bachelor party weekend recap
Jason posted on April 2nd, 2007

I am in a lot of pain right now - emotional, physical, and mental.  Just about everything either hurts or is sad in/on my body.

Last night, I got back to my apartment after spending the last four nights and four days at my buddy Joe’s bachelor party in Newport, Rhode Island, drinking everything I could get my hands on (including an embarrassing incident with a bottle of body wash that I don’t want to get into right now, but let’s just say that under the right circumstances it’s possible to confuse Adidas body wash for Everclear).

Before I get into the bulk of what happened over the weekend, two quick notes:1) I’ve touched on this before, but it’s worth mentioning again: getting drunk on a train is fucking spectacular, and perhaps my new favorite pastime.  In fact, I may not take a proper vacation this year and instead ride Amtrak across America, getting bombed and watching movies on my laptop.  On the ride up to Boston on Wednesday night, I had a ton of beers and watched "Tombstone," a movie that simply does not get old.  As predicted, I did cry after Virgil was shot and said, "That’s ok, Allie girl - I still got one good arm to hold you with," but did not cry when Morgan died, mostly because I looked to my left and the woman sitting there was watching me cry during the Virgil scene, so I had to rein it in when Morgan was offed.  If she wasn’t so good-looking, I would have opened the floodgates, but I tried to maintain a little dignity.

(For some reason, I never cry when Doc dies, since I’m convinced he’s off to a better place.  And Doc Holliday has to be one of the greatest five movie characters of all time.  I will not argue this.  After my nervous breakdown in the fall, I may take to dressing like him full time.  Just so you know.)

2) You know what’s awesome?  When you drop $100 on a pair of headphones and they break in eight weeks.  Thanks, people at Bose.  You guys are fucking assholes.  Now I’m rocking a $6 pair of giant headphones that I bought at CVS right before my train left.  I look fucking ridiculous and, worse, poor. 

The Groom, modeling my sweet new headphones, and the Best Man/Better Man

Now that that’s out of my system, onto the bachelor party.

The Cast
For your reference, the following people were in attendance at the bachelor party.  In order to give you a better picture, I’ve listed their names, ages, location, and a little about them.-

Joe, 27, Boston, Groom-to-be, sterile 
- Me, 27, New York, Best Man/Better Man, likely also sterile
- Bill, 27, Boston, Groomsman, former "star" of NBC’s "Average Joe 2: Hawaii" 
- John, 27, Boston, Groomsman, general dickhead about sports, life, but redeemed his lame performance of weekend by cleaning up Nameless Friend’s vomit
- Brendan, 28, Boston, more commonly known as "Site Guy Brendan" or "He Who Talks A Lot and Also Spits While Talking and Maybe Cried At One Point During the Bachelor Party"
- Griff, 27, Seattle, Greek friend who considering he’s married and doesn’t drink that much held up surprisingly well over the weekend among the drunks
- Kyle, 28, Philly, wearer of high top sneakers but still tremendous friend
- Tom, 28, Knoxville, "reformed" drunk and Masshole with near-allergy to alcohol
- Conor, 27, Boston, "reformed" cool guy, likes cheese and looks like Blaise Pascal 
- Terrence, 24, New York, Joe’s "younger brother," in that they are not related but almost exactly the same 
- Mike, 28, Providence, husband and father of one with another on the way, who showed up for one night, drank a ton and punched everyone, and then got so violently ill he may be deceased at the time of this writing 
- Frank, 31, Boston, future brother-in-law of groom, was horrified by Best Man’s near-constant nudity

The House
The house we rented was not actually in Newport but rather in the next town, Middletown.  However, the Newport town line was a tennis ball’s throw away, and a cab into downtown Newport was $7, so we’ll just call it Newport.

Kyle outside the house 

The house itself was a big ol’ one, with six bedrooms and two full bathrooms.  As you might expect, after arriving on Thursday, one toilet and shower was clogged by Friday evening, threatening the plumbing system of the whole house.  That meant none of us peed indoors from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, which was fine with me.       

The house had a huge yard which was used for various drinking-related athletic events (see below) and soon came to look like a prison yard.  The house was also perfectly situated.  There was a bar next door, a liquor store two doors away, and places to eat on either side of the house.  For sundry items, there was a Cumberland Farms just across the street.  Everything that we needed was within distance of a belly crawl - perfect for a group of men whose laziness is only rivaled by their abuse of alcohol and their abundant use of vulgarity. 

