Here's a close-up. (My friend Lauren works at the Apple Store and a few months later when they took this display down I had her save it for me so Meredith could give it to her mom - who LOVES the fact that her daughter is "a model." Hahaha. So cute).
I had to go to the deli across the street and get money from the ATM and while I was waiting for my money to be dispensed I noticed they had a very familiar article clipped from Rolling Stone and taped to glass of the beverages cooler. (Hey, remember later on this night when Karen go so whipped in a Sparks-fueled birthday frenzy that she pretended to put my balls in her mouth?)
I got up to help him out and was told that he didn't need any help "figuring out his own camera, Goddamnit!" So I took some photos of everyone waiting. Hahah.
So we're all sitting around chatting and out of nowhere, Leigh comes over, sits down on Sarah's lap and then with no warning, slips her hand into Sarah's top and cops a feel! (It was probably her proximity to my Ruffled shirt that sent her over the edge).
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the very best of Star Trek-themed alcoholic beverages, the WARP CORE BREACH! (Please note the vapor cloud in the container due to the copious amounts of dry ice they put in it).
One of us had a tiff of the logo on our laptop so we got it blown up super big and printed out on a giant paper banner. We then hand-painted it. The entire time we laughed about how ghetto it is to show up at an advertising themed conference (you know, where people are supposed to be experts on how to advertise) with a fucking paper, hand-painted banner.
We left the party and by the time we got back out on the street both my brother and Sid had finished their bottles of Night Train. (The next day while we were looking at all these photos my brother got to this one and said "Yep, finishing that bottle of Night Train and posing for this photo is pretty much the last thing I remember." Hahaha. At the next party we met...
On the way over, we stopped in a liquor store where my brother and Sid, despite my repeated warnings, decided to try Night Train Express (the very finest of fortified bum wines) for the very first time. I was like "Yo, Guns N' Roses even wrote a song about how that shit's even too hardcore for them...do you know how hardcore that is?" At first they laughed at me, but then they started to understand that I wasn't joking around when the toothless 60-year old man at the register who had tattoos on his face looked at them increduously and said "Night Train? Are you sure you want to do that, guys? Wow." For a minute I thought they were going to back out - I mean shrugging off Axl Rose's warning is one thing, but to ignore the tattooed-face check-out guy? That's crazy. But in the end, they put their money on the counter. The checkout guy just kept shaking his head as he bagged them up and as we left the he called out "Good luck!" Hahaha.
San Francisco definitely has a leg-up on NYC when it comes to the non-ironic appreciation of metal. There are waaaaay too many people in NYC that wear 80s metal shirts because they think it's funny or kitschy - but in SF you would only wear a Slayer shirt if you thought that Slayer FUCKING RULZ (which they do).
I don't know what's funnier in this picture; my shampoo horns or the fact that Leigh looks like one of the Happy Little Elves from The Simpsons. Hahahahah.
Look at this little otter guy all fucking chilling on his back, floating around in the tank. He was so cute I wanted to smash the glass and reach in there and drown the little fucker.
Then late on Sunday night, a super-nice girl Jane (who has a friend in NYC who reads my site and told her that I was moving to SF and didn't know anyone out there....so nice!) invited me to garden party. I was wiped out from walking around all day and I had to get up for work, but I decided to swing by and at least say hi and try to meet some people. By the time I got there, things were winding down, but I did manage to see a GIRLFIGHT on the way out! Check out the double-knee shoulder pin in full-effect. (You know that means that she totally has brothers that she had to learn to defend herself against.
The sticker even goes as far to imply that if you did decide to disassemble the hub, you wouldn't be able to put it back together in working order. Then suddenly, it's like the thing is insulting you and then....it's on.
Hahahaha. Philip needed a haircut before a date and made the mistake of going to some barbershop he found near our work in Menlo Park. The lady that cut his hair did fine up until the end when she busted out the trimmers.
Philip explained: "So she takes them out to do the usual neatening thing they do. You know, even up the neckline...bzz! Then around your ear...bzz! bzz! Then the lady brings the clippers up to my forehead and suddenly I'm confronted by this horribly loud and sustained BZZZZZZZZZZZZ! as she uses the clippers to completely shave off my hairline's natural widow's peak." Hahahahaha. I almost pissed myself laughing. He was like "I went from looking Jewish to looking Puerto Rican in one swift swoop of the clippers!" The laughs continued well into the following weeks as we charted the progress of his "forehead stubble."
