Hello again!

Let's just start here:  I'm dehydrated.  Damn dehydrated.  At some point this week, I plan on being normally hydrated again but until that point...christ I'm dehydrated.

Holy hannah, New Orleans is fun.

The Big Easy...that's where I've been for the last few days and that's why I haven't been blogging like a good little blogger.  I would have alerted my stunningly good-looking readership of nine but I didn't want some of the seedier sides of said readership--I'm looking at you, Mary Kate--to take advantage of my vacation and rob my condo blind whilst I was away.  She probably would have left me only with a camera and a toothbrush, for whatever reason.

"What kind of sick bitch takes the ice cube trays out of the freezer?"

Anyhow, my gloriously beautiful wife and I traveled down south for a week to visit her Father and Step-Mother, take in the sites and consume entirely too much alcohol.  Here's some stuff that happened:

Day 1:  We arrived in New Orleans, ate at Sonic about 5 minutes after we left Enterprise Rent-a-Car (Helllllllloooooooooo Frito Burrito!) and made our way to her friend Kendra's house.  Kendra is a cool cat who was in our wedding and has a lovely apartment not too far from the Tulane campus.  She took us out to a proper deep-fried NOLA dinner, we had a few beers and then we went to what amounts to a state fair:  Gretna Fest.

Gretna, apparently, is a suburb of New Orleans and--from what I could tell--is pretty much Tulsa with a river.

Wanna go?  No?  I don't blame you.

All of the white trash fixin's for a good state fair were present and accounted for:  Guys in Harley t-shirts?  Check.  Women who shouldn't be wearing tube tops?  Double check.  Deep fried things you wouldn't think to deep fry?  I ate deep friend brownies.  Coors Light?  Oh hell yeah.  Arrests?  We witnessed many.  What's left of Lynyrd Skynyrd?  Can't you smell that smell?

 Hint:  It's either you guys or Katrina.  What?  Too soon? 

To be fair, we couldn't actually see Skynyrd...they were playing on the other side of the levee and there was an enormous crowd.  Misery loves company, I guess.  But we sat in the grass on the far side of the levee and took in their musical genius.  In a word, the whole night was "awesome".  I will admit that sometimes I miss the hilarity of Tulsa so it was super-fun to go to a festival that celebrated all that is white trash.  Also, I don't know if AC/DC has, like, a house in Gretna or something but I saw soooooo many people sporting black AC/DC shirts.  Odd.

I was the designated driver that night so it was promised that we would go balls to the wall the next night in the French Quarter.   And that we did.  We headed down to the quarter to watch the Saints game the next afternoon and I met up with an old buddy from Benet where we proceeded to have many, many beers before getting one of those godforsaken Hurricanes (or two?  Maybe three?  I dunno) and roaming around the quarter for the rest of the night.  We ended up at an absinthe bar and closed the place out with the bartender, the bouncer and this rather strange couple from Chicago.  This is where the night got weird.

The guy actually owns a goth corset company.  I don't know if you know anything about me but when there is a dude who owns a corset company in the room, I talk to that guy. 

Pictured:  Hawtness

And yes, that was the most PG-13 picture of a chick in a corset I could find.  Although, when you google "Gothic Corset" many, many terrifying pictures come up.  Like this:

Oh, dear god.  

And this:

 Why?  Why, god, WHY?!?!

So I'm talking to this dude and his wife who own a gothic corset company.  Honestly, I don't know how or why the subject came up but we started talking about Vlad the Impaler.  As his name might imply, Vlad Tepes was not a nice guy.  He ruled a section of Europe in the 1400's then known as Wallachia and was constantly at war with the Ottoman Empire.  As his name suggests, his favorite mode of torture was to impale a person on a (text far to awful to type) by inserting (text far too awful to type) while it slowly (text far too awful to type) until it emerged (text far too awful to type).  Also--and I cannot stress this enough--he was Bram Stoker's inspiration for freaking Dracula.  Clearly, he was just a super, super good guy.

