What Happened A Year Ago? Part One: January

In my usual style of labeling things "part 1" and never creating "part 2," I will tell you about what happened (or was about to happen) one year ago today....

After working all night and getting about 2 hours of sleep, I head off to Montreal with the boys from Local 188 for the now legendary “Teddy Bear Picnic.”

We make one quick stop on our way out of Maine to eat brunch, shoot guns, and drink mimosas - just to ease us into the mood for what's to come.

A few hours later I am confronted by Canadian border police and presented with my criminal record (“Can we speak with Mr. Ricchio please..”) After a “donation” of two hundred dollars cash, I am awarded a waiver and allowed on my way - crisis averted.

We arrive and immediately get to business - drinking and poutine. I finally buy a winter hat and gloves (which I didn't own prior to the trip) after Jay accuses me of being dressed for "Boca Raton."

The main focus of this excursion was our dinner at Au Pied de Cochon, which Jay and Matt not only treated us to but also let me do ALL of the ordering. As you would expect, I didn’t fuck around:



9 of us ate the following:

Foie gras Cromesquie (which we still lovingly refer to as “fun cubes”)
Venison tartare x 2
Foie gras poutine x2
Foie gras stuffed pigs feet
Duck in a can
Foie gras and apples x2
Foie gras and blood sausage tart x 2
Cassoulet
Foie gras maki roll x 2
PDC “Happy Pork Chop”
2 whole roasted Guinea Hens
Frites!
I think there may have been some salad, but I’m not sure..

We washed this down with 11 bottles of assorted Rhone wines (Gigondas, Cote Rotie, St. Joseph, etc.)



At the end of it all Chef Martin Picard, who wasn’t at the restaurant, randomly showed up and poured shots for the whole table. I think our server may have called him about the drunk and crazy assholes from Maine, and he had to see for himself. All in all, it was one of the best dining experiences of my life.
The entire trip featured epic debauchery – I had already been drunk for 2 months straight going into it. At one point I declared that I was “surprised at how much money I had left” right before I rolled into a strip club – where I proceeded to insist on having 2 girls at once for dances in a private room. An hour later I retracted my initial statement....


Of course there were the “M&M’s” and the "GET IN THE FUCKING VAN” incidents, but that’s another story for another blog (where you have to be 18 to enter). We finish the trip at Schwartz’s deli (for the second time) where we gorge on smoked meats and fries.



On the way back we find trouble once again at the border. I don’t think anyone was impressed with our inability to stop laughing while presenting our passports (I may or may not have been talking about kick-fucking prior to pulling up), and we were instructed to come inside. When asked if we were in “some kind of band like the Dropkick Murphys,” Spencer replied “That all depends, do you like the Dropkick Murphys?”
Jay creates one final incident on the drive back when he purchases about 300 chicken wings “for the group” when “the group” had clearly purchased their own food. Jay proceeds to attempt to eat all 300 wings out of spite and stops around 22.



I think I slept for a week when I got home...

Just long to enough to rest up for Burns Day!

With the aid of our real-life Scotsman, Garry, we set out to make Haggis and drink scotch until we could no longer stand. We were successful in all of these ventures – with a screening of Trainspotting to boot. I proceed to insist on talking (yelling) in my Scottish accent (which Garry says is “better than his”) for the rest of the evening and into the next day.

This pretty much set the stage for what kind of year it was to become....