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Guys,
What a fun weekend and what a big win for the soons. As I sit at my desk in my office, recounting the weekend's activities, I thought I would share a short story with you about my very strange end to OU Texas Weekend. The following is completely accurate. Exaggeration was not necessary.

It all began on Friday evening when I picked up my girlfriend at DFW and headed for the hotel. Sara had flown in from Charlotte through Atlanta and told me she had a story for me. Sara explained that on her flight from Atlanta to Dallas, she had sat next to the backup tight end for the Dallas Cowboys and his wife, Siggi. She described Martellus Bennett as "a huge goofball", supposedly asking the flight attendant questions like, "Could you fly to the moon faster at night, or during the day?" and "Do the pilot's need a break? Tell them I got it". Martellus (who prefers Marty) is 24 and his wife, Siggi, is 22 so there was at least some common ground for Sara to talk about. The Bennett's were on there way back from Tampa where they had been visiting Marty's brother, Mike, the defensive end for the Buccaneers. The conversation began with discussions of the weather, to which Martellus added astute observations such as, "The sun is bright there" and "The sand felt nice on my feet." Soon, though, Sara and Siggi began to hit it off, even exchanging numbers as the plane landed. As we began to approach the hotel, Sara got a text from Siggi saying something like, "It was nice to meet you, let's get a drink sometime soon."

You often hear stories of seeing athletes or celebrities on planes, and occasionally sitting next to one. Rarely, though, does that 45 minute interaction bloom into a real friendship. Well, stranger things have happened on OU Texas Weekend. Or have they...

Well, we attend the Mason Dinner on Friday evening (which was very nice and incredibly generous of the Mason's to host. Kudos Travis) and the game on Saturday. We finished Saturday evening at Mottitos which ended up being a hell of a good time. Well, around 11:00am on Sunday morning, I am awoken by the unnecessarily loud text message indicator on Sara's phone, followed shortly by a good bit of laughter. As I opened my eyes, Sara put the phone in front of my face to read, "Pancakes?" from Siggi Bennett. Still hammered from the Jimador Tequila that Weintz and I treated like water the night before, it took a moment to dawn on me. Well, it looked like we would be breaking bread with the Bennett Family. The time and place (The Original House of Pancakes) were set, we showered, packed, got dressed, and hit the road.

We arrived first. After a brief wait, we got our table for 5 (Marty's younger brother, whose name escapes me probably due to the fact it was at least 6 syllables, would be joining us) in the middle of the room and took a seat. Sara and I began asking each other questions like, "So do I say something hood like 'What it do?' or do I just stick with, 'Hi Martellus, my name's Reid'?" I was between "What's good my *****?" and just looking at him and saying, "Church!" when I saw the shape of a 6' 6", 275 lb, black man walk by the front window and all my plans went out the door. Though I may have blacked out a little bit, I think I said something stupid like, "Yo big dude, I'm Reid." to which he smiled showing every tooth and just said, "Marty!". The first thing that caught my eye were the tats. This dude is inked from head to toe. His enormous hands had all sorts of ridiculous symbols, most of which are probably gibberish. For instance, his left wrist says "Tooti" and his right wrist says, "Fruti". Needless to say, this guy is kind of a clown.

I order an omelet and a side of pancakes, Sara orders scrambled eggs and bacon, Siggi orders eggs and hashbrowns and Martellus's brother gets the blueberry pancakes. Marty's order is something that I need to directly quote.

Waiter: "And what would you like?"
Marty: "Get me 4 orders of turkey sausage, 4 eggs all twisted up wit cheese, and none of that powdered bull****, like a chicken egg, you get me? And I'ma get 4 waffles wit cream, them fried potatoes that lady's got over there (pointing to the booth next to us), 2 more orange juices (he had already ordered 2 earlier), some ice cream, ketchup, and 4 hot chocolates."

After having the orders repeated back to him and sending the waiter on his way, Marty says, "I ordered the **** outta some pancakes yo." And breakfast began.

Our conversation topics went between bootlegged dvd's, NCAA 2K12, Kevin Durant (who he referred to "My boy"), Scrabble, and the difference between Astronauts and Ninjas. Intermittently he would say, "Did I get my pancakes?" or "Where'd my sausage go?" when he had clearly already eaten both. He also proceeded to tell me he was the best Words With Friends player of all time. I openly challenged him at the table, and, though he put up quite a fight with brain-busters like "Dope" for 6 points, and "Bop" for 4 points, he resigned from our game when I added to my 200 point lead with the 65 pointer, "Cymboid."

As we got our check, Siggi said, "Well since you don't have to drop Sara off at the airport until 4:30, follow us on over to the house and we'll hang out." So, I thought, I guess I'm spending Sunday hanging with Martellus Bennett. As we left the restaurant, Marty stood opening the door for everyone, and greeted each new pancake patron with a cheerful, "Welcome to the Pancake House! They make Pancakes!" Sara was pretty much crying laughing at this point.

As we followed their illegally blacked out Escalade towards Irving (during which Martellus ran 2 red lights and hopped a curb) I snapped this pic.

Soon we pulled into his very nice gated neighborhood, rap blaring out of his open windows, and walked up the driveway to his 3 story townhome. We entered and immediately walked upstairs to the main room. Martellus and his wife had decided to turn what was originally a nice living room, into a closet. His clothes hung on every wall, filling the fairly massive room with ridiculously bright colors. The coup de grce would have to be his shoe room though. Yes, that's right. He has a shoe room. I could only sneak a pic of one of the walls but this 15x15 room was full from floor to ceiling.

Marty went on to tell Sara and I about the different clothes he is designing and had us take a look at his fall 2012 collection, brand name Rockitdope. The real money maker, he said, is in his new line of plus-sized women's heels."Tell me more", I said. He explained that he was coming out with a set of high heels for transexuals. I'll be honest, I didn't see that coming...but I let him run with the idea. He explained that cross dressers and transexuals can't fit into women's size 6's and there was no designer out there making heels in a men's size 12......until now. He said that he expects to make, "20, maybe 30 millions" on his tranny-heal line alone.

If this day had not become ridiculous enough already, he then made us grilled cheese sandwiches and escorted us into his movie room. The four of us sat on his couch, ate our grilled cheeses, and watched Bad Teacher on his wall size projector for 2 hours. Martellus laughed at everything. I mean, EVERYTHING. He even chuckled at the Sony Pictures green screen. He referred to Justin Timberlake as "Curlyhead" on a number of occasions as well.

Well, the movie ended and, after helping do the dishes for a few minutes, Sara and I grabbed our coats and prepared to leave. Martellus invited us to come back down for a game or for one of his fashion shows and we exchanged information. Siggi and Marty walked us down to the front door, the girls hugged, Martellus and I did one of those black half-handshake, half-hug deals and then we were on our way. But just before leaving, Marty handed us both an individually wrapped piece of Bubblelicious bubblegum, and said "this stuff is good, really big bubbles", then shut the door. This was pretty much the perfect way the end one of the strangest days of my life.

Though I know this is long, I promise that this is only a brief summary of my time with Martellus. I left out such memorable quotes as, "I don't get GPS systems or maps.....I mean, a map is flat, and the earth is round....you know what I means?" and "Somebody tell me why its got to rain? They should make me in charge of this rain ****." just to name a few.

Well there you have it. That was my Sunday. And honestly, I'm not sure if pancakes will ever be the same.

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