Imagine Me and You and You and Butt

We have gone through Tuesday at this point, I am just over two weeks behind. On the bright side for those of you annoyed by my brief mentions of current events in sports and entertainment you should be glad that I am this far behind as I have had many thoughts to share on the subject of Eric Gagne's streak and other occurrences including Ken Jennings miraculous Jeopardy run. Depending on when I finish up this whole wedding recap and get it going in the present tense direction you may still get to hear something about these motherfucking subjects, and I certainly hope there will be some All-Star game disco in the ballpark (puns, I fucking love puns, or at least wordplay, depending on how you look at it). Anyway, Wednesday morning begins with a very mild hangover..

It was indeed very mild. I had been drinking beer, alot of beer, the night before, but I had also been properly hydrating in preparation for what I anticipated would be a drinky drinky good time in the city. Anyway, a couple doses of Kauf-coffee and 4 advil later, we were good to go. I think I probably had some pancakes or maybe a bagel, since only when I am in Minnesota do I really ever get the opportunity to chow down on a tasty b-fast. Anyway, we planned on expanding hangover matters later that night. The shower on Tuesday was sponsored or organized or planned or given or thrown or buttfucked by my sister, and Karly was doing one this eve. The first was obviously a Katie only affair, while this was an example of the ever popular and all new "couple's shower" concept so well liked by the bridal magazines of today. The Tuesday shower was kitchen themed, which meant we got a buttload of good shit for the cooking front, including some silicone potholders that I love, and other good shitty. There were tables and waffle irons and scumptious goodies galore. Wednesday was a liquor night at Jillians. Bound to be a good time. Maybe there is something else that happened that day that I am forgetting, but as I remember it was just random errands, tying favors, making progams, etc. Anyway, fast forward to approx. 8 that evening...

This by the way marks two consecutive paragraphs I have ended with ellipses. I don't know why that is, maybe I just have a taste for their particular flair...

This shower party thing was being held at Jillians at the MOA. We were there all the mofucking time for about a year, I think it was my senior year in college, at least once a week. No matter how often I would order it they refused to get Summit on tap and have maintained that stance even today. At least their bottles aren't too expensive in comparison to some Minneapolis bars. They also have reasonably priced drinks for a MOA bar that serves quality alcohol. You can drink Stoli caucasians all night without completely breaking the bank, depending on whether or not your name is Maroney. A good majority of the homeys were at Jillians that night, virtually everyone in fact. Fishy said he was coming and didnt, but I think all our other friends in town showed. I had more than my fair share of Summits, at least one caucasian, at least one martini, and some other things I'm sure. We also got some fucking sweet presents which have pretty much pimped out our bar. If you are ever in Buffalo and want a drink you should stop on by. I might need one or so extra ingredients if you are some real fuddy-duddy with your fancy drinks and hotpants, but I can whip up most things in a moments notice. We also got all our various bar tools from the wedding, so if we ever make friends and had a place for them to sit, we could throw a kick ass shindig. More likely we can just drink ourselves silly whenever we want.

Highlighst of the night: Petron silver, Johnnie Walker Black, Godiva liquer, a whiskey Ari says is the best he has ever tasted, and a number of Katie-style fruity thingies which I'm sure will be transformed into fantasgreat martinis of their own. I have done some work on the chocolate martini, some serious work, by the way, but you don't get to hear about it until I catch up. Rest assured that I have begun to figure out what I am doing. We snagged a ride home from Andrea and relaxed at Katie's place for an hour or so before crashing yet again on our mostly inflated bed. The hangover the next morning was slightly more severe but still defeatable with water, coffee, and ibuprofen. Chrissy, the last of the wedding party to arrive in Minnesota, got in Thursday morning, so she and Andrea were both at Katie's place when I woke up. There was some decor work to be done and I think we accomplished a whole bunch of ribbon cutting tieing etc. that morning. Pretty soon however they were off to Katie's final shower, thrown by her Edina friend Becca and her mother. I didn't attend this one either and though I helped Tom do a little stuff around the house, I pretty much sped down to the R-mount to see my dog, my bro, and Andy K. I was glad I got to see Geezer, since he was in a kennel for the almost one month that my parents were homeless, but it was really sad to put him back in the kennel, let me just say that he was not keen on the idea. I think he was treated well and all, but it still made me sad that he was alone in a kennel for so long. Afterwards me, Andy, Natalie, and my bro chilled on the Kemp porch for quite a while.

My bro was staying at la casa de Kempos because my parents had, of course, no where for him to stay. Basically that afternoon was scheduled around planning the festivities of that evening. Those festivities were of course, the bachelor party. This party has been the focus of several individuals for a long long time. Things have changed somewhat since we were in high school, but back then we had plans for establishing a bachelor party fund which would ensure massive amounts of beer and strippers at whatever bachelor parties happened to occur. Priorities are different, but beer never changes. Anyway, I left the homeys to the planning stages and took off back to St. Paul. Katie and I only got to spend a couple hours or so together that afternoon. We took her mother to the HRB to cut some paper into shreds and then went to pick up my tux. I looked decent in a tux, it wasn't comfortable or anything, but I had gotten a plain black and white mafia style tux and I looked alright. This was a Thursday afternoon without hair done or anything, I hadn't been sweating for hours, but it wasn't a bad look. It would have been better without the tie, probably, but I digress.

