Bachelor Party Embedded Reporter Tells All!

That's How We Roll in Jim Thorpe, PA. Tom brandishes his fearsome, pink-plugged paintball pistols on a bleak morning at Skirmish USA.

They say war is a cruel mistress... a devouring beast that no man, or army, or country, or even ideology, ever truly wins. Yes, they say there are only losers in war, as transient, pyrric victories pale in the wake of the pointless cost in life...

...war is hell.

But then again, it's pretty frickin' awesome, too.

My name is Tom Crimmins, and I served as an embedded reporter for "Effin' Sweet" this past weekend, at the bachelor party of Jason Gutierrez. There, I witnessed what no man should ever see, and experienced things that would render lesser individuals dead, or at the very least painfully maimed for life and wishing to be dead. The hardiest man's endurance was tested, and in the ensuing trial by fire, we emerged with a stronger appreciation for life... and copious amounts of alcohol.

How I didn't go blind is anyone's guess...

Let's Start Things Off With Sleep Deprivation!

Jay and I took part as guests at Andrea's and Chris's wedding this past Friday. A delightful affair, to be sure... but a dubious event to start off the weekend, as well. For we were to proceed the very next day to celebrate the Jay-man's bachelor party. And we all must agree that it's hard to switch gears from celebrating the beauty, hope, and love of a wedding, and then the very next day wallow in our testosterone-drenched crapulence and dirty jokes and not showering and wiping our noses on our sleeve and leaving the toilet seat up and not caring, etc, etc. Most guys might have cracked under the stress of such paradox... somehow we survived. I think we have tequila to thank.

We ended up getting back from the wedding that Friday evening (which, technically, was Saturday morning) at 2AM, agreeing with Mike Herlihy to wake up at 6AM to head up to Tarrytown, NY to meet up with Jay's best man, Chris. Do the math, people... we weren't gonna get our 8 hours that night. I had stayed over at the Herlihys' because I completely didn't trust myself to wake up on my own, and so relied on the more responsible Jay or Mike to give me a healthy kick to the ribs to get me going at 6. (To get me going... or to send me to the emergency room... there is thin line between the two.)

A Brush With Near-Death... Before Breakfast!

Incredibly, it all worked out, and we headed up the ol' Taconic to meet up with Chris. I had the opportunity to sport my brand-new black, white, and gray urban camo pants for the paintballin' that morning, and was feeling pretty spiffy. Jay had his own paintball gun that he recently appropriated from ebay. For a nickel, I could touch it. When we arrived in Tarrytown, Chris hadn't arrived yet, so Jay invited Mike and I up to his brand-new, swanky apartment. It was part of multiple-home compound (it's hard to explain... it was sort of a hive-like conglomeration of individual dwellings connected with various terraces, walk-ways and stairs). After the trip from Douglaston, Jay was in a bit of a hurry to get to his apartment (for the sake of his privacy, I won't divulge why he rushed in so fast on this blog... Okay, he had to pee.) He gave Mike and me sort of vague directions in, as he disappeared into the labyrinthine alleys into the compound. I walked in with Mike, still carrying Jay's gun. I found the first door that more-or-less corresponded to Jay's hurried instructions, and pushed the door in. At that moment, looking into what was obviously some stranger's home, I realized the precarious situation I was in... a bleary-eyed, scruffy-headed goon wearing urban camo pants and carrying a gun, bursting into a complete stranger's home at 7AM. If I happened upon any of the apartment's residents, I was going to get shot if I went any farther. Killed and/or arrested, most likely. Thus, I retreated and waited with Mike at his car until Jay returned. Disaster was narrowly averted. Probably.

Paintball's Fearsome Foursome

Chris finally arrived and we all headed out to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania... home to Paintball Skirmish USA. This would mark my third visit there, and my second in this past year. Though somewhat experienced in paintballing, I had never gone during the summer, and was excited about not having to worry about frostbite, but concerned about how much I was going to stink to High Holy Heaven after sweating buckets in a thick, one-piece camo fatigue jumpsuit in the woods all day. My previous trips to Skirmish were spoiled a bit due to my incredible luck in finding the single mask in the entire compound that fogged up whenever it was put on. You know how adults used to always spoil your fun by warning you that whatever you're playing with will "put your eye out"? Yeah, well... paintballs actually do that. "When a small, semi-hard projectile hits your face at a 100-plus miles-per-hour, either you go blind, or you die." These are the actual words spoken during the token safety lecture by the paintball ref while riding the bus to the fields. While paintball is fun, it's more than mildly dangerous, and eye-cover is absolutely necessary. Thus, fogged up goggles really freakin' sucked.

But fog they did not, this time, and the power of sight was granted to me on this, my third visit to Skirmish. So I was stoked. Plus, the dense foliage added to the excitement of trying to out-flank our opponents. I've learned in my visits here, that I'm not particularly good. At 6'2," 230 pounds, I don't exactly have stealth on my side. Put I've learned to play smart, and conservative... and it served me fairly well. My favorite moment was during the second match, when our team was responsible for guarding the flag which was set up on a small "island" surrounded by a shallow creek, connected to the rest of the field by two narrow bridges. The creek stretched across the entire field, and was choked with boulders and low scrub. Seizing the opportunity, I went maverick and crept along the bottom of the creek (trying in vain not to soak my boots too much) in the hopes that I might have a shot at glory. Silently scuttling from rock to rock, I advanced through the field with paintballs buzzing all above me. I could tell that no one had actually spotted me, and it soon became apparent how far I had made it. Suddenly, after a flurry or shooting and several of my teammates were dispatched, all became silent. I chanced a quick glance and lifted my head from the riverbed to scan the surroundings. To my left, one of my opponents was creeping towards my base. The guy was only 15 feet away, and was wholly unaware of my presence. In all my times paintballing, I've never shot a guy. I never had a chance. Now, bogged down in mud and water, flat against the side of a creekbed, I had my chance. I raised my gun, zeroed in, and squeezed off three rounds...

