A "Once in a Lifetime" Weekend: Daren's Bachelor Party Blog

(Note: I'll be adding my pictures this weekend, you can check out Daren's PG-13 version here where he pretends all he did was eat, watch baseball, and take pictures with everyone. And we drank SODA too! Caffeine free...)

I have only one brother, Daren, and after knowing him and his fiancée AnnMarie during their entire relationship. I safely bet he's only getting married one time. So when he asked me to be his Best Man, I was ready to throw him a ginormous bachelor party, yet he immediately told me that he wanted to keep things practical, cost-efficient, and within his favorite state of Ohio (I hope he remembers this on the flight from Las Vegas to Denver during my bachelor party at a date yet to be determined... and the flight from Denver to Montreal)


Thursday
Arrive at Port Columbus Airport at the same time as a flight of international exchange students. Lavish signs, people dressed like Uncle Sam speaking slow English to befuddled Asian teenagers. I’ve never seen a scene like this before and as much as I wanted to enjoy the comedy, my bag was ready and so were Daren and AnnMarie to pick me up.

Quick dinner at the “Rusty Bucket”, the problem was I had already eaten at the airport before my flight. I “endure” a small order of wings (Honey barbeque, no attempted colon explosions this weekend, I promised myself), and a couple beers, a good night but an early one, as Friday the fun begins.

Friday
Daren and AnnMarie are both working during the day, and that means I get to spend the day with my “son” and AnnMarie’s dog Bentley. Also I know Daren’s house is about a mile and a half from a Chipotle. Anyone who’s had it knows, a steak burrito from Chipotle (this time it’d have to be the mild salsa) is worth that walk. In line I get an idea for a welcoming gift for Bentley boo-head… side of steak from Chipotle.

Bentley enjoys the steak as much as I enjoyed my burrito, I’ve never seen this dog so happy in my life. But since I fed him “human food” I find it a good idea to take him for a walk so he can dispose of his treat outside. I think I heard Bentley ask if he could go back to Framingham with me. I think.

Take Daren and his friends Justin Natalie, Jon Marc and Doug for a nice meal at a place where you get to make your own nice meal, BD’s Mongolian Barbeque. Here’s the deal with this place as well as my last trip there. This time though I had to set limits. Not just for my digestive system, but the nightcap is a trip to Vanity a BYOB “gentlemen’s establishment” in Columbus. It would be disrespectful to have my breath smell like chili garlic sauce while receiving a lap dance from a lady of the night.




First plate: Shrimp, Crab, Scallops, Calamari with Broccoli, Mushrooms in a Lemon Pepper sauce with seasoned pepper over noodles
Second plate: Beef, NY Strip, Chicken, Meatballs with Mushrooms in Terriyaki Barbeque sauce with cumin over spiral noodles.

It should be mentioned that the hottest girl of the weekend was our waitress at Mongolian Barbeque, we tipped her a full 20% and invited her for shots, but she thought we were asking her for shots from the bar, and our approach missed.

In between stop at Fitzgerald’s where Jamie Natalie and Fred are waiting for us. Fitzgerald’s is a sports bar that seem to only show Ohio’s sports channels and the ESPN’s I’d hope they use the satellite for football season, at least on Sundays. Anyway we play some cornhole in the patio. This is where the “get reacquainted” conversations take place and my brother makes a notable gaffe. In talking about each other’s new houses my brother considers Doug grateful that his house “isn’t that one with the huge manhole coming out of the grass”. Unfortunately Doug corrects him “that IS my house”. Luckily its Daren’s bachelor party so he doesn’t have to tuck his tail between his legs. He gets to look at tail and what’s between women’s legs at Vanity.

Vanity is a classier BYOB strip club with decent quality if not quantity. Jamie is in charge of getting the beer and the beef choice…Natural Ice. Yep, Natty Ice. Tastes as good as it did when I was in high school. Weird thing is in Columbus or at least in this club the seats at the tipping table are so far below the stage that you need to stand up before the stripper collects your dollar. It’s a little tedious and makes anyone who does it look that much creepier but you get rewarded for your efforts with “titties in your face!” If you ever get a chance to see Jamie Natalie at a strip club, and that chance isn’t likely for most you HAVE TO. That man would’ve burned a hole between a stripper’s legs with his stare, if there wasn’t already a hole there, of course.

I get a lap dance, Daren gets several and there to pick us up…Daren’s fiancée AnnMarie. Yes, my brother has found a keeper! She takes us to Taco Bell on the way back (a REAL keeper!) I go right to bed, but as a condition of Daren’s pickup, he has to take a shower before bed. AnnMarie isn’t too happy with me either…Bentley threw up the steak.


Saturday

The drive from Columbus to Cleveland is the longest most boring two hour drive this country has between cities. Absolutely nothing to look at on your way there.

