(Addendum) Drinking Close to a Gallon of Sake on a Weeknight: Lesson in Japanese Cuisine or Totally Fucking Stupid?

Both, actually. It was excellent sake that is evidently hard to find outside of Japan. But mostly I was totally fucking stupid. I took a sick day last Friday not because I didn't "feel like" going to work but because I literally could not lift myself out of bed until 2pm. Upon which I crawled around the room on hands and knees for another hour, nauseated and with a painful headache behind my eyes. When I went back to sleep around 2:30am I still felt like hell. It was an experience I'd rather not repeat.

Backtracking a bit, the Industry couple invited us out to a sushi spot where they are friends with the owner. He brought us food he wanted us to try: sashimi flown in from Japan; delicate salads; fried fish heads and collars. (I ate an eye.) Once the place closed down, he sat with us, going back to the kitchen periodically to bring us rarer and rarer bottles of sake.

It was a great experience up until about midnight, at which point it took a turn toward the majestically stupid.

Recommendations

Movie recommendation of the week: Hot Fuzz

Dessert recommendation of the week: Beer float (we used Chambly Noire, but I think St. Peter's Cream Stout or a good chocolate stout would work best).

SF restaurant recommendation of the week: Gialina Pizzeria

Anti-recommendation of the week: Going to mediocre gay dance parties until 3am on a the Thursday before an undoubtedly hard weekend, then going to work the next day. Ouch.

Anti-recommendation of the year: Ignoring snail mail. There may be a hospital bill or two among all the Capital One junk, and if you ignore those they'll send the debt collectors after you.

Customer Service

One of the employees on the train actually pushed my boyfriend, for no discernible reason other than because he (M., that is) happened to be carrying a bicycle. Then, when M. asked him incredulously if he (the train employee, that is) was pushing him, the gentleman responded with a harder shove that almost threw him off-balance. And a muttered threat: "The next stop can be yours if you want it to be." Huh?

In all fairness, a train choked with drunk, screaming Giants fans is "hella" annoying, to borrow the local parlance. Especially when all you're trying to do is read the news or study some calculus after a long, boring day at work.

This weekend I'll be in the Sierras with my parents; Uncle Tomas, his wife, and my two little cousins; and my uncle David, his new partner, and the three-year old kid they just adopted. The last time I saw my uncle, in December, he was single and talking to me about how he doesn't want to have kids. He changed his mind awfully quick.

In the meantime, I have another party to go to tonight. Yawn.

It's a Small World, After All: Internet Edition

M. and I saw a picture of ourselves on the online advertisements for the Sunday party, so of course we had to go, workweek be damned. And, once there, of course we had to order two Chimays, the appalling state of our finances notwithstanding.

We'd been there for twenty minutes when one of my favorite bloggers appeared at the doorway. "Look, M., there's Moses (not his real name)," I pointed out. The guy is a local celebrity, immediately recognizable, and incredibly good at what he does. But that's not how I know who he is. Not at all. I know about him because I started reading his unbelievably funny blog after I stumbled upon it a few years ago. I found it by following a link from another of my favorite bloggers, whose popular site I also stumbled upon a few years ago. I found her blog, in turn, because it was linked to her boyfriend's blog. And I found her boyfriend's blog fully by chance, by clicking the "next blog" button on Blogger.

Tortuous enough? It gets worse. About a year and a half ago, M. threw a big house-party. Our first really big one, in fact. And it became a big deal by chance: my Boss's Daughter was in town, and M. ditched me for a few nights so he could go out to dance clubs with her and her close friend. At the time, he didn't want to bring me along because she and I were not on speaking terms thanks to a nasty blog-related incident that was my fault entirely. (The awkwardness has dissipated with time; I slept on her futon in NY, for instance.)

So, to get back to the convoluted story, M. went out with the Boss's Daughter and her close friend, Rachel, whom I also disliked at the time. And while out, he met one of Rachel's good friends, a petite gay boy. (I suspect that this "meeting" involved "dancing with at a gay club," but no matter.) This gay boy, "Raul," heard M. talking about our upcoming house party and informed him that he was friends with a DJ--one of the best-known in the city--who would probably be willing to spin at our party for a few hundred bucks. And more, a veritable army of partybot hipsters would arrive in his wake. (I know this sounds like a nightmare, but from a party-promotion standpoint, it's gold.)

When M. told me that he'd hired this DJ to spin in our living room, my natural response--as I hail from a particular demographic for whom this is second nature--was to search for him on Google. And one of the first hits was a link to one of my favorite bloggers, Moses.

Up until this point, I had no idea that Moses was local. I thought he was a Canadian, in fact. But, as I searched some more, creepy-stalker/Silicon-Valley-demographic style, I discovered that this DJ, as well as Raul, were both included in his immediate his social network. As was the DJ's girlfriend, who showed up at our apartment for our house-party that night, along with a posse which included a porn actress and a professional photographer who snapped dozens of pictures in our apartment.

And, to bring this more-or-less full-circle, M. has been working with this DJ semi-professionally, and his girlfriend is the one who's to blame for my half-accidental debut into Internet prOnulation. And for my possible status as reluctant Industry-party host.

(Here's another connection, actually: Rachel has been dating my DJ/Bartender flatmate, Sam, since she moved to SF from NY earlier this year.)

But let's return to Sunday night.