::FWOOT FWOOT FWOOT::

...right into the guy's guts!

WAR! It's FAN-tastic!

The primitive joy that erupted within me... I had felt nothing like it before. I took the savage satisfaction in dispatching a breathing, living opponent. The guy was stunned... he looked down at his splattered stomach, it had come out of nowhere. Then he looked over at me with an incredulous expression peering from behind his goggles.

What else could I do? I gave him a little wave.

Of course, my death-dealing did not go un-noticed, and his comrades came gunning for me. I was now trapped under one of the bridges, hiding from behind a pair of trees... paintballs skittering into the shallow water on either side of me. I tried to get a bead on them around the tree, but they were invisible in the brush. As I raised my head to get a better shot... BANG! I took a paintball to the back of the head. I raised my gun to signal I had been shot (I didn't want to get hit again... those things sting!) and looked over at who had gotten me. The guy was hiding in a ditch, and as I walked past him towards the dead-zone, he apologized for hitting me in the head. I said, "No problem," and gave him a high-five. That's paintball, brother... Oh yeah.

The day progressed quite well, and I even managed to take out another guy or two (seeing really helps, let me tell you!). We all ended up making a good account of themselves, with both teams getting one win a-piece, and three ties. The last game was The Castle... but that's a whole other story all together.

Chris's Simian Stripper Surprise

Before we left Skirmish that afternoon, Chris had confided in me that he had a surprise in store for Jay. Now, Jay had laid a couple of guidelines for Chris when he was planning the bachelor party. "No strippers, Chris." But Chris felt obligated to pull off some crazy stunt for the groom, and so a plan was formed. Jay's two college roommates, Mike and Brendan, had canceled out on Jay's bachelor party for various reasons. Chris arranged to have the two of them arrive in Tarrytown without Jay's knowledge. He then rented two gorilla suits for them to show up in after we got back from paintballing. Chris asked me at Skirmish to go on a mission: We would stop at a Target on the way back to Tarrytown, on the pretense of picking up audio cables for Jay's surround-sound entertainment system back at his apartment. While there, I'd be responsible for picking up two sets of XXL bikinis for the gorilla-suited buddies to wear. I agreed. Maybe a little too eagerly.

Now, I must have looked pretty sketchy, lurking around the plus-size woman's underwear department at the Tarrytown Target, picking out the most outlandish unmentionables I could find. I'm sure there were more than a few mothers whisking their impressionable children away from me, a foul smelling dirtbag in a GI Joe shirt, urban camo pants, and filthy boots. But when I finally found my shiny-gold panties, I knew I struck paydirt, and quickly headed up to the register to pay for my bizarre goods. (How's that for a sentence you never thought I'd write?)

When we finally made it back to the apartment, we cleaned ourselves up and were joined by Chris's dad, Jenna's dad, and Jay's dad... cool guys, all. Everyone was in on the surprise, and we all sort of hung around the living room, making small talk, trying to stall the increasingly agitated Jay. It was 9PM, and we hadn't yet headed out for dinner and drinking. He paced around the apartment, not knowing what the hold-up was, as Chris mysteriously had disappeared under the pretense of "going out for some beers." When he finally returned, Chris smoothly came through the front door and said, "Jay, here are your strippers."

In come these two gorillas in bikinis, gyrating their way through a roomful of hysterically laughing men. Words can't adequately convey a scene with two man-sized monkeys giving your buddy a lap-dance and waving their butts in his face. A Mastercard commercial could probably be found in this: "2 Gorilla Suits, $60...2 XXL Shiny Gold Bikini's, $60...Getting a lapdance by your two former college roommates dressed as Gorilla Strippers, PRICELESS."

AL, Bachelor Party MVP

As I previously mentioned, the dads were all there. Chris's dad, Al, was in attendance, and I immediately registered the obvious that he was a totally cool guy. Little did I know at that time, how cool he truly was. I would soon find out. We headed out to a riverside bar and grill to eat dinner and begin our night of drunken debauchery. Al drove Chris's van with us idiots as passengers. Mike and Brendan, the two strippers, were already pretty amped-up... mainly because they had arrived early (3PM instead of 6PM) and had spent the day drinking at a local bar. We started off the drinking with a fairly dangerous selection... a round of tequila shots. I decided to make a record of all drinks and foods, by summarily dropping a bit of all of them on my pants. Not on purpose, of course... just because I'm a complete klutz. But thanks to my stained pants, I can tell you with complete certainty that we drank a shot of tequila, got hamburgers, had gin and tonics, Bud Lite... and then apparently took a brewery hostage. It would turn out to be Al who drove us around for the rest of the night, deftly chaffeuring us from establishment to establishment, regaling us with his heroically enormous collection of dirty jokes. We closed down a couple of bars that night. We rocked out to Dio. We dangerously switched from liquor to beer to liquor again. Then back to beer once more. Brendan made a couple of marriage proposals to bartenders and patrons alike. Mike and I played drunken pool. And at the end of the night, the diner owner sequestered our whole gang to the darkened back room so we wouldn't disturb his other guests at 4:30 AM. And Al was with us the whole time. Thank you Al, for making our drunken antics possible... and mobile, swerving through Tarrytown from bar-to-bar, us rolling around in the seat-less back area of Chris's van, howling incoherently.

And no one threw up.

And, seriously, how I didn't go blind is anyone's guess...

So far, I have not met a single Al who is not awesomeness personified.

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