September 9-15, 2004

naked city

Big Daddy Graham Gets Bombed!

Illustration By: Jeffrey Bouchard

The sports-talk host/ comedian drinks the Shore dry.

Sea Isle City, Saturday Afternoon, Labor Day Weekend

3:45 pm: Hurricane Frances is having its way on the beach. It's not raining, but it's cloudy and windy. PERFECT DRINKING WEATHER. Then again, any kind of weather down the shore is drinking weather. Time to walk up the beach to 43rd Street to The Carousel, my favorite oceanfront bar in the world. To hell with Hawaii or Nag's Head or Malibu or Myrtle Beach, THIS IS THE JERSEY SHORE. My wife wants to know if she should bring my beach chair off the beach when she leaves and I tell her no. I'll be back to get it. I mean, I'm only walking up for a couple of drinks, right? I'll be back before she leaves. Right?

3:47 pm: I don't get two feet when someone yells out, "Big Daddy!" It's a couple of guys named Bob and Johnny D. They're on vacation. Their wives and kids are huddled under blankets closer to the boardwalk. Bob's got a tattoo of a naked chick with huge tits on his bicep. They're WIP listeners and big fans. After a brief conversation ("Is Cataldi really that cheap?"), I tell them it was nice meeting you, I'm getting together with some people up at the Carousel. "No way," they say. "We were just heading to the Commodore and we're buying you a drink."

3:57 pm: Inside the Commodore, a private bar inside the Spinnaker condo building on 37th Street. I've been here before. Nice place. But it's early and we're the only ones in here. Down goes my first Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. DAMN, it tastes great. And it's on Bob, which makes it taste even smoother. I sometimes wonder what makes a man sit inside a bar during the day down the Shore. It's cloudy today, but hell, I've sat in here on perfectly beautiful days. What's wrong with me? I quickly conclude that there's nothing wrong with me and let Johnny D. buy me a drink. What he hell. I'm from Philly. I'm SUPPOSED to be drinking. Down goes JWB No. 2 and it's official. I've got a slight buzz on. Bob and Johnny D. are now engaged in a very heated argument over whether Pam Anderson got her start in Home Improvement or Baywatch. Bob's calling Johnny D. a stupid asshole. Nothing like a bar when the only two guys in it are about to trade blows. I pretend that I'm on the cell phone and that I have to split because my daughter's stuck in an elevator in Wildwood. Johnny D. hands me a business card and says if I ever need a Dumpster to give him a call. It's off to the Carousel.

4:39 pm: Despite the weather or because of it, or who the hell knows, the Carousel is jumping. It's a small, round, outside bar that sits on the street side of the boardwalk. Part of it is on sand and the other part is on a cement driveway. In the beginning, it was really an afterthought to the bigger inside bar on the other side of the driveway, the Springfield. For years it served Schmidt's Beer and Schmidt's Beer ONLY. I used to love watching puzzled first-timers who would rattle off beer after beer just to hear a bartender patiently reply, "Sorry, just Schmidt's." Now the Carousel is a booming bar on its own with food and picnic tables and acoustic-guitar-playing singers.

I edge myself up to the bar to order and Ernie the bartender yells at me to look down. There's about a pint of Johnnie Black on the rocks already served with a Coke on the side. What does it say about a man when every bartender in town assumes you're drinking and knows WHAT you're drinking. As I'm contemplating this question someone puts me in a chokehold from behind. It's Darren. A producer from WIP. He's with his buddies Bingo and Genius. Darren just got engaged on the beach and he's out celebrating. Now, Darren's a lot of fun and a true load, and truth be told Darren would celebrate a victory by the Kansas City Royals. His fiancee's back at the house changing and he's out on the town already. "Yeah, that's gonna be a good marriage," I think to myself. Next thing you know I have yet another JWB in front of me, so that's about a quart.

6:31 pm: I'm wasted. Hammered. Totaled. Shitfaced. Fucked up. The Carousel allows parents to bring babies into the bar area. There's dogs there too. Genius tells me that restaurants in Europe allow dogs. Drunks are full of important knowledge. Snuffy, this giant German shepherd, is licking my leg, and I gotta tell you, at this point it doesn't feel bad. Between the babies and the pets it feels like I'm a drunk guest appearing with The Wiggles. The singer's singing Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide," a song I truly despise, but I find myself shouting every moronic word of it with these chicks at the bar. They were so good looking I'd join them in "Kumbaya." Spins Nitely's on my cell. He's driving into Sea Isle. This is gonna be a bad night. Darren tells me his fiancee's at the OD and to tell Spins we'll meet him there. I grab a couple hot dogs for the walk. My wife meanwhile is not answering her cell. What's up with that? Am I miraculously in the clear?

