The I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL tour bus is more than halfway done. We’ve been as south as Gainesville and as north as Toronto. One thing I learned is that DOUCHEBAG isn’t latitudinally contingent. You’d think the type of audience for the movie and the level of discourse would elevate commensurate with the slide up the longitude ring, but you’d be wrong. The exact same type of idiot in the south is up north, just with slightly rounder vowels and more gold chains. Some of the fans of Tucker Max get really belligerent and, for lack of a better word, headlocky. When guys want to exert their special form of ‘I just had my first beer’ male bonding, sometimes it’s okay, but sometimes… you’re in Boston, where the douche degree gets turned to 11. Due to legal constraints regarding the events of the tour, I’m not allowed to say what happened in Beantown, but I CAN say that it is not untrue that possibly someone didn’t not get choked out by a producer of the movie in a location not unlike outside an alleged movie theatre… you get the point.

Despite some fancy Brazilian jiu jitsu moves, at this point in the tour it’s almost impossible to pick an interesting story or event that hasn’t been covered by Tucker Max and posted on www.ihopetheyservebeerinhell.com. One of the refreshing/terrifying things about touring with Tucker is his brutal honesty amalgamated with an I could give a rat’s ass what you think mentality. This makes him almost impossible to embarrass or one up. It doesn’t stop me from trying.

For example, during a recent screening of the film in Minneapolis, I was hanging out in the back of the tour bus, which is always parked directly outside the movie theatre when the film is rolling. I was brainstorming with the ‘vidiots,’ the two videographers who have the unenviable task of making me look as funny and as un-douche-y as possible in 2-3 minute montages of man on the street mayhem http://www.youtube.com/beerinhell.

The vidiots and I had dealt with protesters before the premiere that day and we were going over the video tapes of the protest. Well, it wasn’t really a protest – it was two spindly almost virgins with comic con tees, unfortunate grooming techniques, and a blind self-righteousness that could only exist in college freshman and on Fox news (okay, Republicans, Michael Moore too).

For the uninformed, there has been a small group of men and women who have upgraded Tucker Max, the writer of I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL, from sexist to rapist. Apparently – and it’s a good thing I didn’t know this in college when I was drinking straight from the tap and trying to hump anything with a bracelet – have sex while drunk is rape… or something.

More specifically, these die-hard protesters contend that Tucker, who goes out drinking and hooks up with women who ALSO go out drinking, is a rapist because a woman cannot consent to sex if she’s had (sic) a ‘few drinks.’ Tada!

Um, I think the calculus on that is woman + 3 jager bombs + Tucker Max = RAPE!

Thusly, according to these protesters (we got them in Raleigh, Boston, and Minneapolis), making sweet, sweet love to a drunken slut is always, and in every way, rape. I’m going to have to tell my dad to stop hooking up with mom.

Jokes aside, therein lies a slippery slope of consent. There’s no instance in the book where a girl resists Tucker and he roofies her or shoves a beer pong tube into her trachea or does some Criss Angel sleight-of-hand and presto is inside her bewildered vagina. It’s typical relatable stuff: going out to bars, getting hammered, making dubious choices, and waking up wondering why you made dubious choices. There’s a name for that cycle: college.

Daniel Tosh, one of my favorite comics, has this joke: “If no meant no, none of us would be here. No means work the nipples and neck and try again in 5 minutes.” Of course, 20 thousands comic could make similar jokes and saucier jokes about rape or consent and there would never be a picket line. Why Tucker? Because these kids look up to him as their idol and something about the written word gives it some sort of biblical gravitas to these whales with whistles, I mean protesters.

Which leads me to this: while debating this very serious subject and how best to portray Tucker as non-rape-y as possible, we hear a knock on the door to the editing bay in the back of the tour bus. It’s Tucker with an incredibly attractive girl – blue eyes, auburn hair, cherry lips, and a low slung floral print shirt dancing coquettishly over small breasts.

“Hey guys, go up front,” Tucker says. We look at each other, clueless as to what’s going on. For a second, I think Tucker wants to show his friend the editing bay. As I get up to leave like an automaton, it dawns on me. Duh.

We three head up front and sit in the common area, slightly dumbfounded. Finally, I manage a sentence.

“So, like, Tucker is fucking that girl or something back there?”

Nils Parker, Tucker’s co-writer, co-producer and best friend, looks up from his laptop computer and shrugs as if to say ‘Yeah, and it’s Tuesday, so what?’

15 minutes later, the nice lady opens the door from the editing bay and does the mini walk of shame out of the bus and into the theatre. Well, she didn’t look ashamed; she looked like the cat that ate the canary.

“Um, Tucker, is there a part of the editing bay back there I should avoid?” Greg, one of the vidiots, offers.

“No, it’s okay, I finished in her mouth.” Again. Like it’s Tuesday.

An hour later, during the question and answer period, I decide to embarrass Tucker in front of 300 plus people. A soldier from Afghanistan is telling Tucker how big a fan he is and how much his wife is a fan as well. He contends that he flew 8500 miles JUST to see the premiere in Minnesota.

As the MC of the event, I grab the microphone : “Wow, you flew that far to see Tucker? If you were a really, really big fan, you’d let your wife blow Tucker on the tour bus.”

Immediately, I wheel the mike to face the blue-eyed nob slobberer from earlier: “What’s it like blowing Tucker on the bus, ma’am? Would you recommend it?”

The audience erupted. How embarrassing for her and Tucker! I am a master…. Until:

“I highly recommend it,” she says.

And he says “Wait, what’s her name came back into the movie theatre after? I didn’t know that.

Huh, okay, next question?”

Tuesday.

I stand there with the microphone defeated. Tucker is frankly out of my league.

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