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Posted
24 minutes ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

Holy Jesus F. Longcat!Ā 

War and Peace, co-written by Brisket and Lobo (RIP), was shorter than that postĀ 

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Posted

Quite the read. I felt like I was there.

Shitty that you got fake-ass Gator bites.

We do get flyovers at UF, but probably once a season. Lately they've been doing them on the Salute to Veterans game.

Posted

Fuckin' A.Ā  I'm reading the pregame half of this like Goodfellas with Hen(d)ry driving around seeing helicopters, making sure his brother, Mikey, stirred the sauce and bitching at fucking Lois for needing her lucky hat she wouldn't fly without.

Ā 

Dude, you are a true champion of organization.Ā  I'm sad to read that this one probably did you in.Ā  I'm particularly sad that my friends I've got coming in from all over the country for the Vandy game apparently won't get to experience a Surly tailgate?Ā  But I get it. It's obviously a shit-ton of work and you're handling it without a lot of consistent support, and it sounds like you lost a bit of your ass on this one unfortunately.

In the years to come, I was hoping to offer up a few weekends of tailgate support with manual labor, cooking, setup, general shit (although sadly, this year was not in the cards for me).Ā 

Ā 

In any event, thanks for all you have done and all you may do in the future.Ā  Hook 'em!

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted (edited)

Well at least Mark Sanchez didn't ask you to move your shit.

It was a great story though.Ā  Congrats on longest first post ever in a thread.Ā  Damn.

Edited by Bevo&Pevo
Posted
28 minutes ago, RGBIII said:

Reading all this made me realize we should probably saved everyone else time and podcasted instead

Made me think of this as well.

Ā 

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Posted

Forgot to include the part where I couldn't find the live stream cam and had to use one of the phones taped up in the tree to live stream the tailgate.Ā 

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Posted
12 hours ago, immamac said:

I am actually an initiated member at the Texas chapter for those that don’t know

I'm not inviting another long story, but I thought you went to aggy?

Posted

That, my friends, is 21st Century gonzo literature. Ā Thank you, Imma, for expending the time, energy and capital to make it possible for me to read of your adventures in Pettyland.

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Posted
18 minutes ago, dcbc said:

I'm not inviting another long story, but I thought you went to aggy?

I did, it's not that long of a story. I was obviously not a cultural fit at TAMU and was always in Austin, they thought I was a student at Texas and offered me a bid I told them I went to TAMU. I kept being involved and was eventually honorary initiated.Ā 

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Posted

That's a shame if this past weekend puts and end to the tailgates, and understandably so. I was one of the first ones to show up and had a beer with y'all afterwards and greatly appreciated the effort.

Posted

Forgot this nugget I added it in OP

At one point things were very bleak for the Longhorns and the Gators could have ended the game with a first. Big penalty gives Texas life stops the clock and basically forces a punt. Huge fuck up by the Gators to give the Longhorns life and the stadium knows it. It's quiet. Longhorn fans are apprehensive and gator fans have no reason to make noise. I wait about 3-4 seconds then stand up and yell MOVE BACK! YOU SUCK! everyone blue and orange equally in section 36 and 35 laugh their asses off and I get a bunch of "you got us goods" from Gator fans.Ā 

Posted

I read the whole saga and enjoyed the early Monday morning crapper reading material.

With all the other shit that went wrong, I can't believe the flights were uneventful.Ā  Btw - rental car bullshit makes my blood boil.

So what was the final tally (i.e., how close did you get to break even)?

Posted

Sucks for me that you’re going to stop the tailgates but I totally understand. My fandom got a LOT more enjoyable about 10-12 years ago when I stopped putting on a tailgate. Much more fun to roll up 2-3 hours ahead of the game instead of 12.Ā 

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Posted

My hope and suspicion is that the end of the tailgates might mean the end of Away-Game tailgates with occasional exceptions made where there is a system in place to prevent immamac from losing his shirt (or wedding ring) on the deal.

Posted
3 minutes ago, Grimas said:

Those Chops must have thought you were Jesus turning water into wine (beer)!

LONGHORN JESUS and TEXAS JESUS were shouted many times throughout the evening.Ā 

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Posted
11 hours ago, RexWilson said:

The cpap at the frat house got me. šŸ˜‚

@immamacĀ will be a legend in the University of Florida - Lambda Chi Alpha storybook for ever.Ā  Pledges will be told of the Longhorn Jesus who revealed himself with offerings of lager and ale, partied through the night, donned a CPAP and crashed on the couch, then vanished at the mere break of dawn never to be heard from again.

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Imma sleeping on the frat house couch,Ā  CPAP'd up and looking like Immortan Joe, is the photo we need.Ā 

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I seriously considered telling them to take a pic of me passed out but then knew it would be an invitation to really fuck with me to make the picture the bestĀ 

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Posted
4 minutes ago, honolulu horn said:

That experience could actually be a pretty entertaining movie.Ā 

I would have loved to have had a kid following me with a camera the whole time.Ā 

Posted
16 hours ago, immamac said:

The Leadup to The Swamp

So it was a very strange couple of weeks leading up to travel to Gainesville.

