Vomitus...

It has come to my attention, based on a number of comments I've received lately, that I have the ability to make you people puke at will. I guess I can't blame you, what with all the bacon-crossed recipes and pictures of noxious government-types. While I'm sure many of you were being facetious, it nevertheless helped inspire the following post.

I do not vomit much at all and perhaps only slightly more that the Jerry character on the popular sitcom, "Seinfeld". The last time I remember puking was after a wedding reception in Chicago. It was one of those affairs where the bride and groom had had a small wedding a few weeks prior and this was just a chance for the rest of us to celebrate. The open bar we had been enjoying eventually ran out (or ran us out, as the case may be). We were all dressed up, so we decided to cab it over to the Drake Hotel, a swank joint off Michigan Ave., for a cocktail. As we got out of the cab at the hotel, I knew there were going to be problems. I threw up just a tiny bit on the doorman's shoe as he opened our cab door for us. Surprisingly, he was unphased.

Inside, there is a sort of piano bar area. As my less drunk friends went off and crashed a wedding that was going on, a few of us sat and had a drink. By this point I had switched to drinking Tonic Water. All of a sudden, I felt the chunks start to rise and grabbed the closest container I could find, which happened to be a half-full water pitcher. The first wave filled that handily and the second wave had nowhere else to go but all over the table. Again, surprisingly few people had noticed what I had done. Maybe they just never expected to see such a display at a place like the Drake. My friend, Dave, a bartender himself, inconspicuously ushered over a waiter, gave him a big tip, and asked him to bring over some bar towels. In the meantime, I got my ass down to a toilet and unleashed the remaining torrent. They never even kicked us out, including my other friends who got busted for crashing the wedding. Love the Drake!