Come What May...

My pretty princess friend Jeem has been on here before, but now, my friends, it's time for a real story.  I love Jeem dearly, but that wasn't always the case.  We kind of started off a bit rocky actually.  One day, Melinda and I were sitting around, bored, watching Moulin Rouge and running our mouths, when Jeem busted in the door.

As soon as Jeem saw what we were watching, he immediately settled in on the couch, fully prepared to spend the next two hours with Ewan and Nicole.  Melinda and I kind of raised an eyebrow at him, amused that our muscle-bound "ooooh, I'm so intimidating" guy friend was so into Moulin Rouge, then went back to our conversation.  Someone should've warned us how deep Jeem's obsession with Moulin Rouge went.

I was annoyed.  I'd only known him for a short time, and there he was, all up in my living room, stealing the remote FROM MY HAND and screaming song lyrics to drown out our conversation.  Who did he think he was?!?  I glared at him for a moment, debating whether I should just leave him to be an ass or if I should call him on it.  Option B won. 

I knew Jeem was going to be difficult.  He had assumed his misguided superhero stance.  Yeah, when Jeem thoroughly believes there's zero possibility of his being wrong, he morphs.  He puffs out his chest, sets his feet apart, and clenches his jaw.  Kind of reminds me of a pissed off blowfish.  At this moment in time, Jeem was completely convinced that there was absolutely no chance in hell that I would ever dare to question his Moulin Rouge authority.  He genuinely believed that it was THAT obvious that there simply wasn't any talking during Moulin Rouge.  Ever.  Naturally, I decided to test him.

James was flabbergasted that I even had to ask such a stupid question.  He just stood there for a moment, stunned, fumbling for words. "Because...because..."

I still pride myself on keeping a straight face after such a response.  "James...uh...sometimes it just makes us act like fools, ya know?"  I'm really not sure what was the final straw for Jeem.  Maybe it was that we were still talking during Moulin Rouge.  Maybe it was that I had quoted the music montage to refute his point.  I don't know.  Whatever it was, Jeem did what any muscle-bound, "oooh, I'm so intimidating" grown man would do.  He threw an EPIC tantrum.

Jeem was all muscles, rage, frustration, and a sincere desire to sing.  We decided it'd be best to just go in the next room and leave him alone.  He was kind of scary in Satine mode.  He apologized about an hour and a half later.  Naturally, he had to finish the movie first.

Demon Couch of Doom

I might have mentioned in my previous post that my mom was a bit disapproving of the number of posts I've written that make me sound like I've never been sober before.  I'm actually not drunk all the time.  My friends and I just tend to get into goofier shit when we've been drinking, so those are usually the stories that are the most entertaining.  However, I love my mother dearly, so I figured the least I could do was tell a totally alcohol-free story just for her.  Here goes...

Before Ric and I moved in together, I was living with my mom, my brother, and a bunch of cats, including Bentley, who I brought to our new place a few months after I moved out of mom's.  I know I've probably covered this already, but just in case I haven't, Bentley is a chicken.  I mean he's a few feathers and a beak short of being a real, live, bona fide chicken.  He's afraid of EVERYTHING.

Yeah, unfortunately, my cat doesn't speak English in real life, so there really isn't a good way to explain his fears to him.  If it WERE possible, perhaps moving wouldn't have been quite so traumatic for my family.  Things started out pretty typical with the whole moving thing.  I packed up all my stuff, Jeem graciously agreed to help us do the heavy lifting, we rented a U-haul.  No problemo.  Until the cat saw Ric and Jeem carrying my dresser out the front door.  Normally, he would just go hide under the bed or something if he got spooked, but for some reason, on this particular occasion, Bentley decided that the best thing to do to cope with his terror at things being relocated would be to pee.  While sitting on my mother's couch.  

It's bad enough that he pissed on the couch, but what made it even worse is that my cat drinks A LOT, therefore he also pees A LOT.  Plus, cat piss is probably the worst smelling thing on earth.  Needless to say, my mother was not thrilled.  She tried cleaning it, but to no avail.  It still stunk.  Mom was also afraid that the lingering smell would cause Bentley to come back and pee on the couch again.  So she came up with a "brilliant" idea.  

She put the cushions in a hefty bag, tied it up tight, then put the slipcover back on the couch over her handiwork.  Now, you might be thinking, "hey, that's not a bad idea!  Holds in the smell, protects the cushions if he does it again, pretty smart, Maggi's mom!"  Wrong.  The problem is that there's just no way to keep air out of the bags.  Mom had turned the couch into a three-seater whoopee cushion.  

