McCarty Party 2026 – Back to Urbana
History is good. Not as good as beer, but good nevertheless.
It is said that history is written by the winners. Not so. History is written by the survivors. (You can acquire and read a history of World War 2 from the German perspective, but it sure as f wasn’t written by Hitler….)
So, since I was around for ‘Your Basic Survival Party’ in 1983 and many of the McCarty Parties since, Dale once again asked me to put quill to parchment to tidy the historical record of this annual affair.
In 2007, we commenced the second quarter-century of official Ohio beer drinking, McCarty Party 2007, Tastes Like Chicken. The only thing that can be said for this edition is that this might be the dumbest theme that Dale has ever produced, exceeded in inanity only by the Colonel Sanders chicken logo. Yeah, yeah, Dale wanted everyone to know that he is an actual Kentucky Colonel, but if you’ve got a few bucks lying around you can buy one of those titles too.
2008 Pub Scouts of America. The addition of the ‘Underwear Underground’ puts things back on track.
2009 FantasyFest Midwest. Great logo. First year for body painting. If you are going to steal a theme from Key West, then it only makes sense that you would also steal one of the really cool attractions as well.
2010 Hell Freezes Over. 29th annual. Dale’s last as a bachelor. He thinks.
2011 Sex Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll. Dale attends as a married man. Good party. Not as good as Dale’s nuptials / Thanksgiving / Ohio State Michigan game in Key West. I mean really… “Sir, you need to put your clothes back on and leave this clothing optional establishment…”
2012 It’s the End of the World as We Know It. The Mayans were wrong, and we all woke up with hangovers.
2013 How You Met My Brother. Dale or Mike? We never learned what the title meant. However, it has long been questioned how a decent, upstanding, pillar of the community like Mike could be related to a ne’er do well, alcohol sodden, reprobate like Dale.
2014 Camp McCarty. Intoxication Stations were added this year. Yeah, like we f’n needed THAT! “We’re going to Camp McCarty and drink beer all day, I know, let’s start off with shots!”
2015 Back To The McFuture. Thankfully, this year’s invitation details much of the McCarty Party history AND the future history! Saves me time, so I’m happy. When you’ve got a B.A. in History there’s not a lot of time left between flipping burgers at McDonalds and being the night security guard at Home Depot.
2016 Make America Drunk Again. The stage was set. No, that’s not a metaphor. The McCarty brothers actually built a stage. Now I’m just a simple historian, but if you have to build your OWN stage instead being invited to play Carnegie Hall, well, then it’s a stage more likely suited to lip-synching and stupid beer tricks.
2017 Magical McHistory Tour. The McCarty brothers take credit for everything good in the historical record. And add the causal factor that all previous historians left out – Beer.
2018 The Big Beer Theory. As we all know, theory without extensive scientific testing is worthless. With this in mind, many volunteers were recruited to Bellbrook Ohio to take part in the seminal beer study sponsored by the McCarty Foundation. While the anecdotal evidence clearly indicated that ‘Beer is Good’, the results of the study could not be published due to a total lack of volunteers for the control group. And although this study is repeated every year on or around the fifteenth of July, unless we have a massive influx of Mormons to the Dayton area, it is unlikely that we shall ever find a sufficient control group.
2019 Drunk Side of the Moon. If you were to meet a man who said “I woke up on the drunk side of the moon”, would you say A) obviously an extraterrestrial, B) dude got whacked at a Pink Floyd concert, or C) ah, pretty good McCarty Party. If you said A, B, or C, you’re wrong. It was Neil Armstrong.
2020 MPSN. In yet another clear example of what a crock the whole Covid scam/shitstorm was, some people actually came out in public, said f’ it to social distancing, drank anyway, and had some normal fun. No one died. But we did find out that the idea of broadcasting a party over the internet to self-imposed shut-ins is just plain stupid. If that’s your idea of fun, go back to your mom’s basement and play Dungeons and Dragons with the other cretins.
2021 Son of a Beach. A Party looks at Forty. Still under the cloud of Covid, the brave and the beautiful are undeterred in their quest for sun, sand and Bud Lite. They settle for some sun, no sand, but lots of beer in Bellbrook Ohio. On a side note, 40 YEARS?? Not me personally, but somebody is getting OLD….
2022 Jurassic Party. It’s the return of the Lounge Lizards versus the Hipsters (derivative of hamster). Old versus young. Experienced versus naïve. People who know what a beer is supposed to taste like versus people who think you can make a beer that tastes like pumpkin or goat cheese (you know – idiots). Only thing that you really need to remember is that a T-Rex may be really old, but you probably don’t want f’ around and find out.
2023 Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer is 42. If you don’t understand that, then try reading a book, you illiterate product of the US education system.
2024 The Great American Pub Crawl. Anyone who has ever participated in a pub crawl will tell you that these might be the best two or three days of your life. Ok, we might have stolen the ‘pub’ part from the British, and the ‘crawl’ probably from the French, but ‘pub crawl’ together is a truly American institution. But wait, what if we could have a pub crawl and not need a bus, and not need to leave the confines of camp McCarty? That would be a truly blessed event.