Grant and David demonstrate "The Eiffel Tower of Power High Five" with Miye as the lucky girl "in the middle." Check out the sweat stains - did I mention that by this point in the August night my apartment was about 110 degrees?
Bonus points to whoever that is in the foreground hoisting a forty of homemade Brass Monkey (one of the Crowley Crew, no doubt). As the party started to get going, it was time to kick off the karaoke!
Awwwww! Thanks so much guys! You are the best friends ever. (Sorry I moved back so soon!). I started to put my gifts away and they were all like "No, no, no. After all the time we spent rounding that stuff up, you're wearing it at the party, CALIFORNIA BOY!"
....SHAZAM! San Francisco Brian is here! "Seriously, you should wear that on the plane out there. People will totally think you're a native that was just visiting NYC. You look great. You're totally going to fit in out there!"
Check out my ghetto Photoshop compositie for comparison. Creepy, right? (We've been trying to get them together for a real photo together but we're afraid the world might end if they touch). One of these guys is the youngest photographer to have a solo show at the Whitney. The other has an awesome web site that's main distinction is that it's updated even less frequently than mine! Can you guess who's who?
This is the crazy-ass invite that I spent hours putting together. I went through thousands of pictures trying to find the weirdest/most embarrassing photos of my friends and then spent hours cutting them out in Photoshop and superimposing them onto the Golden Gate Bridge. It was totally worth it, though. Every time I look at it, I still laugh.
I'm not sure I handed my camera over to at this point but as you'll be able to see over the next few pics, they managed to grab some clutch snaps. I didn't even know I was capable of making a face like this. (Check out Leigh in the background losing her shit. Hahaha).
After the show, Karen and I stopped to marvel (ok, and pose) with this amazing/confusing billboard. Maybe all those Neo-Nazis will finally cut the shit when they realize they're also alienating butch-lesbian Catholic priests with all their hate. (Wait, huh?)
When Leigh and I met up with Meredith on the street, she was holding a shopping bag and laughing. Apparently, my birthday present that she'd told me was being "specially made" had finally arrvied and she informed me that she was going to "make me wear it out tonight." Well, Meredith's present turned out to be this uber-classy shirt that says "P is for Pussy" on the front (complete with a picture of the cookie monster doing the internation sign for pussy-eating)...
Leigh said I could have anything I wanted for my birthday. So I told her I wanted to see her try on the "I Heart NY" t-shirt I had bought for my friend Ross and Jordana's son Dashle for his first birthday. (They moved away before I got a chance to give it to him and by the time I saw them again, he'd outgrown - or so I thought until I saw Leigh manage to squirm her way into it).
...ON HIS FACE! Hahahahah. Holy shit. You might think you've seen a dude freak out before - but you've never seen anything like this. Keep in mind, this guy was getting huffy because he didn't want his HAND stamped. When he got all aggro and leaned in towards Pete, Pete stamped him with the quickness. The bouncer had to be called over, Sarah and the French guy went outside so he could cool down and Pete was promptly removed from his stamping post. Hahah.
....PANTYBANDIT! Awwww yeah, lemme hear ya! Check out Scott laughing because he total caught the PantyBandit in action. (PS - I'd be lying if I didn't mention that this photo kind of gives me a boner.)
...Chicago's legendary Mr. Whitefolks, who is arguably the world's only famous white pimp best known for his extensive speech on the importance of "beating the shit outta your hos to keep them in line" in HBO's Pimps Up Hos Down documentary. When I showed up, he was actually in the process of trying to convince Leigh and Meredith and that they should "be his bitches." He later informed me that this process is known as "turning bitches out." (Check out both of Leigh and Meredith's absolutely priceless expressions. Hahahah.).
We ended up heading out the Runway 69 in Queens which on the sign outside promised some very intriguing 'All "NUDE" Dancing.' Grant was stymied, while Seth seemed to have...
After our club "experience" (I seem to recall getting treated to visually stunning dispaly of vaginal gymnastics including a woman who smoked a cigarette "down there") we hopped back into the limo and headed back to Manhattan to find something to eat.
After screaming along incoherently into an extra mic during the first half of this couple's duet, homeboy in the green shirt finally managed to wrangle away Shef's mic and hide it on him. Unfazed, Shef decided to make up for his lack of mic by just singing even louder for the remainder of their song.
After the (outright boring) trip to the nudy bar, we decided to head to Remote Lounge and take over Sid and Buddy's karaoke night there. (I guess karaoke's becoming a bachelor party trend?)