We kept a couple safety pins on the coffee table because sometimes when you'd sit down, you'd wind up sitting on a big bubble, so you'd have to take a pin and murder the couch in order to get the bubble to pop so that your feet would reach the floor again and you could get back up.  Actually, I was the only one who really had that problem because I'm a munchkin.  Everyone else just murdered the couch because sitting on a bubble isn't as cool as it sounds.  It did make for a fun game though.  My brother really loved sitting down next to someone who was already seated.  This is because he's a big guy, so the air displacement would typically cause one of two things to happen.

It was all well and good for a while, but like all good things, it eventually had to come to an end.  One day, my brother's friend Josh came over to hang out for a while.  He walks in and sits down on the couch.  Poor innocent Josh.  Nobody in my family had warned him about our uh...situation.  Suddenly, the cushion next to him inflates to about three times its normal size.

Mom decided that a couch that terrifies guests probably isn't such a good idea.  And that's how Mom's couch wound up at the road.  

I'm drunk a little.

Okay, so tonight was our one year drunkatriviaverwsary, and I'm drubnk, and I don't care if I don't spell things right because I lost my insurance card, and that's okay with me because personally i think I'm invinciblae/  Mom told me she doesn't like my blog so micuh because I'm alwauys drunk in the stories I tellm, but I'm okay with that because right now, i look like this.

ah shit.  That says yoy.  know what?  ;Let's just prentend that I said yoy because I can yell yoy if I want to.  Stop juding me.  That's all.

Edieted to add:  no, my ponytail isn't taht short.  MY bun fell off.  Again, stop judging me.

But you're not wearing shoes...

Okay, so Vincent's antics increased my blog readership by 1200% and that's awesome.  That's also a completely accurate statistic because I googled "percentage increase" to figure that out.  I majored in English.  We don't know how to do math.  So there's that.  In light of that particular bit of awesomeness, I've decided to write another post about wedding stupidity.  I'm also taking advantage of Mandy being out of town, so writing this now gives me a few days to hide before she comes back to kill me for telling this story to all 1200% of my readers.  

So yeah, once upon a time, Caitlin and Mack got married, and because they're delightful people who love their alcoholic friends, they had an open bar at their wedding.  Naturally, we imbibed.  A lot.  Now, I know I said that English people don't do math, but that's not really true.  Our math just doesn't make much sense.  I'm telling you this because I've developed some completely bullshit mathematical theories involving Mandy and drinking.  

Yes, I've put a great deal of thought into Mandy Math.  Like, possibly two entire minutes went into that.  You're welcome.  These are certainly important things to know if you're going to be drinking with Mandy, but there's one more rule, and it's the most important of them all.  Mandy+Drinking=Fall.  This is an absolute certainty.  Furthermore, the more she drinks, the more epic the fall will be.  If there were a drinking curve to Mandy Math, at the time of this story, Mandy was about here.

Anyway, some song came on, and Mandy looks to Bobby and goes, "IT'S OUR SONG!  LET'S GO DANCE!"  Note that I don't know what song it was.  This is because when Mandy+3 Drinks kicks in, whatever song is playing is officially "OUR SONG" between Mandy and whomever she's currently looking at.  It's kind of like Spin the Bottle, but with her retinas.  She was looking at Bobby, so woot, he was going dancing.  Mandy jumps up from the table, prepared to run for the dance floor, and the next thing we all know...

Yeah, only Mandy manages to face plant in the tornado drill position.  Matt comes running over to help her, and in his utter horror at what had just transpired, all he can say is, "Oh my GOD.  YOUR FACE."  This sends Mandy into a complete panic, and I'm pretty sure she was convinced that she was permanently disfigured, doomed to forever look like the love child of Sloth from the Goonies and um...I don't know, someone blonde and big-boobed.  

Her face was fine, as Matt quickly clarified.  "No, but your face.  YOU LANDED ALL UP ON YOUR FACE!  You got bitch slapped by the FLOOR!"  Matt's such a helpful guy.  Matt helps Mandy to her feet, she turns to me, and since I'm not generally one to be sympathetic, I just go, "Mandy...what the fuck was that?"  "My shoes!" This is where I officially think she needs to be cut off.  "Mandy...you're not wearing shoes."