We pick up Daren’s longest known friend Justin Toman. Justin is the lone Michigan Wolverine in the Bachelor Party, which is kind of like being the lone Arab in a bachelor party in Tel Aviv, except a little more cordial. Justin is a down-to-earth guy as are the rest of my brother’s friends. Unlike the rest of his friends, he’s single, so I don’t feel guilty pointing out hot girls to him, which as you’ll see there were plenty of. Why?

Now when booking hotels, I found it particularly difficult for six weeks in advance in what is not usually a popular summer vacation destination. Settling for a kind of sketchy Days Inn in what appears to be a not so good area of Cleveland.

While we’re checking in so are couples of hot girls in Stetson hats, slightly overweight guys with goatees in Stetson hats and muscles shirts carrying coolers. Wouldn’t you know the Kenny Chesney tour is in town, playing Cleveland Browns Stadium. Kenny has sold out this stadium and Gillette Stadium in two weeks, and just about every stop on his tour in record time. Yet most of my readers wouldn’t recognize him if he ran over them with a pickup truck that said “I’m Kenny Chesney” on it. Anyway now I understand why hotel rooms were tough to come by and don’t feel as uncomfortable being in a bad part of town with 50,000 gun-toting rednecks in the area to protect me if need be.

Daren makes the honorable decision to invite two members of AnnMarie’s family, her father and her cousin “Dootz”. They meet us at the Days Inn and now the party’s ready to start.

The other comfort about getting a hotel in a bad part of Cleveland is finding out that Cleveland is one big “bad part”. Everything that’s not near Jacobs Field or Quicken Loans Arena (the “Gateway District”) or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Browns Stadium is a ghetto, everything you hear is true. Furthermore they dug up half the roads so it’s a bitch to get around. Hundreds of hot girls in Stetsons getting drunk in the middle of the day couldn’t beautify the streets of Cleveland.

That said, Jacobs Field is a beautiful park, built in the mid 90’s around the time of Camden Yards it is every bit as nice. I enjoyed seeing it empty as I picked up our tickets to see the Cleveland Indians play the Kansas City Royals.

The Indians do a give away every Saturday and tonight they’re giving away Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn eyeglasses. Jackpot! The Indians market the one thing about them I can appreciate on my one visit to their ballpark. Other good things about Jacobs Field. 22oz. Coronas for $8 which in baseball beer terms is a steal (Daren has about six of these). A Kiss Cam where the final shot is of two players on the opposing teams dugout next to each other, which is always good for a laugh, but kind of politically incorrect nowadays. Seemed like every player and every inning had an overly produced music video. These are things Fenway just doesn’t do. Although "the Jake" doesn’t have a “Sweet Caroline” to make fans look forward to the middle of the 8th and shots of players taking pies in the face called “Rally Pie” before the bottom of the 9th doesn’t motivate the fans or the players.



The Indians are unable to rally from a 5-0 deficit caused by a couple long balls given up by ace C.C. Sabathia and lose to lowly Kansas City 5-4 okay let’s drink.

“Dootz” takes us ALL THE WAY across town to “Dive Bar” an Ohio State Bar near Cleveland Browns Stadium. Of course Cleveland doesn’t bring any extra cabs for this weekend so there are none for us and we walk across Cleveland to Dive Bar.

Dive Bar is no dive bar. Over 30 beers on tap, including Amstel Light (having Amstel on tap automatically gives your bar ***** status, at least with me). The bar is fairly empty and this is our opportunity to poison Daren with shots. Of course the Kenny concert gets out and the bar immediately fills up with hicks. Now I’m a “hick at heart” so I see this as only a plus to the night. By the way, better to be a “hick at heart” than a “hick at brain”. There you go, a redneck joke for you blue-staters.

Among the influx into Dive Bar is College GameDay host and former Buckeye Kirk Herbstreit, Daren and Jamie immediately approach him. I’m too late to notice. They are able to snag a picture with him before he is taken away by hordes of chicks. I have a short list of celebrities who are faithful, Josh Beckett and Kirk Herbstreit are not on said list.



Anyway big crowd reactions for “Hang on Sloopy” and “She Thinks my Tractor’s Sexy” give the bar a special feel where everyone seems to be happy in unison. I miss this feeling, even though no bar in Syracuse ever felt this way at any point.

How’s Daren doing? He’s drunker than he’s ever been and better yet, we still have to take him back across town to his friend Frankie’s boat which he was kind enough to bring to Cleveland to dock on the Ohio River and drink. AnnMarie’s dad convinces a pizza delivery man to drive us cross town for $40 to get there. It needs to be said that between this gesture and him buying each of us many drinks. Having AnnMarie’s dad there didn’t take away from the fun at all, it added to it exponentially. Thank you!

In all the effort to get the boat to Cleveland, Daren’s experience on the boat was passing out in the cabin. Come 3am his brother and the crew wake him up to end his bachelor party. His ONE bachelor party.