After stumbling out of a show at Berbati’s Pan on Saturday night I rounded the corner and ducked into Voodoo Donuts.
I picked this one up because it reminded me of the donut man that Dave massacred at last year’s TequilaCon. As you can see this poor guy wasn’t too happy at the prospect of getting eaten, either.
(I know I haven’t been writing much lately but that’s going to change this week. So sit tight.)
I’ve been trying to do this whole “grown-up” thing for the last few years now, most of which, as far as I can tell, seems to involve showing up at work every weekday around 8 o’clock and paying my bills in a timely matter. After going to work for a number of days you get rewarded with a “weekend”, and as a responsible grown-up you’re supposed to confine your shenanigans to those two days, so as not to interfere with “productivity” and “the bottom line” and other things that responsible people have to worry about.
That’s more or less how it works. Let’s say, though, that you get a call from your BFF, and you gush “we totally need to hang out tomorrow, I don’t think I’ve seen you in two weeks”, and so you agree to meet up when you get out of work the next day. So you meet up with this friend of yours, who we’ll call Sibyl, and her boyfriend T, and your college buddy Niels, and you all go out to a bar for pizza and beer. Now, the key here is that not all of you are doing this whole grown-up thing on the same schedule, and Wednesday night is the weekend for Sibyl and T, so they’re prepared to go no holds barred for the evening. You and Niels are both keyboard-slinging desk jockeys, and gosh if you don’t know very well that you have spreadsheets and code verification and TPS reports to attend to on the morrow. But you find yourselves getting caught up in the spirit of the evening, so much so that after your fifth or sixth round of beers you decide that it’s a great idea for every one to slug down a shot of whiskey, followed almost immediately by a Dos Equis and a game of air hockey. When you eventually stumble home, it is probably more a testament to Portland’s excellent public transit system than anything else.
Got it? Now let’s assume that’s what really happened to me, and I have to assume it did because I managed to upload the picture above sometime during the night, keying in a caption and title on my phone that almost seem to make sense, and thankfully I haven’t put too much effort in figuring out how to post to my blog from my cellphone because then I’d be able to embarrass myself in realtime. And there you have it.
***
A hangover in mid-week earns you no sympathy, nor should it, because responsible people know better than to get talked into that many drinks on a Wednesday. Being legitimately ill at work might earn you some sympathy…
Co-worker: You’re all pale and sweaty. Are you all right?
Me: I have malaria. I think I picked it up last weekend when I was teaching orphans to read in Guatemala.
CW: Oh! How terrible!
Me: It’s okay. I think this Robitussin is starting to kick in.
But a hangover?
Co-worker: You don’t look so well. Are you all right?
Me: I have a hangover.
CW: Hey, way to go, loser. Congratulations on being a moron.
Me: I guess I had that coming.
CW: Time for staff meeting!
Naturally I kept my hungover status concealed, telling the one or two people that asked that I was “just a little distracted today”, because distracted people frequently lose track of what they’re saying in mid-sentence AND drink nineteen cups of water before noon.
Anyway, lesson learned. I shall ride my bike all around town tomorrow to show my contriteness. That and I need to get into shape.
Saturday night found Niels and I at Ground Kontrol, enjoying some beer with our pinball. We hadn’t planned on doing much more for the evening than just what we were doing, but as I brought my fist down on the cover of Pirates of the Caribbean yet again I suddenly remembered that one of my coworkers had mentioned that his band was playing at the Someday Lounge, right around the corner from us. “Niels,” I said, slamming my hip into the pinball console, “rock show?”
“Sure. Where?”
“Just around the corner. This guy that works on my floor is in Bombs Into You and they’re playing at the Someday in about twenty minutes.”
Niels finished the rest of his PBR and set it down on a nearby table. “Let’s do it.”
We left the arcade and walked around the block in search of the venue. My buddy Nate had described its location but I hadn’t been to this particular club for a show yet. After we paid our covers and strolled in, I took in the decor and the clientele and realized that this was a far swankier place than I had anticipated.
Something you should know about me: I am not exactly cool. I’m at least mildly entertaining and fun to hang out with, but you wouldn’t mistake me for ‘cool’. I don’t have any piercings or tattoos; I don’t play bass guitar. I have a boring office job. I don’t ride a motorcycle. I know a half dozen programming languages. I read a ton of books, but never anything trendy, the majority of it science-fiction with a smattering of history and physics and Eastern philosophy thrown in. I sure don’t shop at Abercrombie, or any of the dozens of super-hip local clothing stores for which Portland is so well known. I am definitely NOT a hipster.
