LONG WEEKEND RECAP
FRIDAY
I took the day off work. I had no real reason to do so. I just needed a day off to relax. Of course, I still had WORK to do from home, but it was still more relaxing to work on film stuff at home in my jammies than to do work-work at the office.
That night, B-Rex was having his birthday party. He had a BBQ dinner at his girlfriend’s house first, but I talked it over with the Troika and we just couldn’t seem to figure out a painless way of getting to West Seattle during rush hour. We opted, instead, to meet them at the War Room later. The War Room is a new club/bar that opened up in a building that used to be a gay bar. Meep and I called it the Elk Lodge because that’s precisely what it looks like from the outside. (It didn’t used to look like an Elk Lodge. It used to have an entirely white exterior. Now it’s all wood). Plus, there is no name on it so we didn’t know what else to call it. We were excited to see what it would be like on the inside. We gussied up and got there early (around 8) in an attempt to secure seats on the roof-top deck. Well, being a new bar with a mysteriously nameless exterior and a prime Capital Hill location, the roof-deck was already completely packed. We opted to reserve a nice, expansive booth in the empty downstairs section. We were surrounded by art deco pictures of Nixon, Mao and Lennon (not John). The motif was nice. The drinks had names like “The Iron Curtain” and there were $3 well and $2 beer specials until 9 so we felt optimistic. (Even though Meep and I did get scolded by a bouncer for putting our feet on what definitely looked like a foot stool to us. Apparently, it was just a very low, small table). A D.J. showed up and started playing Hall and Oates so our optimism rocketed ever skyward. The Birthday Gang was running late. They sounded like they were having a great time in West Seattle and we were sad to be missing out but our absence served the seat-saving function so we reconciled. I continued to drink bottom shelf vodka and sprites, completely forgetting the fact that I’m not supposed to do things like that anymore. Meep downed several High Life’s. Around 10:00, the Birthday Gang showed up. The birthday boy in question was appropriately hammered. We have several hilarious pictures of him opening his card and birthday present from us. (For the record, a G.I. Joe-themed card and a home-made t-shirt depicting his face on Godzilla’s body…Gafzilla; His nickname from the “Snow Day” shoot and for the rest of his life). By then, the place was PACKED and the DJ was playing less enjoyable music. I did some chair dancing and some people tried to get me to get up and dance, despite making fun of my extremely white lack of rhythm. No thank you. Here’s where things start to get blurry. One by one, the people at our table decided to trickle upstairs to the roof deck to enjoy the sardine-like standing room only situation. This was in no way appealing to Meep and me so we stayed until the very last. It wasn’t until we realized that we were sitting in the corner of a booth full of people we didn’t know, that we decided to concede. By now I had lost track of how many dirty vodka drinks I’d had and was feeling pretty, well, shnockered. We headed upstairs to find our friends who seemed perfectly happy to be standing shoulder to shoulder yelling conversations at one another. It was then that I realized that I was having a “paranoid” drunk. This doesn’t happen too often. But then again, I don’t normally drink cheap booze…anymore… The cacophony of the crowd was deafening and I was definitely starting to feel the walls closing in on me. I decided that I had to leave right then and there. So out I went, with Meep behind me. Problem was, I didn’t say goodbye to anyone, and Meep didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going. When she followed me outside, she couldn’t get back in without paying a $5 cover (which starts after 10), and she was PISSED at me. And rightly so. It took a little work on her part but eventually she got me to explain that I was feeling claustrophobic and had to leave. She called Borgia and explained everything and we went back to her house for a QUIET nightcap. Guess what…I didn’t need a nightcap.
SATURDAY
Man. From time to time, there comes a point in your night when you’ve had so much bad alcohol that the standard two pints of water before bed will do you NO good. This was one of those times. I was in PAAAAIIIIN. Luckily, I had few responsibilities that day. I rested until around 1 and then got ready to go have lunch with my friend Kristie from college. She lives in D.C. now with her husband and about twice a year, she comes back West to visit her family. She has such a big family that she spends the whole time driving around Washington visiting them and only has a meal’s worth of time to hang with me. This was my meal. We went to Sushi Land in Queen Anne to gorge ourselves on gastronomical proportions of conveyor belt sushi. As much fun as the conveyor belt is, the sushi isn’t really that good there. But the green tea is free and you can’t get sick from bad vegetarian sushi, so I was ok. Kristie, her husband Ben, Dom and I had a leisurely lunch and then went next door to Ladro for a post-meal cuppa. The conversation was top notch, as usual and I always find myself very sad at the end of these whirlwind visits. Kristie and Ben are super cool and we always have a lot to talk about, despite only seeing each other bi-annually.
