Sebbylite

I don’t know what else to say, except this: go see them live if you get a chance. If you don’t have the chance, buy the cd, and turn it up real loud.

What, you haven’t heard of Ghostland Observatory? Here’s what they say about GLO:

Aaron, the singer/guitarist, is like a hybrid of Mick Jagger, James Brown, Elvis and Prince — ONLY BETTER. He shimmied and shooke his way through their amazing set. He dropped his mic during the last song and, instead of picking it up, he launched himself on the floor and writhed on his stomach while he sang into it as it lay on the floor.

And if you sign up to the KEXP podcast of the day soon, you can probably get one of their songs still. Which I recommend signing up anyway, since you end up getting a lot of kick ass free music.

First off, I want to say that the pictures are up. Enjoy. Second, I want to reiterate something: ten hours of drinking. I don’t work that long. I don’t even sleep that long. Ten hours of drinking is also why I don’t feel so bad about losing those aforementioned three hours during the 6th to 9th hours of drinking (somewhere between 11pm and 2am, give or take). I am a little disappointed, as I feel like I missed out on a lot of the fun of the evening, and possibly a lot of the stories that other people will be telling for years/days to come. Oh well.

After some inter-squadal mixing, hanging out, barbequeing, Basil’s Clubbing (the first rule of Basil’s Club is you don’t tell anyone about the Basil’s pizza in the basement of Evans), etc-ing, we started the raffle, intergenerational boat race, underwear-ing, and the dancing. I will say that my favorite pictures so far are the boat race series (pictures 83-93), where Hummer makes Phil take off his shirt, talks shit, then loses the boat race (and I think that he had to wear the thong on his head the rest of the night. Then again, that may have just been for fun).

Some more of my favorite moments (aka, the things that I actually recall happening):

1. Buying my first drink at the Reub with the $5.75 that had been deposited in my cup from “nickels”.
2. Urban foursquare (of course).
3. Getting shoved into the basement of Paige house by Ben Hahn, and then playing Spike Game with Mark Dunn and Ronny.

All in all, I think that it was a successful weekend. Much fun was had, many shenanigans were completed, even more were attempted and failed, the young’uns had a good time, the old’uns got drunk and remembered their “old college try”. I am glad that there is only one alumni game each year, because my liver can’t take many nights like that.

Anyway, take a look at the pictures, and enjoy. Don’t ask where or why some of them happened, because I don’t know.

I have something to admit: I’m pretty sure that I lost about 3 1/2 hours of my evening last Saturday.

That’s right, it is completely gone from my memory. I blacked it out so much that I wasn’t even aware that it was gone until the following Wednesday, when a friend in Seattle asked why I called him at 11:30/1:30 on Saturday night. My response - “I did what?”

Of course, this prompted me to check my cell phone, to see who else I may have called. As it turns out, I made a couple calls that I had no idea I had made. Most of them seem to have been messages, since they were only about 35-45 seconds long. But at least one was over a minute, making me think that I may have actually spoken with someone. Which is news to me, let me tell you.

Regardless, back to the story of the weekend. After finally hitting the futon at Tall’s at around 4:30am on Friday evening, we woke up at 8:30 to make the annual golf game on campus. Rainy and grey as it was on Saturday, it was still a fun event, even though only one person got nekid this year (probably due to the chill in the weather).

Alums: “Ok, it looks like Greg and Broughton’s discs are the furthest in. You two decide who needs to get the rest of them.”
Broughton: “I’m not going in.”
Greg: (says nothing, but gives Broughton a considering glance)
Broughton: “I’m not going in.”
Greg: (still says nothing, giggles a little)
Broughton: (says nothing, but is very obviously not going to get in the water)
Alums: (from the island) “C’mon Greg!”
Greg: (strips and jumps into the water).

I’m still not quite sure what kind of mind control Broughton was exhibiting to make the alums on the island (about 30 yards away) actually heckle Greg, but it worked. It was an amazing display of the Force, if I’ve ever seen one. I just hope Greg found a shower after jumping in Lyman Lake.

After the golf game we had the requisite Hogan Bros. stop for lunch, and then off to the actual game. (Seng didn’t play, but he took some awesome pictures of the game, so you should check them out) The game started off pretty good for the alums, including an almost perfectly played stealth play, in which I snuck down the sideline while the young’uns set up the zone at the brick, and then walked into the middle of the endzone without another person within 35 yards. Stupid Peaches, shoulda thrown the hammer.