The Language
Speaking of vulgarity, there’s no real joke here, but I don’t think we used any sentences over the long weekend that weren’t quotes from "Goodfellas" or contained the words fuck, beer, dick, punch or dick punch.  Worth noting how quickly a group of otherwise respectable young men can turn into cretins when an unlimited supply of Bud Light is involved.   

The Games of Drinking
This is what we did all weekend - got bombed, played drinking games, and got violent. 

Brendan acting as peacemaker in a disagreement between Conor and Bill 

The four main drinking games were:

Lanner
Lanner is a Beirut/Beer Pong-style drinking that was invented by myself and my roommates in May of our senior year of college.  48 hours after it was invented, we were thrown out of housing and off campus, fined $4000 in damages, lost all senior week privileges, and had to accept blank diplomas at graduation until our fines were paid off (I got my diploma in August, thank you very much).  Translation: this game is not for the meek.   

There are two important rule changes from standard Beirut that make this game so destructive:

1) Instead of arcing the ball into a cup, the ball must be bounced in on one bounce
2) If at any time the ball hits the floor, a cup must be removed and drank (so basically it’s the same as hitting a cup)

This not only makes the games faster, which means less waiting for your drunk buddies to hit a cup and more drinking during the game, but it gets your heart pumping because you literally dive all over the floor to catch balls that are bouncing off cups.  Since it is a Gentleman’s Game, however, there is a Gentleman’s Rule that one can not quickly wing the ball at the cups so that it flies off and is uncatchable.  According to the Official Lanner Rulebook, an "earnest attempt" must be made to get the ball into the cup, and this happens via a normally paced and unrushed bounce onto the opposing team’s cups.   

But the speed, more than anything, is what makes Lanner so dangerous.  It’s fast-paced and aggressive and thus, much more awesome than Beirut (it is also, as the picture below illustrates, played on a much smaller board, which means that the ball has a greater chance of hitting the ground). 

The Lanner Board and Set Up 

And it was Lanner that took up the bulk of our weekend.  Kyle and I proved ourselves to be a formidable team, and had some astonishing runs on both Thursday and Friday nights.

This is what winners look like.  Well, not really.

But there were other fun, albeit less awesome drinking games played.

Cornhole
Cornhole is like horseshoes but with hand-sized bean bags, and inclined pieces of wood with a hole in them.  Throw the beanbag and if it hits and stays on the wood, you get one point.  If it goes through the cornhole, you get three points.  First team to 21 wins.  

I didn’t like this game.  I think it’s because it’s very similar to horseshoes and one of my first memories involves my dad being drunk and playing horseshoes with his buddies and neglecting me and subsequently me falling down a flight of stairs (true story).  But what was great about this game was that it turned the back lawn into a prison yard.

Doing hard time on the yard

Also, cornhole is apparently a legit game.  Of course, I use the word "legit" loosely, but I haven’t seen any Lanner websites or associations.  And yes, this is probably because only about 50 people in the world know and play Lanner, but shut up - it’s still a valid defense. 

Anchorman
Anchorman, also called Sailors, works like this.  Two teams, four players on each, stand on opposite sides of a table.  One team gets a quarter and huddles up to decide with team member will hold the quarter in his hand.  Then that team with the quarter comes to the table, counts off, and slams their open palms onto the table.  Each member of the opposing team has to guess, based on sound or expression or body language, which guy on the opposing team has the quarter in his hand.  If they guess correctly, the team with the quarter has to chug a pitcher of beer.  If they are incorrect, they are the ones that must chug the pitcher of beer.  The game is called "Anchorman" because before chugging, the winning team gets to pick one opposing team member to be Anchorman, who will then go last in the chugging order and must finish the pitcher. 

Kyle, as Anchorman, taking care of business 

I stink at this game.  Not only because I can’t (and have never been able to) chug, but because my hands are not made for this game.  They are big hands with long fingers and slimy palms, and each time I held the quarter a slight but easily discernable smack-ting could be heard (the smack from my sweaty hands, the ting from the quarter).  Not good.  I only played a few games of Anchorman, and stuck to my strengths, like…        

Wiffle Ball
Not really a drinking game, but we played a lot of wiffle ball over the weekend (you get a hit, pitcher drinks; you make an out or error, you drink).  And I am, arguably, one of the top 20 wiffle ball players in the nation.  I know that you don’t believe me when I say this, since my track record of failure in athletics has been well-documented, so below I include an excerpt from the 2007 edition of Wiffle Ball Prospectus, which includes scouting reports of over 1000 wiffle ball players.

