Quad Cities Visit (part 2) – August 29th

After we finished up eating, we headed off in search of the Fruit Pie Festival, being hosted by my friend Cthulu at one of his friends’ houses in rural Geneseo, IL. If you didn’t already know, Geneseo is a rural town, so for there to be rural parts of it means it’s EXTRA rural. Every August 31st is International Fruit Pie Day and Cthulu has taken days off of work in past years to deliver Hostess fruit pies to all of his friends at their work places. The guy is insane, but I love him to death. So he holds this Fruit Pie Festival every year around the August 31st date and invites people to bring food and watch movies. It truly is just as odd as it sounds like it might be.

We hit up a local liquor store for some refreshments and hit the road. I bought a bottle of Malbec for HotGirlsMom, since we had been discussing wine earlier that evening. Malbec is one of Gerd and I’s favorite reds and I’m trying to get more people hooked on this stuff. It’s great.

I had gotten directions to the Fruit Pie Festival from Cthulu earlier that day, but they consisted mainly of “turn right at the first major gravel cross road after you pass the curves you’ll see after the Lavender Crest Vineyard.” We drove around for a considerable length of time, backtracking all along the gravel roads and basically getting lost in an area of Illinois without any cell phone reception. Wonderful. We gave up and headed back to the Quad Cities.

Some friends of mine, from a band I used to play in, are moving to Chicago, so they threw their own going away party. I’ve partied with these guys before and I pretty much knew what to expect. I warned EyeHeartPizza and HotGirlsBrother about things they might see and that they might not know anyone there. We also had a signal to leave, involving scratching your left forearm. We grabbed some drinks from the back of the car and rolled in. It was awesome to see these guys again. They didn’t think I’d show up, but I love to shock them. I high fived a bunch of people and made the rounds. EyeHeartPizza started scratching her arm furiously and talking about scabies, and HotGirlsBrother totally ignored her and offered her a beer. Hilarious. Things got weird when these metal guys started crap talking each other about how good they were at chess and D&D. I’m not joking. We snuck out of this party after about 15 minutes. Best cameo appearance ever. (Smallz and I are mastering the art of leaving - it appears to be a lost art in the Twin Cities...) I will say I was very bummed that Jarrod had shaved off his sweet porn mustache before I got to see it.

We headed back to HotGirlsBrother’s parents house to hang out and have some drinks around the fire pit. I would love to go into detail as to everything that went on this evening, but I honestly won’t be able to fit it all into one post. I’m sure there’s a character limit I would exceed. Plus there were a lot of “you just had to be there” moments. I’ll try my best, tough.

We got there and started talking about how much the bottle of wine I bought for HotGirlsMom was. It started about $300 and by the end of the night, the bottle of wine had cost me in the range of $2,400. We poured some glasses of wine for people, mixed some girly drinks, and headed out to the firepit. HotGirlsDad’s friends were out there drinking and laughing it up and we got introduced and talked about the most hilarious stuff. At one point, HotGirlsMom said something that just happened to be a song lyric from way back. Immediately, both HotGirlsDad and TandyKane broke into the same song using the fire-poking stick as a microphone. Hilarious. Then we were talking about the stars, and pointing out constellations and planets and HotGirlsDad bent over and shouted, “I can see Uranus!” We were all a little slap happy, so it was the funniest thing ever.

HotGirlsDad mentioned he'd like to grow his hair out long, and "let his freak flag fly" like Chao is doing. He would call himself "The Silver Fox" - again with the laughter. This all happened after numerous references to my (hidden - even to me) homosexuality. What can I say? I like the girly drinks.

TandyKane and his wife left and HotGirlsMom went back inside since it was a tad chilly outside. HotGirlsDad was calling EyeHeartPizza “mamby pamby” because she drinks coors light and that almost started a fight. Things got seriously crazy then, as the drinks continued. There were so many hilariously wrong conversations that I can’t go into them all. We kept getting shushed from inside the house because we were laughing so hard at various points. For some reason, we started talking about how some old guys are majorly creepy. And HotGirlsDad said his daughter (HotGirl herself) hoped he never became one of those “creepy boner dads.” EyeHeartPizza, HotGirlsBrother, and I all fell on the grass laughing. It took us like 10 minutes to regain composure. It was out of control. So from here forward, HotGirlsDad will now be known as CreepyBonerDad.

We decided CreepyBonerDad needed a theme song, so HotGirlsBrother and I came up with this (what we thought was) hilarious break-down chugs&picksqueals theme songs to a drum beat played on your knees. If that wasn’t hilarious enough, CreepyBonerDad started rapping over the top of it. He would bend over so he had no neck at all and sing into his fire-poking stick like a grizzled old creepy-voiced troll. He busted out a few rhymes and had us laughing. At various points after that, CreepyBonerDad would shout randomly, “…2, 3, 4!” during a non-related conversation and all of us would break into the new theme song without question. It ran like clockwork.

Then he ended one with, and I seriously quote this, “I’m hiding in your closet. I’m sniffing your brassieres.” The scene where we were rolling in the grass was exponentially multiplied and we howled with laughter. Even CreepyBonerDad almost fell into the firepit from laughing so hard. I know it’s not going to be nearly as funny in writing, but my face and sides still hurt today from laughing.

We ended the night waaaay later than we had intended. But seriously, it was the most laughing I’ve done in a really long time. Every time I hang out with HotGirlsBrother’s family, I hear things I never thought I would and it makes me look forward to the net time I can hang out with them. Next time, HotGirlsMom gets a $47,000 bottle of wine!

Top 5 moments from Saturday night’s hilarity
1. CreepyBonerDad was ON tonight
2. Seeing my old bandmates
3. The CreepyBonerDad theme song
4. Having a 45-minute conversation with HotGirlsMom about our various trips to France. I need to go back now!
5. This was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in a really long time

Bottom 5 things
1. Couldn’t find the Fruit Pie Festival
2. Getting lost in Geneseo’s extra-red-neck area without phone reception
3. My face and sides still hurt from laughing
4. Staying up late does not encourage being up early the following morning
5. I got ZERO photos from this event, mostly because most of it took place outside in the pitch blackness