Weekend Funnery

So this weekend's been going pretty well so far. I usually don't do these "summaries of what's been going on" kinda entries, but I'm well-caffeinated, it's one of those amazing flood-your-living-room-with-light kinda mornings, it feels like fall, and I'm listening to chill white-boy acoustica (Donavon Frankenreiter - where the fuck does he get of spelling his first name so completely counterintuitively?) and I felt like I haven't updated in a while so here goes.

Friday night was Geoff's birthday party, which was a lot of fun - exactly the kinda evening I wanted to have, and he seemed to have a blast as well. It started out awesome - we met up at his new Sullivan St. apartment, where Chris created the newest Elephant Larry subgroup, VH-1 CLASSIC, so dubbed because he got three free VH-1 shwag watches from some off-site meeting that his bosses went to. I was Bob Marley, Geoff was David Bowie, and Chris was Joan Jett. So when we powered up, it sounded like this:

Geoff: CHANGES!
Stefan: NO WOMAN, NO CRY!
Chris: I LOVE rock n' roll.

It was our rallying cry for the evening.

Before we left the apartment to go to Otto, I presented Geoff with his present, a bottle of "Chaos" from the McSweeney's Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. Just as he opened it to find out what was inside, the umpire reversed a run the Red Sox had just scored. Chaos indeed! Geoff was quite happy about that.

So then we left, and went to Otto Enoteca (where enoteca = wine library; appropriate, since they have about 8 million wine options) which I'm always a big fan of. Chris had the ever-awesome Otto Lardo pizza (basically dough with olive oil and "lardo," or pig's backfat, on top), I had my usual favorite of Aglio, Olio & Pepperoncino (Garlic, Oil & Chiles), and Geoff had something with anchovies on it. I tried a li'l bit of the anchovy, but goddamn if that's not way too much fish taste for me. I feel like I'll eventually come around if I shut my eyes and pretend I'm having a Caesar Salad pizza or something, but whoa, crazy fish taste, for real, son. So after brief dessert (Olive oil gelato, with salt, strawberries and mint - mind-blowing, so good), we headed over to Dempsey's on 2nd Ave. for some boozing and chilling. We made a quick stopover on St. Mark's place to pick up some party accessories for Geoff (a fuzzy gray hat + some of those weird, hilarious bug glasses that only ever seem to available on St. Mark's for some reason). The rest of the evening was fairly uneventful in the best way - got to hang with people I wanted to hang with, it was fun.

Yesterday I bought a suit! I braved the post-Hurricane Ivan subway conditions and went to the Hugo Boss store on 5th Ave. & 55th St., easily the swankiest store I've ever entered with the intention of actually buying anything. It was one of those places that are excessively white and understocked - lots of floor space and, like, four garments. Luckily, it seemed practically attitude-free, at least in the men's suit department, which was (strangely!) where I spent most of my time. I basically threw myself upon the mercy of the salesstaff and confessed that a) I had never bought a suit and b) I didn't really know the rules or what to look for. I wasn't particularly worried about feeling ripped-off by doing that, since I had set a budget beforehand. Luckily, my boy Michael (this ridiculously ripped man in the tightest t-shirt possible) knew his stuff mostly and helped me out and good. I'm absolutely at the low-end of their sizing because I'm so skinny and therefore not even close to the American male average they usually cater to. This meant that there were not that many options for me, but I ended up, after extensive consulting with their head tailor and Michael, going with a black "Flynn-Vegas" cut that's going to look AMAZING once it gets altered properly and I pick it up next weekend. Man, all you fools at Liz's wedding are going to be like, man, who's the dude in the suit. It looks like Stefan, but he strangely doesn't look like total crap. Who is that? Hee hee. I really liked the whole experience. It was a completely novelty shopping for something in a luxury-ish store and being waited on by two people at once was crazy, and kinda fun. That never happens when I buy t-shirts.

Then last night I went out briefly to Will Nunziata's (of the Royal We) birthday party that was being held at Korova Milk Bar (this bar that attempts, not entirely successfully, to look like the creepy bar in A Clockwork Orange) in the East Village. Pretty fun, I didn't know that many people, but I ended up running into this girl Christina Casa who's all comedy scene-y and also used to temp at US Concepts (as recently as last week). Slightly Known People were there as well, celebrating Mel's birthday. It was cool to see them, they're crazy nice people. It also cemented their names in my head, which was good, since I'm so terrible at names. They're doing a run of shows at Rififi over the next month or so, and I think I'm going to go check 'em out. Plans were also made to have a Sketch Dance-off.

I should mention right now what I was wearing. I made a commitment to wear some funny "going-out" clothes earlier in the evening, because I was feeling a little "eh" during the day and wanted to feel swanky. So I put on my vintage Arizona bell bottoms, my "Here Comes A Special Boy" Achewood t-shirt, and my dad's old leather jacket. AND THEN as soon as I left my apartment and turned right, I saw this amazing hat somebody was throwing out -- all crumpled, kinda top-hatty, with a huge feather arrangement coming out of the back. And here's the best part - somebody had written, in glitter letters MAGIC across the front, with the last C being backwards. Fantastic! So I wore that hat for the rest of the evening and it made me feel really good. I've discovered I love hats - they completely make the rest of your outfit and allow you to be somebody through the hat. It's weird - more than any other kind of garment, they're costume pieces & make the man. I gotta invest in more hats. But yes, this hat was fantastic and garnered nothing but admiring comments all night. Serendipity. Sometimes life is so wonderfully coincidental and fun. Thank you, whoever threw out the hat. Thank you.

After Will's party, little J and I moseyed on over to Kenny's Castaway where Geoff, Chris & the Somers crew were hanging out because it was the debut of The Teenage Softies, which are a "band" fronted by Chris' friend Amy & her friend Anastacia (I think?). I put the word band in quotation marks because they're not actually a band so much as they're art direction, t-shirts, fake albums and a hoax in search of a band. Luckily, Amy confessed as much to me at Geoff's party - she was so excited about her deception that she couldn't keep it to herself. Basically, she thought it would be funny to make CD art, publicity art, Friendster profile and t-shirts (a signed one of which I am now in possession) without there actually being a band. Now, whereas I think this is actually pretty amusing, I'm very happy that I knew about this beforehand, because otherwise I would have felt obligated to stay all the way until the end of the evening to see their "show." As it was, I knew that they were just going to go up on stage, say "Hi, we're the Teenage Softies" and then leave. And that just wasn't worth staying for (though I'm sure I'll get a report from somebody as to how the actual show went - and I'll post an update, I promise). At least we got to hang out in the upstairs VIP area (Amy's brother, Lucas, was playing his birthday show there that evening with his band, Cool Hand). We watched some band that sounded like Idlewild went on, thinking that the Teenage Softies would be on after that. But then another band was set to go on at 2:30, and I decided that I'd had quite enough and headed on home. Amy seemed quite satisfied that we all came out to say hi anyway and forgave me for not seeing the show.

And now it's Sunday morning, it looks like beautiful fall outside, and Marika and I are going to go take a walk. It's just that kind of day. Ah, I love fall.