Welcome to my soapbox. Here you can typically expect to find my various and sundry diatribes, vituperations and general jawing on whatever it is that's on my mind at the time that I decide to post - you know, typical, self-indulgent blogging for the sake of externalizing what was previously a perfectly content internal monologue and putting it on the page for all the world to see. Again, welcome. Thanks, The Management

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Senator Buzzkill, Your Rebuttal?

Well, another New Year’s come and gone, and this year I opted to ring it in Seattle-style. Ironically, the weather was better there than here in California. Even more ironic was the fact that I was not the drunkest one at the party…by a long shot. So this week, instead of focusing on me, let’s focus on another merry-maker: a married 35 year-old on-air meteorologist from a very well-known northwest news station.

If, at the beginning of the night, you had asked me who of the house-party guests would eventually be dragged - out cold - from a bar to be left passed out on a nearby bench, I never would have come up with the assailant – not in ten guesses.

Donning a navy-blue blazer and grey polo sweater over a white dress shirt, the well-known Seattle weatherman strolled into the party like a younger Judge Schmales. Half-expecting him to go into an immediate tirade on the dangers of gophers on golf-courses, I quickly reached for the Patron Silver Label, in hopes of getting him caught up. I selected the largest shot glass I could find and brimmed it. Just before he tilted the hefty helping, he ominously told us it was a good thing his wife was sick and unable to make it; he was ready to let his hair down. And let it down he did.

After he and I single-handedly killed the fifth of Patron, we set sail for the handle of Kettle One. The Kettle/Red Bulls would ensure we’d be able to stay awake for the ball-drop. The Red Bulls did wonders, as we decided to move the party down to a bar on Queen Anne Street for the stroke of midnight. Unfortunately, the stroke never came for me and my meteorological compatriot. Within ten minutes of arriving at the destination, we had downed four Car-bombs apiece and he was down for the count. Quickly recognized by the local New Years revelers, he was bought and pounded two shots of Bushmills and immediately took a face-first swan dive on the middle of the dance floor. With the aid of a man laughing uncontrollably at the sight of his favorite weatherman sprawled on the floor, I was able to get him propped on a bench outside the bar.

I managed to get him on his feet and we began making our way back to my friend’s house, little more than a block up the street. We got just across the street before Weatherman took another spill – this time in the bushes in front of the grocery store. The bushes were brittle and managed to penetrate his blazer and draw blood, making for a grisly scene. I got him out of the shrubbery and into the middle of the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t help but laugh. He looked like a dead senator, splayed out on his back in blue blazer, sweater, dress shirt and slacks, soaking in the northwest rain.

A phone call to my friend up the street and a twenty spot paid out to two teens waiting for the bus produced a car and a couple able bodies to help load the senator. We got him within a block of his house when his stomach first churned and spackled the backseats. What looked like La Victoria Thick ‘N’ Chunky coated the black leather seats in back. Two more waves would coat the backseat before we could safely access him where he lay. The half-hour it took to get him out of the car would have seemed unbearable had it not been for a little piece of good fortune. Within two minutes of arriving at the house, I saw a figure down the street. It was a 19 year-old drop-out with dimebags a-plenty…and it was the stickiest of the icky. I quickly bought four bags and enlisted his help in levitating our La Victoria poster boy from the car to his front doorstep.

Careful to avoid the blue blazer now coated in an encore of various hors d’oevres, we rolled him out of the car. Save for a near disaster involving a lamp post en route to the front steps, we managed to get the weatherman in his house. We also managed to get the hell out of there before his wife woke up, with enough time to get back home, watch SportsCenter and put the finishing touches on the buzzes we had been working on before our “friend” decided to go Ted Kennedy on us. I opted to finish ringing in the New Year with a bottle of Veuve to the dome and a blunt the size of Shaq’s thumb. I woke up in the chair around 7 am with a hole burnt in my pants, champagne in my lap and a feeling that next New Years will be a hell of a lot more fun.