Yamstein 2012

Last year's Yamstein party was a bit of a mess. That blog was a perfect representation of what can happen when people drink too much. For months, people had been getting excited for this year, with most of them telling me that I was gonna die, as this would be my first Yamstein as a drinker. You may recall that last year's party was about one week before I broke edge. I ensured everyone that I wouldn't be this guy, but hey, you never know...

Heath wanted to go this year, and used it as an excuse to visit us for the week. It was awesome having him up. We did pretty much nothing the entire time he was here other than eat garbage, go to a bunch of disgusting smoke/juggalo shops and hit up a sweet antique store.  

We also got a little weird a few nights:

It was awesome having him up and it made me really wish he still lived up here. Heath, you suck for moving away. Steph too.

So anyway, the night of Yamstein, I decided it was time to finally man up and do what I had been threatening to do for months. 

To go from this hair:

to this (temporarily):

to this:

whoops!

Yup, I had a chop stache (which I shaved all the way down to the skin and made even more ridiculous by cutting down the cheek area) and a disgusting, absolutely horrible mullet. This is what freedom looks like:

MER.CUH.

After the initial shock of everyone laughing at how disgusting I was, people started drinking, Matt started grilling, music was playing, and it was a party. Unfortunately, it looked like this would be our first rained-on Yamstein, but we still got some hoops in before it got too gross:

probably didn't go in

When Ahadi showed up, it was like the meeting of 2 long lost shitbag brothers:

look at josh pointing at them!

This wasn't planned at all. But Al's moustache sure was. 

Here's Matt, psyched to be grilling. He even had a microphone set up. Very professional. 

And here's a blurry picture of Rich, directly after he hung a clock up over Jesse's bed:

Years ago at a Halloween party, Rich knocked a huge clock off the wall. He got endless crap for it. Then a few years later at another Halloween party, he did it again in a different room (or at least that's what some (all) eye witnesses have said). It became a joke that all Rich did at parties was knock clocks off the wall, so Rich said "fuck it, I'm gonna do nothing but hang up clocks at this party." He quietly made the joke several times, and I'm happy to say that he actually did it. I think he hung up 8 clocks in different rooms- all while wearing THE SHIRT. I wish I had been there for more of them and that my camera wasn't taking such awful pictures (this was the camera that was dropped at the Saco River), but I still love that he did this.

Shot o'Clock started up, and we had a plethora of horrible and interesting things to drink, including cola flavored vodka, and the big hit of the party, pickle vodka. It was, in some way, both as gross as you'd expect and also not quite as bad.

Much as things die out and are forgotten about when drinking happens, I think there were only 3 shot o'clocks that night. After that, people did what they wanted.

I had a weird moment that blew my mind because of how small of a world it can be. 2 girls showed up and I swore that I had worked with one of them back at Ebsco Publishing- where I worked before apple, like 7 years ago. Her name was Melanie, and she was a high schooler that would come in after school to sort some of the magazines that my sole full time coworker Talluto and I had cut bindings off of all day (tough job). The idea that I would see a part time high school employee that Talluto and I were stuck working with 7 years ago in Ipswich Mass at a giant drunken mess of a party in New Hampshire had never crossed my mind. But I finally just said to her, "are you who I think you are?" and she replied with pretty much the same question. I guess Matt had hired her sister to do some web work for something and invited her, and Melanie came along too. 

the front facing iphone camera is sooooo bad

We had some awkward forced conversation and I felt good that I looked the way I did. I'm sure she was very impressed at what I had done with myself over the years. I ended it with "alright, I'm gonna circulate- talk to you later" and I literally never saw her again for the whole night. 

I played some beer pong (which I still have only played like 4 times and absolutely love), then as it got darker, it was time for the fireworks. This was easily the most fireworks they have ever have, which I even contributed to.

