slumber party do's and don'ts

As with anything worth doing, practice is essential. Slumber parties are no exception. We had a great dress rehearsal, and Opening Night will be awesome. A tutorial for anyone else who wants to throw an awesome slumber party:

Do: Get an early start.

Don't: Try to cram in too much good stuff into one short night. We started off at the LA Comedy Festival for the 11pm show, featuring Hair of the Mangy Dog. They were really super funny, and the opening acts were good too.



Do: Eat junk food. We stopped by Swingers diner (seen in the movie!) for grilled cheese sandwiches, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and home-made macaroni & cheese.



Don't: Talk to the waitress. She doesn't give a shit about you. Pretend that you find her bad attitude amusing. Know what you want when she comes over and forget about refills.

Do: Tip your waitress. After she sees cash on the table, you'll get a pained smile. It's all that she can muster because her disdain for you is unwaivering.

Do: Stock up on licorice and assorted candies from Trader Joe's. Then, proceed to eat ALL of them.

Don't: Forget to brush your teeth. Adam will show you his patented 13 step process for perfect teeth maintenance.

Do: Dig out several boxes full of toys to play with. Including the He-Man toy checklist (complete).



Don't: Forget to take lewd pictures of the action figures. Also, tease She-Ra's boyfriend "Bow" because he is such an emo wimp. (He has a beating heart!)



Don't: Dump out the boxes at 4am to make the sorting process go faster. Because it will be LOUD.



Do: Make sure that everyone has time to sleep in the next day. Preferrably, before 5am. Because when someone has to be up at 8am to move furniture you will feel like a jerk for keeping them up all night.

Don't: Let the clock deter you. Break out the Legos.



Do: Tease Adam endlessly for painstakingly storing his Legos in the original boxes. But then secretly admire the brilliance of it and covet all the tiny Lego people with Peter Pan-like outfits.



Don't: Let anyone leave. Even if they have legitimate reasons to go home. Better yet, DO plan ahead so that no one has an early morning plan.

Do: Fall asleep quickly. Ryan and I were given the bed (fancy, fancy!) and we pretty much sat down and fell asleep immediately. Hey! At least we didn't un-make the bed!

Don't: Have to wake up early (I cannot stress this enough).

Do: Have FUN. If you were well behaved, you might be invited back!

my brains are oozing outta my ears

I am literally dragging myself across the floor. My brain can't rub 2 cents together to craft a paragraph (see?). You're welcome to take the self-guided tour through my weekend of Awesome until my brain recovers. Sometime in 2056.

For instance, I just added all the pictures and links for the Hair of the Mangy Dog show and then somehow deleted them as soon as I finished. So... sorry, HotMD, those have to wait for the next post. My brain cannot handle anymore HTML.

Friday night, we saw the Mangy Dog show at the LA Comedy Festival. Then on to Swingers for middle of the night dinner. Then slumber party at Adam's house. Then Free Comic Book Day. Then PCH drive home. Then Laila's baby shower. Now... brain death.


Friday Night Slumber Party






Free Comic Book Day!

TAL pals

I don't want to brag or anything, but I think we set a new world's record for appetizer consumption last night. I'm just sayin'.

We went to see This American Life Live! which was fantastic. We jokingly admitted later that we are such suckers that we paid to watch a 2 hour commercial for the upcoming season of TAL on Showtime. But it was still worth it. There was a clip from an episode about young kids doing stand-up comedy, which was really funny and also extremely heart-wrenching. These kids had all come by comedy as a means to feel better about themselves. They weren't the classically "popular" or "athletic" kids and so they took comedy classes to give themselves an edge. I had tears in my eyes the whole time, especially when they talked about their tough days at school and being picked on. And how regardless of how funny they are, they'd give it up in a heartbeat if it meant that they could be a popular kid. SO. At the end of the presentation, there was live Q&A and one of the kids from the segment showed up to ask a question. Ira Glass was very excited and asked "Had you seen that segment before tonight?" and just then the satellite feed cuts out. We're staring at a paused screen and then the giant movie screen goes to the Dish Network menu. Everyone starts groaning and yelling to "fix it" and finally one person gets up to alert the theater staff to the problem and everyone else pulls their pitchforks out of their recycled Trader Joes tote bags and starts the lynching call of "I'm getting a REFUND for this!"

After a minute or so and realizing that the show wasn't going to resume, everyone started rushing out of the theater (refund! refund!). We decided that we were all perfectly satisfied with the two hours and twenty minutes of the show we'd gotten and we had fun and laughed and cried a bit, so we didn't need to be those people and add to the clambor. Especially when we saw the crush of people massed in front of the customer service counter. Hell hath no fury like an NPR-listening Orange County liberal democrat scorned. YES they are dripping in diamonds and YES they valet parked their $60,000 car and YES they had a soy-mocha-latte-no-foam on the way in, but they need a refund because they only got 2 hours and 20 minutes of the show and they deserve more than that!

While the Volvo People were foaming at the mouth about being short-changed, we ducked over to the Cheesecake Factory. The menu is daunting for a few reasons, including the fact that there are TOO MANY OPTIONS and also because next to the page of fried appetizers is a full-color ad for cosmetic surgery and liposuction. Undeterred, we ordered one of everything. And then also some lettuce wraps. And then also some cheesecake. Of course we ended up staying well past closing time talk-talk-talking. It's always such a good time when cool people get together (and let me tag along). Which is why: slumber party tonight.

The plan is to do Biore strips and paint toe nails and do facials and build stuff with Legos and play with the He-Man action figures and dress up in costumes. We're going to eat cheese poofs and cherry bombs and popsicles. We're going to trade ghost stories and braid each others hair. Suck it 3rd graders - we've hijacked your Ultimate Slumber Party.