Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Thrillist Miami - The End of... ME


So its not even noon in Miami and it is 100 degrees outside, and it is humid as a Turkish sweat lodge, which I’ve been in! The pool deck is massive with hundreds if not thousands of chairs, and cabanas and sexy sexy people in their sexy sexy swimsuits… and me.


The palest American ever.

(P.S. Thanks to Nick McGlynn for capturing for the world why I should never ever take my shirt off... ever)

So I got comfortable in the VIP section and started chatting up everybody. There was very loud dancey pop music playing putting people in a good mood so I just danced it up, but quickly realized I was going to burn to a crisp.

So I quickly put some sunblock on.

You put on sun block but you can’t stop sweating so you are just mixing sun block and sweat into a type of baste. So you baste yourself and realize you are so damn hot you have to get in the pool, which is super warm.

So it doesn’t really cool you off it just feels good. A sweaty, bastey, feel good soup of people.

So you are in the pool and you realize, you are thirsty, so you get out and you get a Corona. But as you drink your Corona you start sweating again, so you bring it into the pool. And so that’s how it went for the next 5 hours.

But being in the pool with a Corona is dangerous. I like a little limejuice in my Corona, not a little Chlorine. So I put my Corona in a water bottle.


Problem solved.

The people from Thrillist had brought a beach ball for every single person in the hotel, or at least it seemed as such. I decided to lend my powerful lung capacity to blow some up. After blowing up 1 I realize… I don’t have powerful lung capacity. So I quit that and went back to my Corona.

Something about pushing a beach ball up in the air is like Spanish fly for people looking for a good time. We had a dozen people tossing it up in the air and every 4th hit it would bounce off some strangers head, but we didn’t care. We had numbers! Somewhere between 200 and 300 people were poolside living it up like we had all just escaped from an island, an island of sobriety and no pools, and we were here to live!

Of course I lived a little too hard because I jumped up and tried to swat the beach ball and felt my shoulder pop (quickly) out of and back into its socket. I realized this was going to be painful, so I went and put more Corona in my water bottle.

I also ran out of sun block at some point and went to the hotel gift shop which only had SPF 15. The price? SIXTEEN DOLLARS! Outrageous! I mean shouldn’t there be some sort of “No more than a dollar per SPF” type of rule? But not wanting to burn, I bought it anyway.

Then my new British Vietnamese friend suggested we have a chicken fight against a 30 year old mother of 3 with a crazy slamming body.

I refused. Chicken fights, for those of you who don’t know, are when women decide it would be fun to wrestle each other while sitting on the shoulders of men who are trying not to drown.

I am a HUGE fan of not drowning. I mean I had thus far survived not getting a nosebleed in the pool and I just had a bad feeling that having 2 women fight… above me could end poorly.

So naturally I ended up in one. The BritNamese chick climbed on my shoulders and Mom of 3 climbed on another dude’s. I was almost positive we were done for. I remember thinking

Hmph, I never would have thought I would die in Miami.

I mean a mother of 3 who looked like she did Tae Bo in her sleep versus a tiny BritNamese girl with a very ladylike accent. I thought the fight would end in 2 seconds unless my girl bit the mom’s ear.

So it starts and it is crazy. I have no idea whats going on because I am just trying to keep my balance and the girl on my shoulders and I can’t look up cuz I need to keep track of how close to the water I am so I don’t drown… which I hate.

Thirty seconds later we finally went down and I came up thinking we had lost but it had been a valiant effort.

No. Not so much.

No, BritNamese was locked in battle with Mom of 3 until she took Mom of 3's head and palmed it into the water.

WE WERE CHAMPIONS!

So I celebrated with a Corona. Little did I know that this chicken fight would be the reason I wouldn’t be able to move my shoulders for 2 days. But I didn’t care. More dancing on the pool deck, more dancing in the pool. I was living it up. The crowd was amazing, and everybody was happy.

And that’s when the greatest moment of the weekend happened.

I was doing my nonsense thing in the pool when a girl I hadn’t talked to much came up to me and said;

Girl: Who ARE you?
Rich: Who are YOU?
Girl: Everybody here knows you as the guy who is always having fun.

I laughed, toasted her, and went to get more Corona.

Then the poolside concert happened and things REALLY got into gear. I can’t even really describe what it feels like to be dancing, in a pool, with a drink in your hand, surrounded by beautiful people, and knowing you haven’t spent a DIME to get any of it.



Oh yea did I mention there were Klondike bars? They came out of nowhere and rocked all of our worlds.

But we had to wrap it up and head to dinner.

And I went back to my room and noticed the beginning of the sunburn. But I couldn’t waste time I had to get to dinner on the roof of Red Steakhouse. And I know what you’re wondering.

Rich, this was your last night in Miami! You had only 1 more chance… did you…

You bite your tongue! How dare you question me? YOU of all people, how dare you? You want to know if I did? Of course I did.


I rocked the $#!% out of those white pants!

Boom!

We all were in our Miami best when we got to dinner where we were greeted by a violinist playing the classic hits. Including this piece of awesomeness.




I mean it really doesn’t get much better than that. We went up to dinner on the roof, and we had many drinks, and there was a ridiculous rainstorm which we thought would kill the fun.

And yes we ate, and danced, and drank the night away.  We all looked at each other knowing nothing ever would come close to Hotel Thrillist, the greatest weekend of (almost) all of our lives.


