Those Other Drink Bloggers Get to Have All the Fun

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For the past few months, I had my heart set on attending Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. However, after weeks of painful deliberation, the Girl and I decided to stay home and focus on domestic matters. So I sent out my heartfelt regrets to all of my so-called friends and told them I would see them next year.

End of story, right? Wrong.

Okay, so do you remember that time you broke your ankle right before the big pool party in high school and you had to stay home, and the phone was ringing off the hook all night with people being all like, “Where are you, we’re having so much fun here drinking and partying without you!” and you were all, like, “Thanks for calling.” Well, it was like that.

Rick at Kaiser Penguin is like my high school friend Rick who made the flyers for the party because he could draw better than anyone else in school. But internet Rick made his own road-trip penguin graphic and wrote a series of posts from the party to remind me how much it sucked to have to stay home. Thanks for that, Rick.

Then my so-called best girl friend Natalie was having all this fun meeting and hanging out with everyone and writing all about it, which is like high school Natalie drunk-dialing me from the kitchen going, “Woooooooooo!!!!!” and waking up my parents every time the phone rang.

And then there’s Jamie Boudreau, who showed me how to do that cool thing where he taped a bunch of fireworks together and we almost blew up a whole dumpster together that time when we were seven and I thought we were still friends in high school but he bailed on me to hang out with the cooler kids. He was at the party, too, and this time he made a dry-ice bomb and put it in the pool.

Then Lauren, the yearbook editor, was all like, “Everyone get together for a photo!” and then sat in the corner with her notebook and wrote down everything that happened that night so that I could at least get everyone to sign the picture with the caption, “You should have been there, Dude!”

And although I made it through three years of high school without any idea we had a high school newspaper, that didn’t stop the babes from the El Imbibo press from running amok and taking pictures and writing articles and interviewing everyone but me because I was propped up on my dad’s La-Z-Boy all night, elbow-deep in Cool Ranch Doritos and watching TV.

But remember how that same weekend your best friend Jimmy Patrick who lived next door had the chicken pox and couldn’t go either? And remember how you totally forgot about him because you were so selfish and only thinking about how much you wished you could go to that party? And didn’t you feel like a dick when he called and was all, like:

From: Jimmy Patrick
Subject: These guys are killing me!

Yeah, it’s really great and fun here. all the cool kids are here drinking and making drinks and talking about drinking and talking about making drinks blah blah blah. boring…..

I wish we were there.

But I couldn’t hang out with him because his parents wouldn’t let me come over so we talked on the phone all night about what was on TV.

But then I had to hang up on poor Jimmy because Stephen Beaumont, the guy who made me laugh so hard that time at recess that I peed my pants a little but then he made fun of me on the bus all the way home when it was his fault I peed my pants in the first place, he called and was screaming in the phone reminding me how lame I was for being a puss and not coming to the party.

And Camper English, who nobody ever made fun of for having a weird name because his parents were cool hippies who let him stay up late and watch R-rated movies and he always threw a big rager every spring break that everyone was invited to because he was cool enough to hang out with the jocks and the dorks at the same time, he was right there in the middle of everything being awesome as usual.

What really sucked, though, was that my older brother Paul went to the party even though he graduated the year before and everyone was all like, “Yeah, Paul’s here!” because he made a giant piñata full of airplane bottles of Jäger for everyone at the party they and forgot that we were even brothers because he was the center of attention, telling all these great stories the whole time.

But it was nice to hear how everyone took Darcy, the exchange student from Canada who was staying with us, under their wing and showed him around and introduced him to the cool kids even though his English wasn’t that good. But he came home and told me all about it and even took some really fun pictures.

So thanks for nothing, Other Drink Bloggers. All I did was sit around and watch a Love Boat reunion show and drink a whole thing of Mountain Dew by myself. But I promise you, next year I’m not going to ride my skateboard for a whole week before the party so that I can join you in the fun.

13 Replies to “Those Other Drink Bloggers Get to Have All the Fun”

  • Jeffrey says:

    If anyone here can razz me well, it’s definitely Stephen Beaumont. You’ve got me down, dude.

  • I love this! So much so that I gave it a small shout-out in the latest Feature Story at World of Beer.

    That was funny when you peed yourself a bit and I told everyone you had done it and we all laughed at you but not so much at you as with you because you’ve got a pretty good sense of humor, dude. But you’re still lame for missing the Big Show!

  • Lauren Clark says:

    OMG, this is flippin’ hilarious. Could be one of the best blog posts to come out of Tales of the Cocktail, in fact. I have to be a buzzkill for a second, though, and point out that I, the yearbook editor, am Lauren, not Laura. See you next year, hon!

  • Scottes says:

    I’m here commiserating with you, man! I can’t believe that I had to stay home and miss TotC. All this posts were making me cry.

    🙁

    I’ll see you there next year!

  • Does it count when you drunk dial with love in your heart, and a beer bong hat on your head?

    It was just our little way of saying, “We wuv u, man!”

    If it makes you feel better, I puked the second day, cuz I “sampled” too many cocktails the first day. Yeah. That’s me. We muses are classy like that…

  • No joking, my friend!

    I got stuck house sitting and watching the dog while Janet and Dave jetted off to the Crescent City to play with all the other grups.

    Sucks to be the responsible kid.

  • Darcy says:

    Take off eh! We hosers can handle our beer.

  • Marleigh says:

    Sofa cushions! Awww, man!

    This is worse than my cousin having his wedding on my sixteenth birthday.

  • Jeffrey says:

    Paul, you’re making me sad again. I’m going to walk down to 7-Eleven for a Slurpee to cheer myself up.

  • paul says:

    DAMN, that was cool! There’s NO WAY Rick’s parents are ever going out of town again! First there was that band with that guy who broke into Rick’s dad’s liquor cabinet, then Jamie set off those fireworks and the tree caught fire, then the cops showed up but we’d hid all the liquor so as soon as they were gone it was back on, and then Camper did that thing with the hose that had everybody cracking up, and Darcy kept talking about hockey until he had to puke in the bushes and then all those girls showed up looking for Richmond Gimlets — DAMN!

    Any Mountain Dew left in that thing?

  • Jeffrey says:

    You should have come over, Marleigh. My mom made Kraft grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup while my little brother and I built a fort out of the sofa cushions!

  • Marleigh says:

    Le sigh. This is the second year in a row that I have had prior engagements that kept me from attending Tales, and every year I come home to an internet full of posts about how awesome it was and how much I missed out on.

    And I didn’t even get to watch The Love Boat.

  • Wait, I missed a Love Boat reunion show? Damnit!

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