I’m no fan of bachelor parties.  I wasn’t even into them all that much when I was single and it was more socially permissible to be in a strip club.  This largely stems from the trauma I suffered from going to my uncle’s bachelor party in Vegas when I was 23, while my dad was there.  We were equally as uncomforable – and I had to pretend like I never set foot in such an institution in my life:

“MY GOODNESS, WHAT IS THIS MYSTERIOUS PLACE?  MA’AM, ARE YOU AWARE THAT YOU ARE NOT WEARING A SHIRT? YOU COULD CATCH A COLD, YOUNG LADY!”

In any event, my sister in law is getting married this weekend, and I was invited to come to my future brother in law’s bachelor party.  Some bowling, the Madison Mallards baseball game, and chicanery after that.

It only took a few minutes for me to realize that bachelor parties aren’t quite what they were in the old days.  They have been altered irrevocably by technology, and for the worse.  I am talking, of course, about the prevalence of cell phones.

Now, when you go out to a bachelor party, every guy has a camera phone and text messaging ability.  This changes everything.  Back in the day, it was always understood that whatever happened at a bachelor party stayed between the attendees.  No more.

Now, any time anything of note happens, guys are either taking pictures or texting details to their girlfriends.  Even worse are the married guys (me included) who don’t give a crap, so they’re drunkenly willing to share details with the world within seconds.

For instance, I left the party at about 9:30 on Saturday night (we had been going since 1:00 that afternoon, so I thought I had put in some solid time.)  On the way to finding a cab, I ran into the bachelorette party, who happened to be out downtown at the same time.  I was peppered with questions about what had gone on:

“I heard someone got thrown into Lake Mendota.”  (Indeed, they had.)

“Why did you make the groom wear that giant yellow foam rubber cowboy hat at the baseball game?”  (Indeed, we had.)

And so on and so forth.

So here’s a lesson to those of you who have tricked some crazy woman into marrying you.  When you have your bachelor party, all the phones go in a box – not to be touched by their owners until the party is over.  No pictures, no texting, no tweeting, no phone calls.  They all must be incommunicado for the entirety of the event.  And as a thank you for this tip, you must also invite me.

As a side note, one of the attendees at the bachelor party covers the Twins for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  He actually wrote about his experience at Warner Park on his blog here.  He also happens to be a super cool dude, despite having to cover the Twinkies.