  • The Longhorns were coming off a bye, the fanbase and not just here is in a malaise around this team
    • The opening results for Ohio StateĀ and the subsequent dogshit home schedule that did little to produce any excitement or optimism going into SEC play.
  • Signing the 2025 Burnt Ends Contracts and doing the initial payouts and promotional stuff (linked to tailgate below)
  • I was completely overloadedĀ between:
    • Fixing the iOS18 issue that was caused by fixing iOS26 for the users of the board who were inevitably going to come back for this game
    • The tailgate + away watch party at MarlowĀ 
    • My demanding day job
    • Juggling my home life with my wife and 2 kids under 6
  • My Airbnb getting canceled on Tuesday leaving me without a place to stay in Gainesville for the weekend without shelling out 750+/night for a shithole.

I can say as a pure fan, I was so excited to go to The Swamp, party my ass off, and hopefully come home with a tone setting win for the season. As you can imagine, this is not at all how the weekend went.

The Tailgate Saga

The Longhorn Swamp Cruise, a party I've been planning behind the scenes for quite some time and it was finally time to execute and commit on the site, the food, the experience and everything. If you haven't been to one of my parties, they are fucking badassĀ I have a high standard for how I want to operate and how I see a complete fan experience adding an irreplaceable element to traveling fans experience in the city/stadium they are visiting. I work with RevelXP pretty closely as they own every site in the SEC (with the exception of Bama, who I have an existing relationship with). I figure out the site plan with them, where we want the tailgate to be and plan for baked in expansion from 350 to up to 1000 without the tents and without disrupting the rest of their thing. The site was sick absolute Prime Time location where we had not only where the red arrow is, but the entire boundary was the sidewalks you see around - We had the largest site on the entire campus of UF, with tons of tree coverage for shade, a less than 5 minute walk to the stadium and in the middle of the prime time stuff - EA Sports 25 was our neighbor, the Florida Family weekend was our other neighbor and behind us we had the Learfield Longhorn corporate whatever tailgate thing.Ā 

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Alright - site is set, and as I said I work pretty close with Revel and have a whole menu of what I want, I know I want it to be grab n go centric, no bartenders and no lines was the goal. University of Florida has a bunch of policies on who can actually cater on campus and how alcohol can be brought/sold, so I worked through all of that fairly quickly and identified a caterer who I had a ton of confidence in, they checked all the boxes and even elevated our menu with creative additions from their Head Chef who totally understood what we were going for. This place is called Sweetwater Inn, we were gonna have fucking beef wellington filet medallions, gator bites, minimal fried anything etc it was gonna be sick. I line up booze with Gator Beverage who is the near campus liquor store who knew what was up and I like to give fans a true experience of where we are going, I worked with them to source some awesome variety of local Gainesville Craft Beer, a healthy mix of RTD stuff and liquor/mixers/waters/sodas the works.

I’m feeling great about the tailgate, start a vendor thread with the RevelXP site partner to just have everyone on the same page logistically when RevelXP tells me that UF on ONLY this site has exclusivity for catering through their university Palm and Pine Catering. I do a lot of business with Revel home and away so I am not trying to cause problems for them, but an option was to be able to bring it myself if I picked it up and dropped it off (or someone on the Tailgate team) in unmarked vehicles. The thing about the catering is we were going to need mobile refrigeration, some finishing stuff etc this made it logistically difficult, but I scoped it out and had a 9ft van reserved from Home Depot (Uhaul was already sold out). Was gonna do the morning and afternoon drops myself, Sweetwater was going to bring 5 and a site manager to do everything and manage coolers, food, flow, all of it. UF catches wind that we aren’t using them, heat comes onto RevelXP and I against my better judgement relented and went with the Palm and Pine just to make things easier for me personally and so that it wouldn’t mess up my relationship with a partner that enables us and does a great job.

Big Mistake.

The menu recreation was a very painful process and the Chef is immediately showing me tons of red flags that they aren’t up to the task. I express this in real time with Revel and they tell me they will make sure it’s all going to go right.

Okay Fine.

Ticket sales are weird, but not terrible, definitely not strong. There is confirmation that there’s going to be around 10k longhorns going to the game, I’m thinking worst case we just do a ton of day of sales and breakeven. Then the weather forecast comes in on Monday/Tuesday – completely fucked heavy rain thunderstorms. It’s too late to reduce the size of the food order for catering (amateur hour) and I’m stuck with food for 400 with ticket sales on pace to hit 200 by day of.

Very Bad Vibes.

