) “Take it off!” The girls said they would take off their tops only after all the guys did. (Do not imagine it. Just read it.) Eighteen guys, in various stages of beer gut with body hair ranging from pre-pubescent teen to Ron Jeremy, sitting around two really ugly chicks, waiting for them to actually take off a piece of clothing.

The girls suggested a set up for Bob the Bachelor. We laid out the plastic from behind the couch and stuck a chair in the middle. He was blindfolded with his arms tied behind his back. (I’m sure he is still thankful to this day for the blindfold.) His shirt was mostly removed and the girls rubbed some whipped cream from the refrigerator, peaches from the cupboard and I think some shoe polish. They then took off their tops for a few minutes and rubbed their boobies in his face. Whoopie.

Seeing that this is my recollection, I will not bring up the rumor that I jumped in and was rubbing him down with peaches when the blindfold was removed.

In the end, the girls had their tops off for about five minutes. All the time, Tom was watching from the side, yelling at the guys when they started to beg to see a little of the copious amounts of flesh that were stuffed in that spandex. Thanks Tom. The girls left. We found out later that Tom was dating the less ugly one. Thanks Tom you awful bastard. We ended up going to a nudie bar, which helped to wipe those girls from our minds. But I will always be the one to blame for that horrible, horrible bachelor party.

So when I went home and Miss Sally asked how things went, I looked at her right in the eyes and said, "Not much happened. The girls weren’t that hot. We just drank a lot. It was fun, but not crazy.” Sigh.

I’ve spent the last eight years attempting to make up for that debacle. I haven’t been a best man since (word gets out) and I doubt I ever will again.

******
Oh, the video tape. Thank you God for our inability to line up the lens. The camera was focused on the edge of the beer case. There was sixty minutes of out of focus pink and tiger striped blobs. Or maybe the camera was in focus.

You suck, CNN camera symbol!

I read CNN.com because I don't have time to think about news and political debate, I just want to know how many people died and how good looking the teacher having sex with her students is.

But CNN has made my life difficult because of video. On their front page, they list their headlines and if there is a little camera symbol at the end, it means the link goes to a video. Even if you just click on the text, it goes to the video.



The video starts out with a 15 - 30 second commercial and then dumps into the news video clip from their channel. By the time they get to the goods, I've copied the headline of the news story, searched for it on Google News and found similar print stories.

What inevitably ends up happening is that the original video playing in the background rolls into the next news video in queue, which is more than likely a Nancy Grace bit and in a rush to make her go away, I reset the computer.

I like my local NBC affiliate website because they have the camera symbol, but it is a tabbed option.

You will have to wait until morning.

My friend Renee recently stayed at a La Quinta Inn in Mansfield, OH. She, along with her husband and son, had picked up some to go food and were getting ready to eat in the room. The father and son left the room to go get Cokes. When they came back, the boy was having trouble with the key card so Renee tried to open the door from the inside. As she turned the deadbolt, she heard a loud noise that sounded like the internal mechanisms of the lock dropping. The door would not open. The lock was completely jammed. She was stuck in a third story hotel room. It was 5:00pm.


A view out the window

She called down to the front desk and told them the lock on the door was broken. The front desk said they would send maintenance up to fix it.

When no one showed up after more than a half hour, she called the front desk again and they said, “Oh? You are locked IN the room?” As it turns out, the maintenance person was not on site and had to be called in. He showed up about another half hour later, fiddled around with the lock for a minute and determined that a locksmith would need to be called in. It was now 6:00pm.

The front desk called around for a locksmith. They called Renee back and said that a locksmith would not be available until tomorrow and she would have to wait, locked in her room, until the next morning. She said, (edited for brevity and to clean up the language) “No. Call the fire department.”

The fire department was called in. At first they were going to remove her from the room via the window, but firemen like to bust shit up so they got out the Jaws of Life and pried the door open. (Renee said, “I mean the whole door was moving it was awesome!!) The door opened up at 9:00pm and her son rushed in and gave her a big hug. (Awe!)

Here are the photos of the door.

From the outside


Jaws of Life'd!


From the inside

For her troubles, they got a different room, another free night at any other La Quinta Inn and a meal at The Cracker Barrel next door.

The hotel told Renee this was only the second time this had happened.

