moustache rides

America, short of stating the obvious, is one of my favorite places in the universe. There’s quite a few things I love about America—I would say a good chunk of those things currently revolve around James Brown, Tom Petty, Sly Stone and all members of Kool and the Gang…

BUT! There’s more to it than that.

I love that in America New Balance sneakers are as popular as they are. I love that when you go to Starbucks, should the situation require a gallon of coffee, there is a size that accommodates such a desire. I love the idea of southern hospitality. I love that you really don’t find people wearing khaki pants as frequently as you do in America. I love Budweiser (this American fact is in jeopardy, as a Belgian conglomerate now owns my champion brand. Is it now un-American to drink Budweiser? Fuck). Hell, I love the word AMERICANA. I love American truck stops. I love legends like Kit Carson—troubadour of the western frontier.

Clearly there’s a lot to enjoy here.

Preference and penchant are very hard topics. With me it’s very hard for me to state a clean concise favorite. There are actually only two or three areas of my personal taste where I am able to distinctly proclaim a number one favorite. The first area of favorites is breakfast. My favorite breakfast food is easily biscuits and gravy. No questions asked. The second category where I can easily give you a favorite is with music. Every year I have no problem proclaiming my favorite album of the year. Everything else remains difficult, most of the time, to state concise favorites in general categories over time. Things change, places change, situations change and thus a new favorite for each category is inevitable.

Biscuits and gravy, however, are ALWAYS good and ALWAYS the best breakfast option. This is why it is easy for me to declare such a personal fact. But I mean other areas are extremely hard.

Favorite city in America? Favorite of the four seasons? Best magazine to read on an airplane? Favorite ice cream? Favorite article of clothing? On and on.. All of these areas are nearly impossible to state a concise favorite because so many different situations present different penchants. My favorite city in America could be Portland, Oregon—but then again, if it is winter time I prefer to say that Portland Oregon is the armpit of America with its consistent hellfire of falling rain. So the average of that puts it at what--- the 18th best city in America?! All that said, I therefore prefer to put everything in a top three list—of which the items appear in no particular order. They are just simply in my top three and get an equal amount of attention as such.

Favorite city in America? Nashville, Asheville and Louisville. This of course for the time being. This top three list is one that consistently evolves.

Favorite of the four seasons? Fall, Summer and Spring. Jesus, do not get me going on winter. This is probably my favorite top three list because there are only four possible choices to choose from in seasons, therefore the one that doesn’t get chosen is REALLY TERRIBLE. And that is winter in a nutshell. Really, really terrible. And if you live in Northern Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota then winter is FUCKING AWFUL and makes you consider things like jumping off of really, really tall buildings.

Best magazine to read on an airplane? Under the Radar, Ready-Made or The Economist.

Favorite ice cream? Chocolate Peanut Butter, Neaopolitan or Superman.

Favorite article of clothing? A white v-neck t-shirt, a particular pair of cutoff jean shorts that have honestly lived beyond their years at this point (they recently went in to the seamstress for crotch blowout repair number three and overall sixth patching effort) or a pair of loose fitting cotton shorts.

Everything gets easier with top three lists.

So every year one category that consistently nags at me and begs a top three list is favorite holidays. Honestly, this is a tough one seeing as how we have an arsenal of options—all of which imply totally different activities and people involved. Christmas, while you usually acquire a stockpile of new shit, ends up becoming a game of “try to be everywhere doing everything.” Easter I haven’t celebrated in a good long while (actually this is 100% false, just this past April I spent a wonderful Easter in New Orleans with a friend’s family) so I will just ignore it. Things like Colombus Day, Martin Luther King Day or Presidents Day are meaningless because there’s always just a giant question mark declaring whether or not this will be a day off. Then there’s the big kahuna that is Thanksgiving—always a charmer. With no other holiday do your stuff yourself to the point of inflicting pain that is off the charts. This pain then induces you in to comatose-like sleep that involves laying on any conceivable piece of furniture. I mean, you ever notice that? After the family is done eating Thanksgiving dinner, there are people sleeping on the floor, in a chair around the kitchen table, on the arm of the lounge chair, hell maybe in the dog pen at some houses. ANYWHERE. Then everyone wakes up and eats again before going to bed. This is pretty American I think.

Now, recently I have to tell you my beliefs on holidays and top three lists took a U-turn when I wholeheartedly concluded that I can add a clean-cut favorite holiday—this of course adding to my list of categories where I can proclaim a favorite: breakfast foods and music. So bang on the drums, sound the bells, bring out the belly dancers, the petting zoo, a beer tent, fireworks, an arsenal of grillable food—hamburgers and hot dogs preferably, guest appearances including Tom Petty and Chuck Klosterman and a closing ceremony performance by Kool and the Gang doing 15 different renditions of “Get Down On It.”

Yep.

The Fourth of July can officially be declared my favorite holiday. Gone are the days of feverishly wrestling with Thanksgiving and The Fourth of July. Indecision no more. There will be no ties, no top three lists, no situational analysis.

The Fourth of July is hands-down my favorite holiday.

