American Weekend

After spending the week shoveling snow and doing physical therapy, I needed a weekend to relax. I also spent some time glancing at my planner, and realized that I had but three weekends in America left and only one with my friends from Ramsey. So I decided that I needed to have my self a good old, rip-roaring, wet and wild, goddamn AMERICAN WEEKEND.

For our uneducated or perhaps European readers, I will explain briefly what constitutes an AMERICAN WEEKEND

First off, there must be beer. And none of that un-american bullshit like Bud Light with Lime. We're talking about real, quality American beer, like Bud Light without lime, or Heineken or Beck's or something American sounding like that.

Secondly, there must be mediocre corporate chain restaurants. Nothing is more American than a restaurant with identical branches all over the country, which serve crappy food and slowly crush the spirits of their overworked, underpaid employees. Bonus point

Finally, there need to be a healthy amount of poor decisions, embarrassing decisions, and completely irrational. This speaks for itself.

In pursuit of these goals, I set out Friday evening after physical therapy to the premiere corporate chain restaurant in the area: Chili's. Since my other friends bailed, it left me and my buddy Mike alone on a man-date with $150 worth of Brinker International Restaurant gift cards, and dreams of the perfect American Weekend.

Arriving at Chili's we were pleased to encounter lax underage drinking restraints, cheap beer, and a "lively atmosphere." No wonder the Chili's president wrote this franchise a letter praising there hard work in "cornering the market share." This letter was posted on the wall and dated just around the time when the TGI Friday's down the road went out of business. Kudos to Chili's. After sharing a fairly gay amount of food, alcohol, and molten lava cake while awkwardly hitting on our semi-cute waitress, I decided I had healthily checked beer off my list of American Weekend musts, and called it a night. I decided I could use as little more chain restaurant and a lot more poor decisions, though.

With this in mind, we set out with a full crew on Saturday, intent on achieving our American Weekend while simultaneously celebrating my other friend Mike's birthday. After another splendid visit to Chili's we headed to the mall to hit up Dave and Buster's, which wouldn't let us in with their silly rules requiring a 25 year old escort for younger twenty-somethings. (Does this make any sense?) We decided to out-America Dave and Buster's by drinking at first Buffalo Wild Wings and then Lucky Strikes combination bowling alley and trendy bar/lounge.

This turned out to be the perfect location to get trashed and make bad decisions, as cheap jello shots led to my friends (I was designated driving) being generally belligerent. I don't know what compels people to blindly assault car doors, shout racist comments at passersby, and cut their hands while punching a dippin dots vending machine, but I assume it has something to do with alcohol. At the conclusion of the night, it was clear we had completed an American Weekend. Throw in some sweet football victories (J E T S) and you have a solid weekend to work with before France.

Coming Soon: I will be blogging on the train rides to and from Williamsburg. On the way there, I will be previewing the weekend, and the Paris semester in general, and on the way back I will be recapping the weekend and offering my final thoughts on the final preparations and anticipations of my trip.

I did not and will not proofread.