The Beach Saga

I bet you’re wondering where I’ve been, huh? No? Why not? I would’ve thought you’d be concerned? It's been quite some time. Still a no? Fair enough. Well, I’ve been at the beach with some buddies doing absolutely nothing but gallivanting drinking beer, and eating red meat. Patrick-1 Lameness-0. Okay, okay, we're tied at 1. Middle school, am I right?! Speaking of lameness, I did, however, fall asleep on an innertube in the middle of the canal for a few hours, and woke up looking like the Cleveland Indians logo. Meaning I was red, not a racist caricature of a native American. Look, I understand my Irishness, and the proclivity to burn from anything resembling sunlight, but my chest seriously looked  like it got submerged in the vat of acid that the Robocop guy fell in. Not to mention, I felt just like Cru Jones did when he was trying to do land the bmx back flip in Rad (In pain and frustrated FYI). Sure, I was 64% more likely to get Melanoma now, and my liver was functioning like the Pittsburgh Pirates, but man did I have a good time. I hadn’t been out of town in a while, so the relaxation was long overdue. And, by relaxation, I mean completely embodying John Daly letting loose at a Hooters happy hour. 

 I got to picture-esque Galveston, Texas around seven p.m. on Sunday (What day even is it?). We immediately went to the store for our precious rations, and then dropped a couple hundred dollars on just meat and beer, which is both a cliche and still somehow extremely awesome. I don’t know why beer tastes better on vacation, but it most definitely does, and science will back me up on that. Maybe it's the freedom and a cool beach breeze, maybe it's the sweet scent of AIDS soaked seaweed mixed with dead bikers in the gulf, maybe it's Maybelline; I just don't know. I DO know that me and Schmitty ended up getting absolutely hammered and drove the golf cart to the beach at 4:00 a.m. and proceeded to go in and out of the surf like maniacs. We should've absolutely been arrested and/or joined those dead bikers at sea, but we were just two bad kids in their prime refusing to be held back by sobriety and societal standards. We were truly thriving.  Also, I've been trying to make Schmitty stick as a nickname for my buddy Rob, because I liked those commercials, but I continue to be the only one saying it, and frankly people are sick of  me saying it, but I do happen to be a bad kid at the end of the day, so Schmitty it is. Schmitty can back me up on that. 

 We decided it would be a grand idea to start drinking about 11:30 the next morning, and get directly into the AIDS water. HUGE miscalculation on our part. Keep in mind, my skin is normally the color of the breasts of an asexual Puritan, which is kinda redundant, but hey maybe you're redundant, so shut up. Basically extended periods of exposure to maximum sunlight was literally always a terrible idea, but bad-kid is my middle name so I proceeded to lay on an inner tube, and bask. Three hours later, I woke up in the middle of the AIDS canal in an exorbitant amount of pain, and I looked like PETA had caught me wearing a chinchilla coat and dumped red paint all over my body. Given the amount of beers I had consumed up to that point, I wasn't too concerned about the preliminary signs of skin cancer, but I for sure already had it. It's surely a new AIDS/Melanoma hybrid that would probably take my life at any second, and now I completely regreted every decision I had made up until that point. Sun burns SUCK! After hours of being ridiculed for being sun burned and answering to the name, "lobster bisque," which my friends thought was hilarious because they are both retarded and incapable of being funny or clever. I had heard enough from the Carrot Tops. I needed a change of scenery. It was at this point I knew I had to rally and go to the bar just to avoid more ridicule. Lobster bisque... morons. We arrived at a local dive bar named Buck’s around 10 p.m. It was a Monday night (Here I go with the days again), so it was pretty dead, but at the same time it wouldn't have shocked me to see 250 bikers and some beach scum sharing heroin and yelling about minorities. Anyway...

 ...Sorry, I blacked out for a second. How long was I out? Do not answer that. So I was sitting there at the bar incessantly mentioning that I was a famous comedy writer, destined for stardom, because the bartender was hot, but I failed to realize that I was better off introducing myself as I. Have Heroin to a beach criminal like that, but again, I'm a bad kid and I play by a different set of rules. 

Then, this familiar looking guy walked in. He was a very tiny man. He legit looked like he got hit with a shrink ray on half power. I knew him from somewhere, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe I was hallucinating from the AIDS Cancer eating my brain, but I also couldn't care less who it was, so why am I still going on about it? I decided to bless these beach felons with a nice little mix on the juke box which included Jeff Buckley, Pink Floyd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Muppets and some others I don't feel like listing because frankly I don't remember. So, we were minding our business, enjoying the tunes when the bartender comes over and says, “don’t look, but there’s someone kind of famous here that doesn’t like the music," and I'm trying to get tipped, so I'm going to change it and refund you and buy y'all a round or two for the trouble. I was  pretty befuddled. Anyone who doesn’t like Jeff Buckley or SRV should die of Aids Cancer. I still contend that Grace was one of the best albums of the 1990’s and remains one of my all-time favorite records, but I digress. Who do I think I am, Kurt Loder? For the record he actually complained during Texas Flood playing IN THE STATE OF TEXAS! What a fucking bozo! It was at this moment I realized who that "kind of famous" person was; it was none other than ole football time himself, Clay Walker! If there was one rule I lived by as a bad kid, it was never cave in to Clay Walker for any reason. If he hadn't had M.S., I would’ve broken a chair over his little witch doctor shrunken head, and then mockingly sang, “I just want to live until I die, or Then what, whatcha gonna do...” while he writhed in pain and bled profusely. Relax, I was kidding! I'm a bad kid, not a meth crazed biker! I don't support violence nor did I care about his M.S. Why would I care about his Microsoft? 

 At this point my body temperature was at least 150 degrees. I continued to do the prudent thing and take shots like they had aloe in them, and then the bartender made me some special shot for criminals and beach degenerates called the Demotivator, which happened to be my nickname in college. Wait, or was it El Diablo de Verdad? I forget. The shot pretty much hit my diseased body instantly, and I was hammered and happy again, and became demotivated about murdering Clay Walker.  After all, love is the rhythm of two hearts beating... moron.

We made it. Somehow.  I left Galveston Island the next day as an Aids Cancer survivor, and decided that I should return to the beach as much as humanely possible despite the red flags waving all around me like a parade for Yao Ming in China. I felt at home there drunk in the sand with the beach crooks on meth lurking nearby with metal detectors, or barely avoiding getting the first maritime golf cart DUI with Schmitty, the name we all know him by. After all, I'm just a bad kid.