Given my incredible amounts of laziness every weekend (or the constant movement that is tied to my weekends anymore), I seem to have a pattern developed on my blog. Wait until Sunday, then either do a series of posts or write one megablog that covers the weekend as a whole. Today, I will do a mixture, with one megablog and one smaller post as that seems to make sense given the massive difference in the two topics.
Also, as a preface to this posting (and given the nature of previous posts) I wanted to say one thing before I got started.
Friends. Family members. My name is David, and I'm not an alcoholic. I swear! Regardless of my seemingly consistent weekend habits, I am absolutely not one, nor have any interest in ever being one. Want legitimate reasons?
- Hangovers are the bane of my existence - I've never felt worse in my entire life than I did on Saturday at about, ohhhh....11:25 am.
- Drinking = Expensive. If I was to become an alcoholic, I'd need to get a job that pays more. A lot more.
- Alcohol (in my humble opinion) does not combine well with most foods. I am a man who loves his food, so 99 out of 100 times, milk will be chosen over the aforementioned booze.
- I may be addicted to milk. Due to the lack of negative thoughts towards that affliction, I felt as if I could share that. I hardly have room in my life for two addictions (For the sake of believability, I will omit the fact that I am also addicted to Tuna Melts and Comic Books).
Now that I've cleared that up, back to the breakdown of my sauce soaked weekend.
Friday: It was a long week at work. Long, long, long week. Every day started early, a few ended later than usual, and we had big time initiatives going for two products that I'm heavily involved with so the time I spent at work was even more action packed than usual. Needless to say, good ol' TGIF was heavily in play that day. Not only that, but I had two great things to look forward to.
First off, great friend and altogether awesome girl Joanne was in town visiting from Vegas, so that evening she, Colver, Lorna, Kim, and I went out to dinner at pizza joint of all pizza joints Moose's Tooth. Any event that involves going to Moose's Tooth pretty much rules anyways, they have the best pizza (in the world, not hyperbole), their beer is incredible, and the environment is the proper mix of hippies and loudness to make it an ideal Alaskan dining experience.
However, this was a truly exceptional one because everyone seemed to be in great moods and everything was pretty much perfect. The beer was delicious (Fairweather IPA for the win), Joanne and I shared a large pizza and even agreed to the halves to go with (all time fave White Pizza and occasional superstar Greek Gyro), and even the waiting experience was very solid - we had a pitcher to share while waiting, albeit for nearly 45 minutes. Seeing Joanne, as per usual, was extremely hilarious and a treat and a half. If only all of my friends could live up here in Alaska with me, I would pretty much be set, but if I could just get Joanne to live here it'd be that much better (think about it lady).
Afterwards, the second great thing to look forward to was on the plate. Amy, Kim, and I were going to go to a house party that my BFF and Amy's new coworker and friend Cate had invited us to, and I
love house parties. I find them to be highly preferable to bars, so the thought of attending one after a long hard week had me totally jazzed. Plus, it was a St. Patty's Day themed party, which is great because it is my second favorite alcohol related holiday (behind superpower Halloween).
Before going to the party, I had a nice chat with transplanted Portlander Erik about going to Sasquatch, as I continue to see saw back and forth on what my big event for 2008 is going to be. I officially decided that if Erik goes, I will go to Sasquatch. No pressure Erik (you should go! you should go! you should go!). Even better? Kim showed up to my place while I was still chatting, and now she's even contemplating going. Hmmm, Sasquatch could be off the hook, to quote Buster from Arrested Development (this party has juice boxes?).
Shortly thereafter, Amy showed up and we departed for the aforementioned house party. Strangely enough, Amy had hyped this as a more "adult" themed house party, one with actual chatting and cocktails, as opposed to you know, keg stands and typical insanity. I don't really know how to describe what it really was, but I would definitely say it felt like a college house party, except it was at a really nice place rented (owned?) by very gracious hosts Mikey and Mariajose (I believe was her name...). Kim and Amy were not totally down, but stayed for an hour, after which I continued to party there. Why was that? My BFF Cate rocks, Rock Band was in full effect, and there were free drinks.
Also, the night definitely took a turn for the different after two events: Wrestlemania between Cate, myself, and the utterly surprised Mariajose (sorry about the knee to the face Cate!), and TV/Radio personality
Dan Fagan showing up to party hardy with us youngsters. Myself and childhood baseball teammate Kyle goaded Cate into attempting to draw his attention with her feminine wiles while we looked on and snickered, but the savvy Fagan saw right through it and came back to chat with the completely shocked Kyle and I.
Apparently we were less sneaky than we had originally thought.
It definitely was strange to see Fagan there, but after a tiny bit of research I now know why: He was with his producer at the party, who must have brought him along. Regardless, definitely strange to be at a party with a guy who a) was likely twice our age and b) is a known personality in the Anchorage area.
After a bit, Cate and Kyle were leaving and Amy was at the Avenue, so I hitched a ride down with them so I could meet up with the crew. Amy, Hannah, Jason, and Nate were there playing Fooseball, and it was the standard grand time at the Avenue. Much fooseball and joshing around occurred, plus Amy's roommate Arianna (Friendo to some) and her entire crew showed up as well.
Of course, things got a bit heated again when Amy, apparently upset with me over the complete domination I laid upon her in a previous
scuffle (or perhaps she was talking to me and I may not have been listening), decided to start pulling my hair. Myself, not being one to take that from anyone, grabbed on her far longer hair and began pulling with a considerable amount of might. Much posturing took place and the bar was closing so Amy of course made the announcement that we were going to "take this outside!"