After peaking early (at around 2-0), the alums started fading. CUT took half at something like 10-4 or 10-5. The alums tried to fight back, and I think that the young’uns felt a little bad, as they let us walk back to a final score of 19-14. Way to go CUT, nice game.

Once the game was over, all 45 or so of the alums and the whole team got into a big love-fest circle on the field. A couple of messages were relayed about the events of the evening, and then it was brought to everyone’s attention that the three bachelors were soon to be married. This, of course, prompted a spank tunnel (pretty much exactly what it sounds like-everyone stands in a line with their legs spread wide, and the bachelors crawl through the “tunnel” getting spanked along the way. Hummer, after the tunnel, said it was nice that P-bo’s ass and his index finger had gotten reacquainted after such a long time).

I’m not sure how many spank tunnels you have been a part of, but I’ve been involved in quite a few. This one brought in a few “firsts” for me though. To begin, it was the first time I’ve seen not one, but two people get passed in the tunnel. PAB, who was the last one to start, passed both P-bo and Peaches to finish well in front of them. Truly a skill. Next, not only did PAB pass the other two, but he actually beat the tunnel. What this means is this-the tunnel continuously grows as the people in front run back to join the end of the line to get in another shot. Usually along the way the spank tunnelee gives up and collapses somewhere in the middle. This time, PAB beat the people running from the front to the back to the end of the tunnel, and crawled out the end alone and unscathed. Now that is some fast crawling.

Alright, after many ramblings, rants and raves, and general procrastination, I’ll start talking about what actually happened this past weekend.

To begin, Peaches, P-Bo, and PAB are all engaged to be married (as opposed to the other type of engaged). Being good quality former teammates, a bunch of us decided that it was up to us to ensure a quality bachelor party at the expense of these poor saps…er, lucky individuals. For my part, I chose Peaches as my target, and made him a shirt. The shirt was a baseball 3/4 tee on which I sewed a name tag (with Peaches actual name on it). On the back, I titled the shirt “Advice For The Groom”, and then brought along a few permanent markers for everyone we ran across to leave him advice. I think that we finally ended up with 11 entries on the shirt, and I wish that I could remember them all to share with you (I’ve got my people talking to the bachelor to see if we can get the final list from him, in which case I will post it as soon as I get it). Here’s a little taste though:

1. You’ve got to lick it, before you stick it.
2. Sometimes you have to sleep in the wet spot.
3. Don’t marry someone who won’t let you go to a stripclub.
4. Have fun on your honeymoon, because it’s the last time you’re getting laid.
5. Learn how to lie.

Now as you can see, the advice ranges from the practical (number 3), to the outrageous (number 1), to the downright dirty (2). Peaches was a champ, and wore the shirt all night long, and even put up with the multitude of drunk and nubile women we encouraged to write all over him. This happened during dinner (a pretty nice restaurant called Nochee [?], which transformed from an upscale eatery to a salsa dance party to a hip-hop club all during the course of our meal), during urban kickball, at the after-party, during four-square, and more.

All in all, a great evening. I’m a little disappointed that Hummer couldn’t make it up, as he always makes things more interesting (yes, I do know a man named Hummer, you don’t?!?). It was fun to call Plasmoner Industries, and have him ask Clay: “Are you the myth?” I’m not quite sure that he was all the way awake at that point in the evening, but it made for some good hilarity at our end.

More to come about Saturday…

Despite the fact that I just quoted a horrible ad campaign by Outback, the Steakhouse, I’m sticking with my title on this one (honestly, if you are an AUstralian styled restaurant and you want to give yourself an Aussie image, don’t grab the first schmoe you find off the street that has a semi-crappy accent. Subaru did it right, when they wanted Aussie, they went with Crocodile Dundee. Did you know that Paul Hogan was Australian of the Year in 1985? I bet that Outback dude can’t put that on his resume…).

Because what I have to talk about is Urban Kickball, or alternately the life and times of a bachelor party in Minneapolis last Friday, May 12th. Tall said it right, when he described the depths of the game that is Urban Kickball. In essence, it is a cross between Dodgeball (the movie), Calvinball (the game), and Revenge of the Nerds (when the Frat Boys at Alpha Beta burn their house down by blowing Myers 151 at a torch, and Ogre is drinking beer out of a trophy). And even though the Kaiser made a very decent and respectable effort at describing the rules of the game, I’m still sticking with my theory: no rules, only right.

To tell the truth, I think that the real winner is the kickball itself, which managed to make it through the whole beer-spattered weekened intact and in good form. Oh, and the fact that despite repeated forrays into the streets of downtown Minneapolis, no one was hit by a car. And the taxi that pulled up to the bar we were at and immediately joined in our game of foursquare (who needs drinks when you have foursquare?). And the lack of puking throughout the night. And little Carr, for arranging many repeated writings on Peaches shirt.