On our way back, I asked Dom if I could drive his car. I haven’t driven ANY car since I sold my Volvo 3 years ago. I never much cared for driving. I’m not good at it. I don’t enjoy it. But there are times when a person needs to drive so I figured I should put in some practice just in case Dom is incapacitated for whatever reason and I need to drive his car. Maybe there are some bad guys chasing us. Maybe it’s slow-moving lava from Mt. St. Helens. I don’t know. These things happen. Anyway, he foolishly agreed to let me at it. I plunked down in the driver’s seat, pulled the seat way forward to accommodate my short legs, adjusted the side mirror and went to adjust the rear-view. It didn’t move so I pulled just a LITTLE bit harder and SNAP. It came off in my goddamned hand. From the look of it, it seemed like we should be able to just snap it right back on again. Dom pushed. Nothing. He pushed a little harder. CRAACK! The windshield under the mirror mount fanned out into 5 spidery cracks. Fuck. Well, I told Dom I owed him a new windshield. Which I can definitely afford right now. I’ll just have to put off buying that amusement park. I took the whole situation as a bad omen and I re-claimed my rightful place in the passenger’s seat. But Dom still didn’t have a rear view mirror. Now it’s uselessly duct taped on and we still don’t understand why it’s not just snapping back on. Sigh.
When we got home, we rested for a while and then got ready for the Brunswick’s Blacklight Party/Roxy’s Birthday/Roxys Going Away Party.
I was still pretty damned hung over and decided that drinking was not a good idea. Instead I made some phone calls and scored myself a little green for the night. The Brunswicks had moved all their furniture to the side and rented several HUGE black lights for the night. Throughout the night, guests brought glow-in-the-dark goodies and everyone drew on themselves with highlighters. It was all very cool. You can see pictures here. You would think that it would be impossible to take a good blacklight photo, but some of them really did turn out pretty well. Except for the part where apparently NOBODY looks attractive under blacklights. Blech.
SUNDAY
Ah…nothing like waking up without a hangover! Thank you, nature! I did some work around the house and got ready to go to yoga. I was feeling pretty good and definitely ready to sweat and work hard inside the sweltering yoga studio. As I sauntered up to the door, I got a sinking feeling that I should have checked the holiday schedule on line before walking over there. I was right. They canceled the 4:00 class. I walked as fast as I could on the way home to get my heart rate up and then launched straight into living room yoga which is more painful and not as effective, for some reason.
That evening, we had planned to hit Sunday karaoke at Jalisco for Jef’s birthday (so many July birthdays!). Right as we were leaving, Jef called and said that the karaoke was canceled so the party was moving to Ozzie’s. The Troika are not fans of Ozzie’s. We always found it to be waaaaay too meat-markety for our tastes. But we hadn’t been there for quite some time and it was Jef’s birthday so we were willing to give it a go. When we walked in, we were surprised to find that it had been converted into some weird cross between a Shoney’s, a Farrell’s and a (surprise) frat house. It was replete with an ice cream window! It was pretty empty when we first got there and there was even a charming, pipe-smoking old man in the corner perusing the karaoke song books so we thought it might not be so bad. But then the bachelorette party showed up. And then everybody else showed up. By the time Meep and I made our first trip to the bathroom, we had to wade through a gauntlette of cat-calling meat men. Every time we turned around, one of the guys we were with was being threatened by some testosterone-crazed white hat. The karaoke song choices were mostly awful and we decided to leave as soon as we finished singing the songs we'd put in. There were a few gems. Jef did a bang-up job with “kiss” by Prince. Dom and my old apartment manager showed up to sing the hell out of “Poison” by Bell Biv Devo. A spot-on impressionist of Robbie Williams did “Angels” (and afterward was all the rage with the ladies). But we had to sit through the WORST version of Bon Jovi's “Bad Name” I've ever heard, among other fratty standards I'm repressing. We couldn't get out there soon enough and all of us vowed never to return. Of course, I had to be the one to forget something. Just when Borgia was speeding us away from hell, I realized I'd forgotten my glasses case which contained my favorite, irreplaceable sunglasses. I had to go back. Borgia dropped me on the corner and I queued up to get back in. As soon as I was cleared by the doorman, I pushed through an oblivious wall of people and found my glasses case. I bolted for the door and ran across the street to where Borgia had parallel parked. Apparently, his parking job was not without incident. When pulling in, he had lightly tapped the bumper of the car behind him. Of course, the drunk, burly owner of the car was across the street waiting to get in to Ozzie’s. He ran across the street with his more sensible girlfriend after him and demanded that Borgia get out of the car. Borgia refused and instead locked the door. Apparently, after his girlfriend calmed him down a bit, he stopped trying to call Borgia out. I returned and got in the car, and both he and his girlfriend watched like a HAWK as we pulled away. RIDICULOUS. Also, NEVER GOING BACK.
MONDAY
The fourth! I slept in and was surprisingly unaffected by the many margaritas from the previous night. A stupidly last minute trip to the grocery store and the Troika was on its way to Borgia's house in Fremont for the obligatory BBQ. It was blazing hot and I'm REALLY glad we decided to buy sunscreen at the store. We played some trivial pursuit, ate WAAAAAY too much, watched a terrifically bad 1979 sci-fi movie (thanks to Elyse and Gene) called The Shape of Things to Come (starring a perpetually grizzled Jack Palance), and later, watched fireworks. Fun fun fun! Until, of course, it came time to drive home. It took us an HOUR to get from Fremont to Capital Hill because the cops had LITERALLY blocked off every single left turn so that everyone had to sit in the gridlock on Fairview. Why, no one knows. So we didn't get home till after 12:30 on a school night. STOOOPID.
Effed by the Wind 