The best bachelor party of all-time...

For a little background, my buddy “Bob” is getting married this summer. He used to live in Boston, but moved to “New Mexico” this past summer to be with his new fiancé that he met on a trip to “Cancun” a little over 2 years ago. She was not real keen on our group of friends throwing a bachelor party… apparently she doesn’t trust him partying with his friends (which includes me!). “Bob” is about as trustworthy as one gets, so I can’t say I understand her stance?!?!? Needless to say that when she found out about this surprise bachelor party she was very upset with him, us, everyone… although I can’t say I understand why?? I’ll let you be the judge… its not like we were a bunch of little Amy Winehouse’s that stumbled on a mystery package that contained 3 kilos of Columbian Bam-Bam!

Operation surprise bachelor party was put into full effect on St. Patty’s Day weekend in the great city of Chicago. “Bob” arrived in Chi-town on Friday afternoon. The rest of us were already there having flown in earlier that morning. The bachelor thought he was in for a quiet weekend with the best man, not knowing that we were waiting to surprise him… pretty cool us I must say! The best man picked him up at the airport and drove him to where we had been the past couple hours enjoying some food and beverages at Chucky Cheese. We even got some of the girls working at Chucky Cheese to gather around the door when he walked in to help us welcome him. Who knew the wings and beer were so aesthetically pleasing at Chucky Cheese?!?

Friday night was truly a treat and likely a staple of all real bachelor parties. We ordered room service for dinner. When the food arrived it was truly majestic. The salads were so fresh it was breathe-taking. The milk shakes were rich and delicious. How great was it is to enjoy such a healthy dinner together as great friends? Then we took it up a notch and decided to go around the table, holding hands, sharing our fears and dreams. What was revealed was a bonding session unparalleled in any other bachelor party I’ve attended. To be able to connect with your friends on that level in this type of setting was special. Then we called it an early night and hit the hay around 11pm to make sure we got our full 8 hours of sleep. Rumor has it that the best man and the groom cried themselves to sleep.

Saturday was the big St. Patty’s Day celebration so we got an early start and headed out of the hotel around noon time. There were tons of very cool Irish celebrations at the bars in downtown Chicago, but we passed on that to go to a local bakery and spend the afternoon making cupcakes and croissants that were going to be given to the needy at a local homeless shelter. The gift of giving really is the best gift of all!! At night we decided to put on our bachelor party tee shirts we had printed up for the event. The bachelor even had a special tee with a checklist on it. The checklist was a series of activities that he was required to complete before nights end. We were so proud that he was able to get all 10 done. Who would have thought that “Bob” would be able to get a girl to say hi to him, get a girl to wink at him, get the bar owner to let him take out the trash, get the security team to let him collect the cash at the door free of charge, and most of all get the bar owner to let him clean up the bathroom before leaving to go back to the hotel that night? I mean, we almost talked to some girls but then we wet ourselves and decided to leave before any noticed. "If peeing your pants is cool, call me Miles Davis!" Since we had a little extra time on our hands after leaving the bar we headed over to the local strip club. Yup, you guessed it… we stood outside and picketed the establishment. No one is going to subject themselves to that kind of degrading behavior on our watch!!

In summary, it was a wild and raucous weekend in Chi-town that I will always remember… I just wish that she wasn’t so mad at us doing this great thing for our dear friend that now lives across the country where we don’t get to see him very often!

TMI

I’m sure by now 80% of people on the internet have facebook pages. I’m also quite positive you are familiar with “twitter”, which in facebook land is your status update. I have an issue with the madness of these facebook updates. There are three clear issues with this newfound sensation. They are frequency, content, and grammar.

Frequency. I know times are tough out there. Unemployment is a big issue and companies across our ailing country are tightening the old belt quite a bit. Most staffs or divisions of workers are stretched pretty thin these days leaving us all to do the work of multiple people. Somehow despite that, I see people putting 5-10 updates per day. Where does one find the time to update the rest of the facebook world as to what they are doing all day long?? Better yet, why would someone want the world to know what they are up to at all times in the day? I am baffled by this! I kind of enjoy my privacy. I know what you are going to say… Jeff you have a freakin’ blog, privacy what? My response is that is quite different than alerting the entire world as to my whereabouts or thoughts all day long. It’s pretty simple to see. I even think a complete idiot like Britney Spears (lights are on, but no one is home) could see my point here. Are they looking for attention? Maybe they weren’t hugged enough as a child and this is their way of feeling loved? Are they fishing for a response… possibly compliments? I don’t get it. Alerting the world you are going out for the night and you’re not coming back until the morning sounds to me a lot like, “Hey, come rob my place. No chance of anyone being there to catch you”! Good thing George W Bush didn’t use twitter or we would have seen updates like, “George is giving the ok to bomb cave xyz at 1800 hours”. The troops on the ground would have gone to the bombed caves and found nothing but a note reading, “George W…LOL”.

Content. I see updates that I can’t fathom wanting to share with people. I mean if you feel the need to share with us, I would encourage you to think about what you are posting before you hit update. Some things should be personal…I have seen facebook updates like “Tom is going to bed” or even “Grace is reading a book.”. What’s next?? Am I going to start seeing crap like “Justin is in the bathroom sitting on the toilet”?? I guess that’s better than the other extreme. I’ve seen this update, “XYZ loves to date losers… he is cheating on me, again!” and I’ve even seen one that said, “XYZ is having bad day… just got back from the hospital. Mike is ok, the stab wounds didn’t cause any serious damage.” Really? You thought that was something that should be posted for everyone to see? Where is the line people? At this point there is no line! That is so far past the line that when you look back, the line is now a dot : )

Grammar. I have a request for all the facebook update people. If you are going to let me know what you are doing all day long, and sometimes with way too much detail… could you at least use good grammar. Why did I see an update that read, “Jess is dinner with the girls”? Or maybe you’d prefer “Colleen is 2 bottles of wine”?? How hard would it be to put “Jess is out for dinner with the girls”? Unless of course Jess has some weird friends I don’t know about that are straight out of Silence of the Lambs… and Jess really is dinner, lol. If that’s the case I stand corrected and I appreciate the update because I’m certainly never going to dinner with your friends moving forward!! Maybe I was wrong and these updates are useful??