There we were, drinking Chimays we couldn't afford. M. was chatting with a member of a band that happens to be from M. and Sam's home town in the Midwest. (The band also does business with M.'s DJ friend, and it turns out that this guy and M. share some mutual friends back home.This is the chain that never ends.) Left out of the conversation, I watched Moses as he made his way around the bar. Wherever he went,someone would approach him and introduce herself. He exchanged phone numbers with several girls. One guy tried to take a covert camera-phone picture of him. Another posed with him, asking his friend to snap a picture with them together. I thought it funny that these people were treating him as a rock star when I've always known him as a blogger with middling traffic. Not compared to my traffic, obviously, but compared to what he's become famous for, it appears to be frightfully middling.

I buy more Chimays, for me, for M., for the DJ. Now I'm deep in the red, and it's late, and I'm drunk, and the prospects for work tomorrow look increasingly dim. I use the bathroom, hear three people sniffing something in the stall next to mine (gee, I wonder what they were doing?), and returned to the bar to find that M. was talking to Moses. Charmingly (ha!) inebriated, I leaned into the conversation and said (yelled?) something like, "whaddryouguys talking about?"

"My blog," he said. "It's so embarrassing when people tell me they read it. I'm embarrassed."

Uncharacteristically for me, even when drunk, I became halfway hostile. "I read your blog," I snapped, leaning toward him, and, I think, poking my index finger close to his face, which was wearing sunglasses.

"No, no," he fake-lamented, clutching his skull. "Don't tell me that, that's so embarrassing."

"Well, I've been reading your blog before I knew about the other stuff you do, so you should be EXTRA embarrassed."

I don't really remember how he responded--having been sozzled and all--but soon thereafter I know I raised my voice, pointed, and said accusingly, "IF YOU'RE SO EMBARRASSED BY YOUR BLOG, WHY DON'T YOU ERASE IT?"

Wow, what an ass I was; did they spike the Chimay or something?

Then the bartenders told us to get out of the bar, and Moses gestured towards the door. M.
asked if he could finish his drink. Bemusedly, Moses said OK, so M. and I shared it. It
was scotch whiskey, and a delicious specimen at that.

Someone invited us to the afterparty, but we weren't in the mood. Instead we walked home to make ourselves quesadillas. But even before quesadillas, M. sat down to leave a comment on Moses's latest blog entry. It was the first comment in the thread, which had been open for days. The following day, there was a response, posted only seven minutes afterward. (You really do live on the Internet, don't you, Moses?) In it, he described M.--facetiously? I couldn't tell--as "charming" and "handsome." Ha.

Right now I am sitting across from M., who is drinking red wine and crafting a response to that response.

When Blogland and real life collide, only hilarity can result. But if only. I've learned that there are other results, too. For instance: I must be an idiot for posting all of this, for who knows when the gods of Google and dumb chance will team up and surprise me with some far less amusing co-incidence.

"The Industry" and Me

Things have been interesting--imagine that! Interesting, and not entirely bad.

Not entirely bad, in part, because I asked my boss if I could work a day from home every week, and, shock of shocks, he said yes. It feels as though the tediousness of my workweek just halved. But maybe I'll get over it. Maybe, during my 4 days at the office, the dullness of this space will seem all the duller. Yet one day at home means better coffee, better food, and above all, more sleep. Not even I can put a negative spin on more sleep.

M. and I have been going to the party at that bar, almost every Sunday night. For better or for worse, we're becoming a part of the scene. Probably for the worse. Too much Chimay, etc. M. has scored himself a DJ gig next month, but, goddamn it, I think we've gotten me trapped in a hosting gig. Hosting. I am the most socially inept person on the planet; how am I supposed to host an "industry" party? How am I to show up on a Sunday night, all smiles and legs, and chat up producers, models, fashion designers, alleged attempted murderers(!!!!!!), bodyguards, singers, photographers, pinup girls, drug dealers, and whoever the fuck else passes as "industry," and, most difficult of all, pretend to be interested in--nay, enraptured by--what they are saying? I am a nerd. A misanthropic nerd. I don't even blowdry my hair. I do not belong here.

Speaking of "the industry," Rockstar Friend invited us to go with him to the Philippines later this year. A friend of his, so he says, owns two houses in the environs of Angeles City.

So we did a little research on Angeles City. I emphasize the "little": I typed "Angeles City" into Google, and clicked on the first hit. Don't follow any of the links on the page, unless you are interested in learning more about sex tourism. Yep, apparently Angeles City is "the best vacation destination for single men," and it's tough to find any information for the non-sex-tourist. Hey, Rockstar Friend--what does your friend do for a living, again?

Is Our Lushes Learning? (Answer: No)

Two Sundays ago, M. and I went out to a nearby bar. M. has been cultivating a business friendship with one of this city's better-known scenester DJs, whose girlfriend hosts a night at this particular place. M. wants to play a monthly deejaying gig at that bar, and she asked him to come along on Sunday so they could discuss it.

Our night went something like this:

11pm -- Leave apartment for bar. "Let's aim to leave by midnight," says M.

11:10pm -- First round of beer. "I only want one drink," says M.

11:45pm -- Second round of beer. It's Chimay, about 9% alcohol."If you're getting yourself another beer, I'll have one, too," says I.

12am -- Conversation with DJ and his girlfriend. DJ gives us complementary glasses of premium scotch whiskey.

12:30am -- Third round of beer. "Sure, why not," says M.

1am -- Fourth round of beer.

1:10am -- DJ's girlfriend cajoles our drunken selves into letting her take lewd pictures of us. (Said photos, regrettably, are now posted on Internet.)

1:15am -- "Uh, I think it's time to go," says M., and I agree.

1:16am -- As we walk out the door, our flatmate Sam walks in. "I'm staying for ten more minutes," announces M. "Ten more minutes, what's the difference?" says I.

