Cars and Skanks and Naked Demi Moore - Oh My!

Sorry for the delay... some stuff came up. On to the party!

One more thing... all credit for the photos goes Laura, whose photographic talents are matched only by her ability to remember the memory card in her digital camera, a skill I hope to one day master. You rule, girl.

As we had expected, our invitations were a last minute payoff for grinning and bearing our parking lot servitude. No pictures of the cars lining our street, because it was rainy and dark when Laura and I drove down the street to the party. Yep, we drove. I don't even think the tenth-of-a-mile place clicked on my odometer, but I drove to the valet station. I pulled up and a snappy gent led us under an umbrella to a Lincoln Navigator - or other overpriced facsimile - to be driven five hundred yards to the house.

Immediately upon our arrival it was obvious why he was not reprimanded for his parking transgressions: several police cars were parked right in front of the house. This guy clearly knows how to grease a wheel. One more short umbrella-led walk later we were inside. Yeah, it was a pretty big house, crammed to the rafters with seriously ugly art and skanks in varying degrees of undress and sloppy drunkenness. But we’ll talk more about the skanks later. We began a cell phone aided search for my mom and our neighbor, who had arrived before us. Eventually, we found them beyond the weirdest bedroom ever, containing the biggest entertainment technology gap I've ever seen.

I love the NES as much as the the next gal, but come on! Upgrade.

Mom, having already been exploring, proceeded to lead us on a greatest hits tour. First step was the car room. Correction: the FIRST car room. If I knew about cars, I'm sure the makes, models and years would have absolutely blown my mind; however I was more captivated by the sheer number of cars one person could own. Oh, and the shininess. And the fact that this man had at least two subterranean garages that he could have easily parked his guests cars in.

Some old red car

The insides of that red car

Laura had them valet park this one in our driveway

Looks like they had ugly banana yellow cars back then, too!

Sorry for the blur, we were in stealth mode... no flash.

In the words of Laura, "I'm sure this is nice… if you like old cars… which I don't."

Anyway, there was also food and a makeshift bar. We grabbed some food for the trek to the NEXT car room, which was infinitely more exciting because of THIS!

One point twenty-one gigawatts!

What the hell is a gigawatt?!

That's right, he owns a damn time machine. De Lorean. Whatever. I got to sit in it and crack wise about flux capacitors. Like it was even a question I'd do that! Please. Oh, and Frank Sinatra's last car... meh.

He did it his way... and his way was green and kinda ugly.

We found some stairs and wandered upstairs into a large... something room. I'd call it a TV room, but that really wouldn't distinguish it from any other room in the house. This guy must buy forty-something inch plasma TVs in bulk. At least one in every room, and in the kitchen I saw two mounted on either side of a 2-foot wide decorative dividing wall. The room we were in now had a television the size of a twin bed in a wall unit, and a smaller (though not much) television on a wall not 30 feet away. This room had several couches and a dedicated bar. And that brings me to the discussion of the skanks. The only reason I know there was a bar in the first place was because the bartender was tall and I could see him distributing the booze over people's heads. The bar itself was surrounded by an annulus of skanks, three deep in places. The layers was even thicker around a man with the most prominent brow ridge I've seen this side of a museum's wax exhibit of Paleolithic hominids. He had a voice several octaves lower than bass, which apparently functions as a skank magnet. The low frequency resonates with their lady regions and they cannot help but flock. Really - I read about it in a science journal. American Journal of You’re a Skank.

These were not just any skanks, either. Oh, sure, they looked like your typical, garden-variety skank from a distance. But upon closer inspection it became clear that the artfully spackled makeup was concealing their true age: approximately 139 in alcoholic years. Truly horrifying. Needless to say, we didn't hang out there very long.

The next door we came across that was open (or had an easily picked lock, whatever) was apparently DB's office. It contained all the typical office accoutrements: desk, computer, couches, oil portrait of Demi Moore, naked but for a painted on "suit." Yeah. What? The hell. I have no explanations for you; I can only present the facts in a derisive manner. What you do with the information is entirely up to you.

Essentials for productivity.

Next up, the exercise/antiquated video racing game/knock off (I hope!!) Venus de Milo room. I defy you to find a more natural combination – I’m sure it was a Feng Shui thing.

Get in a little workout...

...then drive the hell out of a 32-bit racing simulator while naked headless lady stands guard!

We hit the kitchen, where my sister drained the ice sculpture/scrimp dispenser (I haven't made anything up yet, why would I start with that?) and having thusly eaten the food and seen the house, we made our way towards the door where the wait began. We had to wait for the shuttle, so we stood by the door to feel the breeze and marvel at the skank parade. I have never seen - and hope never to see again - that much side-boob and lower-ass. Dresses too big and too small in dangerous places left them straddling the line between legality and whoredom. Ladies (and I use that term loosely) we don't need to see your baby factory to know you're female. Your preternaturally outsized boobs make it abundantly clear what sort of equipment you're packing, and your lack of clothing clearly advertises what you're willing to do with that equipment. Geez. Subtlety is DEAD, people.

During the wait, we received bags of gourmet popcorn (read: overpriced Cracker Jack without any prizes inside). My mom solicited help on an epic search for an umbrella that turned out to be right next to the door and probably made the help think we were involved in some sort of poorly planned umbrella heist. The knowledge that our house was in walking distance plus a woman smoking a cig and generously sharing her stench with all of us multiplied by two adorably precocious brats made the wait interminable. Eventually we tired of the standing around and of Laura's bitchiness (sorry, girl, the shoes are cute but they put you in a hell of a mood when they start cutting your toes off) and just walked down the damn driveway. Of course once there, we had to wait for my car. Great. Not five minutes later, the golf cart shuttle brought the very people we had walked away to avoid to wait with us. Fantastic. But wait for the silver lining, folks! As she was leaving the shuttle, the Marlboro Lady dropped her black purse on the driveway, where the darkness rendered it nearly invisible. Laura and I began a nearly silent campaign willing someone, anyone to run over the clutch, crushing what we imagined to be its contents: half a pack of cigs and a cell phone with a contact list brimming with numbers of local VD clinics. After near misses with both the golf cart and a real car, one of the brats ruined our fun, as brats are wont to do.

