"He's One Bad Mother . . ." "Shut Yo' Mouth!" "I'm Just Talkin' 'bout The Ghost of Dick Clark."

It's almost May, the overnight temperatures are in the low 30's and we're getting rain mixed with snow.  The long, arduous winter has become a chilly, miserable spring.  What better time to reminisce on a Cabin Fever Crusher from February?

I had made the decision to retire my most inappropriate impression of a post-stroke Dick Clark after this party.  This was not an impression I was proud of, and would rarely perform sober, and was a reaction to the painful awkwardness we were all subjected to every New Year's Eve since his stroke in 2004.  I can understand bringing him back the following year to show he is doing well, but allow him to retire to convalesce privately. Kirk Douglas is still doing his thing, but you don't see him shuffling out every Oscars.

At any rate, I did the impression in front of our standard group of friends to start 2014, mostly at the encouraging of my wife.  The bad mojo caught her first as she spent her first weekend of the New Year in the hospital with an abscess tooth that caused her cheek and lips to swell to a shocking degree.  The fear was the swelling could have gotten into her throat and blocked her airway.  I didn't heed the warning.

We arrived at the Crusher at the more reasonable dinner hour, bringing a bag of random beers and partial bottles of alcohol.  I took this opportunity to bring my bottle of coffee flavored Patron I was "gifted" at a distributor event in Dallas.  We also brought a bottle of Bailey's to make baby Guinnesses - a shot I learned while there.  We didn't bring a crock pot of food, but several others did, so we sampled a variety of foods with a variety of drinks.

Once everyone was fully in party mode, we broke out the game Cards Against Humanity. If there is one game you need to get, it's this one.  It's essentially "Apples to Apples" for adults, as evidenced by this exchange:

Partygoer:  How do you play? 

Me:  It's like "Apples to Apples" for adults. 

Partygoer:  What do you mean? 

Me:  Well, look at this card.  It says "jizz" on it.  No, wait.  It says "jazz."

Me:  (squinting) No, I was right the first time.  It's "jizz."

By far, the best play of the night was when the prompt card read "I've decided to give up *blank* for Lent" and an unlikely source played a card reading "farting and walking away." I went through the motions of reading the other cards, but I had already chosen my winner. The more bawdy cards freed up people to discuss sexual topics, including the difference between The Shocker and The Spocker.

Once the sex talk devolved into awkward silences, someone mercifully suggested we go sledding.  Fortunately, there were only a few of us foolhardy enough to go, leaving plenty of next of kin and organ donors.  The sledding group piled into one car and headed to a nearby golf course.  Once I saw a couple people head down on a toboggan, I decided it was safe enough for me.

I went solo on the red plank of death seen in the photo above and felt I reached speeds that wouldn't have been safe in a school zone.  I put my feet out to slow my progress, but hit the first bump that sent a lightening bolt of pain from my coccyx to the top of my head.  I started to yell "Ow!  That really hurt!" when I hit the second bump at "that." Drunken stories of my exploits later that night had me spitting blood with rivulets running down my face.  Unfortunately, tales of my badassery were greatly exaggerated, but the ghost of Dick Clark had struck again.

I pretty much called it quits after my one run.  The other sledders were getting ready to leave, so I decided to have one last try on the slope opposite the big hill. This was less steep and with virgin snow.  As I started my decent, the one young woman in our group shouted, "keep your tongue in your mouth!"  A disappointing statement to hear from a lady, no matter what the context.  I just wish I had the wherewithal to retort, "that's NOT what she said."

Back home, we nursed our respective injuries with food and alcohol.  "Cards Against Humanity" had been changed to "Scattergories."  The game had changed, but not the tone. It was amazing how many people had thought of 'nipples' and 'nuts' when the letter 'N' was drawn.  When both my clothes and liver had dried a bit, we decided to head home. I made a quick pit stop before leaving and forgot to zip up, which was quickly pointed out to me.  It reminded me of a song:

Everybody have fun tonight;

Captain's wang hung out tonight.

Cape Cod Vacation: The Saga Continues

Friday.  Saturday. Sunday. Monday.  Okay, I'm just about halfway complete with documenting the one vacation I took this summer.  Although we lost the youngest of the adult members of our family when my sister headed home, we still had lots of fun things to see and do.

The agenda for Tuesday was to travel to P-Town (Provincetown to the uninitiated) to do some shopping and top notch people watching.  P-Town is a Mecca for the LGBT community and draws all sorts of artists, writers, poets, entertainers, and people who just don't give a shit about what people think of them anymore, as well as their patrons and gawkers.  It's a small seaside town, but packed to the gills with people.

But first, we had a family game morning at the kitchen table.  My brother and his family like to play the board game Dixit.  This is essentially a cross between Apples To Apples and Balderdash.  Each player gets a turn to "tell a story," which could be a phrase, gesture, or sound.  All players have a hand of cards with pictures on them and each puts in the best match for the story.  Players can earn points by selecting the card the storyteller played or having other players select his/her offering.  Each player has a game piece that marks the number of points earned until someone reaches the end and wins.  The rules are simple enough that G-Bug and my nephews were all able to play.  Although the oldest, I probably had the least mature story, as I went with "who farted?"  The accompanying pictures from all the players made the story hilarious.

