Appetite for Destruction: (Emerald City Epic Part 2)

As expected I woke up with a hangover in a room that felt like a sauna and smelled like stale asshole. After taking about 10 minutes to get out of the top bunk I managed to get a drink of water, some tums, and advil in my system. I went back into my room where I was rooming with Dave. We were the only ones awake because we had both been in different time zones and were two of the only reguarly employed people in the hoard. Dave is working in insurance, and has been taking part in an intensive training program that shipped him out to locations where he congragated with other entry level employees from different field offices across the nation. They train at these sessions for weeks at a time, and get to live a "real world" esque experience where people from all different backgrounds and geographic locations congregate and make fun of each others weird habits and accents. Dave and I concluded that people from the East coast suck and that their values have been skewed from living in overly populated areas for entirely too long. We also concluded that Colarado and Washington are the shit, and thereby we are the shit. Thank you critical thinking and Dr. Tkacz, (I hope he had gastric bypass). I gained a new respect for Dave, he is growing a lot from his current experience. It is stressful to live in hotel rooms and not have any time to relax in a place that you can identify as home.

Due to Dave's unfortunate housing situation, we did not have the wedding invitation on hand and as a result we had no idea where the location or exact time of the wedding. The next 30 minutes we harassed Matt (who for all of his good qualities has never been a morning person in any sense of the phrase) to call the brides younger sister. Matt finally obliged and we were directed to a website of the wedding, which all new weddings seem to have. Satisified to at least know the location of the wedding we split up: Dave and Brett to settle Daves housing situation, the rest of us to get some breakfast and a frame for our card.


Picture five hungover 22 year old guys driving around in a minivan and entering a craft market. To buy a frame for a "card". The word card is not really accurate as it was bascially a collage glorifying our drunken exploits from Freshman year, with a cameo from Samuel L. Jackson of Snakes on a Plane fame. We combined that with a bottle of Dom Perignon wrapped in Pirates of the Carribean wrapping paper as a collective gift. The rest of the afternoon we debated how we were going to actually get to and from the wedding, and if we could get a hotel. It took roughly three hours to determine that we were going to pile into a minivan blast rap music and roll up with a possee of 8 dudes to a wedding where we weren't sure we were actually wanted. Driving this shit show is Michael Brodie (Engineer, metal guitarrist, and self-proclaimedsex feind). We ironed our shit only to find that all of us were wearing essentially the same outfit, as if we didn't look like big enough tools already.


In our fear of showing up late and looking like assholes, we arrived at the wedding almost 45 minutes early. Rather than cluster around akwardly we sat in the nearby arboreum harassing ants, and watching mexican children disrupt the peace. Finally, Andrew Dzjeck, Zach fellow RA and groomsman showed up to invite us inside. From what I can tell Andrew never really had a childhood, and was obsessed with politics from the age of 10. He confirmed this when he said that he got Zach Pots and Pans for his wedding, and told us he was working on a campaign. We followed his advice and waltzed in, trying to not make a scene even though the very sight of us probably brought up a few questions in more than one guests mind.

The wedding started and was beautiful. It was outside running up on this private lake, with Mt. Raineer in the background. There was a handmade wood alter straight out of Meet the Parents, that set the scene for a crystal clear day at sunset. The view was amazing and one that you don't often see in Seattle. Zach was ancy and bouncing around like the dorky child that he is throughout the ceremony. He kept on fidgeting with Andrea's hands, and telling her that he loved her. He was full of the energy that he had the first week of my freshman year, I was really happy and excited for that.

Weddings are great because you get to experience the full spectrum of emotions. People are sad to see friends, and children grow up and leave, but excited loving and happy. It is one of the few times when people are completely able to express their emotions in a public forum. That in turn allows everyone appreciate how beautiful life can be.

The wedding had all the usual rituals, food, toasts, cake cutting, boquet tossing, drinking, dancing and revelry. Zach's uncle's band played the wedding. They were a super cheesy wedding band that wore leopard. It really cramped my dancing mood, but they played a couple songs that made the evening worthwhile. Things began to pick up after a few songs, when a girl named Jessi began to pick me and my friends off to go dancing. In a not too long period of time she began to take a liking to my dancing style and started picking me out of crowds to dance whenever I was resting. I was too busy doing my own drinking to realize this girl was getting hammered, because as the night progressed she started to become more aggressive dancing closer, placing her hands on my ass, and doing other seductive activities. I was just sober enough to realize that this probably wasn't good wedding etiquette to pull away and keep the dancing clean.

That message however did not get to our young protagonist Arthur. For those who do not know RTJ, he is a man of much talk and occassional action. After about 8 drinks Arthur takes himself as a regular Casa Nova, and lets everyone know he is better at getting with the ladies than you. Occassionally Arthur strikes gold with his methods, and on this night he found a young lady in a white summer dress who seemed ripe for the picking (aka she was the drunkest person at the party). RTJ in spite of claiming he was going to get the girl that took a liking to me, took this young lady into his semi-capable arms and put a spell on her. By two dances, RTJ decided he was going to spend the night with this girl. Rather than thinking out the logistics of how he was going to get home and to the Mariners game the following morning, while his friends drove home his parent's mini-van to his house without him. RTJ threw his keys to me so he could satisfy more anamalistic needs. After a bit of making out on and off the dance floor the rest of the crew assembled and decided that they were going to ditch RTJ and leave the wedding.

I begged for RTJ's logistical needs. "We are in his Dad's mini-van for crying out loud? I certainly don't want to drive 40 minutes south to pick him up before the mariner game. Plus who knows how long this thing is going to last?" This was also a selfish attempt to leave my options open with the girl who had taken a liking to me. Over half of the crew agreed to stay and wait for this to pan out. Brett was very much against it, although he was not any more logical, as he pined to go to Seattle and drink at some clubs. Fortunately we stayed because the last few songs were good, including the greatest song to be played at any wedding SHOUT! Some idiot kept on crying for one more song, and after an overextended encore we played the waiting game. Trying to coordinate a caravan to the hotel afterparty. Unfortunately, the maid of honor played a huge cock block on our protagonist and said we could not come. To make matters worse he made RTJ's blacked out love interest deliver the news.

Luckily prior to this we jacked a magnum (huge) bottle of Champagne and we were still ready to party. Obliterated and obnoxious we all made cases for what to do. Fortunately my voice was the loudest, if not most logical and we got my wish to go back to J.J. Mahoney's in Redmond so we could maintain an atmosphere of hanging out with each other, within a reasonable distance of sleeping quarters and our shit. During this whole debate of what to do, RTJ complains about how we were preventing him from getting laid. He tried to drag me in multiple times saying that Me and Irish could have gotten some. It sounded pathetic, like the middle schooler in Dazed and Confused complaining to his friends that he was "getting there". Regardless he didn't stop complaining and we did not stop telling him to shut up and get over it. We listened to a few bad rap songs along the way and finally arrived in Redmond where we cracked our bottle of Champagne and took pulls in the parking lot.


We must have looked like a shit show walking in in full sweaty wedding garb, haggard from drinking and dancing. We were passing out over our ramblings at the bar. We barely finished our two pitchers that we ordered, and then in similar style to last night we dropped off at Jack in the Box to order some munchies. I got two breakfast jacks and smothered them in hot sauce. We got in at about 2:30 and found our separate corners to pass out.

All in all, another great night.