The weekend of my 25th birthday:

An essay, a drunken amalgam of loose stories, and finding that special moment somewhere in the mix of figuring out what the hell you are doing.

Some one in our group had decided to have a weekend getaway for all of us who had recently had a birthday. Mine was the tenth, my man Brian was the 9th, and someone else had a b-day in there. Whatever. That’s the initial reason not the point.

Some weekends have that feeling, a preordained chemistry of a special moment. I think I got this feeling when we were sending the email chain about plans and some one wrote that they only had one head light and would be a suspect community car?

My response:

I can drive, and can fit 5, but my car is minus one headlight. Just like one of our other partners above. I don't want to play this Wallflowers unless I have to.

Yeah, that’s me, always trying to weave in needless references that nobody needs.

The follow up was when I got the feeling, when my friend and former roommate wrote:

I just kicked both my headlights and broke them. Now I can't drive either.

Who says irony rules and slapstick is dead?


So I got off my GY shift at 7 am and three hours later drove down to the rendezvous point (password La Resistance), and seeing as there were 3 hours until takeoff we were looking for options.

Before that, let’s get to the cast.

Me (David, Indiana Dave): bold and brash Midwestern boy with a bit of insanity and a messiah complex about film, music, and politics.

Brian: Rocket scientist and one of the quietest people you will ever meet. Also has a semblance of a chinstrap beard. Also broke his humerus arm wrestling. (I deny any culpability to that chain of events). Has a dual citizenship of Montana and Cali.

Ellie: significant other of Brian (now that he is 25, we don’t have BF’s or GF’s. Just people longer than one night stands) From Whale’s Vagina, CA (San Diego).Being as she is a blast to know, she’s sort of like Monica from friends without the annoying brother or being OCD about everything.

D’A: Short for D'Artagnan. Is a human who is both wiser than his years with his heart and decisions, but is 6-8 years back in his body and maturity at major junctures. Rarely gets wildly drunk where you have to watch him. But he is like the college freshman you knew that always kept drinking until he had his fill. Blackout drunk doesn’t happen to this man. Also still has the energy of a 16 year old the night after drinking. Even though he has amazing intellectual capacity, you still have the feeling of where the hell is this guy coming from (more on this later).

Roy: A friend of D’A’s from Palm Springs. I still don’t know how anyone grew up there who wasn’t an illegitimate child of Frank Sinatra or Bob Hope. I mean, why are people willing to live in the GD desert when the ocean is but two hours away. At least live in a good desert. (note this goes to those people in the Middle East outside of Dubai. I mean, why. Baghdad is on a river and has a wondrous history that has been liberated to all of the museums and collections of rich black market art collectors, but really, why would you live in Islamabad when you could live in Laos, Egypt, or anywhere on the poor side of the Mediterranean (the south side East of Morocco), I only add the bottom side because I know on record that the French and Italians don’t want you there. I mean all this furor over a political cartoon?!? I could call us worse and cite “The Book of Daniel” about the reaction of America’s extremist sides, but 1. only the idiots in corporations like GE would believe that 1/10 of one percent could affect a show’s sales (especially when the major markets of the Neilsen ratings are in LA, CHI, and NY which are either both Jewish, Black, or Polish, which all mean that they don’t get riled up. Let’s list: Jewish, don’t really care about any negative views of Jesus on a mass level (they don’t like war, and I’m not alluding to any notion they like to see any version of any god suffer. They don’t believe in Hell, only criticism, so that’s right out) Black people: either fall into the Jesus was my nigga or Jesus was black category (or at least anyone who was going to watch a show as bad as “Book of Daniel” certainly wouldn’t be from the Southern Baptist belief. Polish, they don’t really care, they know that it’s better to let the Catholics take the glory of the Pope along side the guilt of their child molestation. We Polish, and Polish/German take solace in the fact that we are great workers, fathers/mothers, and we know there are still many dumb jokes to be left. Let the Itie’s have their mobs on the East Coast and get all the hype, we were the Mafia in the Early 20th century and we’re cool with the Jews because we share the same hair genes.
2. That show sucked anyway, and we Americans have celebrities to make fun of and the Euros have affairs to work on.

(I know that last rant had nothing to do with any thing, but I had a goddamned blast writing it)

Anyway, Roy is a guy who is a drinking liability, which means he is a gem of a person to hang out with when boozing. He also made two of the most spectacular cards I have ever seen. I'll try and post the one he gave me. It's beyond brilliant.

So it’s time for one more digression.

About 2 years ago we went down to Man-ha-annn Beach (I have worked with too many Bostonians and Massholes to pronounce it anything else)

For some reason I was in a loose from Reality moment, and decided to talk to women with the angle that I was a soldier coming back from Iraq. I started talking to a girl by saying:

I just got back from the war, I didn’t see that much action, but I did kill three people with one bullet, just like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

This somehow morphed into a tale of my combat experience where I claimed to have killed 73 people in Iraq, including women and children.

And so we walked back to his and D’A’s apartment having the following (shouted) conversation:

Me: I killed 73 people.

Roy: SEVENTY. THREE PEOPLE.

Me: THAT’S TEN TOUCHDOWNS AND A FIELD GOAL OF DEAD IRAQIS.

Roy: WOMEN AND CHILDREN INCLUDED.

Me: EVEN THOUGH THE ARMY WON’T COUNT THEM.

Roy: SEVENTY THREE PEOPLE.

This continued all the way down Man. Beach Blvd for a good six blocks.

