Martha Stewart and the Ass of Doom

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 4:30PM -- The external temperature gauge in my car registered a balmy 73 degrees F as I drove past houses festooned with dazzling Christmas lights and Santa Claus displays and painted plywood snowmen on the suburban street where Eric and Noell Milota live. A knock on the door of their house brought me the energetic "Ohmigosh we are SO excited you're here" welcome I always look forward to receiving after a long drive-- except that in this case it came in the form of frenzied barking from two dogs locked in the garage. Nobody answered the door. Alas, despite delaying my arrival by 20 minutes while touring the city of Thousand Oaks, California to debug the driving directions Noell emailed me ("Hmm, I seem to be at another dead end surrounded by tumbleweeds, maybe I should go back to the last intersection and turn left instead of right") I had apparently beaten her home from work... unless, of course, she and Eric were hiding in the garage and barking like dogs.

Noell drove up 10 minutes later and welcomed me into her house. Eric wasn't due home for another hour and a half, so we passed the time with a tour of the house and lots of discussion about buying furniture, choosing carpeting, selecting interior paints (including rag-on versus sponge-on techniques), having the right kind of wood stain, and coordinating decorating motifs. Y'know, all that girl stuff I love to talk about.

Once we exhausted our abilities to channel Martha Stewart we turned to booze. Noell mixed her favorite cocktail, Sex On The Beach, and asked me for my opinion. After all, I am recognized as the unofficial bartender of the DFS circuit despite having no qualifications for the job other than virtually always drinking whatever combination of alcohol someone hands me. "Needs more Midori," I suggested. "No, I was wrong, what it actually needed was more grapefruit juice," I corrected after that. "Hmm, now it tastes too weak. It needs more vodka." After a while I wasn't sure what the drink needed except a bigger glass. Life could be worse.

As we drank we debated what kind of food to have for dinner. Middle Eastern? Thousand Oaks doesn't have that. Indian? Thousand Oaks doesn't have that. Greek? Not in Thousand Oaks. What's here, then? Little but generic American chain restaurants, although for palettes demanding of variety there are, like, a bazillion of them in town. Shoot, in Silicon Valley I eat things like korma, enchiladas, and kabobs every week. Meatloaf and mashed potatos sounded downright exotic. So we decided that with Eric and Noell's help I'd pop my Cheesecake Factory cherry.

It being a Friday night during Christmas shopping season (apparently everybody was out buying more lights and plywood snowmen to place in front of their stucco'ed southwestern-styled villas) getting seats at the restaurant meant waiting 45 minutes. We passed the time by continuing with our favorite pastime, Martha Stew-- I mean, drinking. We all got on the wagon and stayed dry at the dinner table, but back home at Eric and Noell's place we resumed having Sex On The Beach. I suggested making it as a frozen drink in the blender. Eric scoffed at that idea, asking what it would be called-- "Sex In The Snow?" "Sex On The Beach With A Slurpee," I countered. Or just "Slurpee Sex On The Beach."

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 3:30PM -- Eric, Noell, and I had slept off the previous day's Sex On The Beach fairly well, rising at respectable hours, eating lunch, and getting ready for the other DFS guests (which mostly entailed having more Sex On The Beach). Bill McCarthy called to say he was just leaving his house. Leigh Butler called to say she'd just woken up.

Jamie Bowden arrived first, followed soon after by Dave Rothgery. After the two of them got the tour of the house, all 5 of us fell into another Martha Stewart discussion of home decor. "I don't buy furniture that requires assembly anymore," asserted Eric. "Yeah, I have this great desk I bought that's solid pine," boasted Dave. "Pine?" Jamie asked incredulously. "I'm going oak all the way." "Oh," I countered loftily, "you still think oak is good enough."

Ben Adams, Bill McCarthy and Heather Ortiz arrived later, with Leigh Butler coming by at about 6pm still blinking the sleep out of her eyes. Craig Moe also arrived at some point, carried in by ants who'd trekked all the way down from my house in Sunnyvale (see last week's social report). Come to think of it, I believe I saw them on the 101, lost with the directions Noell sent out. Food was served and more Sex On The Beach was had.

