Or how we just went to Murphy’s.

Ah, first road trip of the Chicago Bar Bracket. Well, unless you count the Metra rides and accumulated Lyft journeys as a road trip. I guess they did involve roads and small trips.

Regardless, a return to ye olde University of Illinois, where I paid good money for a piece of paper to put on a wall and much more money to pump vast quantities of yeast’s shit through my liver.

After trekking down 57 at completely legal speeds I arrived at Renaked and Daddy’s (aka Stir Fry’s) new house. Arrival on campus felt weird as for the first time in about a decade I felt like I had not come home, but felt like an actual visitor.

While glad to see Renaked and Daddy, I felt a little disappointed. Keeping with my innate ability to forget things while traveling, I forgot to bring a house warming bottle of booze for the Renaked Daddies. To compensate I called Mimsi and Mostaccioli to put in a request for Daddy.

In the classiest of Illini fashions, Daddy wanted Ice Bombs (more on that later), so I put in an order of UV Blue. I’ve never actually bought UV Blue before, so I thought I had a respectable bottle (~$30) to give as a housewarming gift. Liver Pro Tip: for those unaware of UV Blue’s general scumminess, it’s not a fancy/expensive bottle. I guess the bottle is representative of the gifter.

Wish the Renaked Daddies’ liquor cabinet freshly stocked with cheap booze, we moved on with our plans for the evening. Originally we (I) planned to name every room of Renaked and Daddy’s new home, then proceed to party in them in bracket-style fashion. Bracket-style fashion means that we would party in two rooms at a time, decide which room makes the better bar and advance the superior room.

Our grand plans were left blowing in the wind as we quickly became three sheets to said wind.

For perspective, if I had a can of beer and a bottle of liquor for each can of beer and bottle of liquor at Renaked-Daddy’s house, I’d be too lazy to count them. Let’s just say the alcohol flowed like the salmon of Capistrano and move onto the more important activities of the night: drinking games.

For reasons unknown to sane people, the group asked me for a drinking game suggestion. I rapidly suggested Bourbon, a drinking game I made up several years ago on the Bourbon Trail.

Back in yester-year, I created Bourbon after The Wheach requested a new game while walking towards the bathroom. I also managed to finish designing the game before The Wheach could drop a full BM. Obviously one of my prouder moments, and given my general behaviour on the Bourbon Trail one of the few I’m glad to reminiscence about from that trip.

I’ll skip over the details of Bourbon for this blog post. It’s something you just have to play. It’s mostly a derivative of Irish Poker with betting tossed in and no pyramid with a small mix of Go Fish. There’s also a play called “Wild Turkey.” If you’re still following me at this point, now is a good time to make an appointment with your therapist.

We finished the game of Bourbon quick enough and without any Wild Turkeys. Somehow the group still had confidence in me and trusted my decision to play Dice Game next. I don’t remember if Dice Game is something I invented, or something passed onto me, but it’s simple enough so I’ll include it below.

 

Welp, that’s pretty much the game. Let me know how it goes the morning after you play, cause you’re sure as hell not gonna be able to speak after a couple rounds of Dice Game.

Daddy sat out Dice Game because he needed his sobriety intact so he could pick up his brother, Daddy-Brother, from the train station.

You may have noticed, but our group has a slight aversion to sobriety.

We quickly raised a pot of cash to pay for a cab so Daddy could drink, and just as soon Mimsi converted the pot to a stack of singles, the most appropriate way to pay for things. Also, someone hatched the idea that I should pay the cabbie, shirtless.

Going outside, shirtless, to pay a cabbie who is dropping off two gay guys may as well be my middle name, so I obliged without question. In retrospect I feel like I should have tried to bargain something out of this deal, but I feel like my amusement level may have maxed out somewhere around the words “shirtless” and “singles.”

We rounded out the night in typical fashion. Fires were made. Dicks were punched. Feelings were damaged. Pizzas were ordered. You know, the typical party montage you’d see in a Bud Light commercial.

Luckily, Saturday morning started out in simple fashion. I pissed off Wheach, Wheach was pissed at Rebecca, Liz ate half of an angry looking donut. Pretty standard. Also, Ice Bombs came up in conversation for the second time in as many days.

