Happy Birthday, misreall!
In honor of misreall, my best friend in all the world who is unrelated by blood... I give you a Top Ten List.
(Because friends steal from each other. It just happens.)
My Top Ten Favorite Experiences With Misreall
(These are in no particular order, except for #1)
10. Our road trip to Bethlehem, PA to see the Red Elvises. We made mix tapes (yes, tapes!) for the road (hers were much cooler and had a theme, natch), we played "shag, marry, or push-off-a-cliff" across the entire state of Ohio, I ended up with the most spectacular, eggplant-colored bruise on my knee, and we saw the best Red Elvises show EVER. Igor stripped down to his boxers not five feet in front of us. Plus we danced to "Sweet Caroline" played by the quintessential Italian Wedding Band.
9. Also a Red Elvises moment. (Not the last one, either.) We were in ... was it Madison, L? ... somewhere in Wisconsin, anyway, and we had been to many shows at that point, right up in front dancing our asses off, and we're sitting on a little loveseat watching the band set up (we were cool, we didn't approach) and here comes Igor and we went all deer-in-the-headlights as he stepped over the little bannister that blocked off our seating alcove (I will never use that word without thinking of In Bruges.) and sat down on the loveseat with us and said hello. We became part of the Inner Circle. And now at every show all the band members greet us like old friends and give us hugs and usually sit down and chat for awhile when they have time. And how cool do WE feel? Hah!
8. Watching 24 in a hotel room in L.A., sharing the WORST chocolate cream pie you can imagine. It tasted every bit of plastic as the forks. It doesn't sound like it should be a great memory, but it is.
7. Going to see an early screening of Two Towers. It was a weekday morning and it was snowing and Chicago looked really pretty and I was wearing an awesome coat. We walked to the theater and we were really early so we stopped for some Mexican hot chocolate along the way. I was practically vibrating with excitement at seeing the movie (I was deep in the throes of my LotR obsession at the time) and she thought I was just adorable in my fangirlyness and very likely feeling like a mom taking her daughter to see the Christmas tree at Rockafeller Center. We were among the first into the theater and the movie was all kinds of awesome and I was walking on bunnies. But they didn't mind.
6. Our trip to New Orleans for our 35th birthdays. We had a whole conversation about how great a name Jack is and how the most awesome, iconic fictional characters are so frequently named Jack. There's Jack Bauer and Jack Kelly and Jack Aubrey and Jack Sparrow and Jack Harkness (although we hadn't met him yet) and many more. We sat at Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop and drank hurricanes all afternoon and had conversations about Jack, which mostly took the form of questions. What would each Jack do in a bar fight? What item does each Jack always have with him? That conversation is still going five years later, leading us to ...
5. Pick a random Jackfest. Ever since that New Orleans trip, we've been having Jackfests. Three or four times a year we make jambalaya and a huge pitcher of hurricanes, we sit in my living room, and we watch Jack. Master & Commander, Pirates of the Caribbean, 24, Newsies, Torchwood, and so on. We toast each Jack as he appears and we get rather pickled and occasionally we take a break to walk a couple of blocks to the Nola cafe and eat beignets. And one time aunt_deen almost got into a drunken brawl on the way (hey, this bitch was thinkin she could front my girl) but thank goodness calmer heads (see misreall) prevailed and we all walked away unscathed. And in our case, giggling like madwomen.
4. Celebrity moments. We went to a party in L.A. which was attended by the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was held in this incredible Foreign Legion Hall on Hollywood Blvd, very cool art deco building, and it had a great bar (with a pair of very cute bartenders) in the basement. We drank a lot and I wanted to get my picture taken with various famous people and misreall was much cooler (as she usually is) and was content to be camera girl. But we both ended up having great celebrity moments. I asked James Marsters (squeeeee!!!) if I could take a picture with him and he said, "Sure, but it's too dark in here." So he took me by the hand and ran out to the brighter room with me trailing along wearing (I'm sure) a very dippy expression, and then he grabbed my waist and pulled me close and we got a (blurry, but I don't care) picture. Then misreall wanted her one and only picture to be with this guy who played the demon karaoke singer on Angel. This guy showed up with a girlfriend AND a boyfriend and was too fabulous for words. He took one look at misreall and said, "Oh god, I LOVE your outfit!" And the angels sang ...
3. My 30th birthday. We went to a gay bar called Big Chicks, escorted by the lovely John & Bob and joined by the equally-lovely Jenn. (marymary was busy with tiny children at the time and it seems so wrong in retrospect that she wasn't there.) We danced for hours and the bartender made the most lethal Cosmos ever (described by misreall as "a martini glass full of vodka, over which the bartender has waved a bag of Craisins.") and Bob and I went outside for fresh air and it was freezing and he hugged me and gave me a kiss which was very nice because he's gorgeous, and then we went back in and danced some more and I was just profoundly drunk and misreall had to prop me up against the wall and keep a hand on me so I didn't slide down it and then we went out for lots of greasy food and I didn't even end up with much of a hangover.
2. Pick a Red Elvises show. Folks, they are your favorite band, even if you don't know it yet. We pick a spot right between Igor and Oleg (we still miss Zhenya, that traitorous fuck) and we grin at Adam whenever he unfolds his six & a half feet from behind the drum set and we dance and dance and cheer and dance some more and Oleg frequently aims that manic, salacious grin of his at us and if we're insanely lucky the set will include "Boogie on the Beach" AND "Blue Moon" and sometimes there's a conga line and we get sweaty and exhausted and our throats hurt from yelling and our feet hurt from dancing and it is the Most. Fun. Ever. You just don't know what you're missing if you haven't seen them.
1. Driving home from a Red Elvises show in Indiana. It was really late and aunt_deen isn't really a night person and was getting dangerously sleepy. We got some coffee and rolled down the windows to let in some freezing air and just cranked the show tunes. We sped northward, singing at the top of our lungs (still couldn't hear ourselves over the music) and it was as much fun as the show we'd just left. Singing "Your Song" from Moulin Rouge (I think we did that whole soundtrack, actually) and "Here's to Love" from Down With Love and "Gee Officer Krupke" from West Side Story. It was truly one of life's perfect moments.
So have an awesome birthday, misreall. Love you a lot.