Aloha from Alcohol

Very hungover to-day. At my cousin's wedding last night, I had a scotch before the ceremony, a scotch after the ceremony followed by a bourbon, an Irish whiskey, and a glass of vodka to cleanse my palate. The vodka and bourbon were complimentary, and when I went back to the bar after the vodka, the guy told me complimentary drinks time was over. I shrugged, and figured I'd had enough. But I came across an uncle tipsy on beer who said, "Can you believe they sprung the cash bar on us?" and insisted on buying me a drink even though I protested I'd already had enough. But, since he insisted, I had another scotch. At that point, I was getting curious as to just how much I could drink. But I didn't have anything else until I got home and had some Wild Turkey.

The bourbon I had at the wedding was Jack Daniels, my first time having Jack Daniels, and I found it to be a little pathetic, though I suppose being used to Wild Turkey, Jack can only seem watered down. Of course, everyone else was drinking pansy mixed drinks. The big event was the groom and some guys doing tequila shots together.



I drank harder than everyone there, I'm sure, though I spent most of the evening reading a book on women in the Middle Ages while everyone else was dancing to The Black Eyed Peas and T-Pain. I still remember the chapter on Blanche of Castile I read--she sounds like an amazing woman, but it made me think about the constant balancing act it was maintaining a kingdom in the Middle Ages. Things seemed just about to go to hell all the time, right up to her death, after which, of course, they did. Aging must have seemed particularly cruel to her.

The wedding was at the Bali Ha'i restaurant, located on Shelter Island in San Diego Bay;



My parents, and a lot of other members of my family, were staying at the nearby Humphrey's Half Moon Inn for the evening. This picture was taken from my parents' hotel room;



There was water in all directions, which was kind of cool. I was very hungry when I arrived, as it was my lunch time, so I walked to a nearby bar called Point Break--which was across from another bar called Fiddler's Green, which I'd have much rather eaten at, but it looked like the sort of place that would charge me a lot and make me wait a long time. Which is unfortunately what turned out to be the case for Point Break, where I ordered a sampler plate of appetisers from an extremely pretty waitress. "What's in the Mozzarella legs?" I asked her. I glanced at the menu, "Logs. Mozzarella logs."

"Mozzarella," she said.

I had the logs, jalapeno poppers, and onion rings. With all the drinking I was to do later, I'd say yesterday was the meanest I'd been to my body in years. It's amazing I don't feel worse to-day.



My lightweight, possibly alcoholic cousin Jared, who rode with me when my cousin Tim drove me home, was astonished that I "raw-dogged" it, by which he meant I had straight vodka. I walked back to the hotel with those two cousins, so Tim could pick up the key to his car, and Jared made obnoxious comments to every girl we passed. He and I waited for Tim in front of the hotel lobby and a teenage girl walked past to whom Jared said something like, "Where you goin'? Stay here with me."

"What?" She stopped and frowned at him with some alarm. She was with a thirteen or so year old boy in a suit and neither one of them looked like they'd been far outside of whatever palace they'd come from.

"I'm not a crazy person or anything," said Jared.

"He's a crazy person," I said to her. "Just keep going."

Later, a horny middle aged woman approached Jared and said, "I love a man in a suit."

"Yeah, baby," he said.

"I gotta go," she said.

Tim, fortunately, had stayed sober. He had just graduated high school, Santana, the same high school I'd gone to. He'd been in my friend Marty's film class, and told me Marty had assigned reading my essay on Vertigo as extra credit, which is one of the coolest things I've ever heard. Taking Marty's class in high school was one of the hugely formative experiences of my youth, introducing me to David Lynch and Ridley Scott, and a general attitude and philosophy about art. That one of my essays was an assignment in his class now really floored me.

Between that and Jared, I suddenly felt very weirdly like the adult last night.

Happy birthday, Robyn Massachusetts.



Twitter Sonnet #156

Rodents run from certain capture to port.
Bland tract housing has amassed to starboard.
Cocoanut is porcelain's last resort.
A cannon is the loo of the coward.
Scrap metal retreats to a sewer pipe.
All orang ootangs are pregnant with droids.
Tomatoes grow four limbs when truly ripe.
It's Hawaiian Punch the primate avoids.
Monkeys guzzle sugar for alcohol.
Spinning strangers blur into stiff hula.
Petrol fed steel is the modern lamb's wool.
Succour's in each leg of tarantula.
Marx siblings are remembered in the bath.
Iodine stains starch of potato's path.