The Power of Soup (ver1.2)

A very good friend gave me some of her thoughts on "Soup." I removed the name of the woman and I added a brief, new ending. Some other small edits as well.

Please let me know what you think.

The Power of Soup

In a very small house with two very small windows, lived a woman. She lived alone, but she was never lonely.

If you were to look through the very small windows, you would see a very small bed, a very small chair, a very small table, a very small lamp, a very small painting and a very big stove.

The woman loved to cook. She had a very big kettle to sit on the very big stove. She had a very big spoon to stir whatever was in the very big kettle. The woman could cook about anything, but she especially loved to cook soup.

Pea soup, bean soup, potato soup, vegetable soup, rhubarb and turnip soup, dandelion soup, and her very special soup which she called Soup Soup.

People would come from the villages near and far to the woman’s house and bring whatever ingredients they had so that she could make her delicious soup for them.

Miss Dryer came to the woman’s door, “I have carrots.”

“Then we will make carrot soup.”

Mr. Hearty came to the door. “I have potatoes.”

“Then we will make potato soup.”

The Simon twins came to the door, “We have turnips and leeks.”

“Then we will make turnip and leek soup.”

Somehow, though only one or two ingredients were added, the woman was able to stir and stir and stir and stir and soon that one ingredient would taste like many!

Everyone loved the woman’s soup.

One day, a little dark haired girl with sad eyes came to the woman’s door. She wore handmade clothes that were more patches than cloth.

“Can you please make me some soup?”

“What have you brought with you to make the soup?” asked the woman, knowing the answer.

“I have nothing. My mother is sick and father is away in the city. I have nothing to make soup.”

The woman said, “Come inside. I think you have something to add to the soup.”

The woman added water to the very large kettle. She lit the very big stove and began to stir.

“Now, little girl, you have nothing in your hands and you have nothing in your pockets, but you have something in your heart. All you need is to speak to the soup and tell it what your heart is saying.”

The little girl stood on a little chair and was just able to look over the edge of the kettle.

She spoke in but a whisper, “I love you Mommy. Get well soon.”

The woman then began to stir and stir and stir and stir.

And as she stirred and stirred the soup began to churn and bubble. Broth began to form and carrots and peas and beans and leeks and hundreds of herbs and vegetables and flavors mixed and melded in the pot. With a final stir, letters formed of pasta bubbled to the surface.

First…

“I love you Mommy.”

…and they sank. Then…

“Get well soon.”

As the sun began to dip in the afternoon and create its own colorful soup in the sky, shadows of a smaller person and a bigger person together carried a very big kettle towards the village.

The next morning, the woman arrived back to her very small house with two very small windows. She carried with her a much emptier kettle, a simple bouquet of wildflowers and a very big smile.

As she walked in the door she said to herself, "I think I'll make some soup today."

Lighthouses in Old Worthington

It seems that developers are going out of their way to market their apartments in landlocked Old Worthington, OH. They are not mundanely giving away ceiling fans or trying to make their neighborhood fancy by adding an "e" to old and calling it Olde Worthington. Instead, they've built a lighthouse and created a small ocean. At least that what it looks like in this scenic advertisement.





Of course, I could be mistaken. Sorry Jen.

Player bites referee and removes jersey to hide identity.

There was a story the other day out of Delaware concerning an irate soccer player who bit a referee on the chin. A photographer on the scene caught the incident on camera. You can read the story here on CBS3.com. The website has a video of photos.

I have a photo of the video of the photos which I thought was particularly funny:


The guy that bit the referee removed his shirt so that he could conceal the number on his uniform and thus his identity. He almost got away with it!

Ann on the swing

Father's Day Tie Fighter

At pre-school, Greg made me a tie for Father's Day.


He drew some X-Wing Fighters and some Tie-Fighters on it. I guess when his teachers said that they were going to make a tie, he got stuck in Star Wars mode.

I wore it for about six hours.

Dyslexia Ahaed

I highly recommend www.says-it.com for all your sign generator needs. I don't really have any sign generator needs, but I seem to make them up as I go along.

Lilly Jane

Congrats to Mel and Jason!!

In fifteen years, Lilly will look two years older than her father. (That beard ain't foolin' anyone.)