Some things I forgot to mention about the Bon Voyage Times Two Party (Now With Extra Llama Face):
Hausfrau drove up especially for the party, but because there was some kind of biker convention in town, she couldn’t get her normal room at the nice hotel and had to stay in a gritty hotel. WTF, Bikers? Isn’t the gritty hotel thing sort of your deal? She also called my cell phone while we were in the emergency room. Scotty answered it, identified himself as Scotty Boom Boom and then had a delightful conversation with her instead, since ‘Weet’s, uh, busy right now.’ Yeah, getting a tetanus shot in one arm and some kind of comedian PA trying to get me to wager on how many stitches we’d need. (He said ‘we’ like it was a special moment we were all sharing.)
(Which reminds me, one of the ways we spend the time in the emergency room, waiting for them to stop being worried that I’d faint when I stood up: talking about what it kind of injuries would result in an injury to the penis that would result in stitches but not Bobbiting. Scotty refused to play this game of Let’s Pretend with me, however. The boy has no sense of imagination.)
We played karaoke revolution for most of the night, and just about everyone sang. Someone made the funniest joke when saying goodbye to Mo Pie: ‘Just remember, I beat you at poker and then beat you at Karaoke Revolution too.’ Which is hilarious since the speaker has never won a hand of poker yet and had stuck to quietly wimpering out the easiest one notes songs offered by the game. And distinctly did not come in first, while Mo and I were just singing the tougher songs for fun, changing lyrics and having a good time. Honestly, we had to remind ourselves to tone it down, because if we put our minds to it, Mopie and I will wipe up the mofo floor with just about everyone on that game. It has become my new catch phrase though, for everything. I was originally changing it up to include cars and income brackets and intelligence, but now I’ve just gone to shorthand with ‘Just remember, I’m better than you. In everything.’
I really hate people sometimes.
Remember, I said that I left after 2 am? When I went back to Scotty’s the next morning to clean up, people were still there. Apparently the party went on until dawn. That’s some dedicated partying. Or dedicated something.
I brought home about six pounds of June’s pineapple fluff. After a week, I reluctantly threw out about two pounds, and only then because something started smelling funky in the fridge and I was worried about the funk somehow permeating it and then I couldn’t even eat anything else in the refrigerator and threw everything away but for the wine. I am completely without guilt about having blown through at least three pounds of pineapple fluff. At my last physical, I was diagnosed with low cholesterol and aside from the pineapple, that sums up the ‘fluff’ part of the pineapple fluff equation. And also pineapple is a fruit. And not just a rum drink garnish, as I would have been led to believe during the first third of my life.
The other thing: I went to Milwaukee and also Chicago. It was damned hot in Milwaukee and Too Damned Hot on the third floor of the Eagles Club but it was especially Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Hot when wedged up between a thousand teenage emo kids who apparently think that the only way they can suffer as upper-middle class wannabes is to refrain from wearing deodorant. I would mock them for wearing jeans, but damn, we were wearing jeans too. I almost wore a hoodie and a camisole, but then opted at the last minute for a micro-fiber wrap shirt, and it’s a damned good thing that I did, because otherwise I would have broken Weetabix Cardinal Fashion Rule #1: The Meaty Grandma Arms Will Be Covered At All Times. Yeah, the hoodie would have been abandoned the second it hit 130 degrees in there.
Jake flew into Chicago and then drove up to Milwaukee to attend the concert with me, and I felt bad because it’s been a very cool summer for the most part and then suddenly, on the day he arrives from the stifling desert, it goes Amazonian with eleventy hundred percent humidity. And what indoor concert venue isn’t air conditioned? At $40 a ticket, with no chairs? The kind that charges $3 for a plastic glass filled with ice and tap water. Dude. DUDE! I am so in the wrong line of business.
Before Angels & Airwaves even got on, we were all just soaked with our own sweat, swatting elbows out of our faces. I had the great pleasure to stand behind BO Guy, who had apparently been training for the concert on a diet of bologna, chili and many pounds of asiago cheese. How I love living in the Dairy state.
When Delonge and the boys came on, we faced a tidal surge of 19-year-old bony bodies, pushing us forward into the 19-year-old bony bodies in front of us. I’ve always felt a healthy connection between my body and solid ground, so it was very scary to have had both feet firmly planted one minute and then be swept several feet forward the next, crushing into the sodden back of the guy in front of us. I walked back, out of the mosh zone and into the area closer to sanity, which was wonderful. And still fucking hot. We could only see glimpses through the bodies and the body surfing but it was a delightful freakshow nonetheless.
After the A&A set, we surged forward with the sea of bodies toward the bar, slammed two waters, half of one went directly down my shirt because have I mentioned the unbelievable heat? My jeans were so damp that they were actually heavy. We checked the clock and realized that we had about an hour to make it to the All-American Rejects set at Summerfest, so we skipped the headliner, Taking Back Sunday and caught a cab back, which upon exiting, I immediately got a hamstring cramp of the magnitude I normally only achieve by bending myself into ridiculous positions in pursuit of’ um, yoga? Yeah. Bikram yoga.
We scouted out the All-American Rejects stage, but the Summerfest open venues are set up stupidly, in that there are picnic tables that people stand upon, which means that unless you’re on a picnic table, you can’t see through the forest of asses and thighs. And then it started to rain. Jake and I were a little jumpy being in a crowd because my god, they did not understand their own strength. We stuck around for a few songs, then decided that some fair food and then sleep would be more fun than standing around looking at the back pockets of hundreds of pairs of manpris. We split a funnel cake, then walked back to the car through light rain, and we didn’t even hurry because we were already soaked with sweat so the rain was, if anything, helping the situation. Back at the hotel rooms, we realized that I had forgotten my key and Jake’s room was locked from the inside, so we had to wait for a night manager to let us in. By the time we got into our respective rooms, we both groaned something about showers and then once I was out of my shower, I was so exhausted that it was all I could do to crawl into bed. Dehydration is a bitch.
