A Recap Of My Weekend At The Wisconsin-Alabama Game In Dallas

Jared Borislow10 years ago

This past weekend, I grabbed two of my fellow Grandex employees, Boosh and Rhyne, and headed on up to Dallas (Arlington, really, but Dallas sounds cooler) to meet up with some fraternity brothers and watch my Wisconsin Badgers take on the Alabama Crimson Tide at AT&T Stadium. With a combination of the start of college football, seeing my fraternity brothers for the first time since May, and exploring a new city, it’s no surprise that this weekend was the most fun I’ve had since graduating from college. Even though the Badge lost, I need to thank Jerry World for letting me make it my own this past weekend. Memories of “Jared World,” as my narcissism forces me to call it, will forever occupy the happiest place in my brain, right next to the memories of those two straight weeks I had no-wipe poops, the first time I ever had my taste buds graced with the soft-bread goodness of a Smucker’s Uncrustables, and that time I found a potato chip that looked like Dame Helen Mirren riding a salamander.

Armed with the most state-of-the-art audio/video and reporting equipment available (Snapchat, Vine and Twitter), I tried to capture the essence of this weekend for y’all. Here’s my recap of Wisco-Bama:

Thursday

Considering Thursday night doesn’t really have anything to do with Dallas, I could leave this whole night out of my recap entirely. I’m not going to do that, though, because Boosh deserves to have his story told.

I had a fraternity brother fly into Austin on Thursday night to hit up the bars on Sixth Street before we drove up to Dallas the next day. Boosh decided to tag along because going out is one of the 3 things he can’t say no to –- the other two being cigarettes and feng shui designs (I’ll get to the latter in another column).

It’s important to note here that Boosh has perpetual drunk eyes, and he has them bad. Almost every time we go out, a bouncer or bartender asks him if he’s okay or just flat-out denies him entry to the bar, regardless of how much he’s had to drink. I was worried the whole way to the bar that my little Booshles wouldn’t get in, but luckily we went to the Blind Pig. Boosh has been to the BP so many times since he moved to Austin that the bouncer recognizes him as drunk eyes kid. When we got to the door, the bouncer dapped Boosh up and said, “Keep your eyes open.” Classic.

Within minutes of entering the bar, Boosh goes up and talks to a girl. And, before you know it, they’re killing it on the dance floor.

Look at Boosh’s technique — it’s impeccable. His hips don’t lie; they can’t lie. If his hips were a witness in a jury trial, the judge wouldn’t even make them swear on the bible to be under oath. He’d just be like, “Yeah, I can tell you’re some straight shooters. Carry on.” Unreal.

Then disaster struck. While taking a swig from his bourbon and coke, Boosh spilled a small amount of his beverage on his dancing partner. She said, “You spilled on me,” and then just up and left. Boosh was heartbroken. While he is adamant that it was condensation that dripped onto her and not the pungent combination of rail whiskey and Coca-Cola that Boosh was tossing down his gullet, he admits that he probably should’ve just sipped it from the straw to prevent this sort of thing from happening. And he admitted this while gazing upon his girl, three feet away from him, dancing with another man.

Absolutely savage.

Luckily, though, Boosh got over it pretty soon after. Always our little champ.

Friday

After receiving numerous disapproving, menacing, “Your days here are numbered” glances from Dorn throughout the day after I told him my plan to leave work early, we left work early and headed up to Dallas. On the way up, we stopped at a liquor store to get our booze for the weekend. This was one of those big liquor depots with free sample stations and everything. Ritzy. As I was driving the ‘ssan (0-60 in 14.4 seconds, get at me) up to Dal-Dal, I did not partake. Boosh didn’t either, but, as always, you wouldn’t know that from looking at him. This prompted one of the sample hander-outers to say to him as he passed by, “Man, you look like you’ve had quite a few samples already!” No joke. Can’t make this stuff up. You can take the alcohol out of the Boosh, but you can’t take the drunk out of the eyes.

After a soulful reunion with my fraternity brothers at our AirBnB, I decided to go on a tour of our little chateau. With 11 people and 5 beds, I wanted to see what we were working with. Leave it to fate to make the weekend even better.

After a couple hours of drinking and shooting the shit just like old times, my drunk self couldn’t handle the emotion, and I rifled out a #SoftTweet.

