One of my closest friends is getting hitched and for his bachelor party he requested no strippers. What would you do? Befuddled by this unusual request, my friend E.J. came up with the singularly brilliant idea to hire Joey Welz to perform. Joey Welz is a 70-something keyboard/piano player who was in Bill Haley’s Comets in the 50’s, jammed with (and claims to have named) the Beatles in the 60’s, and has been on what he described as an “extended bachelor party in every rock club from here to North Carolina” ever since. Now he specializes in white rap.

Check out Joey Welz’s myspace page here:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=49654257

So a group of us guys gathered together in E.J.’s living room to watch the aging legend’s rap show. My favorite tune was called “Yoyo Man” where he raps and performs yoyo tricks at the same time. (Although, he hasn’t figured out yet that rapping isn’t just talking over a beat.) During one tune he leaned over to me and goes “They’re playing this song on the radio in Europe.” He wrote a song to the Asian tsunami victims where he averred “Tsunami, once every 20 years” over sounds of thunder. Another song was written about the game show “Deal or No Deal,” whose chorus was, predictably, “deal, or no deal?!” He said he planned to approach the show’s producers the next weekend in Atlantic City to talk about licensing it.

See a video of Joey performing “Skeletons in the Closet” here.

After we paid Joey a good chunk of change for the night, E.J., Tim, and I headed over to a local dive called Hildy’s, which is known for brawling. One time I heard a loud smack behind me and turned around just in time to avoid a man’s unconscious body landing on me—real Kenny Rogers/Patrick Swayze type sht.

After about three shots and a beer at the bar (and about eight Lion’s Heads and shots of Maker’s Mark at E.J’s), I did something I never did before, I fell over at the bar. The barkeep then kicked me out and I fell again outside, this time in front of a cop who called about four other squad cars. E.J. heroically talked them out of throwing me in the drunk tank by letting them know we were walking home. Somehow in the chaos before I passed out back at the ranch I lost only my mobile phone battery.