It was JOC's birthday this weekend, and he had his birthday party in LA. He lives near Madera, which actually is in the middle of nowhere- pointing to where he lives on a map of CA actually lands your finger on an empty space west of Yosemite and just east of Madera. Which means, it's not convenient for *anyone* to get to, and hence the party in his hometown, Los Angeles.
One of the nice things about living in SF is that you can get plane tickets to LA on virtually no notice for $100 roundtrip. And that's before they build the supercool 200mph train that's going to run between LA and SF. It's scheduled to be done by 2018, which means that it might possibly be done by 2030, but I wouldn't put money on it.
So I hopped on a flight to LA. It was the usual story- couldn't get out of work quite when I wanted, so rather than take the train I had to drive, and drive fast, in order to get to the airport in time. But I still arrived at the gate a solid 20 minutes before takeoff, so it wasn't particularly close, for me anyway.
Once in LA, I picked up my rental car, which was a little Kia that was the absolute worst shade of puke-burnt-orange EVER (they ought to call it the Kia "Birth Control", because no way are you getting any driving a car like that), and headed to Paul and Terry's house, where the party was going to be.
Paul and Terry are awesome, and last time I was at their house, we had a six-degrees-of-separation moment when we realized that Terry was in Cats with the wife of one of my tutor friends from the NYC office. They are extremely generous people, and they have a great house for hosting parties.
I arrived around 630, and so I hung out with JOC and V and Paul and Terry, and helped set up a bit. And, then I fell asleep. I'd worked late the night before, and I'd had to get up early that morning to be in the office, plus I figured that any party involving JOC would go until the wee hours, so I took what was supposed to be a short nap, but turned out to be long enough that by the time I woke up, pretty much all the guests had arrived, and the party was in full force.
Since it was also United Nations day, people were encouraged to come as something relating to their favorite country. Generally speaking, I do not dress up, not since the Smurf Incident in 4th grade...
Up until 4th grade, I was pretty into the idea of dressing up on Halloween. But in 4th grade, my mom came home one day pretty close to Halloween and said she had bought me a costume. A Smurf costume, in fact. Since I liked watching the Smurfs on Saturday mornings.
Thing is, although I *did* enjoy watching the Smurfs on TV, I was also reaching that point in the development of any young boy where life was becoming extremely Darwinistic at school, and the last thing I needed to try and improve my survival probability was to show up dressed as a smurf. I mean, that's fine if you're obviously bigger than all the other boys, preferably in your grade and at least the next couple up, but that's seriously unwise if, just to pick something at random here, there are only 6 boys in your class and you are clearly the smallest one.
I explained all this to my mom. Well, OK, it was probably a little bit more like:
Me: "MOM! No WAY am I going to school dressed like a smurf!"
Mom: "What? I bought this costume for you! I bought it, so you are going to WEAR it. You LIKE the smurfs!"
What followed was variations on this exchange, right up until the morning of Halloween, which was a schoolday that year. We continued to have that fight even as my mom forcibly held me in place and painted my face blue, and put that stupid costume on me. She literally had to drag me out the door and stuff me into the car, and then when we got to school, I refused to get out. So there, on the street, in front of the other parents and the nuns, my mom had to reach inside the car and pull me out. I fought as best I could, holding onto everything possible, but ultimately I lost, and as soon as I was safely dumped on the sidewalk, my mom jumped back in the car and drove off.
What followed was a very, very long day. I won't describe it, except to say that it wasn't all that different from what you've seen on those nature shows, where the one smaller, weaker goat gets separated from the herd by the pack of ravenous wolves, and then the little goat valiantly gives its best shot at escaping before the story finally ends in a way which is not good for the goat.
Since that day, I have not dressed up for Halloween. Except for once in college when me and L and JH wore our costumes from the modern dance piece we were in (they were brightly colored silk pajamas) to the big Halloween party on campus. We declared ourselves to be The Three Tops, and we sang "My Girl" at the door to get in for free. But otherwise, I've avoided costumes.
Including at JOC's party. I looked up the colors I was wearing in the database of flags, and discovered that my colors matched the flag for Estonia, so I declared myself to be the representative from Estonia, but I don't think many people bought it.
There were some good costumes though, including Big E in a fez, and a girl who came as Angelina Jolie, complete with giant stick-on lips and a bandolier of little ethnic babies. That one won a prize.
In typical JOC fashion, the evening featured drinking and talking until the wee hours. By midnight, I was in the giant outdoor hot tub, and in fact I stayed put there until 4am, at which point I looked like a prune. But it was a wonderful night.
Sunday I got up and went to brunch with JOC and V and their families, in the same place where JOC and V got married. I hadn't been there since the wedding, and it was nice to see the place again. Many happy memories associated with that place and that weekend. We had a wonderful brunch, and afterwards I went out to Calabasas to visit Cara and Marty and Danny.
Danny is my unofficial godson, and he's in high school now, which is terrifying because I remember holding him in my arms as a baby when Cara brought him into the office so she could attend a big contract negotiation. He cried nonstop until he passed out, and then I was afraid to move him so I just sat there until long after I couldn't feel my legs anymore. And now he's in high school. I spent a few hours hanging out at their house and catching up, before heading back to Paul and Terry's to meet them and JOC and V for dinner.
After a wonderful Italian meal, we headed back to the hot tub, where once again we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, which was awesome, but which I paid a certain price for since I had to get up and be out the door at 6am in order to get over the hill to catch my flight out of LAX. I suffered through the rest of the day.
But enh, sleep when you're dead, and all that...
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