What I Did Last Weekend

I don't know who you people are (although if the search terms are accurate, you really love pictures of Aunt Esther from Sandford and Son), but I'm pretty sure that once again I had a better weekend than you.

My friend Todd's 40th birthday was last weekend, so it was back up to Atlanta for hijinx. And not just any hijinx. Limo hijinx. That's right, we were going out in a stretch Escalade, just like the rappers on the MTV show.

He planned it all out, where about 20 of us would take the limo from his house, go to Trader Vic's for Polynesian treats, then to a fancy beer place, finally ending up at Atlanta's famous Clermont Lounge.

I don't think I've ever actually been in a limo before. I never had one for prom, because I drove a '77 Lincoln Continental in high school, which was pretty much the same thing, only I didn't have Jeeves driving me around. It was pretty awesome, even if the driver got lost and our fully stocked bar was unstocked except for some water bottles, which was probably for the best.

But even though it didn't have booze, it had all these cool Tron lights all over the place. Check it out.

Doesn't it look like some sort of sci-fi judgement chamber? "I find you ...guilty."

It also had a stereo system playing My Bloody Valentine, Wire,  Naked Raygun, Jesus Lizard, Radon, Guided By Voices, Misfits, and uh...that Billy Joel "Heart attack ack ack ack ack ack" song on it really loud.

And you know, if you're cruising around Atlanta with your good friends listening to that stuff, you don't really need booze at the moment. Although we'd soon take care of that at Trader Vic's.

Trader Vic's is this awesome tiki bar, which means that most of the drinks are basically a whole bunch of rum with some pineapple juice thrown in there for Island Flavor. They also come in cool looking containers. Check it - this is called the Rum Giggle, and it's served in a conch shell. Look how impressed your narrator was with it.

Extra! Extra! Drink comes in shell!

Oh yeah - the hat. I stole it early in the evening from my friend Dave since he wasn't wearing it and I thought the night needed an olde tyme newspaper seller to add some period flavor. Here's a better shot. As you can see, the resulting ensemble was so awesome my girlfriend Sherri took off her glasses to ...better see it or something.

I would like to add that I was not as drunk as this picture suggests. I only ripped my shirt off once the whole night.

After that I stole a little pumpkin at the fancy beer place. The host would hit me in the balls with that little pumpkin later that night. I was told it was an ancient Sicilian tradition, so who am I to argue with the birthday boy. I also managed to take some decorative dried corn, but someone made me give it back as we were leaving. People are always trying to ruin your fun.

We didn't make it to the Clermont, which is probably just as well. Who knows what I would have decided to steal there.

Later that night Jerry Lewis cleaned up after us. No, really, check it out:

He was just happy we were having fun.

So how was my first (I think) ride in a limo? I'll let the sci-fi judgement chamber pronounce sentence on that one.

"We judge your Earth limousines to be...awesome."

The next day I carved a pumpkin for some early Halloween atmosphere while Sherri took photos, because that stuff has to be recorded for future generations. I noticed in one photo that I looked like my dad when he got mad at me for not doing chores. That was some Halloween scary.

This is for your kid hitting me in the balls last night.

So yeah, I carved a pumpkin, hung with some old friends and the new girlfriend, rode around in a limo listening to the Misfits, drank out of a shell, a pretty awesome weekend all around. You really should have been there.