7:10 pm: On the way to the OD we pass Coffee.Comedy, a coffeehouse that has comedy at night. I've done a couple shows there and I remember they have a chocolate chip cookie named after me. At this point there's about 11 of us. Like Moses, I lead them into the coffeehouse.

There's a family at a table drinking lattes. Before I can even get to the counter to show off my cookie, Bingo falls flat out onto the table spilling every coffee on it. This is getting ugly. We run out the door like 7-years-olds running from nuns. Thank God the OD is right around the corner. Still no word from my wife.

7:22 pm: Ah, the OD. Home. I used to perform at the Ocean Drive, or the "OD" as it's more commonly known. Eight summers of Monday nights with Big Daddy Graham. It's an absolute madhouse. It's the beach jam with Secret Service, this singing-joking duo that's been packing them in for 20 years. I know them and used to work with them. Great act. They're more like mad drunken party maitre d's than musicians. There's a good crowd normally, but with it being Labor Day weekend and the bad weather and all, it's nuts. A minute before I entered I was out of it, barely walking, and in this place I felt like Pat Croce. There were hundreds and hundreds of drunks who would have been turned down for the movie Animal House on the grounds that they couldn't stand upright long enough to be filmed. Secret Service is playing "California Dreaming." Everyone is singing, It's loud. Darren says his fiancee is at the back bar. She might as well be in Utah. This extremely well-endowed chick with a tight T-shirt that says "RESPONSIVELY" across her jugs hands me a bottle of Bud Light. It's $1 Bud Day, Night, whatever, who the fuck knows what time it is. I buy five more. It's the first time I've dipped in my pocket the whole damn day. We make it to the back bar and there's Darren's fiancee with a thousand people. Friends, uncles, siblings, priests. They're doing shots of peppermint Schnapps. "What did I do to deserve this," I ask myself? Down it goes. I'm breaking Cardinal Rule No. 1 of drinking. DON'T MIX!

7:51 pm: Dom from Secret Service is introducing me to the crowd. There's a smattering of cheers and applause. This guy next to me says to his friend, "Big Daddy doesn't know dick about sports," not knowing who I am. I turn to tell him he's right. Big mistake. He wants to talk Eagles. Next thing you know Dom from Secret Service is telling the crowd he has a big surprise for Big Daddy and there's my wife. Up on stage with them. What the fuck? My wife loves to sing karaoke at parties among friends but she has never sung at a nightclub. I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW SHE WAS HERE. Turns out she went to the OD with some neighbors and they're more smashed than we are! Secret Service breaks into Springsteen's "Out in the Streets" and there's my wife performing like Bruuuuuce at the Linc. The crowd's going nuts. Shit, how drunk am I? The song ends and I meet up with my rock-star wife. She tells me she's gotta get some air. Still no sign of Spins.

8:17 pm: Standing outside the OD with my wife and Darren, who has lost his fiancee already. Outside is nuts. Cars honking horns. Bass booming from speakers. College brats calling each other jerkoffs. Seventeen-year-old chicks showing fake ID's and getting nowhere. Jeez, it's safer inside. John Clark from Channel 10 is walking by. He tells me he's going to Lacosta. "Meet us there!" What the hell, Lacosta is across the street.

8:22 pm: Jerry Blavat's at the Lacosta and they want a $7 cover.

8:23 pm: Back at the OD. No cover. I lose my wife. I lose everybody. Where's Spins? I've had it. I'm toast. I decide to split. I have a five-block walk home. I can handle that, right?

8:30 pm: What's that Grateful Dead song? "What a long strange trip it's been?" Then I remember I hate the Grateful Dead. The Wawa's up ahead. Food time. Buy some Shortie hoagies and eat a hot dog or two without paying. Unfortunately the Dead Dog, one of my all-time watering holes, is right next to the Wawa, and as I walk by, who runs out and pulls me in? Spins. He's been at the Dog the whole time chatting up this couple from Kensington. I tell the chick that she can't be from Kensington because she has teeth. The dude doesn't take this too kindly and I quietly tiptoe backward out the door, telling Spins to come over to my pad when he's done here.

8:52 pm: Back at the house. My daughter has some friends over and they're playing Cranium. Oh, brother. I take my four Shortie hoagies and collapse on the couch. The last thing I remember before I pass out is that I never got my beach chair.

11:05 pm: My wife and Spins are shaking me, telling me to get up. Through the fog I see about three other people. Is that Darren? Where's his fiancee'? They're all going over to Moore's Inlet in North Wildwood. "Get up, you're going. Pat's not drinking. She's driving." Who the hell's Pat?

Where's my beach chair?

To contact Big Daddy, go to www.bigdaddygraham.com.