March 16, 2005 - 3:07 PM

Not Following Through

We were supposed to go see Rachael Yamagata last Thursday night at the teeny tiny (relative to her current level of success) Hotel Cafe. It was me and Matt and Tony and Margaret and M's cousin Jean (not to be confused with Joan) and a few of Tony's friends. But a line of people that would have filled the place and then some was milling about the entrance before the doors opened at 8 (and that almost never happens there), so we skipped out on the concert. Instead, we walked a couple blocks up Hollywood Boulevard to the Hollywood and Highland complex where they have the Oscars, and had a nice dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.

In addition to ordering too much food for myself (leftovers!), I had a strong margarita which got me quite buzzed halfway through the glass. I think it was actually my being tipsy that made me not feel like finishing my meal while everyone else had empty plates at the end. Drinks have been few and far between for me ever since October when my birthday opened the month and our premiere/wrap party closed it. Even when I was in Vegas with my family for New Year's, I didn't drink too much, and ever since, I've had, like, maybe 5 beers altogether. So the tequila buzz was felt strongly for the rest of that night.

More boozing was in store for me as Flori asked me to head out to some bars with him on Saturday night. He's been going stir crazy at home, restricted from having a life by a broken metatarsal in a cast. We decided to hit Santa Monica around 9 that night. Beforehand, I stopped by Tony's place to eat some gumbo that Eddie made. Then it was on to the drinks. When Flori and I walked into the Circle Bar, it was empty and silent except for the bartenders and waitresses. A little perplexed, we ordered our beers and sat at the bar, talking. It soon became clear to us that they had just opened their doors and we were the first customers. An hour later, the place had filled up, Flori was on his third beer, and scary girls who shouldn't be dancing were dancing.

An hour after that, we got off our asses and leaned against the wall because Flori's ass and leg had fallen asleep from lack of bloodflow. He pointed out a cute brunette wearing an Audrey Hepburn/50's cocktail party black dress at the end of the bar and remarked on how interesting it was to see her outfit in this crowd. I agreed that it was striking and cute and effectively gave her a classy air. A few minutes later, she walked past us to go to the ladies room. When she made the return trip, Flori stopped her and complimented her on her dress. In a delicious Irish lilt, she graciously thanked him and explained that she was borrowing clothes from a friend. A sudden crush of patrons forced her against the wall between us and she conversed some more with Flori while waiting for space to move out and get back to her friends.

Not that Flori was boorishly hitting on her, or being a wanker. He just wasn't doing a good job of keeping up an intereting conversation, and he admitted as much when she left. She was quite fetching, with her accent and her outfit and her cuteness and her being in town just to visit her parents, but I didn't want to confuse matters by trying to engage her in small talk, too, so we just let it go. After I ribbed Flori about his long and involved answer to her laughingly asked question of "So are you two actors or producers or something?"

Feeling a little self-conscious in the now-packed bar with 50 Cent and R Kelly blaring over the soundsystem, we found our way out to the street. I decided to introduce Flori to the Irish Car Bomb, so we went up to Finn MacCool's Pub. A much more comfortable environement for us, as it was more brightly lit with rock music setting a nice aural environment (in fact, I was awfully happy to be greeted with Pulp's "Common People" over the soundsystem). Flori botched the Carbomb by not chugging it. As the Bailey's curdled in the mixture of Guinness and Jameson's, he complained that I had just ruined a perfectly fine Guinness. Philistine.

We agreed to have one more beer before we left, but first I had to go out to the car to feed the meter. When i returned, Flori was talking with a girl on the barstool next to him. She turned out to be a birthday girl who was, at that point, drunk as a skunk and hitting on him. Flori, a handful of beers and shots of scotch into thei ngiht himself was receptive. I'm kinda kicking myself now for not having been there the entire time to see what happened because I've NEVER seen the bar hookup happen in my life. It's always seemed like a fairy tale you hear about or see in movies and on tv, but not something that actually occurs in real life. I hung around for a few minutes, saw that they were hitting it off, went back to the car to get Flori's house keys (I'd driven), made sure to sternly tell them to be safe getting home, and left them at the bar to further discuss Henry James and Herman Hesse or whatever it is you discuss when you're picking up someone at a bar. I was laughing to myself all the way back to the 405, the whole thing was so surreal to me.

Flori emailed me the next day to say that he probably should have left with me, because as soon as she dropped him off at his apartment, she threw up on the sidewalk, and he had to babysit her the rest of the night. Ahhh, isn' that sweet?

Saturday I didn't go to a show at the Tangier Restaurant so that I could finish mixing Adrianne's CD (it's out in the mail right now, on its way to be mastered), and then I went over to Matt and Sharon's to coach Matt on drafting preparation and strategies for our fantasy baseball draft this coming Saturday. We didn't get through all the players and positions, petering out before dinner and interrupting ourselves to watch Arrested Development.

Oh, if you want to read an interesting and informative interview with Will Arnett, who plays GOB on AD, go to Television Without Pity.

Monday night Matt and I chickened out of heading over to the Hotel Cafe again to see Aqualung in concert. We were afraid it was going to be a replay of the Yamagata incident. Oh, and last night, LDBL told me to change my Warcraft character's name to "Doesn'tfollowthroughonpromises" because I informed him that I won't be able to play cello for the reception.

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Random Thought : I saw a tall pale guy dressed in a red suit with a red tophat at a newsstand today. I think he was Marilyn Manson.

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