As promised, today you guys get to get a further peek behind the Energy Rodeo curtain. This tale of the tape, however, would likely get relegated to the uncut portion of the DVD. This post is long, this post is ugly. This post will either make your day or ruin it...so proceed with caution and at your own risk.

As I have a habit of getting absolutely FUBAR from time to time, I am also going to multitask and give you guys my three tips to surviving an alcohol induced blackout and my top five highlights in said state.

But let's start with this weekend...

Friday Night Fights: Down Goes Midas

You would think that as a man who fills his water bottles with Vodka for a leisurely drive to the supermarket, I would know how to drink. Just being on this site and talking to/reading Eddie's posts should be enough guidance. Yet after years of making myself the ass in "jackass", there I went again...

Don't be fooled by their welfare website, Spec's in Houston is the baddes'ass liquor store you ever saw in your life. There's about a football field worth of liquor, beer and wine. There's hobo brand cigarettes and upper echelon cigars. There is a ridiculous, meat, cheese, chocolate and taco department which probably sells Nike's somewhere in the back...

Naturally, being that breakfast was a few hours in the rear view, my compatriots headed for the sandwich line. I was on the other end of the store in my search for the perfect Stout. While they ate and nourished, I tested out Gurkhas and Davidoffs.

After a hot afternoon of drinking and puffing, I finished off the afternoon by our hotel's pool feeling like I was on Pleasure Island. Chugging 11% brew out of a whiskey glass, inhaling my stogey and watching the cuties in the hotel exercise room climb the stairs to tighter asses.

So excited was Midas, that he ignored not eating a thing all day. While the entourage congregated in what is now a blurry eatery in my memory, I brought an anonymous monkey to the parking lot to help me finish of the brew stash.

This is where my night ends and the lessons begin...

Top Three Ways to Survive a Blackout

1) Drink Strong Shit
It's pretty damn hard to predict when a blackout will occur but the combo of empty stomach, high-end cigar and hot-as-hell Houston sun are a good indicator. This is why you always want to go with a stronger drink. Yes, you will dump more water weight than a wrestler pre-meet and everyone around you will lose their appetite, but your system will clear faster and you'll feel better in the morning.

2) Be in a Good Mood Before the Blackout
Again, not so easy to predict a blackout...but you generally want to be upbeat when you start drinking. As you will learn in the upcoming Top 5, it can mean the difference between life and life behind bars. Usually when I blackout, bad shit happens. This time all was well...well, unless you were the passenger door of the car I was in and the right hand sleeve of my sweatshirt. They took a beating.

3) Be Surrounded by Friendlies
I don't know what the monkeys around me did, but apparently they took care of me real well. I know this because for the rest of the weekend they kept repeating we took care of you real well. There's a rapid decrease in social proof for a group of guys when one of their cohorts is in the bag. Sticking by him and helping him get to the sack unharmed is the mark of true gentlemen. Always pick your crew wisely. God knows I would have left me asleep in a dumpster and gone on the hunt.

My Top 5 Blackouts

5) 1/28/2011, Houston, TX

See #3, above? Disregard it. I was bullshitting. Bastards went to Taqueria Del Sol and didn't wake me up. In fact, they left me sleeping in the car with a three squad car full police presence right next to our ride.

What would have happened if I got out the car and had seen those coppers? You guys know how much I love pork...shit would have gone out of hand real quick. Plus, missing out on $1 tacos, with an empty liquorized stomach is like missing a brothel on wheels your first night out of prison. Screw you monkeys, I'm flingin' poo at all of you!

4) 10/5/2001

I drink a fifth of 99 Bananas in 17 minutes. I'm gone. I wake up half way into a walk in closet with one bare foot which is extremely bruised. Asking my roommates what happened they respond:

As soon as Barry Bonds hit 71, you woke up...ran a victory lap around the apartment, took off your sock slow like a stripper and kicked the living shit out the bar stool. Then you went and laid down face first in the closet.

3) 12/31/1999-1/1/2000

Again its a drink/smoke combo, just a stiffer less legal version of each. Pass out in ex-girlfriend's house. Wake up to hear phone ring. Find out its her ex calling from downstairs. Go downstairs. Beat him down. Go #1 on his carcass. Blackout again. Wake up in county lock up. When told that girlfriend is there to bail me out, I exclaim:

Fuck her and you at the same time with one dick, the world's over.

Or so said the judge.

2) 4/1/2006

In Belfast, attempting to play April Fool's joke on current Irish lass piece of ass...substitute bottle of chocolate milk with Moonshine spiked Guiness. Get drunk under the table by her cackling ass in less than two hours. All I remember is waking up naked with you drink like a woman...xxx...your woman written in lipstick across my gut and her nowhere to be found.

1) 10/26/2000

Bad enough being a Met fan. Bad enough all my friend liked the Yankees. Bad enough we filed an acquarium with Cognac and Pineapple juice. Bad enough I found and cleaned out an old Tuba Ruba to use as a straw...but the real worst of all times blackout deserves a new paragraph:

An absolute 10 I had been working on for months was there. She didn't care about baseball, she just wanted to sit in my lap and bounce on it. Naturally, I was in a bad mood the whole night and by repeatedly threatening to axe murder people for cheering Paul O'Neill and Derek Jeter, I was not making the best impression.

In spite of this we were making out as Mike Piazza cracked a line drive off Mariano Rivera that I saw in the stands...it fizzled into the game's final out.

So distraught and excited was Midas and so powerful was The Gnac, that my Perfect Ten was reduced to nothing by what I unleashed on her.

The best part? I fell on top of her as I blew chunks and being both blacked out and severely angry...nobody could pull me off...for a reported five minutes of projectile vomit carpet bomb terrorism.

For Anyone Who Actually Read Through All of This

Tomorrow's installment of the rodeo report will actually have something of a career related benefit for you guys. But in the meanwhile share a good blackout tale with me, I'm sure some of you have done worse...