Someone was cutting onions at the AirBnB, you guys. I swear. A few drinks and bad ideas later…

…we headed out to the Uptown Dallas bar scene.

Boosh had made some adjustments after last night’s performance, and was ready to hit the Dallas scene hard, which he did. My biggest (and only) regret from this weekend is that I didn’t get it on video when Boosh said, “What’s your name?” to each member of a group of three friends who walked by him single file, each hearing him say it to the others and none responding when it was their turn in the hot seat. Stuck-up Dallas girls don’t know what they’re missing out on.

(What they’re missing out on is this…)

We get to the last bar of the night, except Boosh is nowhere to be seen. I ended up finding out that the bouncer looked him over in line, decided he was too drunk, then told him his real South Carolina ID was a fake because “it didn’t have a palm tree on it.” The story line continues.

I was the last to return home to the AirBnB, where I found one thing I didn’t expect and one thing I did: a Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit with my name on it and only sub-par sleeping locations left for the taking.

Even the window sill was taken. We had brought three air mattresses, but they all had leaks (I asked one of my fraternity brothers the next morning “How was the air mattress?” and he replied, “The floor.”) Where can I plop my drunk ass down for slumber? Literally just need something with more cushion than the floor. Drunk me was pretty excited to find out where sober me would end up.

Saturday (Game Day)

Sounds about right.

We kept the morning fairly casual. My boy Bootystank Joe made us all his dankalicious Sunshine Slammers for breakfast to get that good-good base going, and the Wisconsin guys found out something crazy about Texas girls.

The afternoon came, and the pregame began. I tell you what, the “BnB” in AirBnB might as well stand for “Booze n Bitches,” because our pregame was off the hook!!! The guy:girl ratio may have been a solid 8:1, but that sounds a lot less cool and I want you guys to think I’m cool so forget I wrote this sentence.

It came time to head to Jared World, which meant it was time to put on my game day attire. Most people wore shorts and a t-shirt due to the fact that the high was 99 degrees Fahrenheit. After much deliberation, I decided that supporting the #Badge was more important than the possibility of death by heat stroke, so I did what I had to do and headed off to the tailgate.

A little backstory on this turtleneck sweater: it was handed down to me at senior wills my sophomore year with the accompanying reason being that the senior thought I was “the only person stupid enough to wear it.” He told me that his grandmother hand-cut and stitched the motion W onto it, and that he ended up wearing the sweater only once — to a party at which he proceeded to puke all over it. He stuck it in his dresser without ever washing it, and pulled it out years later (probably an hour before senior wills) to find that all the puke had magically caked off. Some straight Billie Mays OxiClean shit.

Within minutes of arriving at AT&T, I was already attracting attention from celebs, despite the fact that I was sweating more than a blind lesbian in a fish market because of the Texas heat that had gotten up into the high nineties.

I thought I played it cool around ‘cek, but other photos indicate I may have gotten star struck around the 3-time Super Bowl champ.

After a couple more hours of tailgating, we headed on into the stadium. What a goddamn behemoth. If the size of this stadium is inversely proportional to the size of Jerry Jones’ hog, then it turns out there is something smaller than an atom. That place is huge. It got me riled.

Not much to cheer about in the first half, except the inaugural usage of my Stave bongos tuddy gif.

On the contrary, there was probably more to be mad about in the first half.

But we went to the half only down one touchdown, and Saint Stave was absolutely slinging the ball, so I had high hopes going into the second half even though our best defensive player lined up for as many plays on our defense as he did for the Alabama offense.

Those hopes, however, were soon dashed. As it became clear that the Badge were not going to pull this one out, morale was at an all-time low.

Morale soon came to its lowest valley after Alabama went ahead 28-7 in the third.

Look at the lack of soul in those eyes. Heartbreaking.

Even if your team is getting manhandled, though, you don’t leave the game early. For shame.

After the Fifth Quarter, Bootystank Joe and I walked for a zillion miles back towards the AirBnB because Uber surge was at 6.4x, somehow meeting up with the rest of our group along the way.

That was my weekend. After some heartfelt goodbyes, we headed back to Austin on Sunday morning. My heart remains in Jared World, though.

Keep those eyes open, Boosh..