My Airbnb cancels on me Tuesday evening. This is turning into a disaster, but I’m not ready to pull the plug and am committing to doing whatever I need to do to make this work. Hotels are insane, I need to wait for night of on hotels tonight/hotwire and just get a cheap room wherever or crash a couch.

@treatyoak and @born have been helping a ton behind the scenes with flyers, video content for socials and guerilla marketing tailgate promo cards. I’m feeling good about our ways to get people to know about the game and print 5,000 of these cards for 140 dollars. Pick them up and look at them.

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Complete disaster on the cut/print side of things as their die/cut lines were way further out than stated in the template. Office Depot on South Lamar (shout out to the awesome staff) helped me trip 1,000 of them down to look viable

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Burnt Ends makes the promo video, it goes viral on Instagram and sales pop hard.

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I’m feeling way better, the forecast is clearing up to very mild rain partly cloudy all day and I think we’ll be fine and the day is gonna just work out well with a huge upside opportunity. I set the wristband pickup at MacDintons a campus bar in the thick of things from 7-10 and feel good about selling more there as we see eventual people coming in. I’m melting down from the stress of it all, but am excited to finally get on site and really get after it.

Friday – Travel Day!

Wake up a completely nervous wreck, needing to do an incredible amount of sales (40k in a single day) to feel completely at ease for Saturday. I had 1,000 of these cards and packed my suitcases full of everything I could possibly need at the tailgate. HDMI cables, HDMI Splitter, power cords, 3.5mm adapters, 3.5mm audio cables, sleeping bag and camping pillows, you name it I had it in a bag along with the starlink for internet when Gainesville cell towers would predictably shit the bed. I can’t focus on anything day job related and just decide fuck it I’m gonna go to the airport and hand out cards to every burnt orange wearing person (two direct GNV flights) I see. The AA flight and the Delta Flight both leave around 2-3PM, it’s 10AM. I get to the airport, check the tailgate bag, carry on the other bag and have backpack stuff to the gills with everything. I’m walking around and the longhorns that I talk to are all not going to the game, I don’t force things with them and just wander around. About 30 minutes of that and I’m really just not in a good place – I had told Will Matthews we were going to meet up and hang out in the delta lounge and catch up (we were on the same flight), so I say fuck it and go into the lounge to wait for him. I go out and meet him and talk to some Longhorn faithful in the process, explain to him how far behind we are and just try to go to the lounge and really have a good conversation with a friend of mine who also loves the Longhorns.

About 30 minutes before boarding starts, I was like I’m gonna go down there and pass out cards at the gate, we go down I start doing my thing, meet a few people who were already going, people are generally receptive and saying they’ll make it and a few sales start rolling in. I’m feeling good our conversion rate will be high if I talk to people and tell them about how awesome the food and experience is gonna be. I get a call from the alcohol delivery guy saying that he needs help unloading this massive order – I tlel him I’m about to get on the plane and I’ll be there asap to pick up whatever, then we take off. Uneventful flight

Land in GNV and I told Will I was gonna start a Texas Fight when we got there. I lead the chant it went off great, but with a lot of nervous energy clearly in the air.

My plan for post landing in GNV:

1.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Get Rental Car – Full Size SUV, reserved.

2.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Go to Walmart on the way into town and buy 3 43ā€ TV’s some 25ft HDMI cables, extension cables and pairing Bluetooth party speakers (for game sound/music at tailgate)

3.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Go give BobbyB wristbands to check people in while I go do a site walk

4.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Go do a site walk, drop off all the AV stuff and set up the starlink and test it - visualize what I need to change and make a list for little things that we are missing

5.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Go back to MacDintons and have a few beers while handing out wristbands and hopefully selling 100+ extras outside the check ins.

6.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Find a place to sleep that’s reasonable $$ or park somewhere and sleep in the empty SUV/Camp on the site/whatever

What Actually Happened

Deplane, Bags are there nearly immediately, nothing is broken.

Score.

Rental Car Lines are not long, but I go to the wrong counter (budget instead of alamo), waste about 5 minutes because of that then get in the Alamo line, vibes are good everyone on the plane is complaining about ubers being terrible and how fun the party is gonna be tomorrow. Still lots of nervous energy, but trending positive. Guy in front of me gets his car, guy behind the counter says oh it’s the last full size SUV he has – it’s 3 people with minimal bags…I’m like whatever they’ll have a standard SUV or mid-size which will be fine. Get up to the counter and start the process, Nope he gave away my car to these folks and all he has left is compact and intermediate cars which won’t fit the stuff. I explain to him I’ll take anything, even a van – he calls the lot and asks for turn ins, there’s a minivan. Hell yeah. They are turning it over and giving it to me. 10 minutes behind schedule at this point, not too shabby. Feeling like luck is on my side.

