Revenge of the Angry Drunken Dads!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Lawrence, Kansas , the Angry Drunken Dads return! Some of you may recall my first dangerous sojourn to Lawrence last year for the Father's Day celebration with my brother and nieces to the University of Kansas, my alma mater (and if you don't remember it, go refresh your memory HERE. Go on... I'll wait). What's supposed to be a celebration of fathers and their kids at college has--and still is--a reason for dads to go wild, show extreme bad behavior, get stupid hammered, try to relive their glory days, and get in fights. It's AWESOME!

First of all, it never ceases to amaze me how my nieces aren't embarrassed by me and their dad; I couldn't even imagine my parents stepping foot into a bar without disturbing the living daylights out of me. But, hey, as long as the girls are good with it, I'm in!

We started our annual adventure by visiting my niece's sorority house. Well...that's not quite accurate; it was a fraternity that the sorority was now living in.

"What? Where're the frat boys?" I asked.

My niece replied, "They got kicked off of campus. So, while they rebuild our house, they put us in here. It's got mold everywhere."

Huh. The mind boggles about how bad the frat guys must've been to get kicked out of their house and off campus. Furthermore, I wondered what they did to accumulate their mold collection. Needless to say, I washed my hands frequently.

And while in the bathroom, there were a couple of girls in there.

I hollered, "Hey, don't worry about me, I'll just be over here at the urinals." 

Now one thing we hadn't considered on our excursion was that Drunken Angry Dads are generally solitary creatures, not prone to running in packs. Which is why my brother and I ended up looking like the girls' "two dads." In the spirit of angry drunkeness, we decided to embrace it and run with it, enjoying introducing ourselves as their two dads. And it STILL didn't embarrass the girls. Tough crowd, tough crowd.

Onward HO! Luckily, the ex-frat house was just a hop, skip and jump away from the girls' favorite bars. But on the way there, we ran into a couple of dads who were threatening everyone on the street with keg stands. (For the uninitiated, keg stands are where you do a handstand on top of a keg and drink as long as possible; I don't get it either, but those are just some of the rules of the Angry Drunken Dad Convention.)

These two little drunk dads were trying to coerce all of us into doing a keg stand.

They hoisted one of my nieces up and barely managed to keep her there. 

"C'mon," they said to me, "your turn."

I looked at these small men and scoffed. "Ah...you guys can't lift me."

"Oh, we'll get you up," said the runt of the litter.

I passed, unwilling to throw my back out for a keg stand. However, I was talked into drinking some nutty cocktail out of a community bucket that another drunken dad was passing around. Throwing caution--and germs and sickness!--to the wind, I sipped mightily. (And, lo, it came to pass that I fell sick the following week!)

First stop was Bullwinkles, the bar where a very drunk girl gave me a five minute head massage last year. Sure enough, she was there, getting her drink on. But this year she had forsaken me, having taken up with another old bald guy. She's got a type. Ah, such a fickle head massager.

In the crowd, drunk dads bopped about to the blaring rap music, twisting their feet, shaking the two-fingered pointy rap deal, and painfully trying to look young and cool. Among this year's celebrities was Steve Bannon, who obviously was on the run from Johnny Law, hiding out in a Kansas college bar. Here I am in front of Bannon.

Too loud to chat, the rap music blaring at ear-busting decibels, we pretty much drank in silence. Some idiot girls brought in two tiny "purse puppies" who were clearly terrified and shaking by the crowd and noise. Time to go!

On our way to the next bar, I asked, "Is rap the music of choice these days? I don't get it."

My brother says, "Yeah, I didn't get it at first either. But I've come to accept it." So if my brother accepts it, all is right in Lawrence, Kansas.

Next stop, Loogies! Now at this bar, the music of choice was '80's alt rock, one of my faves. So maybe it was the excessive amount of beer or maybe it was just my jam, but I turned into one of those be-bopping drunken dads (but not angry, mind you, not yet). 

My niece was saying how her hardest class was The History of Rock and Roll. To which I just expressed shock.

"C'mon, how hard can it be? You got the blues, Chuck Berry, Elvis, then the Beatles, and finally rap. Boom! History!"