In the morning, we decamped from the Russian Cosmonaut Dormitories and hit the road in our separate cars. Since my air conditioning was acting up, we decided to stick with Jake’s rental for the remainder of the weekend, so I dumped my car at my employer’s Shermer office parking garage, then we headed downtown. We were still pretty early, so we parked and went shopping at 900 N. Michigan, where we spent a couple of hours in Bloomingdales shopping for Jake, then when it was my turn, I decided that I was too tired and needed to eat. We headed up to Ed Debevics, where Rizzo hit us on the head with the best phrase of the weekend ‘You don’t know what I got.’ Ed’s is pretty touristy but mmm’. Velveeta on the hamburgers. Love that.
We then checked into The James, which is’ well, words do not describe. They can try, those words, but they will fail. My new boyfriend’s name is James and you know what? Not only does James walk tall and proud, he also talks the talk, baby. Jake had the uber suite, with the big bathroom and the sofa, and I had a standard room, which was lovely and fulfilled my need for MTV and then exceeded it with VH1 and a full-frontal cable channel docket for its widescreen plasma. What’s that? You don’t want to watch TV? Why don’t you just hook up the iPod to the stereo and groove out and spit on the tourists walking on Ontario? The plan was to quickly get changed and then hit the uber-cool lounge for pre-evening cocktails, but after making a few wardrobe changes (I had planned to buy clothes to wear to the ultra lounge, but it didn’t happen, since we pack way too many expectations into our rock star weekends), I made the mistake of sitting on the bed to untangle my necklace.
Oh James. James, you naughty naughty boy. How do you know exactly what I like?
At that point, I just wanted to tank the entire evening. In fact, after we were situated in the lounge with our cocktails (after one of the doormen clones unapologetically checked out my rack’ thanks Keegan, I was feeling very unattractive until that moment. The second time in front of a witness was just icing), I was whining about how the bed, oh god, the bed was calling, and while I really wanted to go out dancing, oh the bed, it was so good and do we have to be rock stars on both nights? Can’t we just be lazy sods and party like the geriatric, enjoy the sweet nothings whispered by James on the second night? We decided to have the best of both worlds: if fellow club girl Poppy didn’t want to stay out too late on a Sunday night or if the club was lame, we’d just catch a cab and go back to the hotel to watch tv.
After we heard the signal from Poppy, we caught a cab to our Lincoln Park club, but it wouldn’t be open for another half hour. We hung out at a Starbucks, where I bolstered my wimpy bed longings with a venti iced mocha. Smart move.
We met Poppy outside of the club and walked in together, to find the club completely deserted at 10:30 pm. Not a good sign. We clearly didn’t need my previously arranged VIP 
reservation, since not a table was occupied, but we were bolstered by the fact that the music was decent, the spaces were plenty and the light show was fun. And then our girl Jenny (who squealed when she saw my ID because she too is from GB) showed us the vodka menu and the temptation to have a private bar at your own table, with an ice tub and a bottle of ridiculously overpriced vodka? Too much for this girl to resist. Poppy took the high road with Clicquot, while Jake and I toasted the proletariat with a delightful offering from the Netherlands.
This is when things got a little blurry. TV? The James? Who what now?
There were limes and fellating the bottle of Cliquot (sorry Poppy, I have all the manners of a debutante at midnight on her sweet sixteen party) and strange primordial White Guy dancing. There was racial profiling and a shot of Strawberry Shortcake Gone Hookerfied and drunk texting and the cutest shoes known to womankind. There was more, so much more, but mostly there was vodka and vodka and vodka and vodka and then there was a motherfucking walk off.
And then there was White Castle, which yes, I think may have saved our lives. All hail the mighty White Castle.
Note to self: do not wear that fucking black dress when it is very likely that you will be drunk. Don’t you ever learn?
Apparently not.
After a few drunk dials, we made it back to my boyfriend James’ house, where the cabbie called me pretty lady and told me to be careful,then after leaving my keys in my hotel room yet again, I finally managed to get into that magnificent king-sized bed and sleep.
The next morning, Jake called a few minutes after I woke up and we made arrangements for breakfast, for which I was very late (I kept making excuses for lying languidly across the bed). We called the valet, loaded up the car and went to Lou Mitchell’s for a crazily crowded Monday morning breakfast (seriously, Chicago, don’t you have to work on a Monday?) and then out to Shermer for some mall time. We went to the mall and checked out a few stores, not really having time to check into anything, although I did manage to end up with a few things that I liked, during which time Jake scored eight million things on uber clearance at the store across the way. Then Jake dropped me off at my car and another fine rock star weekend had come to a close. And this time, without any dramatic last minute dashes to O’Hare or accidental trips to Aurora, Illinois, so go us.
I like to think we learn a little bit more on each of these trips. For instance, normally we are massively under-hydrated, so this time I came with a full case of Glaceau’s Smart Water in the trunk of my car, every bottle of which was either downed mid-trip or finished in transit on the way home. With the exception of the inhumane conditions at the A&A concert, we did pretty well on the water aspect.
Next time, we’re going to focus on other necessities of life, such as eating more often.
It’s good to have goals.
