lordy lordy

I'm hurting.

Yesterday's marathon hangover has bled into a full on cold. I'd been fighting it off for a week now and sort of hoped that drowning the germs in alcohol might kill them off, but I suspect that line of thinking went out with using leeches for bloodletting.

Anyway, the All Man Olympics for the bachelor party went well.

We played darts and drank...move to another location and played pool and drank...then basketball foul shots where we collectively went 10 for 70..oh yeah, and drank...then to bowling where we drank some more...then back to my place for a poker tourney.

Things went well collectively and for me personally right up until the end of bowling. From bowling we went for dinner and I soon realized the effect of 18 cans of Yuengling. Much to the chagrin of the waitress and staff, the group started getting a little surly during dinner and I think they were all glad we left. There's a fine line from clever and funny over to rude and crass. I figured that lines were for pussies and just right to full on jackass...and I think I may have been responsible for encouraging some others to take that walk with me. In the end we made it back to my house for the poker and all went well.

The highlight of the night was the bowling. We played as the little podunk bowling alley outside this beat down little town. While the town is a tad depressed it definitely has more character than teeth and the people there have a great ammout of pride. Saturday night is the big bowling night in town and the featured event is "Saturday Night Fights" where the bring the best 8 bowlers in town for a mano-en-mano slugfest. To hype it up they lower the lights, get a Michael Buffer type announcer, and do the whole introduction thing with records, nicknames, and the occassional costume. If Saturday night was any indication, they draw about 16 people to the entire event.

The difference this time was that we were there. Actually that's giving us too much credit...the real difference is that pitchers of Yuengling were $6.50...and we were there.

About ten minutes before they were to do all this the manager came up and let us know that we'd have to stop bowling for a second and explained why. Rather than just sit on the sidelines and watch, we figured that we'd get involved. The Columbia Bowl-A-Rama has never rocked so hard. We pounded on lockers, we screamed, we formed a gauntlet for the bowlers to run down and give high fives, we howled for "the wolf", and chanted for "the bandit", ....hell we even boo'd a guy...and he liked it. The 'pink panther' was so inspired he even did his version of 'the icky shuffle'.

So in the end the night was a good time. My plan of racking up 360 extra chips in beer points ( 20 chips a beer times 18 beers) was great in theory, but in practical terms seemed to be a bit of a liability at the poker table...apparently retaining your vision is more necessary than I anticipated. I, of course, finished in the dick spot ( 4th paying 3 deep) so if I don't die from pneumonia, we might have to give it another run.

Lemme know if you're in.