The First Time is the Best

The Angry Midget and I dreamed of it for at least the past two or three years. Sometimes it felt just like my fantasy about being seduced by Heather Locklear...I wanted it so badly, but only a tiny part of me believed it would actually become a reality. This past weekend, though, our idea became flesh and dwelt among us. Well, not really flesh, and I don't know if an event can be said to dwell, exactly. I guess I'm just trying to say that it HAPPENED. "Of what does he speak," you ask? I speak of the long anticipated Pub Crawl in the Benson neighborhood's downtown area. It will go down in history as the 1st Annual Historic Benson Pub Crawl and Winter Retreat. Call me biased, but I think it was a night to remember.

There was a time when I thought others would view our dream as puerile and nekulturny (immature and crass). I sent the invitations wondering if I would ultimately find out the answer to the question; What if you threw a pub crawl and nobody showed up? Quite the opposite occurred, however, because we had about 30 "crawlers" of both sexes in a broad age range. Everyone started with enthusiasm, and several have clamored for a repeat of the event in the near future. So while some people would say that I'm just a borderline adolescent for organizing this, some would say I'm brilliant. Well, at least they would say I'm not a borderline adolescent.

Everyone reading this is dying to know what happened, right? The scope of this blog doesn't really allow for all the glorious details. Highlights, though, included 6 local watering holes (not Mick's, though, because they were going to charge us a $5 cover to come in for one drink); pool; darts; shuffleboard; finding the differences between two pictures of naked people (a brilliant idea for a bar game); PBR on tap; snakes in a bar (soon to be a movie released by Paramount); two obtuse semi-literate Benson townies calling some of us the perjorative term for men who sleep with other men (apparently simplybecause we were strangers in "their" bar); those same townies pulling down their pants in front of some of the guys (I don't know, you tell me...); a round for $free.99 from the owner of Marnie's Place (yes, from Marnie herself); Whiskey Drinkin' Woman by Nazareth on the jukebox at The Musette (o.k., maybe that was only a highlight for me); getting to scream at and talk smack to some Dallas fans as the Seahawks whipped the Cowboys (America's Team, my ass) in a Wildcard playoff game; no fights; no arrests for indecent exposure or being drunk in public.

The seven of us who hung in there to the bitter end got a rare treat. We stood on the fringes of a crowd that had more blue collars and red necks than a convention of Blockbuster clerks in the Sahara and watched in amazement as a couldn't-get-on-pitch-if-she-had-a-ladder, rode-hard-put-away-wet lookin', Harley momma in a tight, black, spaghetti-strapped, motorcycle tank top , led the other bar patrons in a rousing karaoke rendition of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA". You know, that song all the most insular right-wingers get so excited and misty-eyed and patriotic over. They talk about how they'd gladly stand up next to you to defend their USA, but, in this particular case at least, they would apparently really rather sit on their asses in a bar and drink cheap beer and judge anyone who doesn't look, think, and act like they do. There was one guy in there in Army BDU's. He's the only one there who had the right to sing that song, in my opinion. Unless, that is, all those other people just enlisted and were killing time while waiting for the bus to come and take them off to basic training. Putting magnetic ribbons on your car doesn't even come close.

I was just feeling proud of having organized and completed a successful crawl.

Tell me you're not praying you can make it to the next one. Will it ever be as good as the first one, though? I guess if it's your first one.