Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Happy St. Patrick's Day
Alright, I know this one is a few days late here, but I started writing a post the other day and inadvertently wiped it out in the middle of switching to another window so I scrapped it. I was starting to say in my last post that St. Patrick's day was such a great holiday as it's the only one that actively promotes drinking to excess. I haven't actually gone out for St. Patrick's Day in several years. Yes I know that may come as a shock to some of you, but the concept of drinking green beer and getting toasted beyond belief for one night is a really straight thing, because with the exception of the green beer, the gay's don't need a special holiday for an excuse to booze it up.
So the evening started out very innocently. We had actually planned in advance on going out somewhere this year with Mark and Andrea, and afterall it was a Friday night, so who am I to say no to hanging out for a drink. Mark and Andrea stopped by around 6 to see if we wanted to head out early and eat. We assembled the troops and headed out to grab a bit to eat before partaking in any real St. Patrick's Day festivities. We ended up at the Old Chicago Restaurant for some food and wouldn't you know it, but Old Chicago even served green beer so we could get a head start on the party. Who knew the Italians got into the spirit of the holiday? The miracles never cease.
So following dinner we all walked out of the restaurant and heard this ... well ... raining sound. Looking around we couldn't figure out what was going on because everything appeared completely dry. Finally something at the back side of the parking lot caught our eyes ...
Apparently the sprinkler system was going off and this sprinkler head seemed to missing. Lucky for the owner of the truck it was shooting straight up and coming down directly into the bed of his truck. We all got a good laugh out of this one and were glad that it wasn't our car with the sunroof open or M&A's topless jeep. That would have been tragic and not quite as funny.
So we decided upon our options for the rest of the evening and all agreed to head over to O'Kelly's. Now let me explain to you about O'Kelly's. It's pretty much the unofficial white trash capital of the east valley. I'm not kidding you here, the last time we were at O'Kelly's some drunk fat man ripped the bottom of his shirt off, cut holes in it, tied it around his head like a mask and ran around the bar pretending to be a superhero. You see where I'm going with this one? Yeah it's THAT kind of place, you know what I'm talking about here right?
Anyway, the ONLY reason we decided to go to O'Kelly's (really the only reason we ever decide to go to O'Kelly's) was because it's literally a 1/2 mile away from our houses, and we just didn't want to drive to Tempe or central Phoenix to hit up something a bit more fabulous. White trash here we come.
Enter the drunk straight people. So as you can see from the photo above, O'Kelly's really gets into the spirit of St. Patrick's Day. They fenced off a large portion of the front parking lot and filled it with plastic tables, porta-potties, and a huge inflatable jousting ring which people would stand on inflatable stands and attempt to beat the living shit out of their opponent with an inflatable joust pole (like they used to do on American Gladiators ... remember that show?).
After finding a parking spot and fighting our way through the crowds of stumbling drunk people who were leaving the bar, falling in the bushes, and on the sidewalk, we finally made it to the inside. We decided to stay outside, watch the drunk fools, and take advantage of the makeshift bar which was setup in the parking lot. No need to fight our way through the crowd to go inside when all we needed was right there.
Well the jousting matches quickly turned into a game of knock the drunk off the post. Yes that's right, we saw both men and women fighting to stay on the post only to get socked in the head by their opponent and knocked completely on their back. One women even got knocked down and rolled completely out of the inflatable into the parking lot. Yeah, see what I mean here, it's a quality place.
I think we made it through our first beer before the really crazy things started happening. This woman walked out carrying a life size man doll with her. She would stop to talk to people and move the guys makshift arms with her hand. Everyone wanted me to take a photo of her with the doll but I just couldn't, it was really kinda creepy.
Next up ... the wet t-shirt contest. Yes that's right only in Mesa, Arizona can you find a wet t-shirt contest outside at a bar in March. Man this is such a wonderful place to live. LOL. Enter drunk mother with ripped jeans and really tight clothing. I honestly though that in order to have a wet t-shirt contest there had to be more then one contestant. I guess I was wrong ...
We tried to push Andrea up there to compete, but she didn't really seem too interested. In the end the flashing mother must of won by default because she walked away with the entire $40 pot ... that's right folks, $40. Man it must have been a good night for her. I'm glad I had my camera with me for proof of all this, I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.
So immediatly following the wet t-shirt contenst, we realized the night just couldn't get any better, so we packed it in and headed back to our place for a few additional beers before finishing out the evening. To say the least, it was certainly one interesting St. Patrick's day.