...Peep World vicinity. In the end, we actually decided to go to a strip club where our friend Joanna (a former Nerve.com intern from back in the day) was working at the time. (Link NSFW).
With Frank properly attired, we instructed the driver to make a few victory laps around Soho so we could shoot the shit and have a few drinks before our first destination: Blue Mountain BBQ on Spring St.
We got to the building in question and fucked around pressing all the apartment buzzers until someone finally buzzed us in (Holly Golightly style, boyeeee). We weren't positive the intelligence we'd gotten was accurate until we got into the lobby and saw this sticker on one of the mailboxes (I shit you not!). He even calls himself DLR. Fucking amazing.
Oh, so I forgot to mention. On the walk over to Sarah's, I ran into my friend Emily on the street who pointed out David Lee Roth's new two-storey apartment to me. I won't give away his exact address, but suffice it to say, one of the floors has a prominent balcony that overlooks a heavily foot-trafficked area of the Lower East Side). Anyway, she told me that according to rumor, DLR was having a huge Fourth of July party on his balcony. When I relayed this info to Grant and the Fatty, we all decided that we had no choice: we had to round up a group and attempt to crash it.
So get this: There's a day camp right next to the country club that was having a pool party and playing loud music. A few of the groomsmen walked over, told them that a wedding was about to start and asked if they'd mind turning their speakers off for the next thirty minutes. They agreed. Well, I guess the ceremony took exactly thirty minutes, because literally the very moment that Jen and Chris turned around and were introduced to the audience as "Mr. and Mrs. Chris Battjer," the music, as if on cue, kicked back in playing "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen at top volume. It was amazing.
On the way home, Tinny and I stopped at the totally scary, 24-hour McDonald's in Chinatown so I could get my McChicken on. There was this cute little old Chinese guy passed out in one of the booths and Tinny wanted me to take a picture of her giving him a kiss. I showed her this one and she decided she wanted a better one and motioned for me to give her the camera...
A litter later in the evening we ran into Evan, Grant's former Nerve intern from years ago who now runs Block Magazine out of Brooklyn. (Whom I totally fucking assassinated with one of the best "get a load of this fucking guy" finger-points in the history of the sport. Hahahahah).
For a long time I'd been telling Leigh that she looked like Cindy Loo-Who (from How the Grinch Stole Christmas). She didn't believe me until she put on my giant red wool Union Suit and suddenly the resemblance was too uncanny to deny any longer. Hahahaha.
We shot up on the roof of the building where Nerve has its offices. While Siege was crossing the roof, he unknowingly walked across some boards that were covering an ELEVATOR SHAFT and fell through UP TO HIS WAIST. If he hadn't managed to stop himself, he totally would have fallen ELEVEN STORIES down an ELEVATOR SHAFT!
How insane is it that this is a picture of Siege just having saved himself from death. (Er, how about the fact that I didn't know Siege had fallen into an elevator shaft so I stopped to take this photo before helping him out. Sorry for almost killing you, for the sake of a photo!)
Fast forward a couple of minutes later and I ended up making a stupid bet. Which ends up leading to photos like...
Here's my revision of the piece that Rolling Stone ran about Sparks. Check out the new headline. I think I just may have missed my true calling as a copywriter.
...Karen's 23rd birthday! Wooo! I brought her a six-pack of Sparks to help instigate some birthday trouble (more on that later...hehehe). The day after the party, I took all my pics and posted them into a "sneak peek" gallery for Karen (because she assumed, correctly I might add, that it would be "like six months" before I finally got around to posting them here).
Anyway, somehow a photo editor at Rolling Stone saw this pic and wanted to use it for a blurb about Sparks in an upcoming "What's Hot" issue. I was stoked. A day later, she realized that Sarah is an editor at Spin and apparently didn't want to prominently feature and editor from a competitive magazine doing something "hot." She went back through my pics and found another photo of people drinking Sparks that Sarah wasn't in and asked if she could use that instead. "Well, Sarah's not in that photo, but the problem is: I'm not either." (And hey, I wanted to be doing something "hot" in Rolling Stone, ok?) So I asked her, "What if I can figure out a way to hide Sarah?" She was like "I don't even know what you're talking about." That is, until I sent her...
...NAKED MAN! Hahahaha. This old dude is always chilling there in a lil' Speedo-type thang and from certain angles (ok, most angles) it looks like he's buck naked.
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