1:17am -- Fifth round of beer. Dance, dance, dance.

1:45am -- Last call! Sixth round of beer.

1:50am -- Say goodbye to DJ and girlfriend; meander home singing "Whiskey You're the Devil"

2am -- ???

3am -- Sleep?

7am -- Wake up, simultaneously inebriated and hung over. Exhausted, too. Off to work with me! Narrowly avoid countless bicycle accidents on the way to the train, and so on.

"Never Again!" we vowed.

Well, apparently all the beer and whiskey has destroyed whatever learning capacity we once had, because last night unfolded in the exact same way. One welcome exception was the absence of lewd photos. One unwelcome exception was the result of the DJ's keeping us there after hours: our night didn't end until 4:15. After less than three hours of sleep, I woke up both hung over and unpleasantly drunk. Biking to work was a slow, swervy, terrifying ordeal; and when I sweated, I sweated Chimay.

All of which is a long way of complaining that I feel like crap. And I'm too stupid to do work right now, but not, apparently, too stupid to blog. Or am I? Eh, too late.

Now, July 4 photos.

An Interlude for Navel-Gazing and Self-Diagnosis

Here I interrupt the scheduled programming (proceeding apace, as it was) to explain my absence.

True, there's been work. Lots of tedious, tedious work.

It's also true that M. has exercised eminent domain on my laptop for the sacred, o'erweening cause of Making Party Flyers On Photoshop.

But mostly, there's been the crazy.

A few weeks ago, for instance, the left side of my torso was going through spells of numbness. I convinced myself I had either a brain tumor or Huntington's Disease, wondered how I'd react when the doctor gave me the news--wondered how I ought to spend the last few months/years of my life. The numbness is mostly gone now; I believe the correct diagnosis is "crazy."

Not enough? My existing pathologies are getting worse. Social anxiety rules my life, more or less. Increasingly these days, I think of the bewildering array of people I might encounter Out There and decide I'm better off staying home. And away from the phone. Away from the email account. Away from the blog, even.

The social anxiety is clear. Upon reading the DSM-IV criteria for Avoidant Personality Disorder, it's pretty clear I have that, too-- I think I satisfy every criterion. That's not new, though; all that's new is my self-diagnosis. But since I'm already self-diagnosing, I think I'm moderately depressed as well. And this is new.

I kind of hate fun these days. Isn't that what depression is? "Let us go to a mind-bogglingly fun event," says M. "Holy God, I'd rather die," says I. "Let us be friends," writes potentially cool burlesque dancer in an email. "Eh," says I, and ignore it. Old friends write me emails and I've ignored every one. I think my job is hugely responsible for my unhappiness, but inertia keeps me from looking for another. I paid hundreds of dollars for an online class but haven't had the motivation to fax in the first homework assigment, even though I've completed it. For at least six months I've been wearing borrowed contact lenses with mildly incorrect prescriptions because it's too much trouble to make myself an appointment. The list goes on and on.

One frustrating trouble with social anxiety is that it's a huge obstacle to seeking treatment for itself. "It's easy to find a good, affordable therapist," my friend Zoe told me. "Just call around, and negotiate for prices." Negotiate for prices? If I could do such a thing, I wouldn't need the treatment to begin with.

I need a therapist, I probably need drugs, and I certainly need a new job. These are requisite for not feeling like crap, I think.

Then, there's the boyfriend. Dating (and living with) a workaholic statistician has been hard; dating with a workaholic statistician who is also a Ph.D. student may prove even harder. Yet I cannot imagine that either scenario could bring me any closer to madness than the experience of living with that very same workaholic while he's on a six-month rampage of wanton irresponsibility. And what makes it especially pernicious to this melancholic, perenially exhausted social retard has been the dedication with which he pursues his goal of being manically irresponsible. This is not someone who takes partying lightly. Partying is a serious affair, something to monopolize his (and my?) time and money. I daresay I am not built for this, and Depressive Penitent in particular is built for just its opposite. Depressive Penitent wants to sit in a chair with a glass of wine and some Borges stories. She wants to watch hours and hours of Nick Cave videos with big headphones blocking out all the ambient noises. If she must leave her apartment, she'd prefer to make her way to a good friend's place and sip Belgian beer while watching something directed by Kurosawa or Werner Herzog. Hell, she'd be reasonably content studying calculus. But raucous hipster parties populated by tactically bisexual, strategically anorexic fashion girls with enough black or blond hair dye to muddy the whole Pacific? A million times, no! In reality, though, it's been more like: a million times.

I have the pictures to prove it, but uploading them would be too exhausting.

On Friday M. is throwing another party. It should be a big one, but we'll see. This time M. will be a tactical bisexual, and for the night I'll be officially disowned. The bar prefers gay DJs, see. Couples are no fun anyway. He won't be pretending to be bisexual, at any rate: he is bisexual. Or was. Or is. Or was. I don't know, it's so dizzying; if only I got the sense that anything was real. I'm not mad, or I am, or I'm not. Who knows? Not I, certainly.

I do intend to come back and write about my trip east. It was absurd, really, and was responsible either for driving me batshit insane or for helpfully convincing me that I had already gone batshit insane. Either way, interesting!

Don't worry, though, it's all relative. What's insane for me may be a fucking success story for some folk. Besides, I'm drinking lots of German beer as I type and it's making me frightfully dour.

Whiskey You're the Devil

I'm not pleased with the seemingly exponential acceleration of time. There is so much to do, and the last few years have gone where, exactly?

