Beerfest!

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I’m late again!  I try to post these on Sundays but that has obviously not been the case the last couple weeks… I can only imagine the havoc that is wreaking on my poor mother.  I am still alive and I would even say I am well!

Unfortunately for all of us I didn’t do much of anything this week.  FORTUNATELY for everybody this weekend I went to a beerfest!  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here… on Wednesday we actually saw the new Hunger Games movie and it was pretty good.  It was pretty crazy that Phillip Seymour Hoffman died during the filming of that movie.  I kind of forgot until about halfway through the movie but yeah - overall pretty good movie!

So yeah, that was pretty much everything that happened all week.  Then Saturday came along!  Carissa had found out about this beer fest (called Brew Ho Ho) from some people that she met doing yogurt classes.  We saw the flyer and were immediately even more pumped because there was a band slated to play at the event and that band was none other than Reel Big Fish (you may recognize the name from when you were in middle school - yeah they still play music and yeah its still great!)

So Saturday morning I put on my best beerfest attire and we ordered an Uber to bring us to the Phoenix club in Anaheim, CA. 

Jeff in his beerfest best.

The event was from noon to 4pm and when we arrived casually late around 12:10 the line was not nearly as long as we would have expected, probably only 30-40 people.  So we jumped in line and as we approached the front near the gates we spotted little Johnny Christmas! (also known as John Christianson or John ChrisHanson - the trumpet player for Reel Big Fish).  One of the guys at the gate was giving him the business because he wasn’t able to immediately prove that he was in the band… even though he arrived with two trumpets.  One guy was like “artist entry is around the corner, you have to keep going to the next gate” guy number two was like “just let him in” so guy number one said “do you have any ID or some way of proving you're in the band?” (again… he showed up with two trumpets AND me and Carissa recognized him and were talking to him about being in the band right before this line of questioning started) Johnny Christmas stated again that he had two trumpets and guy number 2 said “dude, just let him in.”  after about 2 minutes of guy one taking his job very seriously he finally cracked and let Johnny through the door - saving the concert for people everywhere!

So we made it inside the Brew Ho Ho area to find that it was everything we could have imagined!  There were beer stands everywhere serving the highest quality adult beverages on this side of the Mississippi!  We obviously started out by making sure we wafted in to get the sweet scent of each brew and then took a small taste before spitting out and grading each beverage in our homemade beer ranking portfolios… and by that I mean I challenged myself to consume as many beers as fast as I can because there’s nothing worse than the first 10 minutes of beerfest when you’re sober.  So we walked around the inside area for a while before making it to the outside area of beerfest where there were even more stands.  We wandered around noting that the stands with short lines usually had terrible beer and the ones with long lines had the best beers!  At one point we also came across this storm trooper and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this guy who had a much better “meeting a storm trooper” reaction than I did.

After about an hour or so of wandering and trying out some beers we wandered to the other side of the beerfest where there was (you guessed it…) more beer!  But what you DIDN’T guess was that inside of a small building within the confines of this wonderful beerfest was (wait for it…) a shooting range!  Nothing too fancy here… only pellet guns.  But the fact remains, they were having a drunken sharpshooting contest to benefit the same charity as the beerfest (Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County… take note BBBSOS).  Targets were $2 so Carissa and I each got one and although I turned mine in to be scored against the judge’s will I did not win.  Carissa was smart and kept hers as a souvenir.  I got all three shots inside the black center of the target (don’t be too impressed it was only like 20 feet away... and I don't mean a bullseye, I mean I hit the main target) but couldn’t bring home the trophy.

So after we shot we went back outside and got a couple more beers (I think you’re probably getting the idea here) and went to the food trucks they had onsite.  Carissa got a burger I think and I got some tacos I think and both were delicious in their own right.  After we ate we made our way over to the outdoor stage right as the sound check was finishing up.  To our delight and as advertised Reel Big Fish started playing!  As they began to play the crowd got bigger and that’s where a man and a shirt arrived that would change the course of our night.  Now I thought I was wearing a cool shirt to beerfest but this guy totally had me beat.

As you may or may not be able to tell - that is Will Smith (in his Fresh Prince days) surrounded by awesome 80s geometry as well as cassette tapes and those big brick cell phones (or as I call them - Zach Morris Specials).  So the concert continued, Carissa and I screamed our little hearts out and occasionally made a trip over to the nearby stands to get some refills before coming back and screaming more.  As the concert finished up we began talking to this glorious shirted wonder and the friends he came with.

So we got to talking with this group of people and found out that most of them worked for Blizzard (the video game company that I sold a good portion of my childhood to) and that they were going out.  Not only did they invite us to hang out with them I believe the word offended may have been thrown around if we had backed out… either way when you meet a group of people like that at a beerfest you’re invested in hanging out.  So we Ubered to a local brewery to keep the party rolling and after Carissa had spilled about 3 beers we decided to have three of them who were willing come over to play some rock band.

It’s around this point in the day that the timing of everything starts to get fuzzy… I know beerfest was over at 4 and I know from the Uber receipt that we all got to our apartment around 7ish.  I don’t think I paid for the Uber from our apartment back to their apartment but what I DO know is that I skipped the important detail of their apartment having a hot tub.  So we obviously wanted to go hot tubbin’ with these complete strangers.  We got another Uber from our place to their place with bathing suits in hand to go enjoy this hot tub.  We were told that the hot tub had a closing time but that they had gone in after hours before.  That turned out to be false.

Sooooo we got to their apartment and all changed for some good ol’ fashioned hot tubbin’.  We jumped the fence to where the hot tub was and to our unfortunate surprise the hot tub was not hot.  It was actually downright cold (probably not actually cold, probably like in the low 80s but that’s not what you want when you’re ready for a nice hot tub).  Heartbroken and dry as could be the five of us walked back to their apartment with even odder plans in mind.  Being that we were pretty much on hour 9 or 10 of drinking we all decided it would be a good idea to go in the bath tub with hot water since we couldn’t do a real hot tub experience.  So four of us all got in the bathtub together (bathing suits still on) and tried for about 30 minutes to find a way for us to fit comfortably (it didn’t happen).  After that time we just gave up and decided to go watch some TV.  I really have no idea what time it was at this point because from the time we left beerfest we thought it was like 9pm when it was 4pm so we were all still just hanging out watching some TV and talking about whatever crossed our minds.

Again, from an Uber receipt I can tell you that we left their apartment at 12:45 and arrived back at our place shortly after 1am.  I believe we ate pizza and I think I drank too much of their beer (if you’re reading this I probably owe you a six pack).  When we left our apartment at around 11:45am we had no way of knowing the recklessness that would ensue but overall I believe a good time was had by all!

It is Tuesday now and I haven’t really done anything big this week yet but Carissa’s mom and Grandma are coming to visit Thursday of this week so we may have some stories from the weekend of entertaining to jive about!  As always, have a good week and may your poops be plentiful!