I was Steve McKenna'd in Key West...which is not half as dirty as it sounds.

Here I am sitting on my deck enjoying the New Jersey sunshine and trying desperately to maintain the great tan I developed spending the last week in Key West at Craig and Todd's timeshare at the "Windy Hyatt". I knew it was going to be a great week. Good friends, a beautiful pool, an island breeze and drinks. It really doesn't get much better than that for me. Little did I know that I would have one of the most excitingly spontaneous days of my life on this trip.

I had been having a conversation at the pool with the boys on Monday talking about a show called Drinking Made Easy that Jim had turned me on to. Xtina, Jenny and I have regular conversations about it. We discuss the bars they go to, if the bartenders were hot, how we are going to make the drinks they tried for our next Girls Night. We, um…do like our booze. For those of you that haven't seen it, Zane Lamprey, Steve McKenna and some other dude travel around the US essentially pub crawling. They hit up some fairly popular establishments and some off the beaten trail in each city they visit. It's a lot like the shows, Three Sheets or Thirsty Traveler with more personality, a little less class and no random pussy patch of hair under the hosts bottom lip. I ended my speech about the show when the boys promised to look out for it when they got home.

The day after that conversation, Wednesday, started awesome enough in paradise. We decided to get a cab into town to have breakfast at Pepe's, a spot Craig and Todd discovered on one of their prior KW trips. After breakfast we decided to take a stroll down Duval street. If you've never been on Duval, it's very similar to Bourbon street, all the bars open onto the street making it easy to look in and scan the joint before entering. Unlike, Bourbon Street, it doesn't have an overwhelming stench of last nights piss. As we are walking past Sloppy Joes, one of the more famous Key West bars, at 10am, I glance in and stop dead in my tracks. There is Zane Lamprey standing behind the bar with cameras and equipment perched all around him! I don't remember much other than yelling a "please can we go in!" to the guys as I run into the bar. Todd said I didn't make much sense, rambling about, "The show! Monday at the pool! I told you! Those guys!" I literally could not formulate a coherent sentence, that's how fucking excited I was. Something about these dudes I love. They are the perfect mix of fun, drunk and approachable. I dig it. So, anywho, the boys follow me into the bar where I immediately plop myself at the opposite end to watch all the goings on and order me and the boys drinks. Of course, I order a Margarita at 10:15am while gushing to the middle aged female bartender that I can't believe they are filming THIS show on my vacation. The bartender had no idea who Zane and Steve were. I was completely unable to use my fingers to text so I ordered Craig to text Xtina because I knew if anyone in the world would be as excited as I was, it would be her. I called Jim at work. Jim was very excited for me, asked me to not offer any blow jobs and to tell McKenna to "shave his fucking disgusting beard".

So, we are watching for a bit, my camera in hand, taking pics that no one yelled at me for. I was surprised by that truthfully. I was worried that my camera's flash could potentially screw up the camera men. I called the bartender over and asked her to please tell the guys that I would like to buy them a drink once they were done filming. Sure enough, bless her heart, the bartender did exactly as I asked. I heard Zane say, "oh that's so nice, but we are so full, wait let me tell her". Here walks Zane over to me and I have a shit eating grin plastered on my unmade up face, yes that's right, THIS is the day I go into town without a stitch of makeup on. I suck! Anyway, Zane comes over and says something to the effect of "that's so sweet, we've been drinking all morning. How about we toast one another instead?" I throw my cell phone at Todd and my camera at Craig and raise my Margarita high, looking as goofy as any bitch can look. Then I ask if I can come around and get a picture but I want Steve in it too. Zane says, "sure". Screaming crazily I ask Craig and Todd to follow me and I race around the bar. I get in the middle and we take a great, albeit sweaty (me), pic and then I stand there for a bit chatting with them. I ask, "what does it say about me that I am so starstruck right now?" and Zane says something to the effect of, "that you recognize quality programming and are pretty much awesome" to which Steve wholeheartedly agrees. Then I tell them that I watch all the episodes, yada, yada. Steve tells me to touch his beard because everyone thinks it's fake. Please picture it: I am standing there facing Zane and talking while I absentmindedly run my fingers through Steve McKenna's beard for way too long. It was quite priceless. I then politely thank them for their time and go back to my bar stool so I can watch all the post production.

Zane is walking around with his iPad (I think it was an iPad) with a camera man trailing him, telling the camera guy what to take film of. He was looking super authoritative. If I'm not mistaken the show is produced by Zane's own production company. Steve was just milling about. At one point I noticed another camera filming me, Craig and Todd while the beautiful, blonde production assistant watched in her iPad. Seemingly happy with the shot she nodded to the camera man and they moved on. We were the only ones I saw them do that to. The bar was empty other than us, two salty dudes at the bar, who remarked at how excited I was, and a table full of old folks having breakfast. The bar owner came over to me at one point to ask me who my cable company was as he had also never seen the show. As I'm taking the owner through the awesomeness that is Drinking Made Easy, and seriously, they could have hired me on the spot as P.R, Steve comes walking up to us. The owner walks away and Steve hangs out and chats for a bit. We talked about the episode they did in Napa Valley where after a grape leaf eating contest, that Steve lost to Zane, he was forced to get naked and run through the Vineyard, "the whole crew saw me naked that day", then we talked about the fact that he was happy the new season would not include food challenges because he gained 30 pounds by the end of last season and his wife was not pleased. We talked about what some of the new challenges might be. Zane came walking over and told me that they both have Facebook pages. Having both of their attention again, I asked if they would sign my ankle. Weird, yes, I know. Again, I was super excited. Steve jumped on it and signed right away. Zane made me promise to not have it tattoo'd cause some fan, who sees them often, asked them to sign his body for a tattoo and Zane said, he felt so much pressure to provide flawless penmanship. I assured them that I wasn't "that" chick. Then Zane walked away to work some more and Steve took my camera and tried to take two more shots of us together. Unfortunately, they were both blurry cause they look like they would have been really nice shots.

I can't tell you how nice these guys were. So friendly, coming over to me several times to just chat. I know I must have looked overly excited, but, hey, I was. The randomness of the encounter is what made it so amazing for me. I'm sure they don't realize it, but they truly made my day. I was exhausted by noon after having all that excitement. I kept that smile plastered to my face all day. The pictures are under my Key West album on FB if you want to take a look. So much fun!