Mandy: Roy’s SO. She was a blast on this trip, and even though she is quiet to the male group (or maybe just me) I genuinely think she has grace, like Jackie O. It may take 20 years to get to her potential, but she has this. We could have a conversation in the future where she says that she believes that she is the third conception of Shirley McLain, but until then I am going with my initial feeling.

Daniel: Another of D’A’s roommates. To avoid any other complaints from the ACLU and National Defamation League, I won’t mention that he was Asian. He also brought a girl along with him who was from Japan or something. I wish I wasn’t coming off as blunt, because I have had some good times with the guy, and I genuinely do like him, but at the same time, he’s so quiet at times, I have no idea what he is thinking. I like to think he is coming up with a plan to hold us hostage and force us all to play soccer for our lives against an evil team of Steroid powered Nazi’s time-teleported from the 1940’s Olympic team, but I realize that’s more of my fantasy about “Victory” actually happening and me playing with Pele on the soccer field than anything else. I also have had two dreams where I am 27 and have won the Heisman and am bumbling around New York on a bender to end all benders. I’m babbling. If you want to read my past blogs, Daniel is an Omega friend, or a Turtle. He is quiet but he brings things to the table that can’t really be translated to text. That’s something special. His friend though was clearly out of sorts, as D’A asked her for the Japanese word for taint. I am sure this set Dan back a bit with her.

*humming: That’s what friends are for*

Greg: One of at least three people I know that plays poker for a living, and if he did it full time would be clearing more than anyone I know. That and he went to Princeton, perhaps the only college where I get riled up and want to ask “so you think you’re better than me , huh, college boy!”

Ashley: Another Cali chick. I know little except she has good taste in music and could likely kill a yak from 200 yards, using only her mind.

So, back to the trip.

With three hours until take off, Brian makes a trip to Wal Mart to pick up Laser guns. (Sadly they are never properly used in a full on war. There were skirmishes, but not much else).

I was at his and Ellie’s place to either waste away until takeoff or take a nap. One could say this is one in the same, but the waste away would have involved me bothering Ellie and then not making the guest bed I slept on when it was time to go home. (Two side notes, this is the greatest guest bed of all time. I could copy this for my bed and it wouldn’t be the same, because there is some magic in this configuration. I don’t know what they did here, but it’s amazing. 2. The bed is also so complicated I might as well throw a weeks worth of laundry on it, because it’s going to get remade by someone who knows what the hell they are doing with this wunder-bed. )

So I went to Wal Mart.

Two notes:

The Mc’ds at the walmart had soft pretzels. A big plus. Not quite a McRib, but since the one I had on Thanksgiving, it’s never been the same. You really can’t go home again.

The White Trash quotient at any Wal Mart is unreal. I guess I am more shocked because it’s LA, and everyone is reasonably good looking or somehow talented. With the one in Long Beach, well let’s just say that The Simple Life 4 could be shot there.

So on to the trip.

We’re in the car and stuck in traffic on the 91, and one wonders really, why the hell is there congestion on this highway. There are at least three going in the same general direction. It never ceases to boggle me. Where would 100,000 people from the Southland area be going at 3 pm? WHERE

So we turn off the radio and listen to a Dane Cook CD. (short note, in the end, I think he likes goofy wordplay too much. He tries to hard with these.)

Anyway, so it comes to this point about how every group has a Db friend they don’t like and if they are a girl, their name is Karen.

D’A sidespteps into the conversation mentioning how he knew a girl in grade school who was named Karen and no body liked her.

He mentions that everyone was mean to her and that they would never drink from the water fountain after her.

There is a bit of silence.

D’A continues: “Everyone used to say she had AIDS.”

This is when I started laughing without weekend’s end. I lived with D’A. I know his idio-whatevs. D’A will talk and talk to fill the space if nothing is going on, or suddenly he becomes bored. Like I said, the man is a genius, but in many wired like a dog or a three year old child. If nothing is happening he looks for something interesting and then attaches to it. 70% of the time his stories are actually good. That’s a good ratio. 25% of the time they have no aim, and are babbling. 5% of the time they suck. (he’s only human). But 50% of the time when he is babbling, he ends the story with something amazingly out of sync and so far out of left field that it’s perfectly comical to the point of near abstract genius.

This is when I said, “this is why you never give up on a D’A story

To put you in the moment just a bit, we are sitting there in relative silence and he launches into a story which no one in the car has any stake in. It’s about his school, and it’s just about name calling. But then he let’s silence hang out there for a moment, and then says “She had AIDS.” You can’t create that kind of awkward and unexplained in fiction.

But later, he topped that. As we are driving up the treacherous hills and D’A mentions how Daniel and his family were in a car that went over one of the barriers and tumbled down the side of the hill.

The other three of us in the car were sold on the story. Did someone die, was everyone OK, etc? D’A senses our line of questioning and before it’s asked, he says:

“Well, everyone was OK. No one died..”

And then comes a pause.

“Well no one died then… but some have passed since.”

The thought process for him was not ending with how they survived, but he was debating about whether or not their mortality was linked to the potency of the story.

Just one of the most DaDa-esque comedy moments in my life, I don’t know if I will ever forget that stumbling to mention that people have died even though it’s pointless to an awesome story.

So we get to the cabin. There were some cool moments where everyone was figuring out where they could pee without being caught and there was a short moment where Brian gave the all clear for driving over a lip that Ellie’s car clearly wasn’t going to cover. I only list these because they were minor, but on any other weekend this wouldn’t have happened. On a normal weekend, these would be the weird moments that you blacked out, but for some reason the cosmos made these moments something bigger.

The night moves on and I probably miss some good stuff because I finally fall asleep after 30 hours being awake.

When I woke up, I got to something else, which should probably continue in part two.