a weekend with my brothers

Would you like to know what my brothers and I do when we’re not busy interviewing one another? Well then, today is your lucky day, for I shall recap the events of this weekend, which I spent with my darling brothers in recognition of the fact that we all have birthdays between April 1 and May 1.

The weekend began on Friday afternoon. I was stuck in god awful traffic on my way home from work, which left my brothers stranded outside my apartment, playing with George’s Blackberry . The original goal was to head for a brewery to taste beers for a few hours, but I was none too eager to get back in the car after my commute home, and since both the breweries had in mind stopped serving at 8 pm, it would have been a matter of drinking 6 beers in an hour to get the full experience. While there are nights when we wouldn’t shy away from such a task, we decided to take it easy and get into vacation mode. Thus, we skipped the breweries, a decision both brothers hailed as instrumental in the fact that no one got hungover or sick the next day.

Instead of heading for a brewery, we had a few beers at my apartment before making a leisurely stroll down the street for dinner. Whenever I have a brother in town, I like to go to a place called George’s, where you can get the best burgers in town. Maybe even the world. If you come visit me, I will take you to this magical place. At one point, I was eating a Barbeque Bacon and Chedder burger and musing aloud, “Why do I not put barbeque sauce on everything?” William was sweating, because William was sweating the whole time. George was documenting the whole process on his Blackberry. We ate our burgers and fries, polished off a few pitchers and then headed a few doors down to another bar.

William was pretty happy with this new bar because the waitress gave us the beers that were on draft in order of ascending price, which meant you could stop listening as soon as you heard a beer that you liked. We settled for Yuengling. I don’t mind telling you that with as much beer as we had consumed at that point, we found the following to be good ideas: calling our parents despite the late hour, singing Jenny Lewis songs loudly in our booth and taking Blackberry pictures of the urinal in the men’s bathroom (I had no part of that last one).

We made our walk home. Now, all through the night, George and I had been telling William not to let us go to this place called Frogs, because George and I have a tendency to drink too much tequila when we go to that place and we end up being dreadfully sick the next day. As we stumbled home, we started talking about Frogs and William was actually encouraging that we go!! Bad form, William. Instead, George and I managed to have some willpower and go back to the apartment. William kept everyone hydrated and we went to bed at a fairly reasonable hour, since it had been a long day and because we are all getting older now.

The next day we arose and confronted the fact that I had nothing to eat or drink in my apartment other than beer. So after showering, we headed over to a Dunkin’ Doughnuts and enjoyed a nice breakfast. Then we went to Borders because I have a tendency to make people go to bookstores with me. Then we went to a variety store to look at doodads. George really appreciated the variety of it all, and William found me a magnet with the pope on it. Good form, William. You redeemed yourself from that Frogs misjudgment the night before.

After all this wandering about shops, it was time to eat again, and it had been at least 12 hours since we had had a beer, so everyone was starting to get the shakes. We headed off to a place called Brick Store, which is known for its long beer list and its good food, meaning that my brothers and I are its target demographic. We split some Bavarian pretzels and some fish and chips, and we all enjoyed an IPA that was very very hoppy but very very enjoyable.

Then we were off to a street festival that was being held in a nearby neighborhood. Our search to find a parking spot at this festival was very long, but we all had enough fun at the festival that we deemed the frustration worthwhile. We saw some of the street parade, browsed through all the booths and drank some beer, though not necessarily in that order. I bought some apple cider doughnuts for the next day from a bakery in North Georgia to compensate for not providing breakfast earlier. As for the most important purchase, however, that was….KETTLE KORN. God help us, my brothers and I are suckers for a giant bag of Kettle Korn, and this was the freshest batch possible. It literally went from the kettle straight into our mouths. Basically. It was so good, and easily matched any meal that we had during the entire weekend in quality, and I don’t mean that statement as a knock on any of our restaurant meals.

The festival left us sweaty, so we headed back to my apartment to shower. We were also exhausted from all that walking around in 90 degree weather, so we decided to have a quiet night in. We ordered some pizza (the difficulties associated with this deserve their own post, which should be posted directly after this one) and watched “The Wrestler.” We had high hopes for this film because the three of us spent many an hour in our youth watching all sorts of wrestling and following the careers of our favorite wrestlers. After watching the film, though, I would just say “enh.” I’d rather re-watch a classic Wrestlemania, preferably the one where Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage have a retirement match and Macho Man loses (but he had turned bad, so he was supposed to!) and in his defeat reconciles with Miss Elizabeth.

Even though we’d had showers, William still sweated throughout the evening. He can’t live in Atlanta, apparently. Too hot. They don’t call it Hotlanta for nothing.

The next day, we had the apple cider doughnuts, all three of us deeming them delicious. After watching the Travel Channel for awhile and some more showering and a little bumming around the apartment, it was off to another Atlanta institution, The Varsity, where we enjoyed hot dogs in various states of chili, cheese and cole slaw coverings, as well as French fries, onion rings, and Frosted Orange drinks. Just typing out all the food we ate is making me slightly sick, but that is just how my brothers and I roll. We drink and we eat to excess. Eat, drink and be merry and whatnot.

While we ate, I asked George and William which events were so memorable as to be included in the blog, and they both said, "all of them," so that is basically what I have recounted. After the Varsity, it was time for the boys to depart and head back to North Carolina. The weekend was far too short, which I know because I still have beer left in my fridge. Though I guess my gut is grateful.

So, anyways, if you’d like to know what it’s like to be in my family, find two other people and recreate this weekend for yourselves. You get a bonus point for any instance in which someone who is with you points out that you are acting like one of your parents.