Thursday, July 17, 2003

Go Shorty. . .


It's my birthday. Man, 50 Cent is incredible, he can he dodge bullets AND write birthday songs. You can bet I've been blasting that song today. In celebration of the blessed day I was born, I will share with you random Whiskey Tango moments from birthdays past.

2002: Since in the last few years my birthday has been on a weekday, I usually celebrate it twice, once on the actual day and again on the closest weekend day. Last year we went to Naperville the Friday before my birthday, which was fun but pretty Whiskey Tango free (despite the odd line, "If I was wearing that dress, I wouldn't look half as good as you." Wow, what a compliment! I look better than a potential drag queen!), and on my actual birthday we went to the Pub (now the Lodge) in Lisle. A momentous occasion occurred that night: our first meeting with the Male Strippers. While no particularly entertaining conversation occurred, the Male Strippers have become disturbing yet recurring characters in the soap opera that is our lives.

2001: My 22nd birthday involved another trip to Naperville, I believe we ate at Chili's first and Melanie had a wicked sunburn from the time trials. We visited the Lantern and strangely enough, got a table dance by a group of rowdy guys. Melanie bought me personalized Emily stickers as part of my present. We proceeded to stick "Emily" on a dancer booty.

2000: My 21st birthday, where all the bar fun began. We started at Houlihan's, then set out for a tour of Joliet's finest bars. We stopped by the Club Zanzibar on the Empress, but being a Monday, it was closed. Apparently the "every night's a different club" promotion didn't carry on from Club Chameleon (the former Empress Club)to Club Zanzibar. We decided to check out Shorewood's latest and greatest bar, Bedrocks and the Cave. The clientele was slim, but the owners were awesome. I believe I got a free birthday shot and I got to sing karaoke to myself of the Beatles' birthday song. After that we went over to Larsen's, where I ran into some guys I had worked with at the Bus (oh, how I miss you, beloved radio station) who decided to buy me a shot of Crown Royal. At this point I wasn't drunk, but wasn't sure about doing a whiskey shot, but I was a trooper and did it anyway, though I immediately had to spit it out. Very classy. Anyway, Dawn knew the guy who was managing Heroes at the time, and we saw him at Larsen's. He invited us to go back to Heroes with him, and he'd reopen the bar for us and give us drinks for free. We headed over there drank some more, and played the trivia game (alas, no Foxy Boxes). We had some drink that for some reason we decided was called the 10 Inch Lover (I think we heard the name wrong), and Melissa added the drink to one of their bartending books. All in all, an awesome 21st.

1999:Nothing particularly trashy, we missed our train to Chicago and went to Chili's and saw American Pie. Ah, to be below legal drinking age.

1998: Highlights included a trip to Plainfield Fest and Odyssey Fun World, where Wens and I stole stickers of other people from one of those machines where you can take picture stickers of yourself.

1997, 1996, 1995: Birthday barbecues with volleyball, squirting water bottles, and lots of video games. It might have been at one of those parties that people tied Katie Ryan to a pole in my basement, but I had a lot of parties then so I'm not sure. I also remember repeatedly playing R. Kelly's "I Like The Crotch on You" because we thought it was hilarious, blissfully ignorant of his future notoriety.

I don't remember much about birthdays before then, but they probably involved some lovely(?) Esprit outfits, biker shorts, and MTV Party to Go CD's. I still think my favorite present ever was my Nintendo in 3rd grade. Duck Hunt seemed so awesome then, but I hated when that mutt would mock me when I'd miss the duck.

And back to our regularly scheduled report: Tuesday night was the Jackhammers game. Our office had one of the deluxe suites for the evening, so Megan, Court and I were living in the lap of luxury while we watched the Jackhammers lose. Though it was neat to be in air conditioning and not have to go buy food (though I still did it anyway, those chicken breast sandwiches are soooo good), I think I prefer to be down in the regular seats and not so separate from the game. Of course we walked around a lot and saw mullets galore. Yes, pictures were taken. After the game we decided to go over to Alfa's II (why II? I don't get it either, yes, it used to be in another location, but when the Tinder Box jumped across the mall to its new location, it wasn't renamed Tinder II). We saw a man wearing a cowboy hat in the parking lot, which made our listening to Bon Jovi all the more appropriate: "I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride, and I'm wanted (waaaant-ehhhhhd) dead or alive." "Barpet" (bar w/carpet) was crowded, but there weren't a lot of people we knew. There were, on the other hand, a lot of fashion mistakes (ie shiny orange shoes) and a girl that could have been Melanie's twin (we renamed her "Felony"). Courtney recognized a burly bouncer from her high school days and due to the connection, we got free drinks, which is always good. It's time to get back to work and drink some Dasani like it's my birthday, so in the words of the waitresses of Joliet, "Have a good one!"


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Subscribe to
Whiskey Tango: Tales From J-Town!