Best. Weekend. Ever.

I am pretty sure this upcoming weekend is the best weekend ever. Essentially, the weekend is combining two of the best weekends of the year into one.  This Thursday and Friday starts March Madness 2012.  They are BY FAR the best Thursday and Friday of the year.  Games start at noon on Thursday and essentially don't stop until Sunday night.  Just pure chaos - upsets, buzzer beaters, you name it.  And the great part is that almost everyone I know will have at least a minor vested interest in the games because of their brackets.  I'm pretty sure this is the only weekend of the year when my mom calls me screaming into the phone "ARE YOU WATCHING THIS GEORGETOWN-BELMONT GAME?!?!  IF GEORGETOWN LOSES MY BRACKET IS F**KED!"  Just kidding, my mom doesn't swear....wait....I'll leave that one alone.

Anyway, if you are a fan of March Madness, then you absolutely love this weekend and look forward to it every year.  Side note:  If you want to get into my March Madness pool, follow the link below.  $5 for 1 bracket, $10 for 2.  Email me at djameson87@gmail.com, hit me up on Facebook or Twitter @djameson87 for more info.  Password is "jameson" and please name your bracket "FirstName LastName #", like "Dan Jameson 1" so that I know who you are.

http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/51807/invitation?key=f4924827cfa9ad05

So, this weekend is already one of the best of the year...now add St. Patrick's Day!  Wow.  As if we didn't have enough of a reason to drink beers all day long.  St. Paddy's is probably my favorite holiday after Christmas.  It combines everything I love in life: being Irish and drinking.  Ok, maybe that isn't EVERYTHING I love, but you get the point. Just pure madness on St. Paddy's day.

This year, my St. Paddy's weekend will be spent a little differently than years past.  For the last 3-4 years, my cousin Andy and his wife Stacie hosted a group of us hooligans over St. Paddy's weekend at their house in Cleveland and then Columbus.  We would head out usually Thursday night and get into town around midnight.  Rather than rest up for what was sure to be an absolute boozefest of a weekend, we would immediately start drinking (ok, usually we'd start in the car about 2 hours before we arrived).  Most of us would be up until 5 or 6am and then proceed to wake up around 9-10am and start day drinking immediately.  The best part of the weekend was the O-H-I-Olympics.  When sports/games are involved, my family goes all out and this was no different.  We would break into teams of 4, usually somewhere between 4 and 6 teams.  The "first round" of the Olympics would consist of 4 games:  beer pong, Wii bowling, quarters and corn hole.  Each team would break off into twosomes for the games, making sure to alternate partners to keep things even.  Now, you probably are thinking that we just pick teams and play these games on the fly, right?  Wrong.  We have an official draft, usually on Friday night, that determines your 4-man team and who you will be paired with and against for each of the 4 games.  A big draft board would be posted on the wall, with the names and/or pictures of each participant/team.  If this sounds complicated, it was.  And the more complicated the better.  Below is a picture of the draft board from a couple years back.
















The winner of each event would score 2 points for their team and the runner up would score 1 point.  After all 4 events are completed, the Olympic medals would be decided by team flipcup.  The team with the most points from the "first round" would play the team with the least points, etc.  The first team to win 10 games of flipcup would advance.  Also, if Team 1 scored 6 points in the "first round" and Team 4 scored 1, Team 1 would start up 5 games in flipcup.  Needless to say, my team won the inaugural gold medal.  And my teammates took care of buying the "trophies"....

As you can imagine, the games were pretty intense.  Some years we had to cut the Olympics short because of fights, other years we had to cut them short because too many players were passed out before flipcup started.  Nevertheless, we always had an absolute BLAST.

This year, sadly, there will be no O-H-I-Olympics.  But fear not, I will more than make up for that fact, as this weekend is not only March Madness and St. Paddy's, but also my buddy Dan Walsh's bachelor party!

Crazy times ahead.  Lots of high school and college friends will be in town.  Golf will be played.  basketball will be watched.  And yes, lots, and lots, and lots of beers will be consumed.  Right now Vegas has 5/1 odds that Walsh won't make it to our 9pm event Saturday night.  I already put my house on that bet.

I'll be back to the regularly planned American Idol updates next week....assuming I survive this weekend.  It is certainly not a guarantee.