So it surprised me when, having just ordered a drink at the bar, a blonde in a stretchy sweater called out, “Hey! I like your shirt!”
“Thanks,” I said, a little surprised.
“Is it that Mafia line of clothing that just came out, by-” and she named a designer I’d never heard of before.
Now, I was wearing my Cosa Nostra Pizza T-shirt. It’s not some trendy new brand. It’s a nod to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a novel set in a near-future world where, among other startling changes to the American cultural landscape, the Mafia have gotten into the high-speed pizza delivery business. Wearing this shirt made me more than a little nerdy.
As I saw it, I had two possible courses of action: I could lie and go along with the young lady’s assumption, that I was sporting some cutting edge threads, and spend some time convincing her of my innate hipness; or, I could go with the truth and ‘fess up that I am, in fact, kind of a geek.
Embrace it! said a little voice inside of me. Embrace your inner anti-cool!
So I did.
“It’s actually a fictional restaurant. From a cyberpunk novel.” The bartender brought out my drink then. Grinning, I raised my glass to her and winked. “Cheers!” And then I walked up towards the stage to await the opening band. It turns out one of the fringe benefits of embracing your lack of coolness is that you end up not really caring whether or not some club girls in a trendy bar approve of you or not.
‘Cool.’ Pfeh. Who needs it?
I convulsively woke up at just after 6:30 this morning to the sound of rain. I spent a frantic thirty seconds figuring out what day it was before deciding it was Saturday and I didn’t have to get up for work. Of course, I’d also been asleep for over twelve hours, so trying to sleep in was probably a futile idea. After listening to the rain fall on the otherwise silent streets outside I got up to make myself some tea.
My roommates are earlier risers, and were up and moving around not too long after my second cup. I live with my brother and his girlfriend, and when they sauntered down stairs I asked if I couldn’t take them to breakfast to celebrate finally getting paid. Less than an hour later we were across town at the Cup and Saucer, seated in our booth.
I was refreshed from my long sleep, but apparently still a little slow in processing, because I couldn’t help but look at my brother blankly when he said, “So you were talking about mom’s book, huh?”
“What?”
“Mom’s book. The birds and the bees, man.”
“Dude, please make sense,” I said, picking at an errant eye boogie. “I don’t get it.”
“I read about it on the blog.”
“What? Someone left a new comment? I haven’t checked my site since Thursday.”
“No, on your friend’s blog. Uh, the one from Chicago. I think she got stuck at the airport.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh!”
-memory burst-
it’s on the top floor look at this view now that’s what I call white where’s your tie double-windsor try the vampire it has tequila sasquatch’s wingspan hey you forced my hand called me ball-less can’t be looking at goatse at work the thumbs should be down it’s like the iphone of hair-dos I brought mustaches for everyone no more neck tattoos look at my pumpkin here I’ll hold it table used to be a roller-coaster no more sugar for him put that in the notes I didn’t know her in the biblical sense this is great pizza last one will be in Chicago sing for me I didn’t hear last time this is some great art in here she put a bunch of quarters in but pressed one player check it fanboy with the mac is waiting to join that conversation never knew that about women you sure trust us only telling you this because I’ve had three whiskeys roadtrip to vegas peed in the holy water last call already…
Memories flooded through me as they do, and I vividly recalled a dozen snippets from a night well spent. I put my head down on the table next to my plate of eggs and laughed long and hard. My sides ached from a procedure gone awry, a whiskey infusion abruptly and unexpectedly rejected by my body around four the previous morning, but still I laughed.
Sitting up finally, I said, “Yes, I may have mentioned mom’s giant sex book. You remember when we found that thing?”
“Oh yeah. Pass the Tabasco sauce?”
“Sure.”
I was going to write a recap of our latest meet up, but after starting a new job this week with imposing deadlines, keeping Jenny out past her curfew on Monday, drinking wine to celebrate Sibyl’s new tattoo on Tuesday, hanging out with some of the rockingest bloggers I know on Wednesday, and going to a birthday party on Thursday, I discovered that today I am completely pooped out.
Fortunately Brandon and Jenny have both written up totally sweet recaps already, so with that pressure off I feel free to just post a few pictures and call it good.
Oh yeah, and one more thing. You guys?
You guys are awesome, and you know it. Thanks for the great time.
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