Pete Rose & The Kentucky Speedway

When I was a marketing coordinator with Firstar Bank / US Bank circa 1999, one of my sponsorships was of the new Kentucky Speedway. My job was to act as sponsor liaison and talk shop with all our vendors in our US Bank VIP Box... literal translation: invite Brian to the Speedway VIP Box to drink and each as much as we could. The Box has our own open bar, personal bartender, top-notch catered food, and the best centered view of the track. I received two to four ALL ACCESS passes for every race which allowed us to travel anywhere we wanted. When we heard Pete Rose was in the house we slipped through security and onto the track to get his autograph. Not that we really wanted it, but the fact that 30k people didn't have access made it all worthwhile.

Brian was always my wing-man and I miss him like crazy.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

XU Summer Bridge '93

XU Summer Bridge '93.

Where to start on these two pictures?

Although I first met Brian at Kyle and Matt's graduation party, I didn't come to know him until we met again in the summer of '93 for the now defunct Xavier University Summer Bridge Program. "Bridge" was an opportunity for incoming freshmen students on the bubble to live on campus for two months and attend a summer school prep to get our heads in the game once school started. What a ragtag group of kids we all were.

Anyway, while we had the best intentions of studying and preparing for our freshmen year, it was more of a fun summer party away from home that lasted two months with the occasional class or test in the mornings. Yes, I'm sorry to break the news to you Mom and Dad; we broke more rules in Bridge than lived by them. It was the best time of my life and if you'd have ever asked Brian, it was his too. We went into the school year knowing two very important things: all the upper classmates who were living on campus and all the bartenders in a 10 mile vicinity. We were going to house parties with Juniors and Seniors and walking into Dana's and The Woods waving to BJ and Marvin respectively.

It felt like we were the big men on campus because while all the new kids were unloading their stuff, getting settled into their dorm rooms, and meeting everyone for the first time. We already had the campus wired! Instant popularity.

Brian would always drop Bridge references on me and we'd laugh until it hurt. His mind was like a steel trap and he could rattle off all 30 Bridgers' names with ease. Damn, I miss him so much.

Pic 1: (from left) Sean, Heavy Metal Mike, Greg, Matt Tobin, Craig, and Brian. Notice Brian's favorite Jimmy Buffet shirt.




Pic 2: (from left) Danny Weed, Vince, Chris Webb, Brian, Greg. How about the evil on Brian's face?





Craig

Brian and his love of gadgets

Brian always had the the coolest toys/gadgets. He loved to "toy" with people - especially if they had a few beers - or if they were really hot. Brian has the laser pointer and used it at movies before every eight year old kid got one and ruined the joke. He told me how he antagonized Whitey so bad at Dana's with the laser pointer that Whitey almost wanted to fight him! Brian also had the shocking slot machine. He would often tell people after they got shocked to "try it again, it only shocks you one out of five times."

His best was the "zapper" TV remote that could override a TV's volume, power, and channel controls. Brian almost forced several UK fans into the hospital by switching the channel (during the game's final seconds of course) at the Cincinnati airport. He told me that he got an entire super bowl party as well. It was at Matt Castrucci's house who just had a sweet entertainment room completely set up. Its first "appearance" was the Eagle's/Patriot's super bowl game. If you remember, the Eagles were driving at the last minute. Brian tried to turn the channel, but accidentally turned EVERY TV off (we are talking about five sets) at the same time. Naturally, Matt & everyone else freaked considering money was probably on the line, and tried to turn the TV's back on. They got the TV's turned on right when the game was over and the announcer's said "quite a thrilling finish!" I asked Brian if he told them what happened. He said "hell no! They would have killed me. Castrucci was calling up Alamo and bitching up a storm telling to get there right away and fix everything. I got out of there as quick as I could." To my knowledge, Matt Castrucci has never been told what actually happened that night. Matt, you have our apologies, but you already know Brian is really not that sorry!

Brian was one of the funniest people I have ever met. Missing him more everyday.

Brian Continues To Make Me Laugh & Shake My Head

Okay, it's Susan "Nicole Brown Simpson" McCormick here. That's often what Brian would call me, not because there is any resemblance, but simply because it had a good ring to it and my middle name happens to be Nicole.

So anyway, I'm in my kitchen yesterday plugging in Brian's iPod just to see what junk he had downloaded on it (because there are over 2000 songs). I'm flipping through it and there was some Guns 'n Roses, some Linkin Park, the University of Illinois drum line ??????, and then it comes to the next song titled, Punjabi MC....yes, Brian has Indian Punjab rap on his iPod. Okay, so I'm standing there shaking my head, smiling and laughing as I so often do when I'm thinking about Brian...and then, this damn song actually has a good beat. So, I find myself and my daughter doing our white-girl dancing in the kitchen. Can you picture it? A while later, Diane McCormick comes through the door and I make her listen to it too and she starts the booty shaking. I think Brian was onto something here....