Heath got ready,

and saluted MERCUH as best as he could during the display:

This wouldn't go off too smoothly though, as at one point, a bunch of fireworks tipped over or misfired or something. All I know is out of nowhere, fireworks shot a billion miles an hour into the beer pong tent, the grilling area, and people. A lot of people were terrified. One got hit. I'm proud to say that I was drunk and having enough fun that while people were screaming in terror, I pretty much responded with "YEAAAAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" and possibly even "MERCUUUUUUUH!"

this is a sort of shot of the chaos

At one point, I turned around and people were running inside in terror. We stayed though- the fireworks were too good and who knew what would happen next.

We were also a little off. Especially Heath:

creep

A bit after the fireworks, I saw that Ralph (who is like 60 with kids) was raging pretty hard. He was super drunk and I started taking pictures of him.

DOOIIEEEEEE

He then ran at me to knock the camera out of my hands:

What happened next was a bit of a blur, but after he did in fact throw my phone away from me, I basically pushed him away a little bit, and he fell, tripping over a cooler, falling through like 2 chairs and landing flat on his ass. He then got up, went after me again, I moved aside again, and he landed on tar. He then grabbed a tiki torch and starting trying to hit empty cups with it, swinging it with all his might and spraying citronella all over everyone, all the while yelling obscenities at the world. I sat on a cooler laughing my ass off at this out of control mess, and apparently when I was laughing my hardest, eyes shut and cackling like a wildman, he took a swing at me, apparently missing my face by inches. I had no idea it ever happened. He dropped the tiki torch and I decided to try my hand at it, but by this time enough people with brains had run over to make us stop, and I wandered off and Ralph stumbled his way towards other people to swear at. I nearly got KTFO and didn't even realize it. Hilarious.  

This best part was apparently he doesn't remember any of this. 

I played more beer pong, getting extremely rowdy and loud with some dude I didn't know as my teammate, playing against 2 other people I didn't know. We won too. You know, part of this is because I'm writing this blog like a month later, but honestly, the other part of it is that I don't quite remember a lot of details about that night- like when things happened, specifics, etc. Time kind of disappeared. I didn't get to the level that people had predicted I would, but I'll admit it- I was pretty messed up. I had a great time. Anyway, at some point, either before or after my fight with Ralph or beer pong, there was another batch of fireworks. They were quite beautiful, especially since there was a circle of people playing with sparklers around a bonfire. I got some sweet pics:

love this one

The dude at the bottom was my beer pong partner. I have no idea who the other people are, but they helped make some sweet pics.

Then people set off Chinese paper lanterns. I never thought Al would be part of such a nice picture:

Then we kind of just sat around the fire and chilled while someone whose name I won't mention out of respect tried to get freaky with Brian, then me, then Josh (even though he'll deny it), and then me again, only to get turned down by everyone. That was interesting.

Scotty and Rich

Heath and Ray

Then Screammask showed up.

Heath has a gimmick on his instagram where he wears a scream mask in weird places. He brought it and we had a million ideas of where he could use it, but this was about it. I like this picture the most since you can barely see him. Terrifying!

And lastly, here's a picture of my arm the next day. Thanks Ralph. 

Yamstein was definitely much more tame this year. Ralph got BLASTED, I was pretty drunk but didn't really make a scene, and I think only 1 guy threw up. Compared to the pukestein/deathstein/sadlivingroomstein of last year, it was a quiet year of good times and thankfully, lots of beer pong. There were less people (last year probably scared people away), and the rain hurt it a bit, but generally it was still a great time and I'm psyched for the tradition to continue next year. Hopefully Heath comes up again, he definitely made the party better. 

I definitely learned that being a bit more sober is probably a better thing. While I was in the zone, everything was amazing and hilarious, but I was pretty bummed out when, for the first time, I suddenly saw that it was 2 in the morning and I had no idea how it had gotten that late, had no idea where people had gone, etc. It was like coming out of tunnel vision to realize that while I remembered everything, there was no time attached to anything and the entire night replayed in my head in fast forward. There's a fine line and this was the first time I really feel like I may have messed up a little by getting too messed up. Live and learn, right? If Yamstein is good for anything other than having a good time, it's good for teaching you life lessons about limits. Can't wait to break through all of them next year!

currently listening to: Knife Party- "Rage Valley"