Daddy wanted to start the day out with an Ice Bomb, but didn’t remember how to make them. (2 shots citrus vodka, 2 shots vodka, 2 shots UV Blue, Sprite. I think.) Daddy searched for how to make an Ice Bomb on the inter-Googles and ended with results for how to make a bomb out of dry ice.

Daddy is probably now on the FBI terror watchlist. You can thank me now for using aliases on this blog so you can use plausible deniability to distance yourself from Daddy Terrorist.

Eventually we accumulated enough collective dexterity, energy and willpower to head to the tailgate.

We arrived at the tailgate, armed with Golden Ticket Keystone Ice and two rolls of duct tape.

When I bought the Golden Ticket Keystone Ice the orange-ness of the box distracted me and I didn’t notice the Ice-ness of the Keystone. Also, keeping with the Willy Wonka vibe from the Lagunitas brewery last week, the chance of winning a golden can of Keystone had me pretty excited. Excited enough to purchase Keystone, which is saying something.

As for the duct tape, I had plans to either play wizard staff, or reenact the final scene of Die Hard, using duct tape in lieu of Bumblebee Tuna labels.

Given the setup of the tailgate I feel like the Die Hard option was appropriate. Crammed-In and his crew had three RV’s arranged in a U shape with tents covering the open space in the U. It gave off a very fortress-esque vibe and I can very easily see Hans Gruber holding Champaign hostage from this base of operations. Or Daddy Terrorist. I hear he’s slotted as the villain in Die Hard 6. Die Hard 5 already has Hoptimus Pils, the beer tank from Lagunitas, slotted as the villain.

We quickly noticed the lack of a grill at the tailgate as Crammed-In and Sancho showed us their setup. Crammed-In pointed out a small armada of crock pots. Apparently crock pots are more convenient than grills. I don’t know. I stopped listening when Crammed-In said the word dips. That’s right, dip with an ‘s’ at the end. As in more than one dip.

Crammed-In would have had my full attention after mentioning the pluralized form of dip, but unfortunately ecstasy over my forthcoming edibles overwhelmed me.

The idea of adding an ‘s’ to the end of a word being a positive addition is a definite change of pace for me.

I am a recent convert and advocate of the idea of a silent ‘s’ in certain words. For example, a silent ‘s’ would make it sound much more appropriate when I say “I had cakes for breakfast today.” On the plus side, I come across as only semi-terrible for eating only one cake. On the downside, it sounds like I’m eating a 4th meal called breakfat. And let’s be honest, fat is not gonna get broken if the main sustenance of breakfat is cake.

Breakfat or not, the spread rotating through the crock pots impressed myself and the group. At first, like some sort of n00b, I ate the items from each crock pot separately. But eventually, as inebriation and Illini ingenuity settled in, I decided to just start pouring everything in sight on top of the Chilli and muddling it together. My progress on the wizard staff may have had something to do with the enjoyability of my invention, but I stand by my concoction with pride.

And now, onto the Wizard Staff. Also known as Wisest Wizard or Candolf. I assume Candolf also has wine and vodka equivalents, Candolf the White Zin and Candolf the Grey Goose.

Wizard Staff is a simpler game, from a simpler time, passed onto me by Anheuser (who also just launched the Houston Bar Bracket). For Wizard staff you just tape all of your beers together as you drink them, slowly turning you into a powerful wizard as your B.A.C. becomes your Mana Meter. Staff waving and Harry Potter spell-making are both appropriate when playing Wizard Staff.

After the first couple beers of Wizard Staff, which I proudly played by myself, Big Country showed up. He was down for joining Wizard Staff but disappointed that I had a head start. As Big Country tends to do, he started up some sort of engineering jibber-jabber about calibrating our wizard staffs. I don’t think they teach this sort of witchcraft at Hopwarts, so I mostly ignored what he said. Also, Rebecca decided to join sometime around now.

In an effort to close the Bomber Can Gap, Big Country and Rebecca decided to take out the big guns and start shotgunning. Unfortunately, Big Country decided to tape his beer to his wizard staff before shotgunning it. This lead to half the beer pouring out the top of the staff as Big Country spun the staff around trying to guide the hole to his mouth. It legitimately looked like some kind of contraption from a water park gone horribly wrong, spraying booze on unsuspecting but delighted tailgaters. Well, at least the tailgaters who saw other people get sprayed were entertained.