Sorry, no photos of the booty shaking goin' on! Just remember that Brian continues to open our eyes to all kinds of new and different things.

Seersucker Spring Fling

Spring Fling 2002 Brian and I came up with the great idea of dressing me like Danny Noonan from the yacht club scene in Caddyshack. The previous night it sounded like a good idea, we might have been wrong. The looks I got were priceless but Brian wouldn't let me take off the hat and kept saying, "leave it on, you look great." Good friend.

He loved that seersucker suit and as always, stuck out from the crowd impressing the ladies. He is showing off his, "come here and give me a kiss on the cheek" look.

Brian the ladykiller. I wonder if he ever told his mom about the hickey he got before family dinner in Dayton. Shopping for concealer with another guy was extremely uncomfortable.

Dana's, Always a good time

This was a great night, my wife Erin (XU grad '99) and I ('97) were in town for a wedding, and Brian was great enough to let us crash at his place. We had a wild night with many drinks and shot and drinks and shots. And as always some great stories. I unfortunately wrecked havoc on Brian's guest bathroom and I have always felt realllly bad about that. But he never said anything, he was just so happy to see us and wanted us back soon.

Miss U Man

B

Only Brian!: 4th of July with Brian

Only Brian!: 4th of July with Brian

Brian also loved fireworks and blowing stuff up! One of my Dad's lines was fireworks. Brian and I used to love shooting Roman candles or lighting huge Saturn missile launchers and terrorizing the neighborhood - or at least Mrs. Davis. Matt McCormick

4th of July with Brian

Many of Brian's friends might know that Brian was a sucker for anything patriotic. He loved America and the phrase that goes "My country, right or wrong; my country" was right up his alley. He loved parades and anything photographic that showed our military returning home, sometimes after giving their lives for us all, would invariably reduce him to tears.
Loyalty was his strong suit. Loyalty to his family, his country, Xavier, and especially to his friends was never a question for him. He always had your back!
Blessings on all of us, our Nation, and to Brian on this July 4th. "Up the Rebels" was a cry of the Irish in 1916 and it certainly applied to our newly created Nation over 200 years ago. I can almost hear him saying it now.

Brian's dad

Visiting UT

Here's a photo of Brian on a visit to Drew's house in Knoxville. Although there's a few good stories of Brian in TN, none comes to mind with this picture. I just find the expressions priceless.

Gasping For Air

Our senior year, Brian was living on Brooks and I was living on Cleaney. Brian and his housemates threw a nice 6 kegger to start the year, the day before classes started. A group of sophomores, who thought that they were hot shit, and who we knew fairly well as freshmen had moved into 991 Dana, and just before the party, we got into their house and stole their banners and signs from the inside of their house. When they showed up, we had put the banners hanging out of upstairs windows at Brian's place in the back of the house, and they were complaining that someone had broken into their house and taken their signs. After we laughed at them, we invited them into the backyard to get a beer from the keg, and when they saw their signs, they vowed to get revenge.

Fast forward to a few weeks later. Before they could even get their revenge, we decided to do another, bigger, pre-emptive strike, you know, to let them know to not even try it.

This time, they were having a fairly large party, and knowing this, we decided to have a late night keg at my place on Cleaney. We got to their party and the guys in the house are watching us like hawks to make sure we don't mess with their stuff, but of course, we out thought them. Right when the party was at its peak and there were a few hundred kids there, we had Personette come in the front door yelling that the cops just gave a warning that they had 5 minutes to break up the party. A lot of the kids left, but the guys at the house, all of who were underage because they were sophomores, and some of their friends, all piled up stairs, and Personette said that he would handle the cops and let them know when it was safe to come back down. With the whole downstairs to ourselves, we took everything, and I mean literally everything. All of the furniture was taken out into the front yard and stacked in a pile as high as we could stack it. Everything from the walls came with us. Signs, banners, a functioning traffic light, a deer head, neon bar lights, I mean everything (and I'm not exaggerating).

We take off, and the only part I regret is not being there when Personette gave them the all clear to come down and see that everything was gone. We go back to my place and set up all of their wall hangings in our house, exactly like it had been set up in theirs as best we could. We then called to tell them we had heard about what had happened and let them know about our late night party and to bring their friends.

What a priceless moment it was to see their faces when they walked into our house and realized what had happened. They never sought revenge. The thing I remember about it most fondly was Brian's laugh, him gasping for air to laugh more. He laughed the whole way from their place to mine, the whole time we hung things up, and for about 30 minutes after they saw what happened. What a great, contagious laugh.