As such, this past Fourth, spent in the heart of Miller Brewing Country while working in town for Milwaukee’s famed Summerfest music festival, would need to be a seamless display of Americana. The whole affair started with a lake house and a pontoon boat on Lake Okauchee just outside of Milwaukee. Let’s be honest, is there anything more American than a lake house and a boat on the water blaring Tom Petty’s “Running Down A Dream”?! As a sidenote, our pontoon didn’t even have a gas guage, speedometer or a fully functional outboard engine let alone a stereo system that could shake a stick at playing Tom Petty over a non-existent loudspeaker. BUT STILL. It was lake house America at it’s best.

Good days always involve fun people. Great days involve occurrences that you never expected. Unbelievable days combine both. This past Fourth of July was unbelievable. It was somewhere around the 29 of June when I realized that all the ingredients were present for something of an amazing celebration—the lake house was there, the boat, the heart of Midwestern America and a Weber charcoal barbeque. It was too good to be true. I sent out a mass text message to all parties interested and I think within about 30 minutes we had unanimously declared that an unbelievable opportunity was present. Friends from all corners of the universe (Australia included, this was no joke) were in for this last minute thrown together celebration. Somehow Mike and I were given the entire Fourth of July off from working and would therefore have no problem selling our livers to the devil for the day. For the week leading up to the holiday, Mike and I had a running notepad titled “THE FOURTH” that we consistently noted down ideas that should be included in the celebration.

Naturally this list turned in to a poster size piece of paper that included thing like beer Olympics, moustache rides, piñata smashing, naked triathlons, pontoon adventures, burger eating competitions, dizzy bat races, Budweiser, mixtapes, cowboy boots, American heroes (Tom Petty, Sly Stone and all members of Kool and the Gang), cutoff t-shirts, plastic lawn chairs, patriotic beer cozies, row boat races and tire swing distance jump competitions. The list was honestly about five times this size, but some of them are unnecessary details.

The day of patriotism started with a trip to the Piggly Wiggly— the grocery store chain that runs rampant in the greater Milwaukee area—with a laundry list of participants, mostly friends from college and days spent in Chicago. We came out with enough food to feed the state of Nebraska, a boom box, ping pong balls, a piñata, approximately 30 mini American flags, two wiffle bats and balls, a keg of beer and more plastic cups than was necessary.

Let the games begin.

Moustache carving was first on the list— a particularly apropos activity given the penchant for American working class males to sport such a fashionable piece of Americana. All of us (including the women) had strategically grown facial hair to a feasible length that would be fitting for a carving session. What resulted was a half dozen solid moustaches resembling the father’s from that motorcycle reality show Orange County Choppers. His handlebar moustache extends approximately eight inches below his upper lip thus making it one of the longest tailed handlebars known to man. And it isn’t wispy in the least; you would have trouble getting a John Deere rider mower through his grizzle. Anyway, about two of the participants had facial hair that was of this caliber. Most didn’t shake a stick at such magnificence. The other half dozen or so were just sad, sad, sad attempts at bringing attention to one of America’s favorite facial tendencies. I happened to be a sad excuse. My moustache simply isn’t at the caliber that it should be. This is something I battle with on an every-other-day basis.

The piñata we purchased at Piggly Wiggly was clearly an attempt at paying homage to our Mexican brethren. It was particularly appropriate because Mike at times looks as though he is Mexican so really we just wanted him to feel comfortable. We stuffed the thing with about 50 pounds of penny candy and Jake even threw in some cigarettes to give a little added incentive to the smokers of the group. All hell broke loose when this thing was demolished open. Fistfights ensued for the lone snickers bar that was inside and I am pretty sure Jake was on his hands and knees looking for the cigarettes in the grass. OK, no fist fights were had, but we did light the discombobulated remains of the poor piñata doggy on fire and ceremoniously threw it in the lake.

The dizzy bat races ended up being catastrophic and I am pretty sure we axed those within a few minutes. Instead we just used the bats to break each others ribs showing that this day can’t just be fun and games. Sacrifice needs to be involved.

OK, kidding again.

The highlight of the day was clearly Hinano’s Challenge—an eating and drinking competition that was derived from a friend’s original idea between he and his brother’s friends. Their competition took place in Venice Beach at a bar called Hinano’s. Each competitor was to run from the starting point (roughly a mile to the bar) drink a pitcher of beer, eat an entire cheeseburger and then run back. My modified version involved no running whatsoever seeing as how my abdomen was still freshly sawed in to. Instead, we had a table set up on the balcony of the lake house armed with a dozen burgers and 24 large glasses of beer. Each competitor was to eat a hamburger and drink two beers in the fastest time possible. The winner of course was me, hence why it was the highlight of the day. My moustache sucked and I got a bunch of bullshit candy out of the piñata, so my landslide victory was very much so deserved. It was a competition amongst boys really and I am pleased to say that I was the gladiator of the operation. I am occasionally worthless in beer pong, usually can’t do any damage in wiffle ball games, but damn I can eat and drink fast.