I've been entertaining the notion of taking a one-week hiatus from l'Internet. Beginning tomorrow, tentatively. Clearly I can't abandon email if I am to remain a vaguely productive member of society, but even excepting email, this would be much, much tougher than Sober Month. If I'm feeling particularly radical, maybe I'll take a break from news entirely and abstain from The Economist, too. Perhaps it will be good for me.

Similarly, M. is trying to give up whiskey after waking up on Saturday morning, hung over and having little recollection of what went on the previous night. "The last thing I remember, we were standing at the bar with the DJ and his girlfriend, and then he handed me another Maker's Mark. What happened after that? How did we get home?"

Blacking out is scary. I did it exactly once my senior year of college, roughly a week before I broke up with my then-boyfriend. According to observers I was uncharacteristically loose-lipped, spilling my own secrets as well as somebody else's. Ever since, I've worked hard to avoid such alcohol-induced amnesia, and succeeded. Whiskey causes M. to black out quite frequently, which is, frankly, grounds for concern. So I welcome his decision to avoid the stuff, even if I'm skeptical that he'll succeed.

Here are some unrelated photos.


These are carnitas sopes:

I recently signed up for a car share service and first used it on Sunday, when we drove to one of the peninsular suburbs partly in order to buy pet supplies but mostly as an excuse to eat these exquisite plates of fatty awesomeness. We'd been in withdrawal for more than a year, sadly. The secret to these particular specimens is their crusts, which are made of a thick corn meal that is doubtless held together with plenty of tasty, tasty lard. M. and I order it with spoonfuls of hot salsa, but even that's not masochistic enough for us, so we brought a raw habanero pepper to dice and add on top of them, too.


Here is a plaster goat that Sam's girlfriend gave to us for safekeeping while she searches for an apartment. The (dumber) cat was terribly frightened of it at first and hid downstairs, cringing, for hours.


M.'s shitty phone finally died over the weekend, leaving this artistic-looking pattern permanently on its screen:


A few weekends ago, when the weather was perfect, M. and I went with his dad and stepmom to see this exhibit at one of the city's big museums. The coffee in the cafe was crap, but I rather liked the design of the cafe itself:

Sober Month Is Dead; Long Live Sober Month

My married flatmates are breaking the lease and moving away soon; apparently our after-midnight carryings-on are too crazy for them. I rather enjoy their company (childish tantrum aside), but so it goes. When we do find another flatmate, he or she will be my tenth in less than two years. I wonder, is this normal for city folk?

---

Sober Month died on May Day. I celebrated, appropriately enough, by drinking vodka.

On Tuesday, M. and I got home at 11pm. Fifteen minutes later, we flagged a cab to a DJ set/dance party in the rather creepy warehouse district where these things usually take place. Our cabbie complained about boorish, fratty baseball fans, and then, without any transition at all, regaled us with a story about being threatened at gunpoint by a couple of thugs downtown. Note to self: even if desperate, never work as a cab driver.

I have never been to a show at this particular venue without M. drinking too much whiskey and doing something completely ridiculous.

First, there was the time that he took off his shoe and handed it to the DJ, over the DJ table, for an autograph. After the show, he wrote his email address on a ten-dollar bill and gave it to the DJ, asking him to spin a party at our apartment. (By the way, the DJ in question is widely recognized as a joke.)

Then, there was the time that the stage was roped off but M. decided to dance on it anyway. When the DJ flipped out and an army of security guards swooped down on us, M. was so infuriated that he quit the dance floor and stood outside, chain-smoking and talking shit about the DJ. Later, M. spotted the DJ fleeing the venue and promptly rushed over to block his path. My first thought was: my God, a fist fight? I watched as the DJ--a small, effete man whom M. positively dwarfed--cringed with fright and summoned security. As it turned out, M. merely griped over the roped-off stage, but his body language looked mighty aggressive at the time.

This time, M. decided it was a good idea to lean into the ticket booth and swipe the venue's stamp pad on our way out the door. Apparently the whiskey told him to do it. We were in bed by 3am. Waking up was brutal.

---

I finished the project, but the project finished off my brain. Writing, even in a blog post, suddenly seems close to impossible.

Screw transitions. Here are some pictures of an America-themed barbecue that my soon-to-be-ex-flatmates arranged for the benefit of their French visitors.

A giant platter of freedom fries:


Burgers and beer-cooked sausages:


A very special hat:


Bad beer and good beer, none of which I touched as it was still Sober Month at the time:


This is not from the barbecue; it is a gratuitous picture of cats:

Birth/School/Work/Death

I have been on the "home stretch" of this cursed project for about a week now. When I'm truly done with it, I will print out every one of its cutesy, punny pages, light them on fire, and then dance upon their ashes.

It is therapeutic to express anger toward inanimate objects.

There's yet another show tonight, set to last far into the AM. Sober Month is over; God help me.

A Tantrum

Last night's show was good fun, and didn't go as late as I thought it would. And when M. offered to buy me a glass of million-dollar concert whiskey, I declined because Sober Month isn't over yet. "Sure it's over, I already sent in the May rent check," he said. "I follow the spirit of the law, you follow the letter of the law. I'm more of a Christian, you're a Jew."

"Fine. But I'm not drinking."

The lead singer of the band was a spastic, 'fro-sporting, incredibly entertaining performer who reminded me of a cross between Jim Morrison and Mickey Aval0n, if that makes any sense. Or even if it doesn't. I think it was the first time since my freshman year of college that I danced without the aid of alcohol.

Then we returned home at midnight to a rather unfortunate incident. Sam's new girlfriend yelled at M., something about a burrito. M. yelled back. Apparently this was enough to awaken and utterly infuriate our French flatmate, who advertised her displeasure by slamming her door a number of times, hitting cushions as loudly as she could on the couch downstairs, and then stalking upstairs to do a load of laundry and make as much noise as was humanly possible in the process.

