March 5, 2007

• The year 1997. Can you believe its been 10 years since then? I got to thinking about that last night after watching some old music videos on YouTube. ’97 was a good year for me personally and I will explain how. But first, are you ready to feel old? Just look at these list of songs from 1997

  Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind
  Fly by Sugar Ray
  I’ll Be Missing You by Puff Daddy
  I Believe I Can Fly by R Kelly
  The Freshman by the Verve Pipe
  Everyday Is A Winding Road by Sheryl Crow

  Or check out these movies released that year too:

  Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
  As Good as it Gets
  Air Force One
  Con Air
  Chasing Amy
  Donnie Brasco
  Good Will Hunting
  Men In Black
  Titanic

  Also, just look at all the stories from 1997. Princess Diana and Mother Theresa died within days of each other. Chris Farley died that year as well. Bill Cosby’s son was murdered. The lead singer of  INXS hung himself. Worse yet, the damn Packers won the Super Bowl. Although it was not all bad, the Bulls won their 5th championship. Oj Simpson was found liable in his civil trial for murdering his ex wife and her boy toy. Remember the Heaven’s Gate cult? Well, they held a mass suicide that year. Tony Blair became prime minister of England.

  As you may or may not know, our friends used to always go on an annual camping trip.1997 was the year that our friend Rene had the best idea since blow jobs: she suggested that those of us that go camping together start to hang out on a regular basis, and with that, our lives were changed forever. Jt and Rene even dated for a short time. Rene also had a Christmas party that year at her old apartment in which she made everybody get dressed up (ironically, now she doesn’t like to dress up for our Thanksgiving, but for some reason, it was all the rage to dress up that year). Randy and Kathie got married that year. Todd and Pam did too and as a matter of fact, their wedding is where Jt and Scooty met.

  Camping was a really tough year that year. It was Dave’s first year of camping. Before we left, I told him what would become a classic line “Don’t do anything to not get yourself invited back for next year.” Well………let’s just say he did something that made him not be invited back the next year, although he did redeem himself over the course of the next year just enough to be invited back. Cara went camping with us that year too, just about 4 months after her daughter was born. It was her only year going, mainly because she cheated on her husband while she was up there and I did not want her to go again. We should have known camping would be bad that year, when we first got there, as we were unpacking a funnel cloud was spotted in the area. It was Gordon’s first year of camping which made for some crazy memories. Also, when we got back from camping, we found out that my dog had died.

  In August of ’97 I was in my first car accident. Cara was driving her father in law’s uninsured pick-up truck with me in the middle and her 6 month old daughter in a car seat in the passenger seat. A few months later, I was in another accident, this time Rob was driving. I happened to be wearing the same Homer Simpson shirt in each accident, needless to say, I haven’t worn it since. In October, Dave and I had the most fun job we ever, had working at a haunted house. I swear, it was the most fun anybody could have for $6 an hour. I was a clown that heckled people as they waited in line. I called myself “Heckels The Clown” and later on, it became my email address, screen name and Xanga name.

  It was also the year that Jt, Dave and I took our first road trip together, going to Ho-Chunk Casino in Wisconsin, which is a story in itself. We then started to take sporadic, spur of the moment road trips to Ho Chunk.And I mean spur of the moment, one time Jt and I were eating at Denny’s late at night when he realized that he forgot his wallet at work. So, we drove all the way back up to Downers Grove to get it. We were about to get back on the expressway when he said “well, since we are near the expressway, we might as well go to Ho-Chunk” and off we went, 3 hours north to the casino. Later in the year, we talked about going to the Mall of America. One day in December, I got a phone call from Dave saying “pack your bags, the bus to Mall of America leaves in 20 minutes.” An hour later, he and Jt were at my house. Dave had “borrowed” his mom’s car. I never had so much fun as when I took that trip with them 2. We were just 3 goofy guys from Chicago wandering around a very big mall, interacting with everybody that we came into contact with. I know this might sound boring, but we had so much fun. We also stopped at 3 casinos on the trip. In fact, on the way up there, during breakfast, we were trying to predict celebrity deaths in the next year. The first person I predicted would die within the next year was Chris Farley. Less then a week later, he was dead.

  1997 was also the first time Dave and I saw Dae play. He was a guy that we eventually became friends with. He used to sing and play acoustic guitar every Sunday at North Beach in Downers Grove. The funny part was that Dave, John and I went up there to play volleyball the night before Labor Day. I liked the music and on the way out, Dae tried to sell me one of his tapes. Being unemployed, when I found out it cost money, I just shrugged him off. Yet, the next week and for many weeks after that, Dave and I started going not to play volleyball, but to hear him play.

  The summer of 1997, Dave and I were both unemployed and Jt was working 2nd shift. We found ourselves hanging out a Denny’s just about every night of the week until the wee hours of the morning. We spent as much as 6 hours a night there, even become friends with some of the other customers. We would all go up there every night and just hang out, talking and solving all the world’s problems and just generally acting goofy. I have so many fond memories of that summer.

  1997. It was a crazy, life changing year.

  • 10:05 pm
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