Office Party

The rooftop bar babbles with conversation, while the speakers push inoffensive pop through the cool evening air. My third plastic cup of wine hums pleasantly in my chest and turns the quickly coming sunset into a Maxfield Parrish while my boss's boss's boss holds forth.

"Nobody goes into this nursing home and comes out, right?" he continues. "But there he was, ninety-one, running numbers, and when we came to pick him up to get him out of there, he was in a pink suit with a white bowtie."

Mind = Blown (Star Wars Edition)

"The problem with midi-chlorians...,"we're walking up quiet Brooklyn sidewalks at night, yellow light from the sodium lamps slanting through the leaves.

"Aside from the fact they're bullshit," I say.

"...yes, aside from that though, is that you can't have Darth Vader," he says.

"Half his body is gone, and if midi-chlorians are real, that means that half of his are gone, which means he has half the Force power," he finishes, clearly relishing the look of shock on my face.

After the Gold Flush

The farthest stall in the bathroom is occupied, so I take the one closest to the door, take down my pants, and sit.

I'm a little worried about... the sounds that accompany the act of defecation, and there's a certain amount of anxiety that comes with having to urinate simultaneously ("Oh," I imagine the other guy saying, "you sit down to pee?"), but, as the saying goes, when you've gotta go... so I go.

My fears fade away, though, as I hear, coming from somewhere (where? the women's bathroom next door, the vents, where?) music, faint, but unmistakably "After the Gold Rush" by Neil Young.

There have been no sounds from the other stall, however, and maybe the music is distracting him from his business, because I hear him, whispering, "Jesus, shut the fuck up."

Kickass Dreams in a Restless Night

Nathan Fillon (Captain Mal from "Firefly," if you remember) is a curmudgeonly, cynical, wise-cracking collector of magic articles for a ministry-of-magic sort of group, bringing in enchanted artifacts to a central office for safekeeping from the mundane world. Per protocol for his office (and in order to get paid) he has to prove his haul is magic, but on this particular day, he's brought in a bunch of little items (a pen knife, a penny, a brass cylinder that looks like a mezuzah), none of which seem to be reacting to the magic tests. 

But it turns out that no one's magic is working, as the ministry has been taken over by some kind of evil genius who has figured out a way to eliminate all magic (except his own, of course), and who threatens to make the change permanent, leaving himself as all-powerful dictator of the planet, with only Nathan Fillon having to stop him without using any magic.

Katie's alarm goes off and we lie awake in the grey half light of morning until she groans, "I didn't sleep at all last night."

Blast from the Past

The hippies are still on our front stoop when we return from the grocery store, but they quickly gather their stuff to get out of our way.

"So, what? You guys waiting for the bus?" I ask, taking a slightly chillier tone than when I first saw them going out. and the guy (dreaded, bearded, tie-dye, Lennon-glasses) nods as I step past him into our foyer.

"I love your red hair," the female of the pair calls to Katie, and the door slams to behind us.

And So On

It was almost as if the guy had been waiting for me to say something to him while we got dressed in the locker room, because as soon as I asked, he started chatting away.

"Yeah, I thought I was gonna swim in the little pool," he said, buttoning his shirt. "I did it once, but it was just too small, so I joined this one Y, that was close enough to my office? But the new pool is so much better."

A Heavy Pour

I took the last beer from my friend because he was holding two, and clearly looked like he was not relishing finishing either of them

That said, that one extra beer was a bridge too far. They have a heavy pour at this bar, and I think I was overserved.

After we got home, I stayed up, watching Queen concert videos on YouTube until the bed stopped spinning and I could fall asleep.