After dinner we played two party games: musical chairs and blow the kangaroo. We played musical chairs because there were slightly more people in the living room than there were seats. Everytime someone got up, someone else stole his or her chair. Except Craig and Heather; they just sat on each other. (Tho' Heather did once complain about Craig's "ass of death" coming down on her.)

We played blow the kangaroo because... well, I'm not sure why. Because it was there, I guess. Heather grabbed it first and, after several minutes of hard blowing, got it fairly erect. Bill McCarthy and I danced gleefully around her taking pictures with our digital cameras. Then the kangaroo was handed to me and I committed various lewd acts with it, images of which were shot by Bill and Leigh and are probably illegal in a few states. (Hey, Leigh, are you going to list animal porn cinematography on your Hollywood resume?) After being fisted the little Aussie was getting fairly flaccid, so Noell blew it back to rigidity and placed it safely away from the rest of us.

At previous socials we've spent entire evenings making fun of people who weren't there. This time we decided that that was so done already that we made fun of each other instead. Oops, wait, we did make fun of one person who wasn't there. We all ragged on Rich Boyé for several minutes. Then we made fun of each other. The way were all going at one another other you'd think we hated each others' guts, but it was all in good fun. I mean, I was just pretending when I said all those snide things. You guys were pretending, too, right? Guys?

In the course of our many hours of vicious sniping we came up with so many funny lines that it was impossible to remember them all. Rothgery did try to write them down (what a fuckin' geek) but gave up part way through, as even then he'd already screwed up half the ones he did write down. I can't even remember any of my lines, except my parody of the recent Visa commercials, the punchline of which was "Your ass virginity, priceless."

2am rolled around sooner than anyone expected. Leigh left for another party. Everyone else went to bed.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9, 10:00AM -- The gang from the night before was finishing waking up for the day, except Leigh who was probably just getting to bed. We killed time watching some pointless football game (but I needn't repeat myself) on TV until Nathan "Doc Bladder" Lundblad came over to join us for brunch. We argued briefly about who was driving and then piled into the cars for a trip to Marie Callendar's.

The no-talent ass clowns at Marie's managed to screw up our reservations but sat us quickly anyway, although they stuck the 10 of us at a table sized only for 9. Guess who got the loser seat sandwiched between Craig and Heather. ("Hey, that's MY leg you're stroking!") Vast amounts of pork were consumed. Nathan, dressed in a fashion that put him just one wad of crumpled newspaper away from being a convincing vagrant, menaced an elderly woman over the steam tray of chicken wings. Craig tried to describe his job but generally failed, unless his job is to combine ordinary words into phrases that normal people can't understand.

We eventually became sated from artery-clogging meaty goodness and retired back to La Casa de Milota (which is Spanish for "The Casa de Milota"). Craig bailed early while the rest of us went back to watching a football game on TV. Apparently nothing had progressed in the game; men in tights were still taking turns bending over and chasing each other around the field. I stood up and announced I needed to leave, and suddenly everyone else decided to leave, too. Woo-hoo! I was the party wrecker! (I've waited years for that distinction....)

Amidst handshakes, hugs, ass-gropes, and last-minute zingers on the front lawn everyone said their goodbyes and then hit the road. I got as far as the edge of the subdivision before I realized that in the middle of all that handshaking, hugging, ass-grabbing, and zinging I'd forgotten to say goodbye to our generous co-host, Eric. I promptly turned around and drove back to remedy that oversight. Well, okay, I'd also realized that I'd left a CD at their house.

Finally, as befits a traveler like me, the weekend ended not with a bang, or a whimper, or with the harmonizing screams of simultaneous climax (bummer) but with a long drive home. 350 miles, 5 hours, 3 radar traps, 0 speeding tickets.

I'd like to thank all the people who made this weekend possible, but especially Eric and Noell who generously opened their house to a bunch of cantankerous perverts like us. I'd also like to thank all the little people who helped-- you know, the random midgets, who pop up occasionally for no apparent reason anytime you wave a camera around within 50 miles of Hollywood.

I'm looking forward to the next time we can get together. Think "beach"!

If you haven't seen the pictures yet, you may want to check them out now.