I think by the end of the night when all the rest of my coworkers were back at the lake house we were all lighting fireworks and blasting things to smithereens with those little Black Cat sonofabitches. We had a nice collection of bottle rockets that we were attaching things to so they could get catapulted in to flight. The neighbors must have made a side trip to Mexico because they had some exploding shit that far trumped our meager attempts at patriotism. I am reasonably sure that the blasts coming from their yard could have been heard in Seattle. The resulting explosions jarred my ribs as we all stood there joyfully gazing up at the glowing sky. This was both jarring and extremely invigorating.

Once the blasts subsided and it was something like 3 am, everyone was scattered all over the floor of the lake house with moustaches, torn clothing, wounds, drawings on their faces, ketchup stains all over the body, empty bottles strewn about and the smell of sulphur stinged the nostrils from the pyrotechnics spectacle that still lingered in the air from next door.

It was time for me to finally call it a night.

Work the next day was pretty interesting.

I feel like I stayed remarkably on top of my game working that following day for one reason and one reason only: Tom Petty was playing a show that night at the festival and Mike and I saw this as the perfect closing ceremony to the overly American festivities that were still hazily remaining in my memory blocks from the day before. There was only one minor flaw to our plan: the show was sold out and getting in with our vendor credentials was next to impossible. If you were to rate the strictness of entrance and examination procedures by Summerfest employees and personnel, one could easily place them somewhere between Robert Mugabe ‘s Zimbabwe and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. We had about 15 different sets of credentials to get us access to different areas and the level of strictness amongst employees granting access was absolute cutthroat. This made everything difficult over the course of the week we were there, but particularly the whole part about us sneaking in to see Tom Petty. We were going to need a good story.

Right around hour three of working on Tom Petty day, after realizing we were not going to legitimately get in to see the show, Mike and I started to brainstorm. Everything was thrown in to the mix. We tried to sweet talk our way in to some sponsor passes—nothing. We tried to talk to the food service people to see if we could be snuck in hiding in a catering cart. Nope. We spoke with the keg deliveryman to see where there were weak points in security around the perimeter of the amphitheatre. This surveillance proved completely useless as I am pretty sure the keg delivery man was terrified at the intensity that Mike and I were bringing to the table. We were conducting the interview with the man as if we were plotting to blow up the place that night. Nothing. We exited the festival grounds and went to the area where we thought we may have a fighting chance near the employee entrance to the grounds. We chatted up a roadie that was doing the setup for Cheap Trick later that night. He was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a pair of knee high white socks which immediately told me this guy was a winner. We told him what we were trying to do and after about 20 minutes of conversation he pretty much told us there was no way we were going to get in to the Petty show. All Magnum PI efforts said and done, nothing surfaced. We were back at ground zero contemplating climbing a fence that was behind the main stage—this fence had barbed wire.

Awesome.

We continued to walk and brainstorm concocting about 12 different fabricated stories that involved roadies, faux names, Crocs employee passes, free shoes, cash and heart doses of false confidence. With each story we fabricated, we made every effort to make it seem like we knew exactly what we were talking about. In fact, I think we tried to even make the guards that we spoke with feel stupid for not knowing what we were talking about.
Not a single person bit on to any of our intricate ploys. We were told in 25 different ways, by 25 different gate guards to go get stuffed 25 different times. We walked back to the Crocs trailer and sat there almost ready to throw the towel in. We could hear Steve Winwood playing at the amphitheatre, which implied that the show was already underway as he was opening for Petty. This was mildly devastating. There had to be a way though, there just had to be.

There was one corner of the amphitheatre that was opened to employees of Summerfest to use the bathrooms. We had talked to the guard that was stationed there about 4 or 5 times throughout the course of the day but had no success convincing him he should let us in to the show. New light was shed on the situation, however, when a new guard showed up, and this one looked like he had just graduated middle school. Perfect. He appeared supremely unfitting for the verbal ass-kicking that Mike and I were plotting to dish out in an effort to muscle our way through. Mike and I approached the gate with puffed chests and a plotting of bologna and cheese statements to increase our legitimacy. The young fellow looked on completely baffled as we outlined our scenario. It is really mind blowing that the story that actually got us through was telling this pre-pubecant security guard that we had a meeting with our “event team” just around the corner past the gate. Within twenty seconds we had gotten past him silently fist pumping and were well on our way to passing through another set of gates. At just the opportune moment we slipped through the final gate and that’s when Mike and I gave a nod to each other. We held off on full fledged celebration until we were absolutely certain we were going to be strumming our air guitars to “Breakdown.”

We had a stoop on the lawn that night watching Mr. Petty and the Heartbreakers labor away on stage to a crowd of probably 20,000. When they blasted in to “I Won’t Back Down” I immediately had a hard-on thinking about a few weeks prior when I got wheeled in to the butcher’s block to get my midsection destroyed by the scalpal and that song was on in the operating room. Tom Petty, the American legend that he is, was a perfect close to our time in Milwaukee and put the icing on the cake for the overly American celebration in the last 48 hours.

America is a great place and you should like it, too.