Vlad "Giggles" Tepes

1431–1476

Anyhow, my new gothic alterna-friend at the absinthe bar was trying to convince me that Vlad the Impaler was anything other than a terrible human being.  He was passionate about it.  Like he had written his gothic dissertation on the guy or something.  At this point in my evening, I was (super) drunk on beer/hurricane/vodka/absinthe/etc and I was ready to fight him tooth and nail on the subject.

As you may well know, I am a bit of a history buff who has some knowledge of the serial killer because I read far to many books on the subject.  I recommend Colin Wilson's The Mammoth Book of the History of Murder if you want a fabulously-entertaining-while-being-equally-and-sufficiently-horrific bathroom book for your loved ones this Christmas.  While he is not technically a serial killer--"asshole" is the better term--within that book, you will find a nice little section on our good friend Vlad. 

My corset creating bar-mate kept going on and on about why Vlad was such an important leader but he oddly refused to acknowledge all the horrible things Vlad did, suggesting they were "media creations"...as if CNN and Fox News have an ongoing smear campaign against Vlad Tepes.  To put this in a modern historical context, it would be like if a guy insisted Adolf Hitler is viewed unfairly solely because he built the autobahn.  He kept saying things like "He reinvigorated the local economy!" and "He created a set of laws that is still used there today!"  All I kept saying was "His name was Vlad the fucking Impaler." 

No, I assure you my arguments were more intelligent and eloquent than that.  Although the words above did spill out of my alcohol blessed mouth more than a few times.  The moral of the story?  I guess it's this:  never get into a heated argument about a guy named Vlad the Impaler at an absinthe bar in the French Quarter called "Tony Seville's Pirates Alley Cafe" with a guy who owns a local gothic corset company and is sporting the greasy pony-tail-and-goatee-combo of a virgin Dungeons and Dragons player.

Let that be a lesson to you.

____________________________________________

Tomorrow:  More trips to Sonic!  I stayed at a haunted hotel!  I went on an "Obituary Crawl"!  I'm likely still dehydrated!

Tupid

I wouldn't call myself a stupid man.  Sure, I like to pretend I'm ignorant of the world swirling around me but the reality is, I know some stuff.  My knowledge is based on books, the interwebs and good old fashion thinking and common sense.  It also helps to have graduated from two accredited scholastic institutions, even if one of them was in Oklahoma.  Finally--and I cannot recommend this enough--I also married the smartest person I know. 

Add all of the above together and you don't get a guy that any reasonable person would refer to as "flighty".  Why do I bring this up, you may ask? 

Well, as many of you know, I am a tremendous fan of Fightin' Irish football. 

Pictured here, fumbling as usual.

Many of you would see this alone as a reason to question my intelligence.  But love 'em I do.  I'm always on the lookout for new folks to add to my ticketing harem...that is to say, new people with connections to Notre Dame tickets.  Until this past year, it had somehow escaped my attention that my good friend Mary Kate had a father who is a season ticket holder.  Touch down Jesus Hopping Christ!  How on earth did I not know this? 

Lucky for me, I was able to get my hands on 4 tickets for the upcoming Michigan State vs. Notre Dame game.  Score!  All I had to do was send her Father a check for $320 for the face value of the tickets.  This is simple transaction that has been done thousands upon thousands of times featuring passage of Irish tickets between interested parties.  How could I mess this up?

Well, her Dad's name is "Michael".  And when I wrote the check, apparently I was on autopilot because in the "Pay to the order of" slot, I successfully wrote "Michael" but for whatever reason continued on with "Jacklich".  I then wrote a humorous thank you note on a post-it, sealed the envelope and mailed it to the correct Michael in Hinsdale, IL.

To recap:  I wrote a check to myself for Notre Dame tickets and sent it to the ticket seller.

Now, Mary Kate's Father isn't the biggest fan of Mike Jacklich to begin with.  One of his daughters once threw up on my shoes on the mean streets of Chicago while she was very underage.  And please understand, this was not by a long shot the worst transgression that involved me and one of his daughters.  I was, after all, partially responsible for Mary Kate's arrest at Goonfest.

This also might have not been the worst transgression involving one of his daughters.

Apparently, he didn't notice the mistake until he had taken time from his day to go to the bank and attempt to deposit the check.  Sigh. 

