Profile:Mark Drumm

If you are fortunate enough in life once in a great while you meet someone that no matter how hard you try and no matter what you say, you simply can’t even begin to describe him or her that in any way does them justice. Someone so funny and so much fun there comes a time when you just shake your head and say “if you’re lucky one day you’ll meet him and that’s all I can say.” That person for me is Mark Joseph Drumm (Capricorn!) In airports to supermarkets, churches to barrooms, with strangers to siblings, infants to elders, from Ireland to Everest, New York to Amsterdam I have never been anywhere or done anything with this man than didn’t result in a priceless story. We’ve had fist fights, food fights, airplane flights, city lights, 4am in the sea, driving fast couldn’t see, been in places we shouldn’t be, how were still alive is a fucking mystery…Mark, or “Drummy” as he is better known to the world, and I have been great friends for the last 4 years or so hanging 10 mainly in NYC and Ireland. Drumm recently bought a bar in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland called Magee’s Spirit Store that is doing amazing under his New York inspired reign. Without sounding like a complete homosexual this dude is literally the most generous genuine human I have ever met in my life. I lived at his house in Ireland, drove his M3 on the wrong side of the road the entire time I was there, worked in his bar, partied with his crew every single night, went to my first soccer match in Dublin with his season tickets, had the most amazing trip of my life…..and came home with the same amount of money I went with, plus a kangaroo jacket and a lifetime of stories. This is my first profile post to shed some light on the people I share my adventures with and considering the blog was inspired by my travels with this dude I figured its only right he was the first. Mark is the funniest man alive and literally would find a way to have fun and make the best of a child’s funeral. He would give you the shirt off his back if he likes you and would tell you straight to your face if he didn’t. He defines the saying work hard play hard and constantly betters the morals of everyone in his presence with his retarded behavior and constant movie quoting. I have SO many funny amazing stories about this man I hope I live long enough to tell them all. I could go on for hours about how I once saw him jump on the back of a garbage truck loaded at 4am thinking it stopped at every block only to find himself holding on to the side rail for dear life swinging around like a ragdoll at 50 MPH…thank god for that red light dude. I could easily construct an entire blog around telling stories like the time we were partying in Amsterdam for fashion week and Alex and I convinced the doorman that he was Irish royalty and had him escorted through a crowd of 400 people to the front door. This is one of those times where I just have to shake my head and say if you’re lucky one day you’ll meet him. The video I posted is after a night of us working at Magee’s and drummy entertaining a few lady friends and me with a dance to the Irish anthem 2010. It’s just a taste of the constant fun loving attitude he has all the time, especially at 4am! Thank you for everything brother, I love you to death!

Burn out, don’t fade away...
-Mark Drumm

They let me fly an airplane!

I always thought driving 150mph on a Japanese motorcycle was fun, and it is...but nothing compared to taking control of an airplane and landing it in a lake in the middle of the forest. One morning during my month stint in Ireland Mark Drumm woke me up around noon hungover and grumpy as usual telling me to hurry up and get ready he has another surprise in the works. Dragging ass out of bed I shuffled my jeans on and made my way downstairs assuming we were on the way to see another rock in the middle of nowhere that was an ancient tomb or a haunted house or some bullshit like that...well little did I know. Still waking up Mark is directing me toward the outskirts of town as I am playing 500 questions trying to figure out what it is we are going to do. From a distance I see a small control tower and light plane coming in for a landing. Then realizing we were pulling into an airfield I stopped short and said there is no way I’m jumping out of a fucking airplane brother, it’s just not my styz. Drumm replies "well it’s your lucky day cause you’re not jumping out of it, you’re flying it!" It was a perfect day to fly, light winds, calm sea and the pilot was a pretty cool dude. There really is no way to explain the feeling of flying a plane and landing in the water...I mean it’s not like it was a 747 but was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life and off course enjoying it with a great friend always helps. I recommend trying to find someone you know that has a seaplane and trying to convince them to let you fly and land in the water without any experience whatsoever....Good Luck!

Fermanagh Herald!

