Beer Week: Meet the Drunken Idiot

At Union College every year, they have this thing called "Springfest." Now, I'm sure these types of events aren't unique to my small, upstate University, but it was fun in its own right.

At the time, I had been writing for the school newspaper for over a year. Mostly, they had me cover bands and concerts (I was also on the executive board of the radio station at the time, although I hadn't yet made it to General Manager), so Springfest was a logical beat for me.

Our headliner that year was the Pat McGee band. Maybe some of you have heard of them, maybe some haven't. I really haven't been following them lately, so I couldn't even tell you if they exist anymore, but at the time they were a solid act at a college show.

Festivities started at 11 AM, which meant one of my roomates and I got up at 10:30 and started work on two 1.75 liter bottles of "Senator's Club" vodka. If you've never heard of that particular brand, it comes in a plastic bottle, if that tells you anything. By 11:30, we were loaded, so we decided to go down and check out the concert-- but not before bringing some mixed drinks in plastic containers.

At the time, the policy was that you could bring closed containers, but not within about 100 feet of the stage. They had a separate area roped off for "non-drunkies." Security was very laissez-faire back in those days. They've sinced tightened it. Pussies.

So we continued to booze. At around 2, my roomate puked all over the flagpole, so he went to go sleep it off. Me, I stayed. I stayed a while too, now that I had two mixed drink containers which were both very much full, and a heavy buzz that wasn't going away anytime soon -- after all, I hadn't eaten anything that day.

When the headliners came, I was done. I enjoyed myself... I think... and I wasn't ready to leave or anything, I just mean that I was drunk, hammered, plastered, you name it. Done. Just done. When the end was nearing (noise ordinance, they had to be off the stage by dark), I was approached by the editor of the newspaper, and between her and myself, the conversation went a little like this:

Her: So... ready to do this interview?
Me: Yyyyeeppp.
Her: You sure? You seem a little...
Me: No... no... well... yeah... maybe a lidddle. I cannn doit though.
Her: How? Did you bring a pen? Paper? Do you even know what you're gonna ask?
Me: Shherrr, I'll just wing it. I'll remember.
Her: Yeah... well... I'm going to have Becky here do the interview.
Me: Shit, really? That sucks.
Her: Go have fun. You're drunk.
Me (to Becky): I'm really usually not usually like this... usually. I swear.

At which point, I believe, I fell over. The conversation was done.

I kept my staff writer job for another year after that, when another incident not involving alcohol precluded any future journalistic endeavors, and strangely enough everybody was happy-- the editor found a more willing writer, the eventual writer was obsessed with the band, I made it to 7 something in the morning (20 hours-- I don't remember the rest of the day after that conversation, or I'd tell more), and my roomate hibernated until class Monday morning.

So you see, it was all a happy ending after all. No negative repercussions. No arrests. No breakups. No violence. It's times like these I wish I could just buy the world a beer. Or twelve. Happy Beer Week, everybody.

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