What a Bloodbath

I wasn't sure if this weekend was going to be able to live up to my expectations, but it pretty much surpassed them.

As I've expressed in numerous posts before, this weekend was the much anticipated trip to Bean Town for Aaron Karo, one of my fav comedians. My cousin Liz drove from State College, PA for the event and very generously picked me and Caroline up along the way. It was a pretty arduous trip but very much worth the effort.

We arrived in Boston around 5 or so (I'll leave the hotel unnamed for prides sake), got dressed, and headed down to the very classy Chinese restaurant bar in the hotel for some pre-standup drinks. After a round of Mai tais, Liz and I headed to the show leaving Caroline to meet up with her boyfriend. Thank God we left when we did because had we got there 3 minutes later we would have had to stand for the whole show, but instead we got a pretty prime front row table.
So there were Liz and I, just feet away from Karo, having some drinks, pretty much in heaven.

And luckily, the show was in no way a disappointment. I wasn't sure how Ruminations would translate to the stage but it all worked out really well. There was, as expected, plenty of jokes about drinking- including my fav about opening bar tabs, a very dangerous situation- as well as a few about his mom (Just open a window!), trying to hookup sober, and the differences between the east and west coast (east obviously wins). But I think the highlight of the night was probably when he asked for a volunteer, preferably one in a wife beater. Well my excitement got the best of me then because I launched out of my seat to show off my wife beater and to offer my services.

It gets worse.

Then I start to walk on stage and Karo has to remind me that I was not, in fact, at a magic show and that he didn't need me to come on stage. There was some laughter, he commented on how embarrassing it was for me that I had done that, and I probably turned about 8 shades of red.

Still gets worse.

He needed the volunteer to help him out with some new material. He had 25 new jokes that he wanted to try out on us for the first time. However, in the midst of laughing at myself for previous embarrassment, I failed to hear him say that he wanted me to call out even numbers between 1 and 25. My first pick was 25. Karo laughed at me some more, called me a jackass, and basically highlighted my stupidity to the entire crowd. But on a bright note, Aaron Karo does now know my name, and I got a hug from him post-show. And I didn't even need to go up to him afterwards like a desperate groupie, as did half of the girls there. So there's the one plus side of the night.

After the show, Liz and I met back up with Caroline at the Chinese bar, had a few more drinks, and then hit the town to disgrace ourselves in Boston. All in all, we had pretty good luck guy wise. A group started a conversation with us in every bar we went to, and I'm proud to say that all of them were older, not bad looking, and, from what I could tell, fairly normal. By the end of the night, Liz and I had danced to Senora (ie the Beetlejuice song), Caroline got shot down by TWO bars for over-intoxication, Liz met her future husband, and I invited the whole bar back to our very classy hotel for an after party. So basically, the night was pretty tame.

Thank god the next morning we were able to find the BEST diner ever. We all ordered omelets and, no joke, they came out within 3 minutes of ordering them. It was the happiest any of us have ever been.

Later that night, the fun continued when Liz and I met up with my parents in Manhattan for dinner. They were in town for the weekend to see Spamalot so they invited us to meet them for dinner. We went to Les Halles, the Kitchen Confidential restaurant, and then we went to the Algonquin for some after dinner drinks. Unfortunately we did not get the Martini on the Rocks, a $10, 000 cocktail which comes with your choice of diamond. Maybe next time, though.

The rest of the night was far less classy, spent back here at the apartment. By the time Liz and I arrived, everyone had been drinking for a significant amount of time and were either already drunk or pretty close to being so. Liz and I both thought we were gonna have difficulty getting intoxicated but, fortunately, it ended up being no problem. Several Coors Lights and a purple nurple later we were pretty tipsy. I just might have the bestest cousin ever.

So now hear I sit, ruminating over a gourmet weekend, wishing it wasn't over. If I could relive it, I would in a heart beat. I think its safe to say I wont do an ounce of work today which not only is really irresponsible but will also probably cause me some pain tomorrow when I have a million things to do. Its a sad ending to a very happy weekend but that's pretty much the standard in my life. Eh, fuck me.