F-Word Fridays: Razing Arizona

I was going to start this column with some sentence along the lines of “Look out, Scottsdale! My boys and I are about to descend like vultures on your fair city, and tear it up! You’ll never be the same! Wooooooooooo!”. Of course, that would have been terribly, unforgivably lame, and probably would have cost me at least half of my four (4) regular F-Word Friday readers (love you guys!). And furthermore, it would have been textbook hyperbole. There are 12 of us going, ranging in age from 28 to 59, with a mean age of 31. There will be a grand total of two single guys there. Everyone else is married or getting married. These days, the descending is less “like vultures” and more like “on an escalator,” and the only places we’ll be tearing up are a couple of very nice golf courses.

But fun will be had. Dinners will be expensive and laughs will be cheap. And almost entirely at my expense. I have a nervous energy, and I think this must be what the hours leading up to your own roast must feel like. And I’m brimming with questions. For example:

1) What is the number of Vodka Red Bulls that can be consumed before the heart explodes: We’re not talking the medical version of exploding, where a valve goes or something. We’re talking leaping out of your chest and running as fast as it can in the other direction. I’m guessing that number is 17

2) What is the ratio of beers consumed to golf balls lost: This is a very athletic group. And they’ve always been good at holding their liquor. So normally I’d put this at something like 12:1 beers:balls. But something tells me the odometer might be a little higher than we realize. 6:1

3) Likelihood of a hurricane: An unusual question, to be sure, but considering that the guy who planned this weekend also planned his own bachelor party in Myrtle Beach four years ago and managed to pull it off in spite of the mandatory hurricane evacuation order the state issued for that weekend. You know those movie scenes where everyone is fleeing the city and traffic outbound is at a standstill, and the hero is driving the only car on the inbound side of the road? That was us, in a cab. 12%

4) Average age of the women who talk to this group: I have it on good authority that during these late winter months, Scottsdale is the epicenter for single women of…how can I put this delicately…a slightly older demographic. That’s right, it’s the Cougar Capital of America! I find it hard to believe after having spent my share of nights drinking at the Dallas Ritz Carlton bar that Scottsdale has anything on Big D, but I’m eager to know more. 41 years old

5) Number of times Credit Card Roulette rears its ugly head: Honestly, this could happen anytime anyone has to pay for anything. None of my friends are degenerate gamblers, but they can’t help themselves when it comes to this game: 5 times

6) Number of times the phrase “I/you/we are too old for this” is uttered Sunday morning: Vegas won’t even put odds on this. Pass