I proceeded to quiz her on who the current singer blasting over the speakers was. I was absolutely appalled that she didn't know who David Bowie was. What are they teaching these guys in college anyway?

Earlier I said that everyone at KU listens to rap. Another thing they all do is vape. Every last student there. Smoking is so outre these days. In fact the only smoker I saw was Steve Bannon (natch). But every last damn student was toking away on their little boxes. Naturally, we had to make a pitstop at one of these vape shops.

Now, I've never been in one of these places before and doubt I ever will again. First of all, it smelled like Steve Bannon's socks being burned in a fireplace. Second, it's outrageously overwhelming. There was a massive wall just loaded with different flavors, types, scents, whatevers. Huge sensory overload. There was a ginormous section devoted to Mike Tyson flavors alone (and of course when I think of vaping, I think of Mike Tyson. Or whatever).

My brother asked the little hippy working there what good "ice" flavors he had.

I proffered, "Hey, what about Vanilla Ice?"

My brother giggled, the girls looked embarrassed, and the clerk sneered at me and yelled at me for leaning on the glass case.

Our next stop on the Angry Drunken Dad tour was a bar so crowded we couldn't even get to the bar, so we abandoned ship and went to Leroy's, a pool hall. We gathered into a recently abandoned booth and drank.

Soon, though, a couple guys in their late twenties or early thirties came up and stood before us, saying nothing.

"Oh," I said, not wanting to get in an Angry Drunken Dad brawl, "did we, um...ah...did we take your table?"

"Yeah," said one guy, "we just went to the bathroom." Which was kinda weird. I knew women went in pairs to "powder their noses," but I didn't know guys did. Oh, wait! Maybe they were "powdering INTO their noses."

Anyway, the guys settled down, one wandered off, and I thought the other guy would never leave. Turned out he played for KU back in the '90's so he had a LOT to say about the Jayhawks football team. We ended up on a friendly note, he wanting to shake hands. And I suddenly developed nervous not-knowing-what-to-do etiquette. First I offered a fist bump, then retracted, slid into a regular handshake, pulled away, and ridiculously ended up in an old-fashioned "soul hand shake" the kind that hasn't been a thing since the '70's. No idea why, chalk it up to beer and my desire to be cool. And like so many other Drunken Dads, I failed miserably.

Of course we had to end up at the Hawk. Now "The Hawk" was my college hang-out back in the day, a cheap place to drink (Thursday nights were quarter draws!) and go nuts. But, my oh my, how times have changed. I honestly don't understand how college kids can get their drink on at the crazy prices (and vaping ain't cheap). Having had a particularly grotesque experience at the Hawk last year, this year was pretty much the same, down to that ever-present odor. In fact, every bar we went to had that oh-so-familiar smell. The scent of higher education!

Here we met one of my niece's friends, the fourth starting quarterback for the Jayhawks. If only one more quarterback had been injured in that day's game, he might've gotten off the bench! Still, it didn't detract from his own set of groupies hanging all over him.

As day turned into night and more Drunken Dads staggered about, delusional in their beliefs that they were still the Kings of the World, another group became readily apparent, particularly in their despondency. This would be the Dejected Dormitory Dude pack.

Thin as rails, unable to afford (or pick out) stylish clothing, sporting haircuts that only a mother could love, they were easily identified by their round-shouldered dejection. When they'd leave the bar, it wasn't the boisterous Hey-Ho, Let's Go of the frat rats.

No, I could practically read their thoughts, having been one of the downtrodden myself many years ago: "Oh well...struck out again. May as well go back and play Grand Theft Auto."

As we wound down our exciting Angry Drunk Dad Day with a delicious (except not) dinner at Quik-Trip, a sudden epiphany struck me.

"Hey," I asked one niece, "do the moms act this way on Soused Mother's Day?"

"Oh, yeah," she answered with an eyeroll. Man. I, for one, am gonna move heaven and earth to crash that shindig next year!

Speaking of crashing events, you might want to stay away from the Dandy Drop Inn, a quaint little bed 'n breakfast located deep into the Midwest. There've been rumblings that some of the people visiting aren't the most...well, friendly of folks. Checking in is easy...checking out's killer. Read all about it in my helpful travelogue, Dread and Breakfast.