I Can Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.

It was Friday night and the Spring Fling at Jamaica High School was just ending. I as the chairman of the ticket committee was the de-facto social coordinator of the cast party. I decided on Jahn's Ice Cream Parlor on Queens Blvd in Forest Hills Queens. I had my motives for having it there. Thomas McNeil, who went on to found Cyote Ugly, one of my best friends in High School and had graduated a year earlier, and I had a bet.

Here's some history about the real Coyote Ugly. It won't make the movie any better or any worse, but you will at least be armed with some facts:

Coyote stands alongside the best New York shots-n-beer saloons such as (in order that I like them): Doc Holliday's, The Patriot, and Duff's Brooklyn. There are other pretenders who copy these five saloons by letting girls dance on the bar, but forget them. All of these places, Coyote included, owe their existence to one man: Tom McNeil.

It was Tommy who owned the original Village Idiot from the 1980s until 1993 that introduced the concept of bars of this genre to New York. Tommy's formula for success is based on this concept: men will stick around a bar a hell of a lot longer, and spend way more money, if all the bartenders are female. (Gilbert claims that when Tommy needed new help, he would put out a sign that read, SHAMELESS SLUTS WANTED: NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY)

You have to realize Tom was twice my weight. At that time I was about 150 pounds and Tom was over 300 and played semi-pro football. Our bet was that I could out eat him. So thirty-four(34) of us went to Jahn's after the schools spring movie extravaganza.

We all got to Jahn's and I took charge and we got a table along the back center wall that was long and we could all sit at. You have to realize this table could be seen from the entire restaurant. Just what I wanted. Everyone was hyped because the show had gone great. I had enough from the party fund (I controlled the money) for everyone to pretty much get what they wanted. I sat against the center of the table with my back to the wall. Tom sat directly across from me. Everyone sat around us.

The bet was that we would each eat a Twin Jahn's Burger Delux and then a kitchen sink. We had to eat everything on the burger plate before we ate the Kitchen Sink. So everyone ordered their dinner and Tom and I ordered our Twin Jahn's Burger Deluxe. After we finished it we ordered two Kitchen Sinks. You have to realize that when they bring out the Kitchen Sink they have the whole staff parade behind making a racket with bowls and spoons. They wanted to make sure everyone in the restaurant knew that someone had ordered it. The waitress came with 34 bowls and started to place the two Kitchen Sinks half way down the table on each side of Tom and I. I said no one for him, pointing to Tom, and one for me. This got the attention of everyone.

The Kitchen Sink, a mammoth creation with twenty-two flavors of ice cream and eleven different toppings served in a huge tureen. The trick is to gather a crowd large enough - and it easily feeds ten to twelve - to finish it before it melts into a puddle of sugary goo. While the atmosphere suggests time has stood still, the price tag on this extravaganza reminds us it has marched on . . . what cost us $16.95 in our youth is now a whopping $42.65. The memories alone are worth five stars.

We started eating and the cheers went up. It was like a tournament. As we ate through about a gallon of ice cream each we gathered a crowd. I don't think anyone in the place wasn't gathered around our table. It seemed as each a cheer went up as each spoon went into my mouth. I heard a sigh and large exhalation of breath and looked up to see Tom slumped back in his chair and about a pint of ice cream soup in his bowl. Well I finished the last few spoons of mine and then took Tom's and finished his. Then I collapsed back into my chair and one of the loudest cheers I heard in my life went up. I paid the bill for everyone.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.