Joe Messenger

I've known Joe for years and as long as I've known him, he's always been around to provide some great memories.  During lunch in high school I remember eating with him, John, and a bunch of other kids and Joe would always tell us this story about this porn he watched where a lady was riding a bicycle and ever time she pedaled she would be penetrated with a dildo...yes, it was just as absurdly hilarious as it sounds.

My favorite memory of Joe has to come from the trip to Cancun a big group of us went on for Spring Break our senior year of high school.  Since we were a bunch of 18-year-old's from Michigan who could legally drink for the first time in our lives in a beautiful place on the ocean with people who didn't speak English, it suffices to say that most of the time we weren't sober; but there was one night in particular when Joe was a little bit more drunk than everyone else a little bit earlier than everyone else.  I was in the hotel room with John and Greg when Joe knocked on our door and came in, hammered from drinking with his older brother Jeff for a while.  When he walked in he proceeded to put on what I can only describe as a beautifully orchestrated, booze fueled dance fest, and it was there that he gave the world a dance move that just keeps on giving: The Beached Whale.  It was one of those freak things that happened and will never be repeated with the same hilarity as it was that night, but to get an idea of what I'm talking about, here's a chubby dude doing a much poorer version of it Beached Whale (Poser Edition).  I don't know why, maybe it was becayse I was dehydrated from being around undrinkable water and was a dumbass teenager, but that was one of the funniest things I have ever seen, and only Joe, the giant goof ball of a man he is, could have pulled it off.

I don't see Joe all that often these days, although he was part of the group of us that went down to Miami for Spring Break our junior year of college, which was also a great time, but I think I'll save that memory for another one of the dudes that went down there.  Whenever I do see Joe though, he's still the same good guy he's always been, and anybody who gets the chance to talk to him seriously for a few minutes will know that he really is just a genuinely good guy.  Even though like the rest of us he acts a little more "adult" now, there's always that feeling that at any moment, maybe after one more shot, the beached whale will flop out of the ocean and make the world laugh once again.

-Andrew

Dominic Czarnota

I met Dominic at some random get together at the Diedrich's house back in middle school and I don't remember exactly how it happened, but he and I just clicked and before I knew it he became one of my closest friends.  We both dig movies, we're both Polish (and have the wild families that come with that), we're into the same kind of music, we both like photography...we had a lot of things in common that most of the rest of our crew of guys didn't, which is what I think allowed us to build a friendship outside of just having proximity from the people we hung out with when we first me.  One of the things that Dominic and I connected most with was music, and in the decade or so that we have known each other we have been able to see multiple shows, just about all of them being memorable.  The most recent one actually happened but a few hours before I started writing this when we went to see The Hives at Clutch Cargos in Pontiac.  Not only did those crazy Swedish bastards put on one hell of a show, on our way out as we were walking to the parking lot we just so happened to run into the band and shake their hands complimenting them on a great performance.  We didn't plan for something great, it just happened naturally, and in a nutshell that's how I would describe mine and Dom's friendship: natural, unforced coolness.

During the second semester of my junior year at college, Dominic and his girlfriend Melissa were visiting MSU so I invited them over to hang out and have some drinks with my roommates and a couple other people.  What I expected to be just a nice little get together with one of my good buds ended up being one of the most fun nights I've had in college and quite possibly the best night of party photographs that I have ever had.  Looking back through the photos from that night I laugh both at the things I remember vividly and the things that apparently happened which I have no recollection of whatsoever.  That night had pretty much everything: drinks were flowing, laughs were had, good music was played, funny pictures were taken, new friends were made, and old friendships were bound even tighter.  Dominic and I have done plenty of things which could probably be described as "cooler" than that one night we all hung out at my apartment, but to me it's a night like that that defines a good friendship because that was just us being ourselves with ourselves without the help of some famous band or thousands of screaming people.

Dominic and I have been going to different colleges for the last four years and despite us not seeing each other all that often, whenever we do hang out it never feels forced and I always feel like I'm still hanging out with one of my oldest friends.  Because of that I feel confident when I say that I can see me and him being good friends for many years to come.

Cheers my Polish brotha,

Andrew