Of course we then proceeded to wrestle on the ground outside the bar like idiots, laughing hysterically while trying to gain the upper hand perpetually to no real success. However, it was another chapter in our apparent desire to beat the crap out of each other, and another one in my "fighting with girls" legacy. It was definitely a fitting end to the night, which all in all was a very enjoyable one (although I will omit the later parts - quick paraphrasing of what my following paragraphs would be - "Amy! Don't eat those!" "Why don't you take it down a notch?" "Heyyyy Friendo." "Is this Melrose Place? Are we watching Melrose Place?").
Saturday:As previously mentioned there is a huge negative to partying. Hangovers. It's your body telling you "that was a bad idea. Don't do that." For the under 21 crowd, I have this to say - apparently alcohol is essentially poisonous. Don't want to feel like death like I did early Saturday? Never get involved with it. It's too late for me, but there is hope for you yet. Regardless of all that, my sister was very amused by my highly precarious state, even making fun of me to her kids. Not that I didn't deserve it, but still, I was very pathetic until about 4 that afternoon, after a very lengthy nap and a particularly delicious burrito from Taco Del Mar.
That night, I was still pretty iffy from the drinking, but Colver and Lorna came over for some Super Smash Bros. Brawl action (as Colver pointed out, it is pretty much "the exact same game as Melee, except with more characters") which was entertaining, especially because Lorna's complete and utter lack of control over Yoshi in egg form. After a while of that, we headed over to Amy's for a small St. Patty's Day soiree (of course after a rather clandestine meeting with Kim outside of the New Sagaya City Market) with the promise of lime flavored Jello shots and drinking games perhaps on the agenda.
We get there, and already in attendance are Amy, Hannah, Jason (to the right with me...wearing crowns), and Jessie, and shortly thereafter Nate joined as well. After a little while of bsing and laughing, we moved on to the premier game of the evening: Spoonass. Spoonass is, to my knowledge, a game invented by that crew that is a combination of Spoons and Asshole (two other popular drinking games). Essentially the game is a flurry of rules, helmet wearing (as Amy models below), playing cards, and drinking. In short, it's extremely fun and fast paced. Also, apparently far too complex for Colver, who had zero grip on it in any way.
We continued to rip through round after round of the game, with more and more rules being added as we went along (personal favorites: saying "I'm a banana!" whenever you saw an ace, the "Woop!" rule for whenever you saw a face card, and having to drink anytime you say an S word - Amy says "So..." a lot, I say other S words constantly as well). It was extremely fun, but as the night continued, more and more people fell out of the game. Nate never played, Colver quit quickly after the complete and utter domination of his soul, Hannah dropped out due to previous night related illness, Jessie had to go home (sorry about ripping on St. Pauli Girl!), and Lorna was for real sick already.
Of course, this was all in preparation for going out anyways, so the away team for the evening was going to be myself, Amy, Jason, and Kim, or the four people remaining in the game. Before we left of course, we had to finish off the considerable in deliciousness Jello shots that Amy made. She made a batch of Tequila ones, and a batch of Vodka. At first (as seen to the left), we were attempting to consume them using straws. Mostly ineffective, although it did lead to horribly disgusting and hilarious sounds coming from Amy and Jason (I'm going to go with some sort of high pitched slurp, but I really cannot recreate it with text). This of course just led to us upping our technology used to consume it.
Well, so long as you consider going from straws to a large wooden spoon a technological upgrade. In terms of volume, it was an incredibly good decision (as you can see from Jason's experience to the right), making the clearing out of all Jello go exponentially faster and the experience even more hilarious. It was definitely not us at our classiest, but it was pretty stellar in sheer entertainment value.
After we had completed our Jello destruction, the four of us headed downtown to the only place for twentysomethings looking to have a good time in Anchorage - the Avenue. As some of you may have noticed, I have been frequenting this bar a lot. If I'm going out lately, it's to the Avenue. And why not? It's charming with its dim lighting, many gaming tables (could really use Shuffleboard), couches, great drink prices, live music from time to time, and there is a makeshift dancefloor. It's pretty much the cats pajamas.
This night was no different, as we played a ton of fooseball, including the soul shattering devestation that the incredibly intoxicated Jason and I had to go through against a pair of Fooseball hustlers, who both kicked Amy off the table AND continued to talk smack to us throughout the rest of the night. That was different, as every person we'd played with before was very cool, but these guys were not so cool.
Princesses Kim and Amy at the Avenue
Other new Avenue experiences included the terror I went through as I departed the bathroom straight into a fight (a fight that was apparently completed in the alleys of Anchorage, congrats to those guys for sucking at life), Jason and I nearly killing ourselves by taking a shot of Jameson ("it's so smooth man! I promise!" Jason says...), and the Weirdo with the Beardo. That guy spent most of the evening attempting to hit on Amy and Kim, failing miserably, and then giving up to become a pioneer on the dancefloor. This is the man who invented the "take girl and put her under your shirt" move, which was something new to me. If you start seeing this out at the clubs, you now know where it came from. It's a pretty incredible move if you ask me.
After all of this, we departed into the Anchorage night, from which we went to the only place you really want to go at 3 am after leaving a bar - McDonalds. Amy, Kim, Jason, and I split two double cheeseburgers, two McChickens, two medium fries, two apple pies, and a ten piece chicken McNugget. When I say split, I mean literally that. There was fractional breakdown of sandwiches, significants amount of sharing, and loads of ridiculousness. All I know is that was the best McDonalds I've had ever, of course at 3 am after leaving the bars everything is the best thing you've ever eaten.
So that was that, another fine weekend of partying in Anchorage, Alaska. We had a lot of fun, we acted like responsible adults, and nobody got hurt (besides the alley brawlers from the Avenue I assume, and sadly enough Cate from my errant knee). Sounds like a grand time to me!
Harry and the Potters - rocking it for Alaska