There's probably nothing in the world that M. disrespects more than passive aggression, and causing him to disrespect you is the best way to ensure that he makes your life miserable. So his response to our flatmate's temper tantrum was first to laugh, then to (drunkenly) talk about how babyish he finds her, and then to desire to keep her up later by watching South Park until 1am in our room next door.

I hate this crap, and should have nothing to do with it, but I'm sure I'm already presumed guilty through association. Because M. and I are the same, or something. Coming home tonight will doubtless be interesting.

Sunday

Some guy yelled at me on the street because I didn't respond to him the first time. Charming.

We're going to a show tonight. This will be a bad idea.

Awkward Social Gathering, Version 49012.5

My boyfriend takes party-planning very seriously, so when they don't go as planned, he tends to stew. He distracts himself for days analyzing what went wrong, pinning blame accordingly. For instance, few people danced at our last one because Sam brought in a third DJ who played nothing but un-danceable music-snob techno fare. M. considers this a disaster.

"Disaster" is too strong, but I do prefer dance parties. This is half because I like to dance, and half because dancing gives me an excuse to avoid awkward conversation. If someone tries to talk to me, I can say, "I can't talk, I'm dancing." If the room is littered with acquaintances with whom I ought to make small-talk, I can get away with a quick "hi" without seeming completely rude.

At the party last Saturday, I tried to dance, but felt a little awkward when everyone else chose instead to hover around at a six-foot radius and gawk. Later in the evening, a couple of jaw-droppingly intoxicated second-rate hipsters with questionable hygeine gyrated forth, asking me to dance with/kiss/date them. When I pointed out my boyfriend behind the turntables, two of these guys actually brought me their own girlfriends as some kind of evidence in their favor. Wha? This actually happens to me often. Do I systematically attract swingers, or do they systematically swing at everybody?

As the clock struck four I longed for bed, but was instead held hostage by one of the two hipster-swingers and his meandering, utterly nonsensical, yet weirdly insistent attempts at drunken conversation. Could I please sit down and talk to him, since he was having such a bad day? Reluctantly, I stayed and tried to make sense of his bizarre ravings about the "cuteness" of my boyfriend's name, an obscure indie band I'd never heard of, his girlfriend, and, you know, life. The zenith/nadir came when he decided to coo me a "free form" love poem to the tune of a song M. was playing a few feet away. After hearing three clumsy similes for my eyes I'd had more than enough, so I stood up and hid behind the DJ table.

On another note, I am proud of myself for not having vomited, passed out, or otherwise truly hurt myself with alcohol since 2007 began. Moreover, I have succeeded in keeping April a sober month (with the planned exception of the party). Self, hurrah!

I took pictures.

Here is our fridge stocked with cheap hipster-scum beer:


Here is Sam playing a pre-party game of ghost pool:


M. plays ghost pool with Sam, watched by creepy Chinese propaganda:


I don't know any of the people in this picture. The guy in black with the mysterious facial trauma was one of the swingers, but not the "free-form poetry" guy:


And here's a pile of random hipsters I don't know.


M. thinks we ought to slap a cover charge on all these goddamned strangers next time.

In case you were wondering, today was a beautiful Saturday and I spent it doing work.

Sunrise

I wanted so badly to watch Apocalypse Now and go to bed early last Friday, but instead we danced all night and stayed up to watch the sunrise, pictured here doing its best imitation of a nuclear explosion.




At first staying up until daybreak sounded like a bad idea. Then, when I was up on the roof looking east, it looked like a good idea; but on Saturday, when I woke up at 6:12pm and the sun was setting and my head was still pounding, it felt like a very, very bad idea all over again.


Best photo of my flatmate ever taken, best Leffe ad ever made, both, or neither?

I don't understand how M. was comfortable with a(nother) weekend of hard partying right before his Ph.D. interviews. Methinks he's made of much sturdier stuff than I.

Correction: Party Like It's 1997

It was the high-school party weekend I never had. Namely, it would have been much cooler and more appropriate ten years ago; and besides, I feel way too old for this stuff now.

First, our big raucous house party was shut down by the cops. The cops! Policemen with flashlights! We think they were looking for drugs, since it was fairly early Friday evening in a youthful neighborhood, making their "noise complaint" justification ring somewhat false. Or maybe they were trolling for seventeen-year-olds sneaking shots of Jagermeister. Regardless, we clearly weren't doing anything illegal, but they stormed through anyway and ordered us all to go home.

Amusingly, hardly anyone listened to them. People held their ground and stared back dumbly. From what I heard, the cops resorted to threatening the apartment's residents: "We're going to wait outside in the car, and if we hear the music come back on we reserve the right to arrest everyone in the building!"

It was equally amusing how Sam (bartender flatmate) and some of the other party-throwers reacted to the shutdown: they turned off the music and smoked weed instead. Take that, power-tripping agents of state coersion.

Earlier in the party, before the cops, I actually ran into someone I knew in high school. And not only someone who went to school with me, but my old nemesis, my first-ever true enemy: the only person, as far as I know, who has called me a "frigid bitch." The guy had his reasons--I readily admit that he was the inspiration of an unflattering comic I drew for over three years. He was outraged when he found out about it. So, talking to him now, 500 miles and six years removed from high school, was jarring. And creepily reminiscent of the "best" days of my life. (Those are supposed to be high school, right?)

