Recovery
Well, another Milwaukee Weekend has come and gone. Similar to last year, it was a terrific success on many levels. For the benefit of Jim, who wasn't able to attend, I'll give an abbreviated blow-by-blow...
Friday Afternoon: Various parties are in-transit to Milwaukee. For my part, the journey begins with a commute with friends Brad and Steve. We stop in Osseo, Wisconsin at a famous little diner called the Norske Nook. They are famous for pie, and boast many championship pie varieties. I go with my usual staple, banana creme. It is, without question, the best banana creme pie I have ever had, with actual and numerous slices of banana sandwiched between layers of decadent yellow filler, topped by a mountain of creme. It seems to expand in my stomach after I eat it, and I am forced to nap the rest of the way to Milwaukee.
Most of the members of the league begin to arrive around the 7:00 hour. We settle in with drinks and tales of ribaldry and high fashion. Charley from Chico, CA, and Ian from Madison are already there. Soon, Chris and Pat from St. Paul arrive, as does Brien from Carbondale, IL. Together with Grant and Craig, who live in Milwaukee, this means that our party is complete, save for Mike L. from DC, and Mike B. and Cliff from the Twin Cities. We don't expect Mike B. and Cliff to arrive till around 1:00 am, when we will all be in high spirits, but Mike L. was supposed to be here by now.
As it turned out, Mike L. wasn't going to make it. Seems he had a bit of a run-in with the guards at the Smithsonian Institute for trying to use an expired ID to get in (even though he was totally on the up-and-up), and one thing led to another, which led to Mike L. being incarcerated in various D.C. jail cells for upwards of 30 hours. Details were sketchy, at best, but we took it for granted that Mike L. was having a nightmarish start to his weekend, and Milwaukee just wasn't going to be in the plans.
Bummer.
However, we steeled our collective resolve and found a Milwaukee watering hole that met our various dietary and drinking needs, and we settled in for a long night of pool and arguments about whether Bill Laimbeer could play in today's NBA. (The answer was "yes", though we nearly all agreed we were happy he was gone.) The bar had what was, to my mind, the best jukebox I have seen in some time. Chris and I played Bad Brains with impunity.
We retired for the evening to Craig's house, and after I dominated the field in a game of Scattergories, we all decided to rest up for our 10:00 am basketball showdown. Considering it was past 3:00 am, that was probably a good idea.
This is what Craig's laundry chute looks like inside, with Pat's head at the bottom. Hey, it was late.
Next morning, we played basketball. Turns out, Cliff and Mike B. from the cities didn't make it in till 5:00 am, due to horrible icy driving conditions that featured many cars in ditches. And yet, they persevered, and not only arrived, but made their 10:00 am tipoff. The games were mostly competitive, and it felt good to run unless your name was Steve.
After ball, we watched the Timberwolves put on a horrific display against the Rockets. The Wolves fans in the league couldn't even offer excuses for the performance. Dreadful.
And then it was Go Time. As Craig, Steve, Charley Brad and I walked to Grant's house to meet up with the rest of the group to go to the Bucks game, a six-block snowball fight broke out. Even though I got hit more than everyone else combined, it might have been the highlight of my weekend. It had been too long since I was in a snowball fight.
The Bucks/Pistons game was a lot of fun. Michael Redd really is more than just a shooter, but the Pistons were just too strong on this night, and Chauncey Billups just kept making the big plays. I adopted a kind of modified Atkins diet while in the box for the game, which pretty much meant I ate whatever the hell I wanted. Eat, eat, eat. And drink, drink. But mostly eat. The sundae bar was really too much after the nachos, pizza, snacks and bratwurst, but how many times are you going to get access to a sundae bar? I couldn't resist its charms.
Tough loss for the Bucks, who just never got over the hump against the Pistons.
You know the two real beauties of having a box at a game? The first is the private bathroom. The second is that after the game is over, there's no hurry to leave. You can just sit in your box and continue to eat and drink and go to the bathroom for up to an hour after the game is over. No fighting traffic, no crowds. Beautiful.
After that, it was more Milwaukee nightlife for us. We ended up at a bar that was really like four bars and a bowling alley put together. We stuck out a little bit in our khakis. I'd like to think it wasn't our age that distinguished us, but who knows? At one point, one of the guys I was playing pool against asked what was up with our group, if we all worked together or something. I said that we were a fantasy basketball league, and their eyes lit up. We talked for a few moments about the NBA, but then one of them just had to bring up the Wolves game that day. Thanks, asshole. Ah, youth. The highlight of the bar was Steve's potential opportunity to "live the dream", as so many of us put that night, of leaving the bar with two willing and able female friends of the group. But, as so many of us who have tried to live the dream can identify with, it was not to be. Whether that was a result of miscommunication, misunderstanding, gentlemanly good taste or cold feet was an open topic of discussion the rest of the weekend.
I tell Steve about my failed attempts to live the dream, while he two-fists it.
After the bar, we ended up at Craig's again, where despite having seen Spinal Tap numerous times, at 4:00 AM in a very clouded state I was still noticing things in it I hadn't ever seen before. Get the new Spinal Tap DVD, with extended commentary from the cast in character. It's like seeing the movie all over again, but different.
Next day, we had lunch, and said our goodbyes. It's always an abrupt end to a weekend of collective debauchery and getting reacquainted, but I suspect we all felt lucky to have our 48 hour respite from our regular lives.
Oh, and Mike L. got out of jail in DC, caught a flight with numerous connections, experienced weather problems, but finally made it into the box Saturday night with 42 seconds left in the game, where he promptly began making up for lost party time in between multiple recountings of his odyssy through the back alleys of our post-911 justice system.
That's dedication.
12:29:00 PM 
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