2025 Alcoholic Intelligence. The media circus surrounding AI wants you to believe that AI will take over and leave man in the dust. I implore you to do a little research, and you will find that while AI can do some things very fast, it is no match for man on some fairly trivial tasks. For example, Alcoholic Intelligence. Man versus Machine. Drink versus Think. We humans win, and it’s not even close. It will be a thousand years, if at all, before a robot can chug a beer, stumble twenty yards, take a bra off a debutante, and stumble back to whence it came. So enjoy your superiority and have another beer.
2026 —– ???? As the saying goes, only YOU can write your own history. So be there, buckle up, and get ’r done! 2026 is the year of the RETURN TO URBANA.
Oh, and as a footnote, you may ask why I only started this document with the 26th McCarty Party. The answer is that the 10th and 25th histories already exist, and I’m too lazy to do them again. If you pick up a copy of ‘The History of the Civil War’ you will find that it doesn’t begin with ‘… and then man evolved from apes’. So suck it. Also, if anything in this document offends thee, you have two choices – A) Double suck it. B) Get a life.
Faithfully submitted,
TJ Schmenk
McCarty Party Historian
July 2026
A Quarter Century of Diversity
A politically correct history of the 25 years of McCarty Party….
1982 – A diverse group of people gathered in Urbana, Ohio sometime during the summer.
2006 – Another diverse group of people (assuming Trevor shows up) will gather in Bellbrook, Ohio sometime during the summer.
Sometime between 1982 and 2006, the gathering of a diverse group of people during the summer moved from Urbana, Ohio to Bellbrook, Ohio .
This is a complete and unbiased account of all the politically correct things that can be said about 25 years of McCarty Party.
Faithfully submitted,
TJ Schmenk
McCarty Party Historian
A Commentary on the 10th Anniversary of McCarty Party
Nigh unto ten years ago, our forefathers brought forth to this continent a new notion, conceived in inebriety and dedicated to the proposition of women. This notion has evolved, flourished, and is now an historical landmark on the face of the Ohio countryside. Yea, verily, we celebrate “A Decade of Decadence,” because beer is good.
A decade. Yes, it’s true. Ten years ago, a daring band of party mercenaries took up arms and used those arms to pound a few brews. It was the beginning. To this hardy group, walls were confining. They needed fresh air and cow manure. Luckily, the leaders of the band staged a real estate coup on prime dirt in the middle of Ohio, and “McCarty Party” was born on the rolling hills of McFarm. As a matter of fact, one of the great battles of the revolution took place the very next year on the hallowed grounds of McFarm. “Your Basic Survival Party” left bodies piled knee deep in the mud and the blood and the beer. Veterans of this event are still around. They just look dead.
The leaders of the revolution knew carnage when they saw it and said “Hey, this is alright!” But, taking a cue from the ancient Greeks (who had no trouble throwing an orgy together on the spur of the moment), the revolutionaries dedicated the next year to sport. “The Olympiad” saw the beginning of several events which are institutions today, and the institutionalization of several of the participants.
Over the years, the need for revolution subsided, and the notion took firm root as the social consciousness grew more cultured (and the need for cultures grew also). Recreation and leisure activities were promoted at “Club Mac.” But leisure was, well, too leisurely and complacency, unchecked by alcohol, caused “thought” (which, as we all know, is the down fall of all really good ideas). The history books record well that very little thought occurred that year. Also recorded was one of the uglier scenes in the history of the movement, when Hell’s Angels had to remove crazed groupies from the lip-sync stage by force. (Who knew that Dale would look that good in drag?)
The schism was healed the next year with “USA for Alcohol, Drinks Across America.” Party faithful were once again reunited by the social glue of music, sun, and beer. This is not to say that the movement had no spiritual backbone. Everyone needed something to believe in. So when “Paradise Turned Liquid,” most people believed in having another beer. They also believed in groping, falling down, and asking who he/she/it was the next day. Believe me, many of those people found spirituality that night.
But the notion lacked order, and so in ’88, “The McCarty Party National Convention” was held. Delegates arrived, the party was called to order, and then everything went pretty much like it does in the U.S. Congress – you know… scandal, rape, abuse, sex, lies, and videotape. In other words, the convention was a rousing success. Now that the movement had socio-political relevance, it was time to undermine it by returning to the nostalgic days of “The Summer of ’69, Woodstock Revisited.” As everyone knows, ’69 was a pretty good year, except for Vietnam, Nixon, and the Archies. But hey, that should be enough to undermine anyone’s socio-political relevance.
After the nostalgia wore off, it was time to reaffirm the party’s basic value system. To put a hand on the Constitution and say “Sure, dude!” Good feelings were everywhere (think about it) as young and old celebrated “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happy Hour.” Only one thing need be remembered from this gathering. The beer truck showed up, the rain stopped, and the sun came out. A coincidence? Not likely. The scientific community has unequivocally declared this a cause and effect relationship. Take heed.
Why this look back? Because. (Because like every other historian, I’m starving because I didn’t learn any real skills, and I’m forced to survive on the crumbs of the aristocracy.) No, really, I’ve written this because a truly informed party member is, well, truly informed. But a truly drunk party member is someone to be taken advantage of. Therefore, I urge you to uphold the high standards of alcohol consumption, and the low standards of social behavior.
General H. Norman Schwartzkopf
(or TJ Schmenk, as far as you know)
July 1991