Also, this being a Valentine's Day party, I was hit on by:
1. A friend's forty-year old boss
2. A thuggish-looking white stoner who invited my boyfriend to "do some doses" in the park the following day
3. A nondescript drunk who called me "Darling" and then asked to kiss me
while my boyfriend was standing less than two feet away
4. One friendly and mostly agreeable person. What amused me was the following exchange:

Him: Will you give me your number?
Me: I have a boyfriend.
Him: So what? I have a girlfriend.
Me: Sorry, I don't have a number.

---

The following day, Saturday, consisted of varying levels of stupor. M. and Rockstar Friend woke up painfully early to get bloody marys at this place. I slept in. By late afternoon, though, we were all out at this bar for a barleywine festival (note: barleywine is far stronger than beer), followed by dinner at one of our favorite local sushi bars.

This dinner was notable because Rockstar Friend came along. Rockstar Friend, beyond being accident-prone, is a huge sack of neuroses. One of his many lifelong obsessions has been strict veganism. His veganism was not based on any ethical decision, but instead on a control-freak fastidiousness and, from what I've gleaned from M., an odd compulsion to inconvenience himself and others as much as possible. But in a rather charming way, if that makes any sense.

Rockstar Friend had been vegan since early childhood. But last weekend, for whatever reason, he decided that it was time for him to try sushi. Raw fish, of all things! We sat agog and watched him eat: uni (sea urchin gonads) with a raw quail egg; monkfish liver; toro (fatty tuna belly); fatty salmon belly; fatty hamachi (yellowtail) belly; dungeness crab; and albacore. He said he loved everything except the crab and egg.

From there, we continued to our ex-flatmate Hans's birthday celebration at an after hours club where M., Sam, and Rockstar Friend were scheduled to DJ the opening set. I've been to several of these after-hours clubs--a.k.a. speakeasies--in the last six months, and they always make me think of supply and demand. This is a young, childless town, and there are always thousands of people willing to pay lots of money for the chance to drink and dance 'til dawn. And it's clear that on the other end, there are plenty of people willing to buy space in old office buildings, pad the walls, seal the windows, and trade risk for good money. I wonder how many speakeasy owners pay off the police in exchange for being left alone. In my opinion, such regulations are moronic as well as draconian. (Today's theme: fuck da po-lice! rah-rah-rah!)

In a continuation of today's other theme, "high school party weekend I never had," our next stop was an honest-to-god RAVE. I had nothing to do with it; Rockstar Friend's younger sister led us there. While I suspect that the previous after-hours club had made some arrangements with the local authorities, this place clearly had no such deal. The taxi dropped us off at a freeway underpass with nothing in sight. It was a bad neighborhood, and no one was around. We walked cautiously along a dark, eerily quiet road with no sidewalk, and eventually came upon a cluster of ramshackle, graffitoed, seemingly abandoned industrial buildings. Walking closer, we heard the boom-boom-boom of heavy bass coming from inside.

The doormen--or door-boys, more like--crouched nervously in the entrance. They were uncomfortable about letting us in. Maybe we were too clean, looked too much like narcs. When they finally did open the door, they warned us to slip in quickly and not let too much noise leak out.

The kids at the door were high out of their minds on something. "Ten dollars each," they said. "Or seven."

M. was much bigger than them. "There are a bunch of us here. How about you charge us a group rate?"

"Um, whaddya got?"

There were six of us. We counted the money in our pockets. "Twenty-four bucks."

"All right, that's fine."

It's hard to describe how silly this rave was; sadly, my camera was dead at the time, so there are no pictures. But there were crazy hippies of all ages running around on various kinds of drugs. Punky high school kids mingled with fat, topless, dreadlocked, middle-aged flower children. The "music" in the main room was unbelievably bad, and the drugged-out dancing was even more so. At least there was cheap, decent, home-brewed beer.

While M. stood in line for the beer, I leaned back on a table. One of the hippies immediately saw me and wagged her finger.

"Please don't sit on the table. I spent HOURS arranging all the leaflets and flyers on there and I don't want to have to fix it up again."

I stood up. "Sorry. I didn't realize there was anything on the table."

"Yeah, I mean, I would really appreciate it if people would keep off."

"Ok. I understand."

"It just took SO much time and effort to set it up like that."

"Ok."

Once the hippie left me alone I turned around to see what was on the table. It was piles and piles of graphic vegan propaganda. And it could not have taken more than a few minutes to arrange. Then again, who knows what drugs she was on.

Later, a small, teenage Chinese girl with limited English skills started hitting on Rockstar Friend. "I like music," she told him. "I like boys." That's when he decided it was time to go, so we all walked back to the quiet underpass to try our luck with passing cabs. The first cabbie refused to pick us up, apparently suspecting we were up to no good. But the second one happily took the fare, and we were home by an easy 5 o'clock. In bed probably by 6.

---

Unfortunately, Rockstar Friend decided to wake us up at 11 the next morning for bloody marys and brunch. I don't understand why he hates sleep so much, but I went along grumbling.

Randomly-chosen morals of the story:
1. High-school party weekends can be fun, but mostly I prefer moderation
2. Vegans are usually lame, except for Rockstar Friend
3. Paternalistic regulation sucks
4. Some people still live in the '90s
5. Fuck da po-lice
6. There will always be hippies in this city
7. Bloody marys are best made with horseradish, habanero peppers, limes, and olives
8. Not mentioned in the post, but one secret to a really good grilled cheese sandwich is to sprinkle parmesan cheese on the bread before frying it in butter.

Forgive me for this meandering novella of a post. I can't concentrate on work, and I badly need a break from reading about politics.

I think I will follow this with pictures. I have a glut of them; I took 500 over the weekend.