“You dropped your purse!” Little Lord Fauntleroy piped up. He retrieved the bag and handed it to her.

“He deserves a reward!” shouted some drunken moron from not two feet behind me. He had been monitoring the situation and decided to craze it up for his own amusement. “Give the boy a reward!” He was clearly hoping for either a kiss or a monetary reward to be bestowed upon the boy – the slurring made it hard to tell which. Either way, the woman was too drunk and/or dumb to coordinate such a complicated response. She mumbled a thanks and the boring wait resumed. Eventually, I saw lights coming down our street. Thank god. They began lining up in front of us, and the trained professional driving a pickup truck nearly hit another car (and I mean inches from a squealing, metallic mess) made me seriously doubt my decision to valet park. The Precious was clearly not in talented or even competent hands. Thankfully, it arrived with nary a squeal and Laura and I got in. It was go time. I turned around in the driveway, right in front of the valet bitches, and then drove right back to our parking lot home.

The verdict? Not even close to worth it. It would’ve been more fun to park every car we could lay hands on in our street and then saran-wrap all encroachers. Oh, well, there’s always the next party… because it’s only a matter of time before DB feels the need to flaunt his extensive popularity again. Whoopee!

Exciting New Development On A Story You Weren't Informed About In The First Place!!!

Over the summer, new people moved into a house near us. (See lovely map below.) Construction began immediately on what appeared to be an entire additional house connected to the sprawling homestead they had just purchased. I'm not exaggerating at all. As a neighborhood off of the main road, we were clearly the prime location for parked work crew vehicles, construction equipment, quarry dump trucks (I don't know what half that shit was, I just know it was omnipresent and massive.) So that was fun, especially when the workers would eat their lunches and discard their chicken bones on the road for my dog to eat when we walked past. Let me tell you, there's nothing like sticking your hand halfway down a dog's throat to fish out a slimy chicken wing to finish a walk the right way. So thanks for that.

The construction has yet to cease, but they're valiantly not letting this fact affect their social life. One night, I returned to the house to see a 'valet parking' sign at the end of their driveway. "Hmm," I thought. "Interesting. I wonder where they're parking all the.... oh." As I began to turn onto my road, I saw. Both sides of our street were lined bumper to bumper with valet parked luxury sedans of varying absurd price, leaving a tiny conduit for me to carefully traverse to my house. The valets were zipping up and down in their little go-carts, shuttling the illustrious guests to the gala with nary a crystal-clad foot touching the dirty ground. Walking, after all, is for peons. We marveled at the sheer balls of the host’s decision to shanghai our private road for his personal use without even a note to give us a heads up, and briefly considered some sort of retaliatory action involving eggs and/or soap. We eventually just watched a movie or something. We’d make crappy revolutionaries.

A few weeks later, it was party time again. Several hours in, when our road was sufficiently clogged with cars, I called the police. Yeah, I did. Partly because if anyone who actually lived on the street had had the poor timing to have a heart attack or set their kitchen on fire, there would have been no possible way for an ambulance or fire truck to get through the narrow channel the valets had so thoughtfully left for us. I also called partly because I’d never called the cops on anyone before, and partly because I was feeling pissy and vindictive. I explained the situation, but I don’t know if it was ever followed up on. I don’t really know what I was expecting. Wait, yes I do. I wanted them to have to scramble to find parking for the cars, eventually allowing undersized twelve-year-old children to park the cars on their own front lawn, à la the film Father of the Bride. That’s what happened in my head, anyway. But imaginary retribution can only satisfy a girl for so long. For the next soirée, we have a plan of attack: as soon as we see the valet sign, we’re parking every car we have on the road, each approximately one car length apart. Our neighbors agreed to participate, and we have standing plans to invite people over for the additional vehicular volume and to eat popcorn while we relish the inevitable chaos. So for quite some time, that summed up our relationship with the Entitled Family – they use us as a parking lot, and we hate them with the fury of an endless procession of eternally burning suns.

AND NOW FOR THE EXCITING UPDATE!!!

A few days ago, there was a knock at our door. It was a woman bearing an apology for the parking shenanigans and an invitation to their holiday open house. And when I say ‘their,’ it’s because it’s a company party and this woman worked for the gracious host. I bet she didn’t know that glossing over her boss’s neighborly ineptitudes was included in her job description. Apparently, this guy part or mostly owns one of the most generically yet nefariously named corporations I’ve ever heard of. Seriously, I’m sort of mad that I won’t be able to use that name for an evil empire, should I ever obtain one. But anyway, I am so totally going, as are one of my sisters and my mom and some of our neighbors. It’s going to be awesome, I can just feel it.

FURTHER EXCITING UPDATE!!!

So I called to RSVP, naturally expecting to speak to the woman who had delivered our (shamefully last minute, according to Emily Post) invitation, because whatever evil plan she had botched to earn herself invitation delivery duty would surely also warrant RSVP duty. As it turns out, not so much. It was an RSVP hotline. 1-800-WeHaveTooManyFriendsToTakeTheirCallsPersonally. Wow. We’ve organized a small posse of neighbors to go, but we can’t decide if we should walk, or each drive separately and have our cars valet-parked on our street in front of our own houses and then be go-carted to the party. I think you know what I’ll be voting for.