Generally, having our current beers on the top of the wizard staffs led to problems, with me liking to make grand hand gestures and such while drinking. This also made it hard to hold my cigar, so instead of lighting my unwrapped cigar I put it in my back pocket for later. This led to the unfortunate side effect of destroying the cigar, but the fortunate one of coating my back pocket in tobacco leaves.

I’m somewhat glad the cigar accident occurred because given what I put into my body throughout the breakfat I don’t want to know what scents were coming out of the mad scientist’s gastronomical laboratory that my innards had become. Instead, I had the refreshing, filtered and smooth flavors of a $4 cigar emanating from my anus throughout the afternoon. At least that’s what I hoped for.

The other problem I had with my wizard staff was it’s overwhelming size. Yes ladies, you heard me right. As this problem grew I made the executive decision to reinforce the staff by taping the empties on the side of the staff at the stress points. Unfortunately my reinforcements were about as effective as the Maginot Line.

However, my impressive staff did lead to three attractive girls questioning it. Naturally this led to discussions about about the bar bracket. This is more impressive when you consider that the first time I saw one of these girls in the morning I was holding two cans of beer and biting into an unpeeled banana. I know all this talk of bananas and staffs may be overwhelming for some.

All of my friends later informed me that my conversation with the girls ranged from terrifying to creepy, which is believable because I started the day off by slurring my words like someone fed a wet mop into a Gatling Gun. And that was after the 0th beer.

Eventually I ran out of things to pour onto my chilli or to tape onto my staff, so Rebecca, The Wheach and I decided to head to Murphy’s for a one-bar Bar Bracket of Champaign.

Murphy’s won in case you’re curious.

To leave the tailgate I faced my fears of a lack of Lyft in Champaign and summoned an actual taxi, although the words actual and taxi are up for debate when it comes to Champaign Illinois. This taxi was fine enough, and we may have burst out laughing when we got the bill – $7. But as for my second taxi of the day, I’m legitimately not sure if I got in a real taxi or if I got into a rando’s van that had “Taxxie” scribbled on the side. Either way I survived, but suffered from too much fear to strike up my normal obnoxious taxi/Lyft conversations.

Although we did not do a Bar Bracket in Champaign, we did do a mini Table Bracket inside of Murphy’s.

Upon arrival at Murphy’s we only managed to find seats at the bar. Psh, who sits at the bar at Murphy’s? Not these guys, that’s for certain. Well, except that one time we did that.

After a couple minutes a nearby tabled opened up which we appreciated because had not so patiently ripped through drinks from Erin at the bar. We quickly swooped in and claimed this uncharted land as ours.

However, The Wheach coveted an occupied table near the window, so he sent me over to negotiate a table swap. We didn’t even need to take hostages in this negotiation, which was convenient because Daddy-Terrorist was not present. My smergy-dershy slurry speachy must have been pretty on point by this time of day because we got the table free of charge. Still, The Wheach offered up a round of Fireball shots like the benevolent victors of the vice that we are.

However, we are not just benevolent victors, but hungry ones and we quickly began plotting to conquer another table. When the table next to us opened up we ran into a small obstacle. We only had 3 people and wanted to take claim of approximately 12 seats worth table. Luckily our wizard training came in handy as Rebecca still had her duct tape. We cordoned off our new tables and pretended like it meant something. Apparently it worked, as the Murphy’s staff said nothing despite stopping by our tables several times over the next 40 minutes.

 

We decided to start up some more drinking games once Big Country, Little Country, and the Bonercrushers showed up. (I know, college, right?) Tonight on the agenda, Hockey, which I’m too lazy to describe, so here’s a link, and then a second wagering game that I made up.

Mrs. Bonercrusher did not like this game and Mr. Bonercrusher made fun the Mrs. for not understanding.

Anyways, there’s some more tales from the weekend but keeping track of the entire group’s activities throughout the day is a sisyphean task and would ruin all the things I have to talk about in person.

Oh yeah, at some point this day there was a football game. To my understanding the Illini won a Big10 game. I’ll wait and see if this is true. I have my doubts.

In other news, the Chicago Bar Bracket scored some free tickets to a Beer Dinner at Sheffield’s, so look for the review of that later this week. Until then feel free to follow on the Twitters or Facebook to stay up to date with next Saturday’s matchup between Sidetrack & Twisted Spoke.

Peace.