Party Like It's 1987

M. and Bartender/DJ Flatmate are throwing a Valentine's Day party tonight with the help of M.'s Rockstar Friend from LA. The last time that Rockstar Friend drove up from LA, his bicycle was run over and smashed to bits by a crazy uninsured driver, his car's transmission blew up so the car was junked, and he ended up sleeping on our couch for an extra, unplanned week. As a result, I didn't sleep for seven days, came to work late every morning, and picked up a nasty, lingering cold. Whenever I ask myself, "Since when am I a disgusting vector for pestilence, a shitty delinquent worker, and a brainless underslept zombie?" I can only answer, "Oh, yeah--ever since the time Rockstar Friend drove up from LA."

So I am bracing myself for the worst. Rockstar Friend is particularly accident- and crazy-prone--he is, for example, the only person I know who has been stabbed--so every possibility is game. He is borrowing a car this time; will it be jacked or get into a wreck? Will he inadvertently bring us a mosquito carrying the West Nile virus? Or will he get us in trouble with the Feds, or the Russian mafia?

Less of an open question is whether my sleep and health will suffer. I answer that now with a confident probably.

The picture above is the flyer M. made for the party. He was going for a corny, smutty, eighties softcore fantasy-mythology look, which I think he accomplished quite well. Art courtesy of this guy.

Reflections Upon Returning Home From a Bad Party, Having Walked Through Rain to Get There, and Then Going From the Bad Party to Somebody's Apartment,

Whereupon a Group of Friends and Acquaintances Sat Around a TV Smoking Weed and Watching Music Videos and Eating Cheetos--Except for Me Because I Don't Like Weed or TV and am Generally Anti-Fun--Until I Convinced My Boyfriend to Walk Home With Me in the Rain, Yet Could Not Convince Him to Go to Bed Because He Was/Is High and off His Meds and Wants to Play Records Until at Least 5 Ayem Regardless of What Anyone Thinks, Which Annoys Me Because I Am Too Neurotic to Sleep Before He Does:


Tonight was boring and pointless. This post is boring and pointless. These events are intimately related.

Spies and Whiskey

Somehow, on Friday night, 4am, I find myself on a balcony in the warehouse district, standing between 1 portly Englishman who used to be a spy for the MI6 and 1 nervous American man who used to be a spy for the NSA. My boyfriend stands across from me, drunk on cheap whiskey, jabbering loudly at a million bpm.

I've barely slept in a week and I feel a cold coming. 75% of me wants nothing more than to go home and sleep. Enough excitement already, or pseudo-excitement as it were. Three hours of failed napping (on accounta my being anxious to the point of handicap); an empty dance floor at a giant local venue; a self-indulgent loft party thrown by and for the techno-DJ underground; and I am more than ready to call it a night.

"You want to stay and talk to these people," says M. "I think you'll be interested." Indeed, I am interested. Interested enough to ignore my exhaustion for the time being and stand outside in the cold, breathing lungfuls of other people's cigarette smoke.

I listen as the ex-spies talk about war with Iran, and intelligence failures, and Iraq, and the 2008 presidential race, and how they came to work as spies, and they thereby keep me interested. So far, so good.

Regrettably, though, whiskey makes a first-class asshole out of my boyfriend. A loud, arrogant asshole who cannot stop talking to save his life. For instance.


NSA Guy: I think this is important because--

M.: No, no, NO! You're wrong and I'll tell you why. [insert long, pedantic speech on a political, scientific, mathematical, linguistic, musical or other topic].

NSA Guy: I understand, but I still disagree with you because--

M.: Well, I think I have some credibility here because I just got published in [prestigious science journal]. Anyway, as I was saying, [insert interminable speech].

MI6 Guy: I agree with NSA here, I think--

M.: Well, *I* think [insert position] and that's legitimate because I'm smart and my girlfriend told me something to that effect, and my girlfriend reads The Economist and blogs.

Me: (embarrassed) I do read The Economist and blogs, but that hardly makes me an expert. I think we should at least listen to what these guys have to say since they have way more experience than I do.


Yet it is nearly impossible to do any such thing. M. keeps talking. It is six AM now, and he keeps talking. I am a zombie at this point and our new acquaintances are rubbing their eyes.

If I could, I would hereby ban M. from whiskey for ever.

The necessary disclaimer here--for M., if he ever reads this--is that he does not typically act in this way. My guess is that his rantings were a product of (a) too much whiskey, as I've already said; (b) a very, very long time off his meds; and (c) the euphoria of getting his work published. Moreover, this is the only example that comes to mind of my boyfriend having seriously embarrassed me as opposed to the reverse.

---

Bonus round--the intelligence guys predicted the following.
(1) A McCain presidency
(2) No war with Iran

I do, however, take their predictions with "a grain of salt" as they say: on (1) because they were experts in international not domestic affairs, and on (2) because both retired from their government jobs during the Clinton years, presumably giving them little insiders' insight into the workings of the current administration.

Science and Debauchery

Apparently being a published scientist involves scheduling interviews and otherwise acting as your own PR agent. Who knew? M. has been running around trying to manage what looks to me like a science-media frenzy. But as I told him yesterday, unless his stuff ends up in the science section of The Economist I will remain unimpressed. Well--that's not strictly true, but an article in my favorite news magazine would definitely win me over for life.

On Monday, unsuspecting, I went to a workplace holiday party with Bartender Flatmate as his date. The restaurant he works at rented a swank downtown bar for the occasion, but we got kicked out a few hours too early when an irate co-worker mooned the audience during the gift exchange, I QUIT written on his ass. Restaurant workers are a rowdy bunch, and soon the whole inebriated lot surged into the quiet street and into an empty, ill-prepared bar.