After cabareting around the north of Ireland for the last 2 weeks I should have realized that a 6’4’’ long haired freak wearing leopard print and women’s clothes with an American accent wouldn’t go unnoticed for very long. After a while I would introduce myself to people in pub’s around town and get responses like “oh yea, you’re the guy from New York” or “yea you’re the guy who was buying leather pants in Topshop for yourself!” No matter how awkward the reasons were for people having heard about me, most of them were true. Before I came to the North I figured the only way I would end up in the news was if I were in trouble or being shipped back to the states in a body bag, surprisingly the weekly circulated paper wrote me up for a completely different reason. A man by the name of Patrick Riley, who will definitely be getting a profile done later in this blog, came in to the bar last week snapping random photos of me at work. I went about y business knowing he is kind of a nutcase assuming he was going to use the pics for his own sick personal enjoyment. (Just kidding Pat) The next morning I received a phone call from a local reporter asking me about my thoughts on the country and my status as an international bartender. She also asked about my status as an international playboy after she heard I had been entertaining a few of her interns the night before at Magee’s Pub. We spoke for twenty minutes or so and she concluded our convo by saying the herald might want to use a few words for their travel section. The next morning, bang! Front page! I mean, it’s no "page 6" but it’s a funny thing to make any headline anywhere for just doing your do!

Cheers to my friends at the Herald and off course Magee’s Spirit Store. Very special thanks to Patrick Riley and Nuala Mcaloon.

Life is our stage...!

Noones Hole

Sumera: Irish word for abyss or bottomless pit. In the early19th century locals discovered a black hole in the earth way up in the rolling hills of Boho, county Fermanagh that they referred to as the first sumera and treated as a supernatural place out of suspicion and fear. Perfectly level with the ground that surrounds it, this 30 foot wide pothole is a straight drop of 88 meters (289 feet) and is almost invisible while walking on level ground. In 1826 there was a man named Dominick Noones that was a member of an illegal reform group known as The Ribbonmen. He was marked as an informant and lured to a wedding party in the hills of Boho where he was captured, had his tongue cut out and thrown down the hole plunging to his death. Legend says his murderers were able to here his scream until it slowly faded away believing he would fall forever. Ever since that day the sumera has been more popularly know as Noones hole. It was heavily explored in the late 1900's and became a very popular site among tourists and locals as it is the deepest pothole in the entire country. Sometime around 1988 the government planted trees and thick briar all around the hole and fenced it off with barbed wire due to multiple accidents of people slipping and falling to their death, but off course this didn't stop me. Yesterday afternoon i was led up the windy back roads into the hills where the black hole lies hidden and overgrown. From the road, the fenced off section of overgrown brush stands out in an open field like sore thumb. We pull off the side of the gravel road onto a cow pasture through a break in the stone wall. As we get out of the car my mischievous tour guides Mark and Lee begin to scour over the stone wall in search of the perfect rock. We make our way down a hill avoiding massive moon pies overgrown with magic mushrooms, carrying a good size boulder and a flashlight. As we approach the wire i can feel the boys getting nervous as they had obviously both been here before and know the severity of the danger. Now, as most of you know i am the king of stupid and crazy shit, but when the reality of how stupid something actually is gets a hold of you before you pull the trigger it instills a bit of fear and fear is the devil. One slip on the forever damp Irish bog, one loose rock, one animal that darts out of the only cover for miles and startles you the wrong way and poof your gone. Lee carefully gets a grip on 2 barbed wire strands pushing the rest of the fence down with his boot as Mark and i shimmy our way through the razor. Once the 3 of us and the rock are inside the fence inching our way to the edge Mark turned to me and uttered the first sincere sentence i have heard out of his mouth in the 4 years I've known him. "Please please be careful kid, this is not a fucking joke and i swear to god i would rather jump in after you than have to call your mother!" Mark had one hand gripping the back of my belt and one hand holding the camera and Lee had one hand holding on to Marks belt and the other wrapped around a tree. Anyways it was a crazy experience to hear that rock banging off the walls and not hit the bottom, the video says it all. I'm glad i lived to tell about it and i have a feeling its a site most of you will never see given its remote location so i hope you enjoy...
As always, a special thanks to Lee Harron for taking me on their adventure and off course to Mark Drumm for endangering my life with his bright ideas!
Fear is the devil...>

Drive it like ya' stole it!