As the tallest table tennis player ever so aptly put it, the weekend was very definitely summed up with one word: “Crazy”. And I’m pretty sure that my part of the story doesn’t even begin to describe the whole iceburg vs.Titanic carnage that is alumni weekend (for example, I’ve heard rumors and mumblings about someone who was covered in their own vomit but still managed to talk themselves out of an underage drinking ticket [this site does not willfully endorse nor intentionally unendorse underage drinking]. Color me a little bit interested in that whole scenario).

Suffice to say that even with 14 hours of sleep from Thursday through Sunday evenings, even with more lemon drops/jaeger bombs/whiskey shots than I’ve had previous to this point in my life (not to mention the beer chasers, the Boone’s Farm wine, etc), even with only two Basil’s gyro pizza’s under my belt, I had an amazing time. I had a great conversation at 4 in the morning with someone that I’m pretty sure doesn’t remember what was said at all, but in which I learned a lot about myself that I hadn’t known yet. I sprained Tall’s finger with a kickball in downtown Minneapolis late Friday night. I’m pretty sure that I’ve developed a good little crush on someone that is 7 years different in age. I spent more money in one night than I usually do in one month.
And I’d do it all again in a second (well maybe not those last few drinks on Saturday night which made Sunday morning so uncomfortable).

But, also because of the aforementioned lack of sleep, I’m about to crash and it is only 7 bells. I’ll tackle the rest of the weekend in installments, which will include but not be limited to: Urban Kickball, the Reub, and Foursquare.

Extra-medium, out.

ps-oh, and I should have a ton of pictures for y’all sometime soon. Well, as soon as I get the time to go through them all and edit out the ones I can’t share (and the ones that are crap-which happens when you take pictures while drinking). I’ll let you know, so keep in touch.

Well, after getting up at a ridiculous hour this morning (although realizing last night that my flight to MSP was at 7am instead of 6am made quite a bit of difference in the whole beauty sleep area of my life), I’ve had a pretty sweet day. The flight was relatively painless (well, as painless as a flight can be when you are 6′4″ and sitting in coach. As it turns out, I was sitting next to another guy that was also about 6′4″, which meant that we had competing needs for the extra knee space to the side of the seats in front of us. Suffice to say that I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have liked [not to mention the guy by the window who snored the whole flight, and I mean snored. There were people turning to look at him from four rows in front of us], but it was a direct flight so at least I didn’t have to make any connections).

Now, after getting a ride from the airport from tall and tallerer, I’m hanging out at his house while he is overseeing his grad students at work. Which leaves me sitting in front of his freakishly large tv with cable and internet and kegerator. Not a bad way to spend a day, if you ask me.

Of course, this just makes me question my current lifestyle, said lifestyle consisting of working 40-50 hours a week, not enjoying my job, already being at the top position that I could get to at the current company I work for (even though I’ve only worked there for 6 months), not having time to see any of my friends due to work on dog duties (and dog “doodies”), etc, etc, etc. All in all, it isn’t what I expected to be doing when I was 10 years out of high school, and 6 out of college. Honestly, how I thought that I would be spending my time is how I have been spending the last few hours, sitting in a room with a computer, stereo, tv, beer, good music and creativity. I’d love to be able to work from home, blog about whatever random thoughts enter my mind (ok, so that may be a little too much, because my mind is random), make some phone calls and do some business that way, etc. Who’s with me?

Now, how to make that happen…

Wow, this weekend is going to be interesting, to say the least.

This weekend is the ultimate frisbee alumni game at Carleton College (yeah, that’s where I went to college, hence the “alumni” part), and this will be the first time I’ve been back in a couple years. Usually, the alumni game involves quite a bit of drinking, a lot of shenanigans, some tomfoolery, a little bit of downright stupidity, and maybe a smidgeon of ultimate. Added on top of that will be the bachelor party on Friday night, since we all happen to be around and ready to drink.

And to make it even better, I’ll be hanging out with 6′2″ guy, which means that there will be at least 13 feet of man wherever we go. Which is fun to say. I’m already working on my story for the weekend for any innocent bystanders that happen to ask why two tall guys are hanging out together. I’m thinking we will be in town for the “Doubles Table Tennis” championships at the Excel Center, or maybe the Mime School that is in town, or some other such thing.

Basically, I’m looking forward to the weekend, and I’ll more than likely have some interesting stories to tell next Monday, if I make my plane trip home.