Sober I wasn't, but still I think I was the most sober person there. Strangers approached me and drawled all sorts of nonsensical things. Bartender Flatemate pointed out his workplace crushes one by one and, later, smoking on the street, confessed to his "#1" that he liked her. One girl, who acted as though she was on speed but was probably just maximally "type A," was talking to me about one thing or another when a raving drunk came up to us, pressed us together and shouted, "Two of my favorite girls. TOPLESS FOR THIRTY DOLLARS?"

"Come on, you ain't got thirty dollars," the girl said.

"Hehe, I'm BROKE," the guy admitted. "Free, then?" I think he was looking at my face for at least ten seconds before he realized he'd never met me before.

Maybe the high point of the evening--though there were so many high points--was being hit on by a self-loathing loser while Bartender Flatmate was talking to his crush #1 outside. The guy had long, unkempt hair, equally unkempt facial hair, a long flannel shirt, pot belly, and a bitterly self-conscious way of talking.

Loser: Are you calling someone on the phone?

Me: I'm sending a text message.

Loser: I don't know how to send a text message.

Me: I can show you if you want. It's not that hard.

Loser: No, I don't need text messages. I don't have any friends.

Me: I don't either, but if you send a text message you don't have to talk on the phone.

Loser: So, are you here to pick up somebody? Everyone's here to pick up somebody.

Me: No, I'm not. I'm here with my roommate for his work party.

Loser: Sure, uh huh. I believe you.

Me: Ok, fine, don't believe me.

Exit Loser; enter Bartender Flatmate. But later, Loser returned.

Loser: (Taps me on shoulder) Do you think that guy is cuter than me?

Me: This guy? He's my roommate. I don't know.

Loser: So should I just give up then? Just like every time?

Me: I have a boyfriend. I'm not looking for a date.

Loser: Sure. Well, I have a girlfriend.

Me: Ok. Well, you're welcome to hang around if you want.

Loser: Fine. I'll go. It's clear I'm just not cool enough for you.

After that, I was fully ready to escape. We got back to the apartment at around the same time that M. was arriving from the airport. He was in New York for a three-day uber-bender and his friends' ultra-extravagant wedding. The bride was the Boss's daughter, whose father is taking us to Hawaii next week. I haven't had anything resembling a vacation since March. I am looking forward to it.

New Year

On New Year's Eve, we planned a balloon drop. For an hour and a half I pumped air into cheap balloons; then M. and Liam (our artist flatmate, whose wife Renee lives with us too) stuffed them in opaque paper tablecloths taped to the ceiling. When it was all set up, it looked as though our ceiling sagged.

The first party guest was a quiet, austerely dressed Italian girl named Arianna whom none of us had ever seen before. She stood awkwardly in the kitchen with us, refusing drink. She told Renee about her (Arianna's) novel, and Renee told Arianna about her (Renee's) paintings. Then Arianna saw the balloon drop and pointed at it.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Have you ever seen the movie Coccoon?" said Liam, deadpan.

"Water damage," said M., equally deadpan.

Unsurprisingly, Arianna didn't stick around for very long. But we were happy with that; everyone we knew and dozens we didn't know came to our apartment that night and danced 'til three in the morning. M. played the best DJ set of his amateur career and our common space was filled to capacity. I ran around in what was perhaps the most absurd outfit I've ever worn (and I have worn many absurd outfits)--it made me look like, if you can imagine this, a whorish cab-driver candy-cane. Picture hat, boots, dress pattern and dress length accordingly. An ordinary-looking but apparently rather kinky guy with glasses approached me early in the party and insinuated that he wanted me to hook up with him and his girlfriend. "What kind of guy do you like?" he asked.

We were standing in front of the DJ booth, so I pointed at M. "That's my boyfriend," I said.

"Oh. Do you have any hot girlfriends you can direct me to?"

"I don't have friends," I told him, and meant it. Why else would I be dancing in front of the DJ booth alone?

A fifty-some year old woman bopped happily a few feet away from me. I have no idea how she got there, or how she heard of our party, but she danced all night in a pink tutu and glittery blue tights. I think she garnered even more stares than I did.

At midnight, M. was too nervous to give a countdown, so he stopped the music and shouted, "IT'S MIDNIGHT! NOW, EVERYONE JUMP UP AND TEAR DOWN THE CEILING!" Everyone did, ripping madly at the white paper, and soon dozens of balloons of all colors fell to the floor. Enter the irrepressible human urge to stomp on fallen balloons: a general ruckus ensued. Amid the ruckus I slipped behind the DJ booth and M. and I shared our first new year's kiss. A good end to a relatively good year.

Now for new year's resolutions:

1. Drink less
2. Eat less
3. Exercise more
4. Get to work on time (relatedly, get to bed before 2am on weeknights)
5. Get into graduate school: largely out of my hands now, but 'twould be great.
6. Replace current set of contact lenses, which I've worn for countless months and which are probably deteriorating in my eyes as I write
7. Find a way to prevent estranged brother from killing himself
8. Spend less money: indeed, consider saving some (closely related to items 1 and 2)
9. Learn calculus
10. Plan things (vacations etc) rather than perpetually stumbling into them
11. Do something about social anxiety disorder
12. Start talking to people outside my apartment
13. Get in touch with old friends
14. Stop being a friendless steel wall of a person living vicariously through the successes of my boyfriend--I mean, be a better person

This is where I go to bed, as I'm working hard at violating (1) and (4) at this very moment.

Happy 2007, invisible Internet comrades.