As my Godmother would say, "Tupid, Tupid, Tupid!"

With the possible exception of her racist, soul-crushing harpy of an older sister, Mary Kate's family is super nice, full of Irish levity and warmth.  I don't want these people to think I'm stupid.  They already look at me with an arched-eyebrow due to my younger transgressions. 

So I did the best I could, under the circumstances, and sent her parents a note along with a new, correctly written check:

Mr. and Mrs. Collins,

Allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Mike Jacklich.  Friend of Mary Kate, proud graduate of Benet Academy, eternally suffering Notre Dame fan and a dumbass. 

I have no earthly idea why I would write a check to myself for the Notre Dame tickets and send it to you.  Confusion?  Excitement?  A gushing head wound?  I’ve got nothing.

Please accept my apologies for the confusion and subsequent hilarity that must have ensued around your dinner table upon your return from the bank.  Perhaps I should have taken my Mother’s advice and continued my higher education at the Taco Bell University of Book Learnin’ from which I received my bachelor’s degree.

Sincerely,

Michael Jacklich

Exhaust, meat and glorious, glorious smashing

I've stated many times over that the number one thing I miss about college is waking up specifically to drink.  In my fraternity days, on the morning of one of our parties, we would wake up at 8am for an event called "Drivers and Donuts".  We would set up for the party that A.M. and eat donuts and drink screwdrivers.  Thus allowing the collegiate overachiever to get drunk twice in one day.  Three times if Rum Fest happened to fall later that afternoon.

I don't often get the opportunity anymore to wake up and pound beverages; Opening Day is my only remaining event that requires morning drinking.  However, I still seek out events where I can--at the very least--drink all day.  Which brings me to this past Saturday's spectacle, the "World Famous Figure 8 Trailer Race" in Rockford, Illinois. 

The trailer race is exactly as it sounds.  Well, not exactly...it's also a demolition derby.  What it boils down to is an all day event at the Rockford Speedway but most of the day is a series of short-track, NASCAR-style races.  We tend to wait until the last possible moment to enter the stadium since I have absolutely no interest in NASCAR.  Why people pay their hard earned money to sit in the sun and--as George Carlin once said--watch redneck jerk-offs drive 500 miles in a circle is beyond me.  After these races, roughly 20 yahoos who have been building and modifying their shitty trucks for the past year, pull onto the race track with the intention of destroying every other vehicle in sight.  This part of the event is very white trash.  This part of the event is also a ridiculous amount of fun.

The rules are simple:  a hillbilly enters the race with a car/truck/jeep and attaches a car/boat/camper to his vehicle via trailer.  Said hillbilly then drives around trying to destroy every other trailer on the track until one hillbilly with a trailer remains.  You can stay in the race as long as your vehicle is drivable-ish and still retains the trailer.  And did I mention they drive in a figure 8?  Words cannot adequately express the mayhem that is unleashed upon the track.  Hopefully this video will do the trick:

My friends Mary Kate "Perpetually Pregnant" Terberg and her husband Dirk host the event.  Apparently, Dirk and his friends have been coming to to the Rockford Speedway for the race the last 11 years.  And boy do they go all-out.  They're the 1st to arrive in the parking lot, they stake a tent and skull-and-crossbones flag near the beer and proceed to drink for the next 8-10 hours.  This year, they had pulled pork catered and grilled all sorts of delicious, delicious meats.  At the chef's suggestion, I piled a mountain of pulled pork on top of my cheeseburger and now have a new favorite way to destroy myself from within. 

 Proud sponsor of the 2011 World Famous Figure 8 Trailer Race

As the title of this post indicates, the race was glorious.  I was surrounded by good friends, good meat and some weird rodents that filled the parking lot and increasingly baffled our party as we consumed more booze.  We ate, played catch, mocked the trash and peed in a field (dudes only).  We smuggled in beers, watched 45 painful minutes of NASCAR races and ate some oddly good fried cheese from the Rockford Speedway.  And we watched 20 rednecks with names like "Spark Plug" and "Whitey" and "Caterpiller Miller" destroy each others vehicles in a truly American example of overzealous waste and fury.

We will, of course, return next year. 

USA!  USA!