during the last weekend in october, jen and i flew down to philadelphia for a couple of reasons. first, in order to celebrate the 25th birthday of mike yetter, the legend himself. i hadn't seen mike since he graduated, so i was looking forward to surprising the pants off him. the second reason was to celebrate the 21st birthday of my little sister, who is a junior at upenn right now, as most of you know. in the face of these two birthdays, it wasn't too hard to make the quick flight down after work on friday. we got to my sister's place around 10pm, and the craziness hit heavy and often throughout the entire weekend. a quick recap:

we decided to go to a place called "la terrasse" to get a little bit of food and possibly ring in my sister's 21st, as she turned over at midnight. unfortunately, the doorman, upon hearing that my sister was turning 21 in about 1 hour and 15 minutes, decided he was going to be a dick and said he couldn't let her in. jen did everyone proud and yelled at the doorman and told me and my sister loudly that we should leave. then jen and my sis stepped out, but there was a twist - in the back of the bar stood colin (straight out of work), steveweiser, and zac(h/k). they were meeting us down here for the night and were quite confused when i walked in and then quickly walked back out. after gathering them, we moved on to the next place. we tried to go into a place called "the white dog", but it was ridiculously packed and kind of confusing to navigate. did i mention zach and steve had been drinking since 6? cuz they were pretty drunk, though i didn't fully recognize it at the time. anyways, we moved on to the next place down this little alley and walked into "new deck".

so new deck was freakin sweet. first off, they have the bar, but they also have a ton of tables everywhere and were clearly serving food. this is clearly a huge win. actually, that was the only reason it was sweet. jen and i were starving and food was a requirement for any place we were going in to. luckily, new deck obliged.

the beauty of philadelphia is the fact that yuengling is on tap pretty much everywhere. i know, yuengling isn't that great and sure, lots of cities on the east coast have it. boston doesn't have it anywhere though, so i was pleased to return to the roots of my junior year experience. new deck of course obligated with america's oldest brewery's beer on tap, which washed down the chicken quesadillas nicely. jen also got a huge order of cheese fries, which were excessive and incredible in every way that cheese fries can be excessive and incredible. i think steve and colin got spinach and artichoke dip, after steve called colin a for liking spinach and artichoke dip. steve's an idiot and i didn't get to try it, but they said it was good.

by the time the food was done, it was about 5 til midnight and time to get my sister her first round of legal drinks. i asked the bartender for something sweet times 6, she obliged with something the bill called a washington apple shot. it tasted sorta like a sour apple jolly rancher - pretty delicious. after reveling in those for a bit and possibly getting a round of drinks in between (jack and coke!), we got car bombs for the table. they did em right with jameson and everything, but my sister did em wrong, leaving half her shot of baileys to congeal with the guinness because she was too damn slow. also, zach finished first and i finished second, and "you coulda been a legend" steveweisa finished 3rd. just sayin.

so we decided to leave around ... 12:30 or 1 or so, and colin kept saying something about a place called "smoke's" where everyone leaves with a girl. he sorta said that about every place though, so i'm not sure if he was being serious or not. anyways, "smoke's" is slang for smokey joe's, where we headed next. we got into some sort of line amongst all the penn kids and community college kids milling around outside the bar. it was kind of sketchy, but it really turned bad after zach and steve walked into the bar, when someone throw a bottle that shattered right in between jen and i and the girls standing in line in front of us. then some yelling and swearing occured between some drunk people that i didn't know, and we decided to ditch that entire scene.

i'm not sure what direction we went next, but we ended up at this place called "blarney stone". it was really, really lowkey and half empty. i think my sister knew some of the guys in there though. i wasn't really paying attention. a few things of note happened here, though:

1) there was another kid named zach who came up to me and introduced himself and then introduced me to my sister, claiming her as his girlfriend. he was dumb and drunk and is not at all my sister's boyfriend.

2) since this was a day or so before halloween, people were out dressed up. one of the guys there that my sister knew was dressed up as the burger king king. you know, the guy in the nfl commercials and the "wake up with the king" commercials. the terrifying grin, etc. there's about 20 levels of hilariousness here, so bear with me. chadego works for the pr firm that is in charge of the burger king "king" ad campaign (and the rest of the bk ad campaigns, i imagine). just earlier that same week, chadego was flipping out to me because i saw a segment on espn where the king was being interviewed (in mockumentary form) and spoke, because "the king is not allowed to speak!!!" it all got cleared up, but the connection between chadego and the king was forever etched in my brain. so anyways, looking at this man who had a mask on (and thus was expressionless) and was clearly very drunk, i could only come up with one thing to say:

"my friend chad invented you. i swear to god, he invented the king."

i was laughing very very hard, but i'm sure the king thought it was because of his costume and not because of what i had just told him. anyways, i told him that a few more times and then moved on to other things. don't worry, the king will return shortly.

at some point i started challenging people to rock-paper-scissors matches. i went 3-3 for the night, which isn't awful at all, especially considering steve pushed for the cowboy-indian/ninja-bear alternative which resulted in zach imitating a gay bear like 3 times that weekend (you can see them in the gallery when i get photos up), as well as at least one of my losses, because i had no idea what the hell was going on. the point is, i felt good about my rps showing, even if the record was mediocre.

an important foreshadowing note: since i somehow bought everyone everything back at new deck, steve insisted on buying me a drink at blarney stone. i asked for johnnie walker black as long as zach drank it with me. zach pussied out, i ended up drinking the jw black neat, which resulted in a prolonged state of drunkness. but zach pussied out. note it.

before the night ended, jen shared with me a classic gem among gems from the aforementioned king. apparently the king decided he wanted to hit on my girlfriend. i didn't see it happen or i would have stepped in. if i had stepped in, i wouldn't have gotten to hear this amazing line, uttered from the king to my girlfriend:
"you can be my dairy queen and we can make lots of little wendys" (note: updated to reflect what was actually said)

that line will never stop being funny, especially considering that i told that guy that my friend invented him and that's how he responded (in a way).

that was night one in philly. coming soon: all of saturday, including the best hypothetical situation i've ever set up in my life, and sunday, in which nothing happens of note.