Rockin'. Rollin'. Drinkin'. Word.

It's Wednesday night, which is not only the first day of my week-long vacation from The Newspaper^TM - which employs me - but also the night before I travel to Summerfest in Milwaukee, WI. This huge 10-day music festival is a tradition for me, a yearly reunion of sorts. Not a reunion with people, but a reunion with ridiculous amounts of alcohol and the act of giving inappropriate hand gestures to complete strangers.

So in essence, it's just like the once-a-decade reunions my family holds in Massachusetts. At least that's the way it is on my dad's side of the family. My mom's side of the family tends me be more sober. Sissies.

I wasn't able to go to Summerfest last year, but I went the two years before then. I documented my time at the 2002 Summerfest on this website, and plan to do the same this year. I'll write about tonight's rowdy adventures in Friday's column, and for you loyal members of Daily Ramblings Express, I'll be writing Saturday and Sunday columns from Summerfest as well.

But what is there to write about at Summerfest? Worry not, reader. Every year I've gone, there's been more than enough material. When I attended in 2001, I didn't book a hotel room beforehand, and there was a convention in town. I drove through every bad neighborhood in Milwaukee (they get interesting at 2 am) until I found a $30 Motel Six at 4 am that had no towels, curtains that wouldn't close, and pubic hairs in the bed. During that same week, I ate breakfast at a George Webb Restaurant. If you've never been to a ghetto-style Milwaukee GW Restaurant, here's a user review I found on Citysearch.com that explains it perfectly.

I witnessed an argument over a table. The patrons are ethnically diverse and are a motley bunch comprised of persons somewhere between lower class to homeless.

The difference between the reviewer and I is that I like that sort of atmosphere. Under "pros and cons", the same reviewer listed "smell" as a con. I'm not sure if he was referring to the homeless customers, the ghetto waitresses, or the food. When I ate there, the cooks and waitresses were hollering at each other, saying things like, "Hey motherfucker, are those eggs ready yet?" and "Bitch, don't fuck with me! These motherfuckin' eggs will be ready when I tell you they're motherfuckin' done! Don't make me fuck you up, bitch!" It was hilarious. I tipped well.

Here's some other past highlights, taken from my 2002 Summerfest columns on this website:

The Indigo Girls:
They're just fucking terrible. They sound as if they're giving birth throughout every song. High-pitched, annoying and long drawn-out girl power screams. God, I think a woman giving birth nearby would have made less noise. I started to learn how bad it really was when I saw a bunch of guys vomiting against a wall, and realized that they hadn't even been drinking. There was a militant-style girl who was looking at me rather impatiently as I stood there drinking my beer. This was probably because I was making vomiting noises and asking random people walking by to kill me.

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried:
Gilbert Gottfried came on stage at 9 p.m., drunker than a high school girl at a frat party. He was so drunk he couldn't even remember any of his jokes. He told a few lame knock-knock types that bombed, and then began singing obscure love songs from the 1950s. He didn't sing the songs with his normal annoying voice, he wobbled and mumbled the songs like an old drunk sitting underneath a highway bridge with an empty bottle of whiskey. At the start of the show, the place was packed. By the end, I was one of 20 people left. They had to bring in extra security in the last five minutes, because the 20 people left were throwing so much stuff at Gottfried that it was getting dangerous.

A foreign convenience store worker:
I went back to my hotel in the downtown area, stopping by a convenience store first. The man working the counter spoke very little english. When two young girls in tight clothing bought something, he hit on them in jittered english. It was rather funny. "You . . . how old you? Seven . . . teen? You look . . . twenty. Very . . . mature. You turn around for me now? (He stares at her ass as she's turning around) Yes . . . you . . . very nice. You come back again . . . yes?" I can't really talk crap about the foreign guy, though . . . I was staring at her ass as she turned around, too.

An interesting conversation:
I had an interesting conversation in the elevator at 12:30 am. A man who I didn't catch the name of told me an interesting story. "Man, what are you, 23?," asked the random weirdo. "Man, back when I was 23, you could get it on with girls with no strings attached. Now, things are different. Now you have to buy them dinner and take them to the movies and all that sh*t." Boy, I sure hate it when I have to take a girl to the movies before I engage in twisted, kinky sex with her.

A break dancing 10-year-old:
At one point, a 10 year-old kid walked up to the circle of people. There were two reasons why I noticed this kid. Number one, it was one in the morning and there were no parents in sight, and number two, this little munchkin could break dance like a son of a bitch. He was spinning, flipping and schooling every other break dancer there, some of them twice his age.The girls were all over him. They were leaving their boyfriends and going up to hug this kid. About three different girls gave him the "If you were a few years older" speech.

Rate column 5 - Great 4 - Good 3 - Average 2 - Poor 1 - Awful

Reader Comments

page:   1

Db      Dec 31, 1969 • 4:00pm   That is hillarious. I\'ve seen a few of those young breakers and they are ridiculous. So good and so smooth...it\'s amazing they can do that so young. Katers      Dec 31, 1969 • 4:00pm   Jesus Christ, between your natural rowdiness and the general nature of drunk Summerfest patrons, I\'m gonna be dead by the time this weekend is over! Paul Ryan      Dec 31, 1969 • 4:00pm   It was from 2002, and no, they just let me vomit and leave. erin      Dec 31, 1969 • 4:00pm   I thought the indigo girls broke up... Did they make you sign a petition about Indian reservations????

page:   1