11:13 am | 28 June 2004 | fa fa fa FA fa, fa fa fa FA FAAAAH

Micks

I don't think I told you about St Pat's on the CTA--I think this incident even predates VC--but so here you go. Somewhere there's a photo from the same day where I'm being carried aloft by a crew of Irish guys who were, like, singing U2 and crying or some shit. I'll look for that.

Crazy, fast

All my friends apparently decided it was Party Time on the same day--on Saturday--and I was busting around in two-hour increments of extreme debauchery from 10am onwards. I will now present a brief rundown of the day's events in time-travelling itinerary format: as though it had not yet happened. Neat!

9:00am : Wake up and talk to Pantalones for forty-five minutes while attempting to subdue insaniac, went-to-sleep-while-it-was-wet hair (failed) and also catching bread on fire (trying to make toast in the oven).
9:45am : Realize am running late. Chant "oh fuck oh fuck" as Zen means of centering, or something. Um.
10:05am : Make it to Paul's. After much ado we buy a big giant mitre saw--sweet!--and I get a roll of red DANGER tape, which is sooooo much awesomer than typical, declass� yellow CAUTION tape. Caution tape is for babies.
11:30am : Try to work on new art broadsheets project but realize you're not in the mood, as sentences like "But of course, Joseph Beuys was a serious and semi-angry fellow so he would probably hate that example, but he's dead and it is a GOOD example so whatever" proliferate. That helps nobody.
1:00pm : Up to elbows in large orange bucket of hot plaster. It's for a bull. Don't ask.
2:00pm : Driving crazy-fast through L.B. You got phone calls to make, sister! Naps to take! Thirsts to slake!
4:45pm : Driving crazy-fast up to Brentwood, with a stop to make en route. By all means, start visiting people at work, too! You're not frantic enough!
6:25pm : Make it to Narkleptic's sister's birthday barbecue, where you will feed chicken kebabs to a giant and demanding Siamese named Yasser Aracat. Also, since margaritas are premade, drink two, which is the beginning of the end. Unlike many amateur drinkers, you don't claim that tequila is especially harsh, but you know that, just as sake makes you mean, tequila makes you craaazay.
8:00pm : Make it to Renee's, a bar in Santa Monica you used to visit a lot in the younger days, mainly because one bartender was so relieved that you drink Scotch and not fruit-tini-pink-opolitans like every other bipsy bimbo there that he gave you tons of drinks for free. Now you are meeting friends at someone's birthday party. The birthday boy is gay and so (duh, obviously) has gay tastes: "You have to see the Cherdonna cake!" Cher-donna? Oh, yes. It is a cake printed with the faces of both Cher and Madonna. You hate Madonna but her nose is DELICIOUS.
10:00am : Get this picture taken of you on the ever-present cameraphone (tomorrow see a before-and-after of Charlize Theron in "Monster" and identify with it, though looking at no point as good as Charlize or as completely busted as Aileen Wuornos, but so anyway this is technically the "Charlize" phase. Since I don't want your eyes to bleed, I will not be presenting any images from Sunday's bloodbath aftermath). At this point also decide to buy shots for everyone there. "Gimme eight of those...red things!" you holler to the Prettiest Bartendress in the World. "Those are eight dollars each!" she hollers back over the buoyant strains of the Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer." "Uh...that's cool!" you yell back anyway, throwing fiduciary caution to the celebratory winds. "I'll take 'em! Fa fa fa fa fa, fa fa fa fa faaah!"
11:00pm : Look, you already knew you were gonna a. smoke cigarettes and b. yell "Woo!" a lot tonight, so are you really shocked about your throat bursting into flame as though you'd been energetically blowing a flamethrower, instead of the aforementioned Kool-and-WooFest? Are you really? Why do you turn into a spring-breaking frat boy at parties? QUIT YELLING WOO! Jesus, you really hate yourself sometimes. Thank god you are sobering up.
11:25pm : "Fuck this! I'm sick of this! I'm not here to look cute! I'm here to do my job. I'm fucking good at my job. I'm sick of trying to look cute. Fuck it. I'm fucking done."
12:00am : "Where's Rachel? I want Raaaaachel."
3:00am-esque : You make it home in one piece, but not without first placing the requisite phone calls to distant friends*, where you inform them of the intensity and duration of your love for them, or just sneeze about 15 times onto their voicemails (this is okay because tomorrow you will get a voicemail back from Joel where he hiccups a lot).

Like Victory

That, then, is why I was hungover ALL DAY Sunday, folks. I did several important things, such as make the Best Hangover Sandwich ever (which I then dorkily photographed. It was just so pretty); invented the Horchata Latt� (Horchatt�?) which is a creamy world of ricey, cinnamony goodness; bought some savagely adorable polka-dotted sandals (although why I attempted shopping in that condition is really beyond me); and, it just occurred to me, went the whole day without listening to any music whatsoever, which is truly odd and really attests to the severity of the hanging-over. The cover of the Sunday Long Beach Press-Telegram had a photograph of helicopters with the headline "IT SMELLS LIKE ... VICTORY!" Yes. Um. Still kind of lost on that one.

On crackers

So part of my job is captioning architecture and design photography, which is fine, except for the facts that a. I try to spend no more than 20 seconds writing each caption and b. my audience is distinctly un-you-like, being the creative departments of, like, Elle D�cor Germany or whatever, so my writings are the typographical equivalent of that spray-cheddar-food-in-a-can, that is, you can serve it on crackers it's so cheesy, to wit:

"Sleek contemporary styling unites a dining room and living area"
"A spare, masculine bathroom makes bold graphic impact"
"Balinese artifacts grace a terraced landing"
"A clump of cacti stands sentry over the sea at Grand-Cul-de-Sac"

*It's also interesting how even on nights where you are totally slaughtered drunk--unlike tonight, which is just a low-level tequila-crazy buzz--you know and remember which friends you CAN call at 5:00am and sing Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls" too, and which ones you cannot. You have also managed to NEVER call either family's house inappropriately, which by comparison to some of the other shit you've perpetrated in the past eight years is a miracle on a level with the whole water-to-wine thing.