Anytime your in a foreign country there are bound to be things that are different. Food, people, customs, traditions so on and so forth. One thing however that is the 78% the same all over the civil world is we all drive on the right side of the road! I got my international driving permit for my trip to Ireland and the UK and for the last two days have been perfecting my "left-side" driving and i think today i finally got it down. On our walk back from visiting a less than interesting tourist trap in the woods today, i saw something in Ireland that i am very familiar with and adore all over the world, a wide open gravel parking lot! I ran to the car like a kid on Christmas morning, jumped in the driver seat, realized it was the passenger seat, Chinese fire drill, ran around the hood to the other door, jumped in again, fired up the backward buggie and proceeded to execute an emergency brake donut smokeshow to perfection! Thank you Uncle Bry for teaching me how to drive anything with an engine as recklessly as possible without dying. Thank you Mom and Dad for letting me go to his house even though you knew it was going on!

Lough Navar

After waking up at 5:30pm hungover as hell from going to bed at noon, we decided it was time to get some fresh air. I have said and heard that expression a million times but never really understood the term "fresh air" until we got to the peaks of lake Navar. You start out headed up a one way 6 mile road through perfectly planted pine trees on both sides that are so big the branches almost touch overhead and block out the sun. As we made our way out of the forest section the scenery becomes more and more beautiful. Hundred mile views on both sides, the bogs and fields are so green you can see every movement from all types of wildlife and the biggest, bluest sky you could ever imagine. By the time we made it to the top of the windy way it was sometime around 8:30pm which is just in time for an amazing sunset. The last stretch of road before it opens up to a small stone parking lot is a straight away through rows of pines that looks like your going to drive off the end of the earth. The view from the top is offensive...to the left, the Atlantic ocean "next stop Montauk." Straight ahead is a mash up of lakes and tributaries to the ocean with a view of Ireland as far as the eye can see. To my right, green, that's the only words i have to describe the mountainous landscape are beautiful and green. And behind me, a forest so perfect that it looks like Bilbo Baggins could walk out from behind a tree at any second...literally. Along the steepest part of the little viewing area is a 2 post handrail with slanted tops that make them nearly impossible to balance on, especially half-juiced but we had to try. We did some crane kicks and crouching tiger posses and off course Drummy took one stretch a little too far, slipped of the railing, tripped down the stairs and landed face first in a pile of pricker bushes like a torpedo. After i realized he was alright we both laughed ourselves to tears, and be under no illusions it was a legit fall that could have been very bad! Its the kind of place that no photograph can do justice although i have created a slideshow to try. The ride down was just as much fun and its actually used for rally car races in the spring, needless to say we had to put the ol' 5 speed to the test! "That didn't feel like 165mph?" Drumm: "That's kilometers you idiot!" No different than in America logging is a problem in Ireland as well. They replant a tree for every one they cut down but it still has an effect on nature and to see a place that amazing being hacked at is a sin. I took the liberty of lubricating the door handle to the logging truck Americano style.

A serious thank you to Mark Drumm and Vincey Bullion for playing tour guides and showing me the best of Irelands beauty.

Rock the free world!

The Irish Moon!

The North of Ireland is literally one of the most beautiful places i have ever seen in my life and i have seen a lot of places. The rolling hills of green laced with veins of gray stone walls under a reddish blue afternoon sky is breathtaking. Yesterday my dear friend and Emerald Isle guide Mark Drumm, ventured about 20 miles north of his hometown to an ancient castle called Monea Castle. The landscape was perfect, an amazing ruined stone structure surrounded by white stone walls, placed on top of a hill overlooking fields now occupied by cows and horses. The smell of the pines after an early Irish rain fills the air, the setting sun tries to peak through the thick blanket of storm clouds one last time before it retires for the evening and the grazing beasts are making their way home. After taking some photos of the broken down stone spiral staircases, the dungeon, and the arrow holes built into the walls the size of golf balls that the English would shoot through, i did what any respectable American tourist would do! Climbed up to the highest point i could get to, took off my shirt, displayed the Irish moon for the world to see and raised my arms over my head screaming at the top of my lungs, "FREEDOM!"

Testing 1, 2, 3...

This is my first post. This is my first subject, My brother Brandon and his hat...Bar Harbor Maine 2009.