What does it take to be named America’s greatest partier? A strong liver, for one. The ability to summon literally thousands of people to a house party is also good. A spread in Rolling Stone magazine won’t hurt, either.
That’s what happened to Bert Kreischer during his sixth year at Florida State University back in the late 1990s. He got a call — as he was in the middle of doing bong hits, naturally — from a magazine journalist interested in writing about FSU after it had been anointed the country’s top party school. Kreischer’s name had been mentioned by nearly every student the writer had spoken with as someone who knew his way around a bash.
The resulting article, called “The Undergraduate,” which detailed Kreischer’s out-of-control drinking, merrymaking and public nudity, made him a star — and inspired the 2002 Ryan Reynolds movie “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.”
“I’ve never seen it. I had nothing to do with it,” Kreischer, now 41 and a stand-up comedian and TV personality, says of the frat comedy.
Kreischer is responsible for “Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child,” a collection of outrageous anecdotes, on sale May 27.
In it, he writes about his unpredictable, Forrest Gump-ian life, including the time he was briefly in a band with the dude from Creed, and the time he cried on Whitney Houston’s shoulder while his daughter had dental surgery.
“Here’s the weird thing about me. I was never one to tell you stories about me. I was always the guy who others told stories about,” Kreischer tells The Post. “I was like that up until I was 35 years old. And then I started telling stories about me onstage.”
Kreischer has plenty of stories that never made it into the movie. Here, he shares tales from some of his wildest nights of partying, including a few from the days when he lived in New York.
Pulling pranks with Tracy Morgan
I was working at the Boston Comedy Club [on West Third Street], standing out front “barking,” trying to bring people in to watch our comedy show. Tracy Morgan came out of the club. He asked me if I wanted to go get high. We took a left and walked down the block, to either Thompson or Sullivan. Tracy lit [a joint], and he passed it to me. I said, “This tastes funny.” He tells me, “Oh, it’s wet.”
“Wet? What’s wet?”
“Oh, it’s PCP.” Then he walks away.
I’m like, “What the f- -k?” I’m spiraling. I ask my friend [comedian] Tony Woods, and he said, “No, Tracy doesn’t smoke PCP. You’re fine.” I’m like, “Seriously?” Tony said, “Listen, don’t go home. If you go home, you’ll think you’re on PCP.”
So now you’re in that gray area where you literally feel high with anxiety, and you’re spiraling because there is the possibility that you smoked PCP. The truth is, I was just a young, white comic, and I know for a fact that Tracy has a history of messing with young, white comics. They all come to me with their stories: “You should have heard what he did to me.”
Later, Tony and I went over to Madame X [on Houston Street]. Tracy was there holding court [with 20 guys]. We drank a ton of Champagne and I had some Heineken.
When the bill came, the waitress gave it to me [because I was the only white guy in the group]. I’m freaking out. Tracy got up and caused somewhat of a ruckus. “Ah, f- -k that. I’m the rich [N-word] in here! F- -k that white boy, he works the door,” he said. Tracy ripped off his shirt and the bouncers were on top of him.
Tony and I go outside. Tracy comes out and he looks like he’s been beaten. But he’s sly as a fox. He looks at me and Tony and goes, “Now that’s how you get out of paying the check.”
Naked ambition
I suffer from an inability not to grab the mic. I’m the guy who needs to be front and center. I joined a fraternity to do that. The frat elections were such bulls- -t. So catty. What would happen is, I’d grab the mic and use it as an opportunity to get laughs. I’d write a song about the brothers or something.
One time, I went up totally naked with a tie on and delivered a speech that said I had nothing to hide. That was my platform. It killed, and it killed because once the shock of me being naked wore off, I’m still delivering a nine-minute speech naked. And I’m not really well-endowed, so it became almost surreal to these guys.
The next year, my buddies ask me, “Are you gonna do a naked speech?” I said, “I would, but I’m afraid I’ll s- -t all over the place.” They’re like, “That’s perfect!” So we go and get a tie. They go up and give a speech about how I’m trying to change, how I’m trying to become more of a serious person. Then I come up and I’m naked and the guys love it.
I go up and raise my hand and turn around to face a table of councilmen, and I push and I s- -t on a pizza box. The council didn’t see me s- -tting. All the council saw was me pissing on their feet. Because when you go number two, you also go number one. That’s why they call it number two: It’s number one plus another number one.
I piss all over their feet and they lose it. Then, they smell it. All hell was breaking loose. I swear to you, there were people jumping out of windows. Even me, when I had to clean it up, I gagged.
Later, we go in to tally up the votes, and they force the two candidates to stand next to each other, and everyone is still talking about the s- -t , and I’m standing next to [the other candidate] and he’s in a suit and tie with a laser pointer and I’m naked. They tally it up and I won by a landslide. [The other candidate] yells, “That’s bulls- -t!” And someone else from the back yells, “No, that’s Bert s- -t!”
Oliver Stone wants to kill me!
When Oliver Stone optioned the rights to my life, and they were trying to develop a movie based on my life, there was this agent who set me up with writers, and they were going to write the script. These two writers had a great pitch, but they kept saying, “We don’t know how the story ends. We want to know how it ends.” One night, we go over to the Argyle [now called Sunset Tower, in West Hollywood], and they’ve rented the penthouse suite. We walk in and there’s a ton of coke on the table. They go, “You party, right?” I didn’t say no at the time. Then, very quickly I realized they were trying to kill me so that they’d have an end to the story. I go out on this tiny balcony overlooking Hollywood, and I think, “I need to get the f- -k out of here.”
This one’s on David Lee Roth
My first night in New York ever, I went down to the Meatpacking District and a journalist friend named Steve Garbarino showed me my first gay bar. We went to an after-hours club called Marylou’s, and this guy recognized me. He said, “You’re the party animal! I just read about you. I got to get you a drink!” I went, “No, no. That’s OK.” I was just being coy. He called over to his friends, “Harvey, Abel, you gotta meet this guy. He’s the No. 1 party animal.” I’m looking, and the girl we’re with goes, “Holy s – -t! I can’t believe David Lee Roth wants to buy you a drink.” That was my first night in New York.
What a long strange trip it’s been
The most f- -ked up I’ve been and, hands down, one of the favorite moments of my life, was St. Paddy’s Day my first senior year. I had two senior years and two junior years. I’m at Potbelly’s bar and get a call on the bar phone. My buddy says he’s coming by. He pulls up on a scooter, and he goes, “I got a bag of mushrooms. Let’s go.” I eat the mushrooms and sit backward on the scooter so I am facing traffic. We proceed to drive through the campus at a slow speed, and it was literally one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was giggly fun and very peaceful. And just beautiful. We’d drive around and I’d say, “Let’s go see if we can get a corn dog inside the Tri Delt house.” It was that kind of energy.