Car takes about 35 minutes to get ready and get the keys. Walmart is out of the question because I gotta get Bobby the wristbands ASAP. Along the way I met two guys who were SOL and didn’t have a rental car reservation and couldn’t get an uber because they kept canceling on them and offered them a ride downtown since I was headed there. They didn’t know where they were staying but were gonna find a motel or something, so whatever I help them out no sweat. Bobby calls me and says MacDintons has a $20 cover and people can’t just come in and there’s a massive line to get in the wristband situation is fucked. I don’t have an audible to call, so I am just gonna meet people out front after giving bobby wristbands. I decide fuck it I’ll just send it and park and stay then go to Walmart at 10PM – I got a site video from RevelXP and that was good enough for me to plan.

MacDintons is a fucking disaster, but oh my fucking god the amount of smoking hot ass (cheeks) out and about was actually impressive. There is no shortage of eye candy there and it’s a very very strong Florida vibe. Don’t get to hang out with my friends that were there to meet me and chill, tell the quick recap and that I don’t have a room.

Boom, friend has an extra hotel room because the ā€œvibes were offā€ in the accessible room they got at the hyatt place downtown. Hilton fixed it and they just left the other room with them so they handed me the keys with the stipulation that I had to be checked out by 11AM next day. I was like fuck yeah, free room for a night one problem solved! Ā Wristbands are weird, but we sell 10+ right off the bat and hand out another 30+ pre-check in. It’s 7PM and I’m calling it cuz bobby can just hand them out and no one else is coming cuz of the cover thing. I’ve got 4 tablets for self check in the next day so it should be smooth. I need to get to Walmart and to site – so I bail and head to Walmart.

Florida Walmarts are absolutely fucking insane.

Some of you may remember our Walmart trip on the way to Tuscaloosa, it was funny and we saw some toothless folks and some people who looked like they grew up in the hills. Florida Walmarts are on a whole different fucking level of crazy, so much so I had to call RGBIII immediately. This is quite possibly the largest Walmart I’ve ever been to in my life – I knew they had stock of the speakers I wanted because I had called ahead.

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Football field for scale.

The clientele skews heavily black and Florida fat white crazy bitch + old vet Geezer. Very fucking Florida. I beeline to the electronics section and tell the associate I’m gonna need some help checking out and getting all the stuff outside. They look at me perplexed as if I just need help picking something out and putting it in a cart, I tell them no I’m gonna buy [insert list here]. They are like holy shit, uh yeah we will help you. I wait my turn for help, then go and ask what is the cheapest TV’s they have, get the speakers, find the extension cords, buy 3 4 ft collapsable tables to up them on, an additional router to handle more than 200 clients on starlink. I get it all.

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Alright that was mostly painless, it’s 815ish and I’ll have plenty of time to drop off at site then cruise around and sell more wristbands and hang with friends/get drunk and party.

Card Declines.

Get the standard text message, whatever it’s a 1k purchase at a Walmart in Florida and it tripped fraud detection. Send it’s me and wait a minute try again.

Declined.

WTF, I try again a few more times, chip isn’t working quite right it’s a bit of a mess. Get a text from Wells Fargo again, this time saying call the fraud department immediately. I call the number, get on with someone in less than 2 minutes. Explain that yes, I am buying a bunch of stuff at Walmart and please reactivate my card, they reactivate the card and say wait 5 minutes and try again. I’m cutting up with the staff at Walmart and am honestly in people watching heaven, so much going on at this Florida Walmart for entertainment value. Who knew simple things like getting a new prepaid phone could be so fun! We retry after 5 minutes.

Declined.

WHAT THE FUCK, I’m starting to get pissed, it’s been 15 minutes at the checkout and I can’t get the card to take. They’ve got other customers that need help and are starting to get irate, but it’s hilarious to watch. They save the ticket to a resume barcode and move on while I try to figure this out. I get another text from Wells Fargo saying call the fraud department immediately. I somehow get connected with the exact same guy who just unlocked my card 10 minutes ago. He’s like oh ok, well I’ll give you a higher activation and it’ll definitely work. You can try again immediately. Scan in the ticket, have to manually decline all the extended warranty for 12 items or whatever and finally it’s ready to go.

Approved!

Hell yeah I’m out this bitch! It’s 8:35, not doing too bad! Dude can’t get the anti-theft lines off the TV – stuck another 15 minutes, finally get out around 9PM, damn its late, but at least I’m not fucked. I invite one of the funny checkout girls in the electronic dept to the party and gave her a wristband. (she didn’t show)

Booze delivery guy got everything delivered except the mixers and a few little things, I drop in to gator beverage to pick that stuff up and load it into the car and go to site to unload everything. Get help from the site guys with a golfcart to load, move and unload everything and make a plan for the next morning mentally.

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It’s 11PM, I’m getting the fuck out of here and landing at the hotel and going out and trying to sell wristbands/push the tailgate. Sales are not good, I still need to sell 150 to break even and 400 would be great. Park the van, come out and boom run into some plane people who are now shitfaced, but had been handing out cards for me as they went places. I wanna go put my stuff down and meet them for a drink. I go put stuff in the hotel room and god damnit if my IRL friend wasn’t right. Weirdest fucking vibe in a room I’ve ever stayed in. Just an awkward amount of space and used in the weirdest way possible.

