By 1pm on Sunday we'd finished driving the last of the guests down the mountain and then we cleaned up, packed and headed back to NYC. Thanks for coming up to celebrate the cabin with me, everyone! It was nice to be surrounded by people I love to process the bad news about my dad.
But quickly devolves into karaoke where you can just name a song and the band will look up the chords (or Frank probably already knows them and will just shout out the changes!)
Grant was in town visiting from he and Aki's new home in Whistler, BC (that's in Canada) so we all went over to Fatty's for a backyard BBQ! Here's David, Grant and the Fatty (who's clearly getting ready to do something inappropriate/gay with that ear of corn).
Yay, it's November! On Friday night, we went to see Fiasco play a show at Crash Mansion. Crash Mansion has one of the best sounding rooms in downtown NYC, but the crowd there is always a little...
Siege and I drove over to their new apartment in the moving truck. When we arrived, we found a whole bunch of new people who had showed up to help unpack!
Just because there's champagne doesn't mean Fatty's gonna give up his Smirnoff Ice! (PS - Check out Grant in the background giving Fatty the "Flying L for Loser." Hahahah)
Across the room, Fatty was getting warmed up by a certain lady in a shiny shirt who'd take a liking to him. And Grant and I noticed that said certain-lady...
The show started out normal enough, but then halfway through the set, this wannabe Lenny Kravitz pushed his way up to the stage and started giving Grant funny looks.
Fast forward a week and Meredith and I have just gotten back into town after our trip. I immediately rang up the boys and we made plans to meet up for a drink so that I could bestow upon them exotic gifts from Jamaica...
Saturday night we all met up at Emily's fancy new apartment to go bowling. Grant called to tell us he was on his way and Fatty announced that he was going to hide in the bathroom and jump out when Grant came in the door (Hey, remember Scaring Grant?) So Grant walked in the door and Fatty jumped out screaming (holding a roll of toilet paper and wearing a towel on his head, no less) but Grant hardly flinched this time. Bah. Anyway, on to bowling!
In the AM I met up with Grant and the Fatty for one final Dim Sum brunch down in Chinatown. (Where after years of eating there with us, Fatty finally spoke up and told us "Hey, you know what? I don't even really like dim sum.")
On Thursday night (T-minus three days!) my roommate Victoria cooked a nice dinner and invited some of my friends over for a low-key dinner party. Here's The Fatty, Tinnz, Charlene and Grant (Sarah was there later on!)
Just in case there was any doubt about who planned this party (*cough* Frank's Mom *cough*), all the guests received silver lasagna serving spatulas. So awesome. Congrats Frank and Liz! Now get to work on some grandchildren already, will ya?
Three bozos. Grant, Fatty and me arriving at the reception in CT. (Note the accidental irony in Fatty doing the "L is for Loser" handsign backwards. Hahah).
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.
The show was really good, but Grant got in trouble for jumping around on stage too much (seriously) and so this was unfortunately his last show as rhythm guitarist in the band.
If you're looking to capture the jump-shots, you gotta shoot with an itchy shutterfinger. I saw movement and snapped figuring Grant was getting ready to launch into another big kick and instead managed to capture this totally awkward (sideway?) leg kick. Hahaha.
...the craziest, highest rock n' roll jump kick I've ever seen in my life. If only DLR (who lives less than a block away, incidentally) could've been there to see it - he would've wept with joy knowing his heir apparent lives. (This is so wallpaper worth - click here for the hi-res version).
On Friday, I went to see Grant and Fatty in (the now defunct band) Fireworks Go Up play a show at Don Hill's. If you squint, you'll notice two parenthetical blurs in the middle of the stage - those were created by Grant's feet during a double-legged DLR kick that I managed to just barely capture.
After we were done watching Fatty writhe suggestively in a manner that recalled Tawny Kittain in a Whitesnake video, the three us of walked down to Mandarin Court for a Chinee dim sum breakfast celebration.
On Friday, a whole bunch of us headed over to Arlene's Grocery to see Grant join Fatty in playing with Fireworks Go Up for the first time. (After only five or six appearances as their rhythm guitarist, Grant left due to "creative differences.") Boo.
This was too fucking funny: Jen Choi and Amber were arguing over who should get to drink an errant shot of whiskey (that was likley there because we're all girly men who were too pussy to drink it). Jen Choi was like "How about we each drink half?" Amber was like "Sounds good. Here, I'll drink the first half." Then after pausing for a moment, she yelled "SUCKER!" and shot the shot. I managed to catch Jen's face right when she started to realize she'd been had. That just goes to prove the old adage: Never trust a heavily tattooed girl in a hot-pink lycra shirt to share her whiskey.
Despite the fancy dress shirts we wore because of Pepper insistence that they would help us "fit in better," we soooo didn't fit in. (Best photo ever).
After a long day of moving, we all headed back to my apartment on the Bowery where Frank and Liz thanked us with pies from Lombardi's! Mmmmmmmmmm! Best pizza in the world. Then after dinner...
After I'd finished documenting our facial hair, we headed back to the house, showered (and I shaved, thank god), packed up and hit the road to head back down to Los Angeles (to attend the surprise birthday party that Jordana had put together for him. Shhhh!).