That was a good question.  A sizable group of us looked around for a WHILE for the other stupid shoe.  Somehow, Mandy had turned Caitlin and Mack's wedding into a fucked up, drunken Easter egg hunt, except instead of getting cool plastic eggs filled with candy or money or something, the winner would receive a stinky ass used shoe.  FUN.  Anyway, we finally located the other shoe.  In the midst of her epic fall, the other shoe had flown off her foot, across the wedding reception, over the top of several tables, and landed, luckily without stilettoing someone in the ear because that would be awkward and painful.    

See?  Told you.  Awkward.  Anyway, Mandy's story is that somehow the heel of one shoe got caught in the ribbon detail of her other shoe, thus sending her catapulting into the ether.  Personally?  I think she got so caught up in Baby Got Back or whatever was playing that she threw herself on the floor in a seizure of delight.  Anyway, at this point, it dawns on her that she just looked like an idiot.  Okay, wait, just to verify,

BAHAHA!  Yup.  Still funny.  What was I saying?  Oh, yeah, so I kind of felt bad for her and suggested we walk outside for a minute.  This was so I could laugh at her unabashedly without further embarrassing her and so she could hide.  We grabbed drinks on the way because, OBVIOUSLY, Mandy needed another one.  We sit our drinks on the ground beside our chairs, I smoke a cigarette, and Mandy attempts to recover some dignity.  When we get ready to go back in, Mandy picks up her drink, looks in it, goes, "Aw man!  There's ash in my drink!  ...oh well."  She chugged the whole nasty ass thing.  So much for dignity.  I mean, wouldn't you drink a lot, too, if you had done this?

BAHAHA.  Yup.  Still funny.

"I'M LOOKIN' FOR CHANGE, TOO!"

The thing about practically living in the bar scene is that it's entirely possible to be friends with people for five or more years and to have never seen them in daylight ever.  Or sober.  Ever.  Rachel and Matt's wedding destroyed this.  Now don't get me wrong--their wedding was beautiful and was a TON of fun.  But it started out WEIRD.  When the ceremony was over, we all stood around outside just looking at each other awkwardly.  This is because most of us didn't recognize each other in the harsh light of day.

We needed booze.  All of us together, fully clothed, able to walk and speak correctly--WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON???!!!  We raced to the reception venue and promptly attacked the bar.  

Those poor bartenders probably thought they were being accosted by a pack of rabid alcoholic zombies or something.  Perhaps they didn't understand that most of us don't function past 7 pm without liquor.  At any rate, fifteen minutes or so later, we were all good, the bride and groom had arrived, and things were back to normal.  Well, if you define "normal" as a room full of people who slur, stumble, swear a lot, and smoke like chimneys.  The smokers congregated outside to destroy their lung tissue and take goofy pictures.  This is where things get interesting even for our less than well-behaved entourage.  Vincent was DRUUUUUNK.  No, that's certainly not the unusual part.  Vincent had a metal detector.  At a wedding.  

Not exactly a common sight, but if anyone were going to bring a metal detector to a wedding, it made perfectly logical sense to all of us that it would be Vincent.  Things were fine for a while.  Vincent happily showed off his new toy, and he even let a few others try it out.  Then all hell broke loose.

Note: do not feel sorry for this woman.  Usually, she's evil.

Anyway, everyone else went in to repeat this story to anyone who would listen.  I stayed outside because Vincent was still conscious, so this meant there was potential for more entertainment.  He sits there for a while, still fuming that some beggar would have the nerve to ask him for spare change.  Who did she think she was?  OBVIOUSLY his metal detector was there with him to help him find change!  If you can't collect money from drunkards dropping it at a wedding reception, HOW ELSE DO YOU BUY YOUR GRAND MARNIER!?!?  She was obviously stupid.  Obviously.  Then Vincent does the most out of character thing I've ever seen him do ever.

The moment didn't last long, however...

He grinned proudly.  Noting that he'd put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLABble, I asked him how much Spanish he spoke.  "That's about all I got," he grinned.  Then he face planted onto the sidewalk.  At this point, Ric had come back outside, ostensibly to laugh at Vincent some more, and fortunately, just in time to help him get back in his chair.  Completely unfazed by the whole thing, Vincent looks at Ric for a moment, realizes that his metal detector has a feature he has yet to flaunt, and makes a public service announcement that I personally believe was audible in Bangladesh.

"Vincent..."  I was afraid he was going to attempt to yell at me like he did the homeless lady and wind up face planting on the sidewalk again, so I proceeded with caution.  "We're on concrete."

"I KNOW THAT, YA KOOKABURRA!  ...I'm gonna go find cool shit."  And with that, Vincent and his metal detector disappeared into the moonlight.