I am in complete disarray about the sales not going well and trying to pull a miracle out, but am also exhausted and need to get some sleep. I go downstairs and can’t find drunk couple and just turn around and go back up shower and try to get to sleep to wake up the next day and get to site at 6AM to set everything up.

SATURDAY

So here was the plan:

1.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Get to site at 6AM

2.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Get sound going and speakers tested and paired/charged

3.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Get TV’s put together and up on the tables they were going to go on for the best viewing experience for everyone

4.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Get early beers on ice and early water on ice for the degenerates.

5.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Crush my first beer at daybreak

6.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Set up starlink and get it calibrated

7.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Set up all the self check in tablets

8.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Set up the livestream cam with all day battery

9.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Test Stripe tap to pay on the 3 phones I brought

10.Ā  Get Site redone for flow instead of a buffet setup that they had

11.Ā  Get 1st drop food served and all the booze in coolers

12.Ā  Go peddle tickets all over campus to anyone wearing burnt orange – Sell out (600 total, 350 that day)

13.Ā  Check on 2nd drop food and then party until the game and just MC and vibe check

14.Ā  Go to the Game and destroy the gators at the swamp

15.Ā  Break down my shit and pack up tailgate except for beer.

16.Ā  Afterparty at the tailgate to laugh at how bad everyone else sucks until we run out of beer

17.Ā  Sleep in the van after going to downtown bars brown out/black out drunk

I get to site, and things are going smooth. I get the speakers out, turn them on test max volume and put on Gangstas Paradise by Coolio (rip) – pair the speakers and test the total soundstage, then test the wireless mic setup.

Ā 

Ā 

I open the TV’s and the cheapo ones need to have the feet screwed in, lame, but I have a screwdriver so it’s alright. It’s dark as fuck and it’s hard to figure out which direction these legs go, I have to redo them a few times and then a RevelXP guy gave me a headlamp – dramatically increases my effectiveness. Get everything up and going, then I’m gonna get ready for game sound on the TV’s.

FUCKING CHEAPO TV’S DON’T HAVE BLUETOOTH!

The site TV’s didn’t either, the one thing I didn’t bring (which I have) is a Bluetooth to 3.5mm dongle. FML, no game sound on the speakers. Kind of the first fuckup of the day, but not a big deal because the music was pretty much a vibe and no one cared about the game audio or gameday.

Right after I get that set up I do the starlink, works great, pair all the tablets works great all is good and smooth. First people show up right at 8AM and we crack our first beer. He helps me put a bunch of beers in the cooler and on ice and we have a pleasant time while I’m kinda doing some scrambling around picking the site up from the mess I’ve made of boxes and wires (lawn staples to keep people from tripping etc.

Catering people show up, we reconfigure the whole tented area and set up for first round of food. There is Spinach dip – I did not order spinach dip it was never on the menu we discussed, but it’s not a bad thing just a wtf I didn’t wanna pay for this. I’m totally done with everything way ahead of schedule in my mind, probably 8:30AM. Hornian is there at this point and Bobby shows up and I’m chillin and doing wristbands for people walking up and checking in and figuring out how we can sell more tickets.

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The reality sets in that I’m starting the day 38k in the hole. I NEED to SELL 200 more tickets just to break even. Ā I look around and we are set up so early – we are the biggest group out on the quad at ESPN gameday start with a good group of about 30-50 people already congregating and having fun. Vibing out playing Texas tracks. There is no one else out, foot traffic is minimal, not a lot of burnt orange that I’m seeing. I decide around 10:15 that I need to make a big push and walk south towards the parking lots – completely dominated by gators, not a longhorn to be seen. I turn around after about 10 minutes of that and decide to walk to the main drag at stadium and university. Stand there and walk through multiple tailgating areas, the University of Florida sign and hand out hundreds of cards and talk to people. Lots of people saying they wanna check it out and I’m feeling alright. Sales are rolling in pretty steadily, but it’s nowhere near a pace that is gonna sell what we need and people just weren’t out. We are talking about clumps of 3-5 turning into 10-20, but no globs of hundreds or thousands like on campus at DKR. Very strange as the noon eastern games kick off I decide I’m just gonna build a contingent and march them to the tailgate. Gave out a few MULEDICK promo codes to a surly user, got about 9 people to follow me back to the tailgate just as the 2nd food drop was going in. I tried everything, it was all okay – I could complain, but at this point I’m just glad it’s not terrible…

At this point the tailgate is full, but not packed like it should have been.

