Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek

The Skatepark of Tampa Party Team episode of the Captain and Casey Show first airs on Fuel TV at 8:30pm on Friday, November 28, 2008

The Skatepark of Tampa Party Team is getting serious. Brixton is making a Party Team hat. Schaefer just approved the sample here

We all cleaned out the fridge full of booze behind the scenes at the Captain and Casey Show. That's recent addition to the Skatepark of Tampa Party Team, Oliver Flores

When you're on the set looking towards the cameras, you have bright lights in your face and smoking hot models walking around to keep you distracted. This is at The Captain and Casey set

I guess Captain and Casey find these girls by sending out a craigslist.com note. That's Clarissa. She comes out in the middle of the show and delivers beer on a skateboard tray in coffee cups to all the guests on the show. I think at least 20 coffee cups got smashed during filming

Don Brown's beer disguise was not approved to be on the show

I don't know how they're going to turn this chaos into an actual episode of The Captain and Casey Show

They have some pretty amazing props on the Captain and Casey set. We took full advantage. Schaefer threw a coffee cup right through those thin walls behind us

One last group photo after we wrapped up filming at The Captain and Casey Show. Wow, Chris Casey is making out with one of the models. Good times

Clarissa and her sidekick were happy to pose for some photos after the show. After we asked them to get naked, her reply was, "Not for this paycheck"

I had the pleasure of accidentally walking into the dressing room while Clarissa was changing. Oops

After the show and in between takes, a fun drunken skate session went down on the quarterpipe out front. Justin Strubing flew in from Santa Cruz to be on the show with us

Chris Casey ollies up while Dyet and Don Brown secure the deck

We destroyed the place inside and outside. Don Brown somehow found some paint and a windshield cleaner. After asking us what art we'd like to see, he answered his own question with "Neckface!"

Don Brown's masterpiece. Sorry we defaced your building Captain and Casey

I don't know how they're going to turn any of those crazy antics into an actual show. We'll see. After filming wrapped up, we had some flaming drinks and were joined by the real Neckface and Kevin Spanky Long. Lizard King bought us all dinner - thanks!

The chill cam sometimes can take a decent skate photo. Lizard King has some king sized flat ground kickflips even while hammered

Must be nice to just cruise over fire hydrants while you're messing around drunk in the streets

Now we're at a more normal television show setting. This is at The Daily Habit set the next day. We brought the remaining members of the Skatepark of Tampa Party Team with us to this filming also. Adam Dyet and Lizard King have been up all night. Welcome to the Party Team, Lizard!

That's the set for The Daily Habit show

Everyone had to get the touch-up. Lizard King and Clements are getting the Jim Greco make-up treatment before going in front of the cameras. Wow, not very macho, dude

I guess you're supposed to look into the camera and read this like you're not really reading and it's not really there. Welcome to Hollywood

We all almost killed ourselves skating the quarterpipes on set. I don't think Lizard King made this attempt

Schaefer and all us old guys of course did pivot fakies on it. Thanks Fuel TV for putting us sketchy dudes on the boob tube

Sunday couldn’t have been anymore beautiful driving from San Diego up to LA. I dropped Brian and Rob off so they could chill at Venice Beach and I made my way over to Hollywood to catch up with some emails at the Comfort Inn. Many hours later we re-grouped and had dinner at a cool joint on Sunset with Chris Casey, Braydon, and a few other friends. It was a pretty mellow night…until Braydon rear-ended someone right out in front of the restaurant in his brand new Caddy. Damn. Not a bad precursor to the mayhem that was to ensue the following day.

Brian headed off right after we got up on Monday morning to pick up Justin Strubing from LAX. He came back and got Rob and I and we grabbed some grub before driving to the set. Relaxation time was about to be over for the next 30 hours…

I was trying to come up with some witty comparison of our two hectic/crazy/fun/exciting days filming TV shows, but the only thing that kept popping into my head was “Beauty and the Beast.” And I know that that’s the name of the upcoming Anti-Hero/Girl Tour, so I didn’t want to bite their creativity by calling this article by the same name.

Then I thought, “I’ll just compare cheap wine to fancy wine,” insinuating that Captain and Casey is the cheap wine and The Daily Habit is the expensive wine. But that’s not good either because I don’t want to compare Captain and Casey to cheap wine.

Making this comparison and coming up with a catchy phrase was more difficult than I thought it would be, so I’ll just settle for “separate, but equal.” The people at Fuel know that Captain and Casey are the bastard children of the network, but that doesn’t make them any less loved. And just because The Daily Habit is refined and polished in a fancy-ass Hollywood studio doesn’t necessarily mean that it lacks authenticity either.

I don’t know how to better describe this experience other than “total chaos.” This wasn’t controlled chaos by any means…it was completely out of control. To attempt to describe the scene…we were way east on the Sunset Strip. You have to drive through these gates and park in an over-crowded lot.

The property is shared with a Mexican church and some type of immigration office or something similar. The paint on the outside is this dull baby-blue and there’s a solid amount of junk and trash lying around. The building that houses the Captain and Casey set is an after-hours club that’s apparently a pretty seedy place to hang out after the bars close. Too bad we missed out on that one.

As you enter the double doors you’re standing on a floor that has been painted 20 times over the years. There’s an exposed and outdated A/C system and a bathroom without a door. If you make your way through the rest of the maze you find various other rooms that seem to serve little to no purpose, but there is trash and “empties” everywhere.

The set itself consists of crappy old carpet and 70’s paneling that is held together by 2x4’s and finishing nails. Right behind the set there are wires and cords everywhere…or what we’d like to call a constant fire hazard.

