FRIDAY

After work, I went to Brugos’ to check on Lucy, pick up Elyse’s Nalgene and meet Matt, the guy who is house-sitting while B is in Brazil. Matt has a large dog so Lucy was nowhere to be found. She is probably perpetually cowering in the basement, fearing for her life and plotting to shit on everything that Brugos owns when he returns.

Turns out I’ve met Matt before at (probably more than) one of Brugos’ parties. We talked for a bit and then I had to run to the House of Fun to meet everyone Elyse, Andrew and various H.O.F.ers for dinner before Andrew’s going away party. For some reason, I had thought that the House of Fun was a lot closer to Brugos’ house. It was a longer walk than I expected. I arrived starving.

Olga brought out the party favors and then we walked to Olympic Pizza where I created my own calzone.

Back at the H.O.F., we broke in the karaoke machine. Meep and Borg arrived a short while later. Borg, Meep, Elyse and I played a few rounds of suicide karaoke (which isn’t all that much fun when you actually LIKE to sing karaoke methinks). We put in special requests for Andrew including Foreigner, Billy Ocean and Chaka Khan. I tried to capture a few moments on my digital camera in video mode but, obviously, the sound and picture are awful. It’s probably best left to memory anyway.

Other highlights included Matt singing “Come Together” some dude singing an intelligible, occasionally Irish, “scat” version of “Give It Away”. I mostly sang songs I had never done before. Some of them worked out and some didn’t. Meep sang quite a bit too, which was awesome.

Meep, Borg and I took our leave around 1:00. I had planned to ride the party out to the end, but they were my last chance to sleep in a bed that night and I was pretty tired anyway. It had been kind of an emotional week. For a lot of people.

SATURDAY

I got my hair cut in the morning. After that, Meep and I devised for the rest of the day. We would go to Cal Anderson Park, play Badminton and read comics. On our way there, we stopped for water at Rite Aide and happened upon some Garbage Pail Kids cards! Apparently, they have re-released them. And they are better than ever!

At the park, we attempted to play Badminton, but it was too windy. We broke out our comics and read for a bit. Then we lightened our load at Meep’s before heading out for the night.

Our first stop for the evening was Clever Dunne’s. We had planned to eat there as well, but apparently they no longer serve food. They do, however, encourage people to bring in their own food. Since we wanted to have a couple of pints, I went out in search of dinner. I returned with some delicious cucumber sandwiches from the store up the street.

A few pints later, we were ready to head to Scrapps’ birthday party. When we arrived, we felt a bit uncomfortable at first. The only people we knew were Scrapps and Matt and they were busy being hosts. So for a bit, Meep and I sat in the corner and chatted. Eventually, Scrapps came over and talked to us and then introduced us to some other people. After that, we were integrated into the party. It helped that most of them were video game designers who work with Scrapps (and therefore geeks). Meep met one of the guys who designed Gauntlet: Legends, and was a little star struck.

Meep and I finished the beers we had brought with us and, as our conversation had degenerated to nostalgia at that point, we decided we should go home. After Meep and I parted ways, I got a text message from Sherwood saying that David Cross was at the Nite Light.

SUNDAY

First off, I called in sick to my office boating event. It was just going to be too awkward and not much fun. Besides, I had already made other plans to attend Bumbershoot with Meep, Scrapps, Matt and their friend Travis.

We met the boys at Starbucks, and bought both our coffee and our Bumbershoot tickets. It was so painless (especially in comparison to my ticket debacle the previous year), that I think I will always buy Bumbershoot tickets at Starbucks.

We drove down to Seattle Center in Travis’ car and somehow, fairly painlessly, found free parking in Belltown. On our way to the center, we passed by a group of otherwise normal looking adults who were standing in a circle around a baby, who was seated on the ground. That is just one of those scenes that are probably funnier without an explanation.

When we got to Bumbershoot, it turned out that we had different plans for comedy. Since now, there are two comedy stages, we parted ways. Meep and I went to the Charlotte Martin Theatre to get in line for the Upright Citizens Brigade. The boys went to Intiman to try and catch Zach Galifianakis.

Andrew had planned to try and meet us for UCB. Instead, Elyse managed to find us and scam her way into line with us just in time. Andrew was unable to make it through the mess. (This year they are having everyone scrunch together into a blob, instead of standing in a pesky, ordered queue. Genius!)

UCB was awesome. It was all the original members apart from Amy. Also joining them were Horatio Sanz, Rob Huebel (Inconsiderate Cell Phone Guy) and Paul Sheer from Best Week Ever.

At the beginning of the show, they passed around some baseball caps asking everyone to donate their drugs. Obviously, no one wanted to give up their drugs, but Elyse put her bag of slivered almonds into the hat, and I unloaded my “Perfect Strangers” trading card. The bag of almonds ended up on the stage for the duration of the show. The trading card ended up in Ian Roberts’ pocket!

After the show, we got some overpriced, greasy Chinese food and ate in on the stairs whilst surrounded by shrieking high school kids. Then it was back in line for Trapped in the Closet.

In line, we ran into Pam and Aaron. We pulled out the playing cards and killed a little time with Hearts.

Trapped in the Closet was AMAZING. The premise of the show is that the movie is being inducted into some sort of honor society. They have guest panelists who play characters who supposedly worked on the movie. On this panel were Slovin (playing R. Kelly’s therapist) and Allen (playing a man from a future in which Trapped in the Closet has replaced religion), Mary Lynn Rajskub (playing the craft services coordinator), Rob Huebel (playing the stunt coordinator) and David Cross as the voice of The Closet. The moderators are Paul Sheer and Aziz Ansari (heart) who play Octogenarian T.I.T.C. experts.

I imagine the full show is better, but they only had an hour, so they began by recapping the first six chapters and then showing the next four with commentary and questions from the audience in between. I had never seen any of T.I.T.C. before so the whole thing kind of blew my mind.

After T.I.T.C., Elyse took off to see more music, and Meep and I went to find a beer garden and wait for the guys to be done with their comedy. We chose our first beer garden poorly. It was right next to the Jazz stage. Scrapps called and we decided that rather than have them meet us there, we would down our drinks and then move to a different beer garden. We chose the big one right next to the giant claw that spews fire.

Fire spewing claws are cool, but after a while, we realized that we were done with Bumbershoot and would be happier drinking for half the price at a bar. Scrapps and Travis (Matt had already left) were especially tired of Bumbershoot because they ended up not being able to get into ANY of the shows they had wanted to see.

We headed up second and stopped at the Rendezvous and Shorty’s and the Nite Lite (sadly, comedian free) before calling it a night.

MONDAY

Perhaps I drank too many VARIATIONS of beverage the night before because I was all kind of hung over, from nausea to dizziness to just general craptitude. I managed to venture out into the world around 11:30 to get chai and breakfast, but that was, sadly, the only thing I would be able to accomplish.

The rest of the day was spent watching the Dark Angel marathon, checking my email every five minutes and occasionally cleaning something. I also watched Flight Plan. I must say that even though the twist was even more dumb than I expected, I kind of like the social study of how the other passengers on the plane reacted to Jodi Foster’s character in that situation. I also liked that Sean Bean didn’t have to be evil.

Next Weekend Dandys and Hump. Plus: I get older.

September 5, 2006
Categories: Dear Diary . Tags: bumbershoot, weekend recap . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment