Bay Area Darkfriend Social

December 29, 1996

Hawk and I decended upon the Chevy's restaurant in Mountain View, California, at about 1:50pm on Sunday the 29th. Several people we expected did not attend. Aaron Bergman chose to sit in a puddle of mud beneath a torrential downpour and watch the 49ers play football. Tony had important family needs to take care of. Ken Kofman got eaten by Trollocs. And Don Harlow and brood chose to stay home and away from the roads since they were afraid of the 98% of all California drivers who have no earthly clue how to drive in the rain.

A few people did bother to come. Rick Moen arrived promptly at 2:00, bringing Troy Terry, Brian Postow (aka "@cs.orst.edu"), and Lisa Postow along on the handlebars of his bicycle. Emma Pease joined our bunch, noting as she sat down that the hostess pointed her to our table before she could so much as say, "I'm here to meet 10 people I've never seen before." (Emma has met most of us, but the saying is now a formula, much like "Against what do we guard? The shadow at noon" etc.) Drew, aka Kid Probability rounded the group out at 8, and the social was afoot.

(You can see us in the picture page.)

As 3 attendees were ex-DC Darkfriends, we limited ourselves to one table at the restaurant.

Since the DC Darkfriends were having a social on the same day, possibly with overlapping hours (factoring in the 3-hour time lag between coasts), Hawk thought we should have people with cell phones attend each social and put the groups into contact with each other. Brian wanted to know, if we did that, whether it'd count as having one table or two. Let me offer the answer that Albert Einstein might have given (borrowed from his explanation of the Telegraph):

"You see, it's like a social with one very big table. Bill's throwing coins down Hawk's blouse at one end, and Chad's complaining about losing his appetite at the other end. Except there is no table."

There were some real hum-dingers of witty sayings at the restaurant, but I forget most of them. The one I remember was when, at some point, Troy pointed out that we'd mentioned "Wal-Mart" more often than "Novak". Brian piped up in a teevee announcer voice, "We've secretly replaced Novak in this conversation with Wal-Mart. Let's see if anyone notices." (Sorry, Brian, but "Wal-Mart's being mean to newbies!" just doesn't sound right.)

Brian and Lisa discovered that they are related to Hawk. I am not making this up. And I'm not talking about Erica's family trees. Hawk mentioned her aunt Lillian Postow, and Brian said, "Hey, WE have an aunt Lillian Postow, too...."

We talked a lot about books at the social. Or, I should say, everybody but Lisa and I talked a lot about books. I hate books. I don't see why people waste their time reading books and talking about them. Don't y'all have better things to do?

After about 3 hours we decided that the ring of waiters standing impatiently around our table meant it was time to leave. We gathered for the obligatory group photograph and discovered that Clint Eastwood had joined us. Carmel's not that far away....

Hawk and I invited the gang back to our place for some post-social socializing. Once there, we broke out the booze and the weapons. As usual, Hawk's whips were very popular. The knives went over well, too; Troy even sharpened one for Hawk.

My "Darkfriend Family Album" was popular, too. It's a photo album of darkfriend socials I've been to. Not every social is shown in there, and not every picture ever taken is shown, but it's more complete than what you can find on the web. (That's primarily because some pictures that look good on photographic paper look terrible when scanned in to a computer and displayed on a monitor.) The favorites were... no, I won't embarass them here. You'll have to come to a social I'm at to see my personal extortion files.

Scottina B. Good called us from Nevada. As Drew said, she "expressed regret that she couldn't make it." I think that was a euphemism for what Scottina really said to him on the phone....

Here are some memorable quotes from the evening:

We broke up at about 9. I had a great time, but I don't remember many other details. Too much glue sniffing, I suppose.


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Bill Garrett
garrett@cs.unc.edu