Keep in mind that our visit to the Show was a last-minute type deal. We didn’t want it to be a standard “Skatepark of Tampa, Brian, and Ryan” interview, so Brian’s idea to spice it up a little bit by inviting a few members of the Skatepark of Tampa Party Team to join us seemed perfect. Well, that turned into inviting the entire Party Team, with only a couple of members being absent.

The filming should have taken about two or three hours, but it was nearly five hours and I have no idea how much alcohol later that we got out of there. Between the screaming, yelling, hollering, smoking, drinking, and many takes and retakes (because of beer being visible) later we left at sundown. Here are some highlights from each member that was present:

• Oliver Flores – he got “abducted” to the Team during Tampa Pro when he proved that he can party harder than anyone. But the real attribute to Oliver’s professionalism is that he showed up to Captain and Casey with his own designated driver
• Joey Brezinski – Joey B. came to Tampa for some Red Bull shindig a while back and developed his party-bond with Schaefer at that time. He’s never let us down since
• Don Brown – the oldest member of the Team cancelled several meetings at Sole Tech last minute to be able to attend. Smashing mug after mug while doing “cheers” with me wasn’t enough. Even after he cut a stitches-required gash in his finger, Don one-upped himself by doing a Neckface painting on the wall outside. That was the single funniest moment that I’ve experienced in a long time
• Pat Duffy – if having Duffy on your Team isn’t legendary, I don’t know what is. He might have a baby and baby-momma’ now, but he’s still a solid partier
• Adam Dyet – if you’ve ever hung out with Dyet you know that the party never stops with him. He showed up late in true party fashion, but caught up to the rest of the crew in no time
• Rob Meronek – if you’ve never seen The Ragin’ Asian in action, you don’t know what you’re missing. There was this prop….a log with trucks and wheels attached to it, that someone (can’t remember who) sat on and Rob tried to push him through the entire set!
• Brian Schaefer – I don’t know how the Party Team Captain didn’t break his leg when he tried that backside boneless on the quarter-pipe, but it was hurting him the next day…along with a possibly-broken finger and bump on the head
• Justin Strubing – a true dedicated party solider, Strubs flew down from Santa Cruz on last-minute-notice to join the fun
• Braydon Szafranski – probably our most notable partier on the Team, of course the dude lives in Hollywood and rocks a leather jacket when it’s warm out. Here’s a plus: He can still rip on a skateboard after partying, too!
• Chris Peck – after his amateur display and suspected lack of recent party experience, Peck might be getting kicked off of the Team. Not only did he puke and pass out in one of the rooms, but he knocked over a laptop in the process. Dude was out cold and when we moved him to the car he puked again. Nothing like waking up shirtless in a car with no phone or idea of where you are

I was there of course, but I’m not on the Party Team. My new title is Captain of the Business Team. My job is to maintain each party to where everyone has just enough fun and we stay within budget. I don’t know if I did such a good job on The Captain and Casey Show though, so that’s why we want to throw out a special THANKS to Matt Soloman and the entire crew for putting up with our antics.

We’ll let you know when it airs…

Oh yeah, as if Don Brown’s Neckface painting wasn’t enough, later on at dinner we ran into the real Neckface along with Kevin Spanky Long…and Lizard King joined us, too. Lizard was gracious enough to pick up the tab at El Conquistador, too, so thanks Man. Those dudes kept the party going and I went back to the Comfort Inn for some rest…

Here's some video footage of our antics on set:

I think the sun rises earlier on the west coast or something because morning sure came quickly. I had a bit of trouble getting Rob and Brian in gear, but we made it happen regardless of current mind-state. That’s how true partiers do it. We arrived at The Daily Habit studio at 9am, and one of the producers, Jennifer, was like, “Wow, you guys are really early.”

Let me tell you how they do it in Hollywood. They tell you to be there an hour early because everyone in Tinsel Town is pretty much operating an hour late. So if they say 9am, they really mean 10am.

I need to back-track a bit because there is a vital element that I’ve neglected to mention thus far. On the way to The Habit, we got a call from Dyet, Braydon, and Lizard. They were still partying from the night before and wanted to say ‘what’s up,’ but Brian took the initiative to invite them to the set. Perfect.

Talk about complete opposite from the day before! The set for The Daily Habit was dark, cool, busy, crowded, professional, had a serious sense of seriousness…if that makes any sense at all! There’s a secretary that greets you when you walk in and there’s memorabilia all over the walls. They have a “green room” where they put make-up on you and you discuss what’s going to happen when they start rolling. Everything is planned out and super-professional, but that’s when we told them that they needed to add in something about the Skatepark of Tampa Party Team. The host, Pat Parnell, was super-cool and was down to make it happen…

Watching Lizard King getting make-up applied was too funny. I had my finger on the call button to dial The Boss right then and there. Lizard wasn’t being so Deathwish-ish. Then it was time to do our takes. It was super-easy and we didn’t have to redo anything. During breaks we skated that little quarter-pipe – it’s tight and hard to ride, so anything on it is pretty sick.

During the final take of the episode, we made the big announcement: Brian, Pat, and I were saying our good-byes and had Braydon and Dyet out there with us. Then the big news was released: Lizard King is now on the Party Team! Welcome to the Team, Son! He came out and hi-fived the crew and the Show was a wrap. Too easy.

It was only noon, but we had to book-it to the airport to make our 2pm flight. And damn it took a long-ass time to get home. I wasn’t in my bed until 2am. I got this info the next morning:

For your information, your show is scheduled to air on Monday, April 28th at 6pm PST/9pm EST on Fuel TV and later again that evening at 9pm PST/12am EST.

Don’t worry…we’ll remind you. Thanks to Ian Hill, Pat, and the rest of the crew at The Daily Habit for making it happen and allowing us to throw in our own little twist. The craziness is over for a bit and I’m looking forward to being home for a month.

Thanks for reading about our ridiculous lives…

Ryan