After that Katie pretty much had to drop me off at Andy's house. Her evening was planned as well, a bridesmaids-dinner-slash-bachelorrette-party at Kieran's Irish Pub in Minneapolis. I don't know all the details obviously, since I wasn't there, but the overall goal seemed to be to "drink their way through the rainbow" by having drinks of every color that was included at the rainbow wedding. Most of my drinks aren't of colors that are in the rainbow, but it sounds like fun. The gentlemen involved in this evening's festivities began at Andy K's and drove several cars, jammed full with shit, about 40 minutes to the SouthWest to Jordan, Minnesota, where my bro had reserved 3 cabins at the KOA campground.

The evening had weather which was about as perfect as can be reasoably imagined. It was a Minnesota blue sky with just the right amount of fluffy clouds, no breeze to speak of, and a cool warmth which may only make sense if you are from a state like Minnesota. The weather was a good start, but of course, was just the beginning. It was maybe 7:30 when we got in and we spent the first half hour unloading and setting things up. The three cabins we had were right next to each other, they were fairly small but pretty sweet. They had a couple windows, windowshades, a set of bunkbeds, and one fullsize bed a piece. Check this, they were also air conditioned and heated with cieling fan and power outlets. We encountered one significant problem in unloading the cars and it was with the keg. My brother had successfully wrangled a keg of Summit EPA from some liquor store in St. Paul and, though we had managed to obtain the necessary ice, there was no way to keep the ice near the keg since we had no trash can to speak of. The bed cover from one of the bunkbeds in cabin one was successfully engineered by Andy Kemp (arguably his finest hour) into a keg refrigerator of the highest quality. It was a giganto pain to get set up the next morning, but worth every moment of that relatively brief struggle. Cabin 1 was then officially dubbed the refreshment cabin, it contained all the relevant booze, the relevant soda for those poor unfortunate souls not drinking, and the cooler full of food. Cabin 2 was the smoking cabin, it made use of a lovely device I have not gotten to utilize in a long long time and some quality fuel for that instrument brought in from Madtown. Cabin 3 was irrelevant except for a couple poker games and my resting place early-late the next morning. Wilking, who showed up nearer to 8:30, had two crucial things with him, the charcoal and the cigars. After setting the first on fire I moved to the second, and damn was it good. I've had a couple small cigars since I quit smoking, but these were the first fresh real smokes I had enjoyed in damn near one year. My dad showed up not long after the charcoal was ready to cook things and shared a couple brats with us.

My guess is that my dad just wanted to be there for a sort of tradition's sake. He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he doesn't really do any of the things one does at a bachelor party. I guess if my son was getting married I would do the same, but it struck me as odd. Anyway, he had a couple bratwurst, we talked about law and debate and his new place and the like. His girlfriend Paula was coming in later that night so he was only around for maybe 45 minutes, but I was glad he got to stop by. It wasn't much later that the Dobs, AJ, and Sanjay actually made it. They had been dicking around getting their tuxes and all this nonsense, but eventually got their asses under control. We ramped up the drinking, ramped up the smoking, started a raging fucking campfire. Andy's brothers Gay and Piss came along and were actually fairly instrumental in the creation of the fire as we knew it. We ate our burgers and sausages. Later on that night we discovered a couple other snacks which were delicious as well. We had the obvious smores, chocolate, a couple bags of marshmallows, and a box or two of crackers de graham. They taste really good when doubly intoxicated and there were zero remaining sugary delights the next morning. The other snack was a great find near maybe 2 am, though I am bad with temporal measurements on that night. Anyway, it was a dozen ears of intoxicatingly delicious Minnesota sweet corn. We wrapped it in foil and tossed it into the coals of the campfire, where it cooked to an absolutely delicious carmelly delight. Best late night snack ever.

Other highlights throughout the evening.: I won two out of the three poker tournaments I played and got knocked out on a runner-runner flush by Flury in the other. I had a hot fucking week at the tables, even though our lack of cash made it not altogether profitable. There was a rousing game of 2:30 am croquet which continued until near 4 am. It was loud and conducted on the hill back behind our cabins. There was lots of yelling and ball smacking (heh heh) and game breaks to head to the smoking cabin, but no one seemed to mind. It was an epic battle between Maroney and Wilking, who have a long time croquet rivalry. It was amazing that people felt so threatened by Maroney's ability to play this game, seeing as how he drank between one and a half and two bottles of Captain Morgan that evening, depending on whether or not the second bottle was full when he started, a fact whose veracity is entirely unkown to anyone present. We partied hard until about 5, when the sun's rising convinced me that, seeing as I still had fuckloads of shit to do before the wedding and rehearsal, I needed to sleep.

Yet another event down. We are catching up motherfuckers, I am on you.

Peace,

MB-K