RAMONE

The odd thing about blogging about bachelor parties is that you never really tell the full story. 10% if you’re lucky. So at such low odds, what the hell do you even get to write about?

There was a point in time when I used to give myself one year. One year after an epic, unbloggable situation happened, I’d get around to writing about it without hesitation. That did happen for a bachelor party once when I was in Las Vegas. Then I turned 30, matured a little, and now feel I should be a little more responsible with my writing (I see you, PR people). Actually, it really depends on how you just word things.

For this round, we’ll leave the truth calculations out. This post is rated: suitable for the imaginative.

I’m far too descriptive to include a weekend of events into one blog post. Unless you’re into reading books the size of Noam Chomsky. So I’m splitting this into Friday and Saturday.

This was Friday.

Did You Know: "Little Phoenix" was Bruce Lee's original family name. And our bachelor is basically Bruce Lee reincarnated.

My road trip days have came and passed and these days I prefer flying than long car rides. I mean, time is more precious than ever, and a lot of times I’d rather spend $150 extra to fly and save a few hours of my life. But I figured, these dudes I’m driving with are some of my first and best friends ever. Literally, I came out of the womb, and some of them were there to say, “What took you so long?“. That’s Jonesy and Little Phoenix. Some are also my closest family; cousins that took me in as their brother since I never had siblings. In previous posts, I called ‘em Poser and Skeezy. So this bachelor party meant a little something special to each of us. We hadn’t all been out on a road trip since we were 10 and our parents drove us over the border from New Brunswick to Maine to buy live chickens and cheap basketball sneakers at Marden’s.

There are two things I regularly fall asleep to: boardroom meetings and sitting down longer than two hours (like really long movies, driving on a two lane highway, sitting in the ER with my ear hanging off the side of my face). I had a feeling this would become a problem driving 5-6 hours to Montreal. Fortunately, I had a plan: drink a gallon of coffee and hope for the best.

Zee lovely Madaline Zanni took this photo.

The folks at Honda Canada and Media Profile gave me the OK to take a fully loaded, 2012 Honda CRV Touring to Montreal. F—ing kick-ass. The CRV Touring was an exceptionally smooth ride: the AC was cool, the seats were leather and spacious, the sound system booming. It was the perfect road trip vehicle. Most importantly, it wasn’t a gas hog: half tank only cost $30 to refill and $115 for the entire trip. Not bad for a trip in an SUV. I think it had to do with Econ mode being on, however I’m not sure if the green leaf symbol was a peace-of-mind thing, or if it switched from four cylinders to two. Most likely both. Econ was absolutely okay on the highway and I didn’t find much trouble accelerating past the 18 wheelers.

I also had a backup plan to stay awake for my iPhone-filled SUV: Rdio.

Rdio, to say the least, is the Netflix of music. Access to almost all music in existence, available to stream at an instant. Coupled with Anthm, Rdio’s little jukebox sidecar, the trip became an interactive dance party. The beauty about it is that each of my friends could download the Anthm app for free. Anthm can connect them to my Rdio account, which was Bluetoothed to the CRV. My friends could search the Rdio database and add songs into my Rdio-playing, car-connected iPhone. That mean lots of random songs we haven’t heard in years and hours of staying awake to literally anything. Occasionally, my less-than-tech-savvy friends (well, friend, since everyone could work it except Jonesy) would fill the jukebox with songs about carrots, which we had to continually thumb-down and remove.

But anyways, this story is about Little Phoenix. And his exceptionally wild weekend of pre-marital freedom.

Arriving in Montreal, we had a three bedroom presidential suite set up for us somewhere near McGill University. It was a pretty perfect scenario for 11 people: extremely spacious with a massive living room, dining room, work space, balcony, and a private rooftop terrace with BBQ grills. It sure beat the proposed alternative: six questionable motel rooms at the Days Inn. Err, yeah.

The trip was planned by Little Phoenix’s fiance’s brothers: The Pizza Guys. Among us were a few of their cousins and friends from Toronto to Michigan, and Little Phoenix’s bigger and older brother, whom we’ll call Thor.

Pounded back beers while eating steak off the grill. No rice, no vegetables, no bread, no cutlery, no plates. Just steak and sauce.

Left for a strip club called Chez something. I’m going to cut it here because I know his latter is reading this. Lets just say we kept the dragon busy.

<Sniiiiiiip.>

Left the strip club around 1am. Skeezy had a super close friend that he hasn’t seen since childhood who worked at a bar 20 minutes away, so we hopped a cab over to meet him. I haven’t seen the guy I was 12 years old in a 14-15 year old basketball camp. Everyone was bigger than me. Nobody passed the ball to me. It was kind of traumatizing. This dude was one of two guys that would actually incorporate me in the game, so I’m indebted to at least visit his bar.

And what a bar it was. Half the unit split to the casino while Skeezy, Poser, Jonesy, Thor and I took Little Phoenix to a bar that resembled the late Piccadilly Circus in Toronto: college kids, stripper poles on the bar, and this massive space in the back for a mechanical bull. Not really my scene, but by the time he flooded us with shot after shot after shot, old AMEX started to reveal himself.

Random screen grab from Piccadilly Circus in Toronto. This is their "best case scenario", otherwise it was a colossal train wreck.

In an effort not to appear like a huge douche, I highly recommend you read a little bit about the AMEX, also known as The Angry Mexican in my previous posts. I do have alter ego’s, see. There’s The Angry Mexican, who nobody really likes because he’s full of rage and anger. Kind of like the Hulk, but replace the green skin and superhuman muscle with scrawny arms and a Mexican hat. I definitely passed that dark phase in my life into a lighter and more comical version of it: Ramone. Which is how this piece of blogging magic came into fruitation.

Without getting into detail, a bit of AMEX came alive that night.

• Mean mugged everyone at the bar. Funny enough, in my head I was actually having a great time. But I visually looked like someone stole my last Twix bar.
• Left the bar. Walked up to a shady, late night massage place. After 10 minutes of knocking, old Russian woman appears. I yelled, “Holy shit” and ran down the street. Had paranoia that old Russian woman was following, ducked into convenience store.
• Bought and ate a delicious bag of cheese curds.
• Thor and Little Phoenix chat with passerbys about old Russian woman. I run up and instigate fight. Oops.
• Went back into suite. Little Phoenix passes out on floor. We laugh and eat cheese curds until daylight.
• HEY. If you’re thinking of giving me sh** about starting fights and acting a fool, remember: this is a friggin’ bachelor party weekend. Every guy you’ve known has done much worse than me. They’re just afraid to admit it.

Damn, now I can’t wait to blog about Saturday.