Omaha '08!

We just spent the weekend in Omaha at a fantastic wedding for some friends of ours. I know exactly what’s going through your head right now, “What the hell is there to do in Omaha? Actually, first off, where the hell is Omaha???”

Omaha is in Nebraska. Where is Nebraska, you ask? I don’t know. Somewhere in the heartland of real America.

Anyways, what is there to do in Omaha? I’ll tell you what.

First of all, Omaha has the highest number of beer taps per capita in the Western hemisphere. I know this as a fact, not because I looked it up on Wikipedia, but because my friends and I used empirical evidence and our livers to figure it out while we did a pub crawl through the Old Market district on Friday starting at noon and ending at 1 AM.

Omaha also has the Spaghetti Feast. That’s actually the name of a meal on the menu at the Spaghetti Works restaurant. Two of our friends went head-to-head in a Spaghetti Feast eating contest, which was simultaneously the most amazing and disgusting thing I’ve seen in a long time. The Spaghetti Feast is 2 pounds of noodles, like 3 or 12 meatballs, and a sausage link. I’m not sure how the sausage link worked its way onto the plate because it just seemed gratuitous, but it was there. Someone else who was questioning the existence of the sausage link was my buddy who lost the Spaghetti Feast eating contest because the sausage link was the only thing left on his plate, taunting him like a bunch of leftover pig guts wrapped in a pig intestine casing. I realize that doesn’t make any sense but if I was made up of a bunch of shit like that I’d be all bitter and vindictive too.

Omaha has soccer watching English dudes. No shit. We went to a bar where I saw a guy wearing a Liverpool track jacket. He saw my Liverpool scarf so we did a bro hug then sang You Will Never Walk Alone. It turns out he grew up outside of Liverpool. On my way out we shared another bro hug and wished each other luck in the match the next day, at which time a second English dude grabbed my scarf and asked why I’d root for a scouser team like Liverpool. No bullshit - there was a second soccer watching English dude in the same bar in Omaha, Nebraska. I scoffed in his face and asked what lesser team he followed.

“Who do I follow!?!” He said indignantly (in an English accent), “I follow my ancestors who are from Chelsea!”

Ooh shit, he invoked his ancestors! What the fuck was I going to say to that? I wanted to be like, “Oh, your ancestors, huh? Did your ancestors defect to Omaha-fucking-Nebraska too, or was that just you, you fucking wanker!?!”

But then he was totally going to be like, “Actually, I just came here to get some life saving medications for my mom who is dying of Hyperhydrotosis back in England.”

Then I’d feel like a dick.

So instead I just said, “Well, good luck with that new winning streak,” and walked away (As you recall from several posts ago, Liverpool ended Chelsea’s 86-game home winning streak the other week, so I pretty much gave him a verbal kick to the nuts). He didn’t appreciate that. Wanker.

Omaha also has awesome weddings. This one was held in the old train station, which was amazing. The cocktail hour was in the lower level of the building, which is now a museum commemorating the history of the American frontier with a specific emphasis on the railroad industry. All that means is, we sat up in the cupola of an old caboose and drank our cocktails, had our picture taken with a taxidermied bison, and hung out in a Native American tepee (which, if you can imagine what you think the inside of a tepee would smell like, that’s what it smelled like). It was badass.

The reception was upstairs in an amazing ballroom where we danced our faces off and in general had a head-to-head contest to see who could make a bigger ass of themselves. It was decidedly a draw.

A highlight was doing the conga train to Quad City DJ’s Come On Ride That Train while playing our wooden train whistles that the couple had handed out as the wedding favors. Brilliant.