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Then I get to the star of the tailgate, the Gator Bites. I’m excited and grab one pop it in my mouth expecting a meaty pop like a juicy chicken nugget, what I got instead was like a hushpuppy flavor and a cornbread texture. I thought I was going crazy and so I picked another one up and just pulled it open with my hands. I asked an innocent bystander incredulously ā€œdo you see any fucking gator?ā€ to which they promptly replied ā€œhaha, no is that supposed to be gator?ā€

Mother fucker. I go and grab the catering lead, immediately escalate and then take them over to the gator bites and say grab one and eat it. They didn’t want to and I’m doing my best not to go full Gordon Ramsay

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I explain to them that I am acutely aware this is not their fault and that I’m not in any way mad at them, but I need them to absorb and communicate the situation all the way to the chef.

I proceed to take another ā€œgator biteā€ and pull it open and ask her to point to the gator for me. She obviously cannot, and is kind of baffled and I said now go talk to whoever you need and find me the gator bites I’m sure it’s just a mistake.

Head of catering comes out to try to smooth things over and I tell them if they want to try and tell me these are gator bites to have the head fucking chef come out and do it himself. Site lead comes back and says the Chef says that’s the gator bites and proceeds to show me a picture of BOXED GATOR BITES FROM CISCO OR BEN E KEITH. In our contract it was explicitly written that it was locally sourced gator, cubed lightly breaded and fried. Needless to say I told them the ā€œgator bitesā€ needed to be removed. They scramble to replace with anything they have on hand and apparently they have some crabcakes at this point I don’t care and they bring them – they are barely passable.

I’m doing about $500 every 5 minutes in sales, which gives me hope, but then it dries up quick and comes in spurts – total we did about 4k in walkup sales on top of doing another 8k or so in online sales. I’m admitting defeat and I just wanna hang out at my own damn tailgate for a little bit before the game and get pumped for this fucking beatdown that Texas is about to deliver. I’m getting the crowd pumped announce the plans for the afterparty and then I finally get to sit for the first time all day and relax with some of my friends. That lasted for about 20 minutes and then everyone was headed off to the game, meanwhile one of our potential commercial partners Tailgreeter was coming to the site to talk. The head of RevelXP Florida, the head of Tailgreeter and I have about a half hour long pow wow on the day, business and a path forward right next to the leftover booze since it’s obvious that we are going to lose a shitload of money on the day, but the party was fucking fantastic and it was just a headscratcher on what happened commercially.

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I shotgun a beer and walk to the stadium with a roadie talking business until the ticket line with Tailgreeter homie. I cannot let the tailgate ruin my day – Texas is about to play in the fucking Swamp and I’m feeling like this team is gonna come out and really have it turned around and play with a chip on their shoulder. I talk to some hilarious Florida fans, they ask about my shirt I tell them all about Burnt Ends and NIL, they are shocked at how cool Texas fans have been. They keep talking mad shit about DJ ā€œBagwayā€ and Billy Napier and telling me they are a basketball school. They are worried we are gonna miss kickoff and I said no way the flyover hasn’t even happened yet! They were like ā€œwhat are they gonna fly over, helicopters?ā€ To which I kind of looked at them confused and said ā€œAre there no planes around here?ā€, then they told me that they very rarely have flyovers and I’m still just confused and tell them that there’s one at every Texas game. We wish eachother luck and I head to my sick 40 yard line behind the bench seats, pumped.

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I get to my seat and an idiot Texas fan who didn’t come to my fucking party was in my seat, kickoff was just about to happen and I was like look I just wanna watch the game, so I’ll stand in a different seat till someone shows up. They made a deal out of it and I just tuned them out and ended up next to a younger Florida fan and a grumpy Longhorn fan who wouldn’t engage to talk about the game or what was going on and his wife who was nice. Behind me was a pair of old women who were split Florida and Texas and then in front there were a healthy mix of Florida and Texas fans in clumps. Overall a great vibe – young Gator fan was talking plenty of shit, but in the friendly type of way – great banter. One of my favorite exchanges with him was when arch broke off the 30 yarder and he said ā€œthat’s more than your running backs combined in one play!ā€ to which I retorted ā€œCalm down Mr. Tim Tebow schoolā€.

The atmosphere in The Swamp was worthy of every single bit of hype I’ve ever heard. The place was FUCKING ROCKING. The product on the field was obviously shit, that’s not what this story is about. Some of my favorite things about the stadium in no particular order:

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  The lack of artificial sound/music all the time between plays

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  The lack of massive jumbotrons being distracting, modest and simple is good

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Great announcers

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Awesome cross fanbase collab from a UT Austin Graduate Executive at Gatorade – classy as fuck

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  MOVE BACK! YOU SUCK!

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Gator chomp

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Tom Petty song thing

Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  The sunken field and it’s general acoustics

About 3 minutes before halftime I said fuck it I’m gonna piss before it gets crazy and I ran into Mike from last stand hats as he recognized me and pulled me aside. Asked how tailgate went, but he already knew and we vibed out for a bit and talked ball. I invited him back to help us finish some of the beer that was left even if it was not the result we wanted. He was convinced we were fucked, I was still optimistic that it as a 12 point game.

