10. Halloweezer 2005
Halloweezer was an annual event friends of mind would put on. They would dress up in costumes and play a 2 hour Weezer cover show.
2005 was at a house party where roughly 200 people showed up to watch Halloweezer play in a basement. I missed the opening band because I was working, but arrived in time for Weezer dressed as a pirate. (I was the sober driver for Bob Dylan and The Dude from Big Lebowski).
This night was notable because I was hitting on a nice Jewish girl who was dressed as a Ghostbuster, but this would be one of the first nights I saw Sal out in the wild, picking up her best friend who was also drunk. We both gave a head nod and a "Oh, I know you from Spanish."
9. Beach Penthouse 2008
Sal and I had just moved to Myrtle Beach. We didn't know anyone. The social rule Sal put in place was to accept any invite we got for the first 6 months, even if we were tired and didn't want to go out, because we didn't want to be the people that didn't get invited to anything.
Myrtle Beach is this weird place. Surrounded by conservative Christians who don't drink, but also know much of their money comes from party-goers drinking in the clubs, we had wild laws around alcohol. You can only buy booze from noon-5, Monday - Saturday.
Since Sallie worked at a paper where most people kept hours from 6 pm to 1 am, they would collect a slush fund of hundreds of dollars while the few day shift people would go and purchase after their shift. This generally lead to people overthinking and overpreparing fora night in drinking. Instead of a reasonable bottle of vodka, you would opt for the handle in this rare case where you would run out while the liquor store was closed.
One of the first parties we were invited to was in January, when there were no tourists. We were able to get a penthouse suite on the beach for like $72. This was a rager that largely lead to Sal and I becoming friends with everyone at the newspaper. There's even a video deep on Facebook somewhere of me playing a Sublime song on an acoustic guitar using a credit card as a pic while 25 people I don't know sing along.
8. Mardi Gras 2005
My college roommates and I crowded into my Malibu and drove from Columbia, Missouri, to New
We were 20, had a friend living in New Orleans, and nothing else to do that week.
I'm still not sure I'd consider it fun, but it was a spectacle I'd never forget. A million people descend on New Orleans to just party their asses off. Everyone is shoulder to shoulder, desperately trying to get a glimpse of the incredibly intricate floats.
We bellied up to a bar called the Funky Pirate, cause it turns out, they don't check your ID when there are a million people in your city. So we underage drank Hand Grenades (a cocktail made from grain alcohol) and just tore up the city for five days.
I returned to New Orleans last year and the Funky Pirate was still open.
7. New Years Eve 2013/14
After being married for several years and not being able to afford a trip, Sal and I decided to hop in the Honda Civic and drive to Minneapolis for a Blues game. Since we were young, dumb, and totally ignoring the fact that it would be negative 7 degrees at it's warmest, we also decided to pay for a fancy New Years Eve party.
Not only did we walk a mile in dress clothes to save taxi money, but we showed up to a club that was definitely not our flavor. But instead of sulking in the corner, we made fun of the idiots at the party.
There was the Indian prince who had rented out half of the club for his friends. He sat on the back of a couch, looking over his subjects, while they drank bottle service all night.
There was the out of place middle aged people that sat at the bar all night, staring miserably at the back of the bar.
Then came the complimentary champagne toast. Each person was supposed to get a miniature bottle of champagne at midnight. Sal and I were split up at the time and somehow ended up with 6 miniature bottles of champagne, which is roughly 1.5 full bottles. We gladly drank the bubbly, convinced a cab driver to only take us a mile, and passed out never to go out on New Years again.
6. My Wedding
Yes, the people running the wedding got drunk and disappeared maybe 15 minutes into the reception. Most other groups would accept their fate, leave a terrible Yelp review, and move on with their lives.
Well, the venues left us a car with keys in it and we're not one of those groups. We took over the DJ's iTunes account and played Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" 15 times, we went behind the bar and server ourselves, and wee even snuck in many of my brother-in-laws friends because we needed help drinking all the booze we pre-paid for.
Ultimately everyone tore the dance floor up, had tons of drinks, and smoked cigars.
5. New Years Eve 2006
"Shut your damn mouth" is what Sal said to me as she realized that I would more or less ruin every picture we took from now until the end of time.
Sal was getting over a cold, so she was our DD. I was a terrible boyfriend, so I drank 7 and 7's all night.
We were at Mojo's again. They had this really cool projector setup where they would play music videos by like the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, and Cold War Kids, but put some sort of like color filter over it. It was like they were projecting through colored water or something.
This was also the "I love you" night. Just really feeling the good vibes coming from the party.
4. Maifest Euro-Dance Party 2015
The Germans both had something to prove to the Americans and wanted to test the Americans. Maifest
We drank outside in the town square with Axel and his friends for hours. Sal and I had to break off to go to the restroom and Axel gave us instructions on how to get to where they were going.
Weeeeellll neither of us listened very well and wandered the small town for 45 minutes until we found Axel's apartment building and I held my phone up as high as I could to get a Wifi signal from this third floor apartment. Once I got a signal, I had 36 messages from people telling me how to get to the club.
What we walked into was from movies. A giant tent, thousands of Germans, flashing lights, vaguely German covers of American songs, and just people jumping up and down.
We left the club to go to a dive bar and have Schnapps. And then went to a 24 hour kebab shop and had Doner kebab for the first time.
Woke up the next day with one of the three all time greatest hangovers of my life. I threw up on the side of the autobahn. Life is good.
3. Tokyo Bay Booze Cruise 2018
What we got was a luxury cruise liner, roughly 3000 Japanese people dressed in their Kimonos on a boat with unlimited booze.
The problem was, there was not unlimited food and by the time we decided to get some, it was too late. There wasn't a crumb or insta-ramen on the ship. By the time we got back, we were drunk, semi-lost, and all the restaurants were closed... except for one.
Cutting through the Tokyo fog, beaming brighter than a city filled with lights, was the bright red sign screaming "Hooters." We had one of my favorite meals in the entire month being in Japan: wings, quesadilla, tacos, and Budweisers.
2. Double 30th Birthday 2014
Our birthdays are only a week apart and sandwiched between roughly 12 other birthdays. We usually opt to have a low key bar hop or movie viewing. Well, 30 is sort of a big deal. And we sort of have a lot of friends.
We called in all the favors we could. We got 2 kegs at price, we had appetizers brought by everyone, music blaring, by 5 pm, I was drinking keg beer out of a 64 oz Stanley Cup looking stein. It was one of the all time best parties.
1. The Nuisance Party 2007
In 2007, Columbia Missouri voted to decriminalize pot. It was one of the police forces favorite busts to do. Likely out of a little boredom and a little payback, the Nuisance Party law was passed. Anytime there was a gathering of 12 or more people, the police could issue a ticket per person that lived in the dwelling.
Thinking this was probably not going to be enforced very hard, we decided to throw one last absolute rager for Sean's graduation.
Somewhere around 200 people showed up to this party.
I took Sallie home around 11 pm. When I walked back to the house, there were three cop cars, a camera crew with a bright light, one of my roommates int he back of the cop car, another on the hood, and a third screaming, "f-cking pigs" from across the street.
All in all, we racked up about $1400 in tickets
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