And it's funny, we all got these bracelets that got us in to all of the events. They say I "thrillist logo" Miami. And it's kind of ironic because a chunk of the "I" on mine is missing.



Which makes sense, because I definitely left a piece of myself down there.

The End.

P.S.
And yes, I did get burnt to a crisp anyway.

Damn it.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

THE WHITE PANTS ROCK DUDE! I also like that you cuffed them, giving the full "where the flood at?" look... Glad you had fun in Miami, hope your sunburns all better now!

Joey's Dream Garden said...

Who ARE you??! hahahaha! I really liked that bit, very funny!

Terog said...

That's a keeper: 'The guy who is always having fun.' Not that 'Rich' is a terribly hard name to remember but awesome that in a group that large everyone knew you for something other than loving corn, sunburns, and rocking white pants.

Krysten @ Why Girls Are Weird said...

I am totally telling my hubby about beer in a water bottle. He'll think it's the greatest invention ever created.

However, I don't think I can convince him the same thing of white pants. But you're totally rockin' them!

Stephanie Ann said...

I'm doing a little victory dance right now because I now know that I am not the whitest, non-albino person in the US. Yes!

On the serious side, you rocked those white pants. And in a non-Miami Vice sorta way. Score! Also, the two Jacks (Panama & Daniels) always help with my sunburns.

Tara Rose Stromberg said...

I will admit, I am jealous of all of it: the crystal clear pool, not having to pay a dime, the white pants.

Livin the dream man, livin the dream!

Neurotic Workaholic said...

You look good in the white pants! Not a lot of guys can get away with wearing them. :)
You're so lucky you got to go to Miami. It sounds like it was a lot of fun. Meanwhile, here in Chicago, it's been rainy and cold and people are still wearing jackets, particularly whenever I have days off. Of course, when I have to work, THEN it's nice weather. It'd be awesome to go to Miami where it seems to be nice all the time.

Rebecca said...

WHITE PANTS! YES! Where is the pug!?! haha! I loved the part about "Chicken fights, for those of you who don’t know, are when women decide it would be fun to wrestle each other while sitting on the shoulders of men who are trying not to drown." True - we women tend to forget that time to time.

Glad you had a good time, and way to ROCK those white pants!

Caroline B said...

See, I told you if you drank enough you wouldn't care how pale you are!
Sounds like a blast and thank you for showing us the first outing of the white pants!
Hope the shoulder pain goes away soon - I sympathise, once had my 9 year old son on my shoulders throughout a Guns'n'Roses concert (I am a terrible mother...) and suffered for a week!

Pat said...

Sounds like you had a blast in Miami...at least what you can remember of it!

It doesn't surprise me that you were the funniest guy around..you ARE funny, damn it!

JerseySjov said...

since you're someone who probably needs baby-strength 70-or-80 spf you might want to keep quiet about your "$1 per spf" idea.
meanwhile i'll be sittin pretty with my $15 dolla bottle.

as a tall, sturdy female i feel you on being the chickenfight base. congrats to both of us for not yet drowning in battle.

Anonymous said...

Did you think you were ok, suburn wise...until you had a shower, got ready for the evening and then just started getting more and more pink until but the time you went to bed, you were glowing?

Yeah...done that.

Deanna @ The Unnatural Mother said...

Bowchickawowwow!! Rock the shit out of those pants, go you!

cathysrunning said...

White pants, Miami, free - does it get any better?

Jen said...

Oh. My. GOODNESS! I just caught up on the WHOLE Miami SERIES and I am DYING. You are HILARIOUS. Glad you were the guy that was always having a good time! That's rad. I want to be that guy!

Also, the white pants RULE. Love the shoe choice as well. You did good.

Ha.

Esther Boller said...

Those white pants are AMAZING!!!! And might I just say you have a pretty classy style. I know how you feel about getting sun burnt. I'm a part albino red head and I have put on spf 100 every time I go out in the sun...I'm either moving to Seattle when I grow up or finding a job as a vampire hit man that works for the mafia. I'm thinking the first one's a better choice.

Haha anyway glad you had a great time!

ShineForLife said...

I'd recommend the sunscreen I used to use. Except I'm fairly dark, so I've been extremely lazy about my sunscreen and I think I lost it somewhere in the garage. I mentioned perhaps buying another bottle to my parents, but we don't keep a shopping list in our house, so if you need something, you'd better be able to remember what it is when dad randomly yells "I'm going to Costco what do you need!!??" It took me 5 weeks to sucessfully procure Kleenex.

...I'm sorry about that long tangent. In any case the sunscreen is in a light blue bottle, and I believe it is either SPF 50 or SPF 75. It also dries non-greasy or something.

Oh! I was checking the kitchen drawer to see if the sunscreen would miraculously appear, and I found this: Ocean Potion Dab-On SpotStick. Its contents are liquidy and it's SPF 60.

the ginabean said...

Best. Post. Ever.

Not sure which part was funniest, but I nearly snorted (at work no less!) over this little tidbit: "A sweaty, bastey, feel good soup of people." Sick!

Glad you had a fun time though!

Xo said...

In those white pants you remind me of Allan from the Hangover. Too bad you didn't have a satchel... ;-)

RILEY said...

i put on sunblock this weekend, but i kind of messed up and somehow ended up with a white hand print (ish) on my back, surrounded by lobster red where i wasn't able to reach. and i know it will not go away all summer and i will now have a slap-mark tan line.

the life of a pale white person is HARD.

John Dantzer said...

Hahahahahah. So funny. You are the guy who is always having fun.