At one point things were very bleak for the Longhorns and the Gators could have ended the game with a first. Big penalty gives Texas life stops the clock and basically forces a punt. Huge fuck up by the Gators to give the Longhorns life and the stadium knows it. It's quiet. Longhorn fans are apprehensive and gator fans have no reason to make noise. I wait about 3-4 seconds then stand up and yell MOVE BACK! YOU SUCK! everyone blue and orange equally in section 36 and 35 laugh their asses off and I get a bunch of "you got us goods" from Gator fans.Ā 

I stay through the end of the game, and walk back to the tailgate to break down and drink as much as possible to deal with the reality that I just lost a bunch of fucking money, the longhorns actually fucking suck this year, and that I had an impossible amount of beer for even 100 people to consume at an afterparty. I call the Alumni Officer for the Florida Lambda Chi Alpha chapter and tell him, ā€œhey I’ve got about 50 cases of beer, they are y’alls you just gotta come get themā€.

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This is the equivalent response I got but via voice on the other side of the phone. A lot of stammering and figuring out how to get there in the crazy traffic and I told him hey we will be here for a few hours at least just get here when it dies down.

About 12 people show up and we get to work, I’m grumpy as fuck and just nursing a drink while I’m boxing up the TV’s the speakers, the wires everything. I’m hollering at any pretty ladies or longhorns to come consume with us, hardly any takers except some young hotties from ā€œSanta Fe Collegeā€ which is UF’s ā€œsister schoolā€ in Gainesville haha. I finally wrap up and at this point I’ve got a good buzz and just start telling stories with everyone. A poster from Tulsa was there, it was good times just kicking it. Then the Lamba Chi’s finally commit to an eta to get their beer, so I’m organizing carts to take it over to where they can load up. I’m walking back to the tent beer in hand and notice some guy walking off with one of the speakers in the box. I sternly, but normal outside voice say ā€œhey you!ā€ he ignores me. I get loud, Texas fight chant loud, and say ā€œHEY YOU!ā€ still ignores me. Then I get full on metal vocals loud and say ā€œHEY I’M TALKING TO YOU WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH MY SPEAKERā€ as I’m running up on this guy. That gets his attention quick and he turns around and says ā€œI’m just trying to listen to some musicā€, I replied ā€œYeah that’s my speakerā€, he turns and starts walking away and I was like ā€œGive me my fucking speakerā€ and turned him around and took it from him. He then started arguing with me about not letting him use it and I just turn around and walk away. I tell him no and to go back to his tent. This fucking idiot comes at me from behind after I had turned around and I saw because I was looking over my shoulder still and I turned around and told him ā€œI JUST HAD THE WORST SATURDAY I CAN REMEMBER AND YOU ARE ABOUT TO HAVE A WORSE FUCKING DAYā€

At this point 4 revelxp people had run up onto the scene, Mike was standing up coming that way. They are apologizing profusely to me as they watched the whole interaction go down. I calmed down immediately as I didn’t really realize how hot I had gotten being in a bad mood.

We call over some more ladies, one of them takes a full bottle of ice cold Sauv Blanc with her, another took an 8 pack of Surfsides. Another group took a case of High noons and some of the revel guys took a sixer of some of the beers. Didn’t even put a dent in the frat haul. We load up all that, they get it into the cars and then we are loading out my tvs, tables and speakers and I notice one of the 3 TVs is missing and think I’m going crazy and that maybe I just put it under a table cloth on accident. Nope. Its proper gone. RevelXP Sales VP for the Southeast region comes up and is like oh no and ends up finding it at the speaker guys tent. He’s now banned from all RevelXP sites for life.

We laugh all this off as we are polishing off the cooler, everyone says their goodbyes as we cut the generator and I get a ride to my minivan downtown from the 2nd lambda chi car that has my stuff and about 12 cases of beer in it. We do a hilarious shuffle of moving things from his car to mine at the garage while blocking some poor people in who wanted to leave for like 5 minutes but they were cool. At this point I’m starting to turn a corner and evolve my thinking entirely away from the game and more onto what I’m gonna get into for the rest of the evening in Gainesville. The Lambda Chi’s graciously invited me to the house to meet the guys and see the place. I oblige and meet them at the frat house after I talked to my wife on the phone for about 15 minutes and caught up on the weekend’s happenings and told her that I’m done with tailgate stuff. (a more formal announcement on plans later, but yeah I’m done in the current form or anything similar)

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16 hours ago, immamac said:

The Frat Saga

I get out expecting to just go inside say hi, shake the President’s hand and get a tour then be on my way. Instead I get out of the minivan and am walking over and see a car parked in the grass, and thought they were just unloading from the car – nope some chick clearly wasted just in her car in the lawn. I wave and proceed to the front door of this massive house. I know absolutely no one that is inside, but wave in the window after knocking. This is already getting weirder than I wanted and I’m fucking old – what the fuck am I doing at this frat house. A completely shitfaced kid opens the door and lets me in. The house is TRASHED.

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I introduce myself as a Texas Lambda Chi Alum (I am actually an initiated member at the Texas chapter for those that don’t know) and told them I think they were unloading some of the beer I gave them. These guys are full on

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Welcome me in and offer me one of my beers. I oblige, I’m feeling the situation out and watching the Miami Florida State game with them answering questions on why I have 50 extra cases of beer and just in general vibe checking things. More people start to congregate in the common area as news has spread that there’s a ton of beer there now. A bunch of recent graduates were there partying as well, I gravitated towards them in conversation asking about their adventures into adulthood we start chopping it up vibes are good. For the first time all day I’m finally not feeling any stress.

I go full degen, I’m keeping up with the youngins – and then some Indian kid who is maybe 5’5 155 walks in with a MAGA hat on, just a goofy looking kid. I ask him if he’s wearing that ironically and everyone laughs and it’s clear he’s one of the ā€œtroll for reactionā€ types in the frat. I get a good laugh from it and we continue drinking and stuff. I get a tour of the house, and I’m taking into a room that has the fake taxi logo on it and I’m like oh God what’s behind this door. They were like you gotta check out so and so’s room haha.

Door opens and it’s pitch black with strobing colored lights and soundproofing visible on all the walls and immediately huge volume erupts from the door – I enter the room there’s 3 chicks and 2 dudes just listening to crazy electronic music in front of lights. The bed has red satin sheets and one of the guys and 2 of the girls are there. It’s really dark outside of the strobing and I don’t wanna get involved in a weird orgy or something so I’m kinda staying by the door and not trying to be a part of the room. I’m still very much the old man who is weirdly there, don’t want to fuck up the welcome vibe. We leave after about a minute of me laughing and asking about the sound proofing and check out the library, then the rest of the common area, kitchen and the backyard. Really cool setup they have there.

Then we start drinking with purpose, I mention that I have all kinds of speakers and tailgate stuff in the van so we go get that and set it up and get ready to throw another party and invite everyone over. Girl start appearing out of everywhere, hallways, doors the outside etc. I’m laughing and having a good time with some of the other alums that are there. I tell a joke to some of these girls asking them if they wanna see my minivan and all the cool shit I have inside. They play along and we actually go outside to check out the minivan I have all the tailgate stuff in there, I open up the crazy bag of cables and starlink and they are laughing and impressed that all the absurd things I was saying were actual truths.

It's that time of the night where you are fucked up, and what better idea is there than to go to the bars? Turns out one of the guys in that crazy room was a Ron Weasley Doppelganger of a ginger. Hilarious crew of misfits we have assembled and of course that’s at 12:45AM, the bars close at 2. We hop in an uber and go downtown, then midtown, then back downtown all over Gainesville it was impressive how much ground we covered in such a short amount of time both walking and via car. One of the guys with us had one of those Florida colored overalls and some thicc black ladies were cat calling him. They didn’t wanna interact but I couldn’t resist. They wanted to know how much money it would take for him to give them his overalls on the spot. They offered $50 to open, he said he paid $100 and I was like how about $220 and then they were like ā€œAWWWWW HELL NAWā€ we had a lot of funny banter after that then ended the night out and went back to the frat house, drank more and realized fuck I have to drive to the airport and all this shit in like 4 hours. I take a shower, change into new clothes, pull out the CPAP and my sleeping bag/pillows from my bag that I had packed to sleep in the van. They present me with this top tier donor shot glassĀ 

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Plug in, put in my noise canceling sleep headphones and zonk out at around 3AM.

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SUNDAY

TO-DO LIST:

1.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Drop off stuff with guy with RV to mule back to Austin (speakers, 3 tvs, 3 tables) by 7AM

2.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Get gas before turning in rental car

3.Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Do not miss flight at 11:55 to Austin

Not a bad day agenda. Wake up without any dicks drawn on me thankfully and pack up my sleeping back, cpap and hop in the car and drive to the RV park, get there on time to unload and then decide I haven’t eaten properly in 3 days so I should get some breakfast. Stop at Waffle House in Gainesville, am the only patron it sucks and I take a massive shit in the bathroom and pay and leave. Get gas, get the airport, get through security by 830AM. I started writing this around then, then a Longhorn takeover of the airport happens from 9-boarding due to 2 directs from GNV to AUS. Tell a few stories with people, but mainly talk to Will Matthews about what our thoughts on the team are and how much we fucking hate OU. Ran into drunk couple again, exchanged contact info. Boarded, wrote some more of this until I was actually nodding off and then zonked out until landing. Made it home by 2:45PM.

I hope you subscribe to my newsletter, or better yet to this website. It helps me do stupid shit like this and share it with you all.

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