Around lunchtime we headed to P-Town.  The day was one of the hottest of the trip with bright sun and blue sky.  There was a long line of cars at the first turn off the highway into town so we traveled on to the next light.  This took us by our usual parking lot we use when we visit, but the lot was already full.  We headed toward the tower and circled the area until we lucked out and found a spot someone had just vacated.  We were just two blocks away from the main drag (considering this was P-Town I feel obligated to say "no pun intended").  We met the rest of our group across the street from a Pilgrim memorial.

We did a little bit of window shopping as we made a slow progress down Commercial Street.  The streets were jammed with people, bicyclists, and the occasional car or service van.  A short time passed before we were starting to get hungry, so we made our way to a small food court nearby.  Everyone had a different taste in mind for lunch, so each person went to his/her choice and we met on a deck overlooking the water.  There was a bar on the deck and my brother, the Wifey, and I got a beer.  I just had a bowl of clam chowder for lunch while others got chicken, burritos or hamburgers.  We were able to get a table with an open umbrella to shade us and allow us to enjoy the view.

We did more active shopping after lunch.  There were a couple boutique-style stores that G-Bug liked and she bought a shirt at one store.  My brother bought her some perfume at this store as a birthday gift.  Also at this store was an artist's portfolio which contained several drawings of men (one endowed with what looked like a fence post) in various stages of "relations."  My oldest nephew flipped through a few pages with a look of shock on his face.  I told him he should probably just close the book.  Unlike most instruction, he followed this one immediately.

We only toured a small section of Commercial Street before the heat and humidity started to take their toil.  We had to make one more stop at Cuffy's, the true indicator of a successful Cape Cod trip.  On every trip to the Cape, my family had stopped at this store to get a sweatshirt or T-shirt.  My closet holds 4 or 5 sweatshirts and my dresser is filled with twice as many T-shirts, but I opted for one more T-shirt this trip.  I found a nice gray one for Cape League baseball.  One of the best things about Cuffy's shirts is they are ready to wear soft right off the shelf.  Most souvenir shop shirts feel scratchy to me and I have to wash them before wearing them.  We stopped at Twisted Pizza and Ice Cream before heading home.

We had a couple hours to rest and freshen up before the couples headed out for a night of their own.  The Tutus agreed to watch the kids while the parents had a chance to whoop it up.  Our evening started at the Wicked Oyster, a fancy restaurant located in Wellfleet. We showed up a little early for our 7:30 reservations, but they were able to accommodate us.  We had a round of drinks before dinner and another round during.  Knowing we were going to close our Cape vacation with a lobster dinner, I stayed away from most of the seafood.  I finally settled on the duck trio.  It was very good, but too much food, and I had to leave some on my plate.

Las Vegas Day Two: May 26, 2011

I had set the alarm on my phone for 9a so we wouldn’t waste the morning, but we all started stirring at about 8a.  Mike was rolling over and I reminded him I wasn’t his wife before he decided to grab a teat and tell me to roll over.  There were a slew of things we wanted to do and we decided to put together a schedule over breakfast.  We crossed Las Vegas Boulevard (it really doesn’t become “The Strip” until night time) to the Denny’s directly opposite the Monte Carlo.

There was a fair-sized line for a table and Rob agreed to wait for our turn while Mike and I tried to find the movie theatre.  We knew one thing we wanted to do was to see The Hangover Part 2 on its opening day.  This, too, was conveniently across the street from the Monte Carlo, but the entrance wasn’t obvious.  We saw a sign for the theatre, but it was over the entrance to the parking ramp.  We went to the next pedestrian entrance and took the escalator upstairs.  This turned out to be the department store, Ross.  Rather than losing ourselves trying to find the theatre, we immediately turned around and took the escalator downstairs.  We figured we wouldn’t be able to find it before our table was ready, so we cut our losses and went back to Denny’s.  Outside we saw “actors” dressed as Elmo and Bumblebee trying to convince people to pay for pictures with them.

Once at our table, we had plenty of time to plan our day.  In fact, I would say the wait for the food took longer than the wait for the table.  At one point, the waitress said she had put our order “on the slow side.”  Thanks to Rob’s restaurant industry experience, he knew she probably had forgotten to put in our order.  I was fine with the delay, as I would have the chance to tell her I put my wallet “in the other pants.” 

Meanwhile, we planned to hang out by the pool and then take in a matinee showing of Hangover 2.  We would also purchase tickets to a couple of the shows we wanted to see, including Jabbawockeez at the Monte Carlo and one of the many Cirque du Soleil offerings.  I recommended seeing the Crazy Horse Paris show at the MGM Grand (formerly known as Le Femme).  The Wife and I saw this show a few years ago and it was very titillating, emphasis on the “tit.”  We decided to have dinner that night at Bahama Breeze as Rob could get us a discount on the meal; again, thanks to Rob’s influence in the restaurant industry.  We felt a lot better having a plan in place.

After breakfast, we made another effort to find the movie theatre entrance and eventually asked a security guard for help.  If we had walked the other way down the cross street, we would have found it.  We decided to catch the 2:45p matinee and returned to the Monte Carlo.  We visited the concierge to see what tickets we could get for a Cirque du Soleil show.  I was on board for Zumanity, but I think the consensus was for O at the Bellagio.  Regardless, the prices were well above what we wanted to pay, so we chose to get tickets for Jabbawockeez for Friday night.  Since we were guests at the hotel, we received a discount on the tickets.