SURREAL LIFE

Yesterday I managed to run into almost everyone I know and have a sort of legendary night without leaving West Philly. Siobhan was my date all night for the Human BBQ XXXI at Pi Lam (the "punk fraternity" at Penn) and some show at Danger Danger. The "big surprise" that everybody already knew about Human BBQ was that the Dead Milkmen were playing.




10. "Oh man, I really need tonight to be bloggable."


9. Dan texted that we should bring an empty bottle or can to drink out of. This was our first encounter with the 1,000 Rules of Drinking Last Night. They were really random and bizarre. I didn't know why we should need bottles or cans, but we stopped at Dungeness Crab Place (aka "Garden Court," aka "Beer Breakfast Dungeness Crabs," depending on who you ask)to each buy one can of PBR. On the way, Siobhan had me explain all the rules of buying beer in PA, and I don't know how much help I was. It's confusing.
Not nearly as confusing, though, as the 1,000 Rules for Drinking Last Night. When we found Dan and a bunch of our people outside Pi Lam, he said, "You brought your soda cans, right?" Turns out your can/bottle couldn't LOOK like beer, because they wanted the place to look like nobody was drinking "so it could be an all-ages show." First sign we were not dealing with grown-ups.

So, first rule, drink out of something other than a cup or anything that says "beer" on it. We got some Arizona bottles at Allegro's and came back. Second rule, it turns out, is there is no beer downstairs; you have to go upstairs, because all of the kegs are in the bedrooms. Not every bedroom has a keg, and you shouldn't go into a bedroom if the door is closed. The bedrooms--

--wait, let me emphasize this: these bedrooms were dorm rooms. Like, posters on walls, fleece blankets from Target, Hits of the 80's CDs, the whole deal. This was really happening.

--might be so full of people that when you get to where the keg should be, you'll realize that there's no keg in that room. This is all if you can get past the third rule: there's a nineteen-year-old blond girl with a baseball bat who only lets people upstairs if she knows them, they're in a band, or they're "with" a band. She kept stopping Siobhan--like repeatedly--and she kept nodding at me and smiling like I'm somebody who's so famous that of course she knows who I am. Listen, one of my three hard-and-fast rules of partying is that I never ever do V.I.P. spaces, but when all the beer in the entire party is upstairs, you break your rule.
Sometimes we ended up furtively whispering to people, asking them in low voices if they "knew where the beer was." Then we would be led upstairs through covens of teenagers and weirdos until we found some kid's bedroom on the third floor that had the keg of Woodchuck. We've never had to work so hard for beer. We drank every drop.
Actually this was all hilarious and totally fun. A few hours into it, it got old, but it was fine.

8. Women played better than maybe any other time I've seen them. Dan broke the strings on his bass on the first song and they had to borrow one. I spent half of the show leaning over to Lauren and saying, "Ohhh, my boyfriend's sooo cute. God, I love it when my boyfriend plays his guitar in his band. He's such a rockstar. My boyfriend is IN A BAND." I thought I was just making fun of her, but later she said, "You sent me into such a giggle fit when you said that stuff about Sean. I got so excited."


7. Siobhan discovered something last night that I had to deal with last year, when I started going to Temple. "1989?" she said. "Did that kid just say he was born in 1989???"
"Some of them," I told her, "were born in 1991. I was doing the Bartman in 1991."
For the rest of the night, she kept screaming, "1989? 1991?"


6. By the time we got to the food, there weren't any buns left. We made Boca Burgers and turned them over with pieces of aluminum foil, then ate them with our fingers. This dreamy 19-year-old named Matt (actually, I'm gonna say Mat--he just looks like somebody who leaves off the last "T" for some deeply personal reason) started talking to us. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt and iridescent rainbow wings. He flirted with both of us pretty aggressively for twenty minutes and told us about his full-body leather bondage suit which he bought as a Halloween costume but now just wears to shows and parties and "occasionally comes in really handy." This kid totally rocked our world.


5. On the first note of the Dead Milkmen's set, the whole crowd kind of surged towards the set. Right away, some douchester poured his beer over my head and Siobhan got punched right in the lip. Later, a speaker stack started falling into the crowd because some total wad was balancing on top of it to take pictures, and while Woods, Dan and I tried to fix it so it wouldn't crush any skulls, this guy came crowdsurfing by and kicked me hard in the eye. Later, Siobhan lost her jacket. Battle scars.

4. Last week I bought a 95 cent XXXL black t-shirt with rainbow sequins all over it making up dollar$ $ign$ and lucky dice. Siobhan tried it on in my kitchen over her jacket, scarf and pocketbook. I told her she should wear it as a dress.


3. At Danger Danger, we realized we really like being the only girls in the room. Frequently, we were, and the rooms were full of people.


2. More texts from "Spelling Fedish." It's now been like two years since our hourlong text-acquaintanceship that I ended pretty quickly, and he keeps trying. I am catnip for the mentally ill.


1. Last night I had a dream that some of us went to a Christian waterpark in New Jersey, where Lou Reed played a surprise show and David Bowie joined him on stage to sing "Scary Monsters." At one point, Lou was in the crowd, leading us in a singalong, and when he segued into some song that was, in my dream, a pretty unknown Lou Reed song, I was the only one who hollered. He came over to me, put the mic in my face, and said in a friendly voice, "Hmm? Did you say something?" I said, "No, Lou, I just really love that song you're about to sing." Lou said, "Oh, thanks, man, thanks." Then he went back up on stage and sang the song.

In other news, I can't stop looking at this.

DOWNLOAD:
The Dead Milkmen - "Violent School"