The Shirts
The weekend’s gimmick, if you can call it that, was that every person in the attendance was surprised with a personalized t-shirt to commemorate the weekend.  All the shirts had the same logo on the back, but on the front was a personalized design created by myself, Bill or Joe that often made fun of the person.  Below is Site Guy Brendan with his shirt, which features a picture of Brendan sitting at a computer and also thinking of a computer (because, you know, he’s a computer nerd).

Brendan, modeling his shirt

I won’t go into the others, since most are private or personal jokes that would require too much explanation.  As I mentioned, Bill, Joe and I created these t-shirts, but we kept each other’s t-shirts secret (for example, only Bill and I made Joe’s, so he would be surprised).  I was told very early on in the process by Bill and Joe that my t-shirt would "rock my world" and that it was the worst - meaning most ball-busting - of the bunch.  For this reason, during the t-shirt ceremony on Friday night, mine was presented last.

Well.

I won’t tell you what mine was, but suffice it to say, I can never wear it out.  As a matter of fact, I may have to destroy it immediately.  Not so much because it is damaging to me, but because it is unconscionably mean - even by my friends’ standards.  Let’s never speak of it again.  

The Newport Scene
We only made it out one night, Saturday night, and this was only because it was fairly obvious that if we were to remained cooped up in that house any longer, someone would surely die.  So we headed to downtown Newport to take in a little of the bar scene.

Despite the fact that the bars close at 1am (???), the bar scene in Newport was pretty good.  Not only that, but there were a ton of beautiful women out and about.  It’s not like I was expecting anything bad, but there were a number of "wow" women prowling the streets.  And, of course, my friends and I didn’t talk to any of them.

Dudes not talking to chicks

But it’s a pretty great lil’ town.  I would definitely go back, though probably not during summer.  I try, to the extent possible, to stay away from beach towns in the summer when the weather is warm and everyone is tan and fit.  It’s just not good for my self-esteem. 

The Absence of Boobies
To be honest, I think that what we did is the perfect way to have a bachelor party.  Rent a house somewhere cool, get a bunch of your buddies together, and enjoy a long weekend of getting bombed.  But one thing was missing from this bachelor party: boobies. 

In part, I understand and empathize with Joe.  I don’t particularly like strippers, and I certainly don’t like them putting their HPV boobies and coochies all over my body, which is what happens to the groom at bachelor parties.  But on the other hand, I like to see boobies.  A lot.  So do many of the guys who attended the bachelor party, save for a few (Conor, I’m looking in your direction).  

And, dang it, it just doesn’t feel like a bachelor party without boobies.  Call me old-fashioned, but the two go so well together in my book.  Not that it matters now.  Maybe I’m writing this to make Joe feel bad for vetoing the strippers idea.  Or maybe I’m writing it to make Joe look good in his fiancée Danielle’s eyes, because maybe we did get strippers, and maybe they did things that none of us knew that females - human or otherwise - could possibly do, and maybe Joe asked me to skim over this part for his sake, pulling the "You’re the best man and I haven’t asked you to do anything else but this" card.    

The point, as always, is that I like to see boobies.  Moving on. 

The Aftermath
When I got home just after 9pm last night, I was beat.  I opened the door to my apartment, which was clean but completely empty, and I felt a little lonely.  Simply: I was pretty beat up and needed some lovin’.  Not only was depression sinking in as the alcohol drained from my body, but I am literally beat up - in addition to various cuts and scrapes, I have three bruises on each of my arms and five bruises on the right side of my body, from my chest to my side.  I don’t know how any of these happened, but I’m thinking that since I often sleep on my left side, someone came into my bedroom as I slept and beat me with a hammer (these are the bruises on the right side).  I then awoke somewhat and raised my arms to defend myself (the bruises on my arms).  Then whoever was beating me with the hammer got tired and left.  This was the best explanation I could come up with last night as I lay uncomfortably in bed, thinking I may seriously have cracked a rib. 

But since I had no woman to come over and nurse me back to health, I had to settle for a long shower and a Xanax.  All things considered, not a bad alternative, and much less likely to ask "So are you ever going to shave your back again or are you growing it out for some sort of competition?"  Tonight, I see a similar fate, as I slowly try to detox (with Xanax?) and nurse myself back to health.   

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Overall, a great time.  What Joe did for his bachelor party is pretty much exactly what I would like to do for mine.  Fortunately, we have at least four months before my bachelor party, so we don’t need to worry about that now.