WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

We began the evening by stopping at the Shitty Market in our old hood for movie snacks, before strolling down to Pacific Place to see The Brother’s Grimm. I was delighted to find not only BOTTLES of Blackthorn’s for sale, but also CANS of Strongbow. I felt like I was back in London for a brief moment. The Strongbow beckoned me and I had to purchase a 4-pack for the movie.
Oh Terry Gilliam. How the mighty have fallen. The movie wasn’t BAD certainly. But one has come to expect more from such a man than a cliché script, fairly ho-hum visuals and a whole bunch of jokes about the French. There were one or two cool Gilliam-esque special effects and I must say that the acting was, for the most part, enjoyable. Matt Damon isn’t terrible, even if his accent is (it’s reminiscent of a region of England that Meep would call Genericshire). Heath Ledger was only as annoying as his lines, though he played his character inexplicably gay. Perhaps he was preparing for his upcoming gay cowboys eating pudding film? Jonathan Pryce was, well, Jonathan Pryce, and therefore great, if not underused. It was delightful to see Gareth, even though he is well on his was to Type-cast Town. Overall, however, the film was a bit of a yawn, and that hurts coming from the man who made Time Bandits. It was almost saved by a hinted-at moment of homoeroticism, but they chickened out. Damn you, PG-13!
Meep, Dom and I all felt similar about our luke-warm feelings toward the film. Borg liked it. Krk, a die-hard Python and Gilliam fan, was pretty devastated. So devastated, in fact, that he could only go home and go to bed. The rest of us went back up the hill for a late-night snack and drink at the Canterbury. I was only two Strongbows ahead of everyone else. The Canterbury was fairly uneventful apart from the French-fry orgy.

SATURDAY

I had planned to go to yoga but I decided to forgo exercise for finishing Season One of Battlestar Galactica. As most of you know, it ended in true That-Carnivale-Guy fashion by making everything very open-ended and effed up. Thanks, guy! Even if you are sometimes mediocre, you really know how to leave your audience hungry for more. Luckily, Ben is going to get us caught up on Season Two thanks to his TeVo.
I did my yoga video, which is in no way as intense as the Bikram, but still reasonably effective, and then we got ready to go to Brugos’ Birthday Dodecacathelon. Oh happy day! We loaded the DDR in the car and the Troika + Sherrard headed Brugos-way for a day of games and drinking!
Well, games for everyone else. For me and Meep, it was all DDR all the time. Some of the games we didn’t participate in included Tang (something to do with speed-drinking), Egg-Tossing, Botchee Ball (sp?), and Keg Stands. To our surprise, Sherrard took part in the Keg Stands not once, but TWICE, consequently propelling him into instant drunkenness very early on. The party was, as Sherrard pointed out, a Sausage Fest. The result of this is many many drunken, shirtless men running around being obnoxious. This isn’t as sexy as it sounds. But I didn’t care. I was playing DDR. Meep and I got in round after round. For a long time uninitiated people would periodically pop their heads in and laugh at us before running to the backyard to binge drink. Eventually, a nice, open-minded couple (of course I’ve forgotten their names) who’d never DDR’d before showed up and were intrigued. They played a few rounds, and before long, they were just as addicted as us. The guy actually turned out to be some sort of prodigy, going from “beginner” mode to “light” (which is a fucking misnomer if I’ve ever heard it) mode with ease. Before long, he was playing everyone in light mode while they stayed on beginner and was KILLING the competition. Amazing. After dinner, Meep and I started drinking. For a while, the alcohol seemed to be helping. But only for a little while…
Things started to get a little hazy after that. I noticed the house was getting pretty trashed. I feel kinda bad for the Birthday Boy, who doubtless spent all day yesterday hung over and cleaning. I know there were conversations in the backyard, people eating raw eggs and running laps, a pie-eating contest, Borg, and some other guy jamming in the basement with Dom on drums. Meep and I sang “El Scorcho”. There was some playing with Brugos’ cat, Lucy. There was a crazy Russian guy who broke all Keg Stand records (I think his best was 45 seconds or something) and then passed out on the lawn. There were some drunk jerks (who were probably jerks sober as well) running around insulting people. There were some drunken declarations of admiration (in which I participated). And finally, there was karaoke on the X-Box. The selection was rather limited but I sang not one, but TWO Skid Row songs and had a fucking blast. I also got in a horrific rendition of “Cum On Feel the Noise”. Luckily, I got help on both that song and “I Remember You”. I need more butt rock on our at-home karaoke system, man. It reminded me of sophomore year of college when I hung out with Beth, Allison, Ann and KT at their on-campus house. Erik would pull out the acoustic guitar and we would sing all the butt-rock favorites until the sun came up. I’m telling you, Warrant is the perfect campfire sing-a-long band.
ANYWAY, at 2 or so (I think), poor Dom had to drive all our hammered asses back to the hill. At least I’m pretty sure he had a good time before people became incoherent.

SUNDAY

I may have had two bottles of Cook’s to myself, but it was over the course of 10 hours (yes, the party was that long. Longer, in fact, as we arrived late. THAT is why everyone was so useless by the end of the night.) That and sweating out the booze as I dance dance revolutioned all night. Furthermore, Dom was an angel with the water-bringing. So all I needed was to sleep in till 11 and I was fine.
Sunday was mine and Dom’s 3-year anniversary. Our big plans started with beginning Deadwood Season One. Then we showered and went to the Interbay Golf Course for some mini-golf. The weather held up nicely. Mini-golf was fun apart from the 4-5 year-old girl and her grandma who were speeding through the holes behind us and chasing us through the course. We would have let them play through but they would finish their last hole when we were ¾ through our hole and so it seemed like waiting would take forever. Instead, we finished the whole course in under an hour. Then we stopped at Fred Meyer in Ballard for a quick, romantic shopping trip, before going to dinner at Louis’ Chinese Restaurant. The food was really good, but about half-way through our meal, it became family hour. After dinner, we decided to drive to the U-District to see if we could catch a movie. We decided on The Aristocrats. See Mark, we DO see indie films in the theatre sometimes! We probably should have picked something else though. In retrospect, it seems like a waste to spend $9 on a mini-DV documentary. Overall, the film was interesting, but really not that funny. It wasn’t OFFENSIVE or anything. It was just kind of mediocre humor. Plus, I’m not a very big fan of most of the comedians they featured. Give me the Comedians of Comedy over Drew Carey any day. Plus, I don’t think I like seeing comedies with American audiences. They are so eager to laugh that they don’t really stop to think if the joke is funny or not. They just recognize the fact that they’ve just heard a punch line and so they laugh right on cue. This is, I think, why Meep, Dom and I tend to find ourselves laughing out loud in a silent theatre and vice versa. We actually LISTEN to what’s being said and, if it strikes us as funny, we laugh. It can’t be that our sense of humor is SO VASTLY different than the rest of the country’s, can it?

And thus endeth the anniversary date and the weekend.

NEXT WEEKED: Meep and I celebrate a finished script, and I take Sherwood to Bumbershoot for his Birthday.

August 29, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions, Hug Your Television . Tags: bsg, dodecathelon, weekend recap . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment