2000-08-06 | 04:16:43

we are interrupting this ex-games broadcast for a special announcement.

apologies to anyone who's been slogging through my extra-long entries of late. i'm working through something, bear with me.

but before i dive back into my parade of former paramours, i want to share the story of stephanie's goodbye party held in honor of her exodus to new york.

due to circumstances beyond my control, we were forced to hold the event at a very hollywoody bar/restaurant called jones. it's got a cool vibe. i bet it's a great place to be on a wednesday night. dark wood, red lights, sophisticated hip on the east coast tip. on friday and saturday nights? fuggeddaboudit. packed to the gills with ickos people. hawk-eyed players and silicon-packing skanks.

bleh. so i reserved a table over the phone that afternoon. the hostess informed me that there was a 10-minute grace period. after that, our table was gone. with a 7:30 p.m. reservation, we had to be out of our table by 9 p.m. everyone had to order at least $10 worth of food, drinks not included. ohmigod. the pressure! i asked for a bunch of appetizers and the waiter had to go run the numbers to make sure we had purchased enough meat to keep our seats. whew! just made it. i felt compelled to become our mealtime coach: "ok, people. look alive! who wants a crab cake? time's a'wastin'. enough with the chit-chat. focus, people, focus! move! move! move! you! calamari! stat!"

at 8:55, we took our booth leave for drunker pastures in the bar area. too many people. not enough space. claustrophia is people! trippin', bumpin' and apologizin' all around. heccos! one pleased-as-punch fella in our group, brian, remarked that girls squeezing past him kept running into his back with their breasts. he was beside himself! a new hobby discovered! we decided that since many of the mammary mounds had been surgically supersized, the girls in possession of said mounds had lost their sense of depth of field. like negotiating the difference between parking a compact car and an SUV. boink! oops! boink! so sorry. boink! so what are you doing later? wanna boink?!

but it was a cool night as far as the people who had come bringing good wishes to stephanopolous. very cool people she be knowin' and ish. she be flossin' some aite peeps.

like this one guy, david, who serendipityly revealed that he had grown up in the same small town as my college crush robert (see previous entry--i'm too lazy to link)! i told david about how i had made my parents drive me through robert's hometown on the way to visit my grandma in central california. i related the tale with some embarassment, but david said that he thought that it was cool that i did that. (isn't it even cooler that i used the word "that" four times in a sentence?) he reassured me that it was a romantic gesture. like when he used to drive by the houses of girls he liked. that's so "say anything," isn't it? (another movie i love. lloyd dobbler, where are you? come to mama!)

other aite peeps included steph's cute surfer buddy, joe, who showed to wish her bah-bye. he resembles actor michael ontkean (good actor, pretentious poet--i heard him do a reading once and it killed the crush i had nursed on him ever since his role as the romantic lead in the kristy mcnichol movie, "just the way you are." i love that goddamn movie. just fucking love it. oh, and he was in "voices" with amy irving where she was the deaf girl he falls for. ahhhhhh! crush rush! ok, michael, i'll forgive the poetry mishap. come to mama! oh, and he played sheriff truman on "twin peaks," for you non-kristy fans.)

ANNNNNNyway, joe looks like ontkean. (i always think people look like celebrities. our waiter looked like dell on "caroline in the city." he gets that a lot, he said. i hate that show by the way. hate. hate. hate. perky girl must die.)

so, joe is a surfer who makes surf films for a living. what a racket, aye? anyway, he's got the lazy, cool, mellow, warm surfer vibe. he's just great to be around for that. plus, the dimples. i'm so sure! plus, he uses great slang like "heccos" (hectic) and "ickos" (icky).

so it's getting to be around 2 a.m. and there are rumblings in our group of going for food. the first posse of six leaves and then steph, joe and i decide that this place is dead anyway and take off. joe lets us know that his buddy hank has been crashed in the car all this time. got his party on early and needed a disco nap.

so weez pull up by joe's car and see hank doing a bleary-eyed stretch. he's a big guy. probably 6 foot 2 or something. burly. coaches water sports for a living. tan. tossled hair. rugged good looks. total surfer persona. when he speaks, shades of jeff spicoli. fucking hilarious. sometimes on purpose, sometimes not.

so we roll up on the designated late night diner and join the noshers already in progress. hank made himself useful by checking out every single girl who walked past us. by checking out, i mean head turning to follow them, doing the old up-and-down appraisal, and peering over the tops of his shades (yes, he wears his sunglasses at night. ah, hank? corey hart called. he wants his gimmick back.)

"lotsa jewish hotties around here, man," hank drawled 'n' drooled to joe. "you can tell. they look high-maintenance."

"they're point grinders, man," said joe. i said, "eh?" then the two boys explained it as a line from a scene in "big wednesday" where a challenger accuses his nemesis's girlfriend of being a ho. point grinder=ho.

"is that a good movie?" i asked. "it's a guy movie," answered hank as he watched a rayon-coated ass pass. "it's a SURFER guy movie," qualified joe, bemused at his horndog wingman.

hank soon began to regale us with the tale of his fourth of july 2000 arrest for organizing and spearheading the criminal act of chucking water balloons at police officers.

"we were gonna mix it up a bit with the men in blue. raise a ruckus and what not," he explained. "you know, the fourth's a good day to examine your feelings on independence and personal freedoms and what not." no doubt. he demonstrated a slow-motion account of himself lobbing a cop-bound water balloon with his right hand as another officer, approaching rapidly from behind, simultaneously slapped a cuff on his left hand.

the arresting officer's name was lieberman. as they drove to headquarters, hank began a stream-of-consciousness manifesto on the violation of civil liberties meted out by certain dirty cops in backrooms with broom sticks, etc. then he took a more personal approach as he addressed the officer.

"hey man, i know you're gonna let me go. you know why? because your name is lieberman. lieber means "free." get it? free...man." hank raised his eyebrows at this point in the story and waited a beat for that to sink in. "it's true, yaknow? latin-based, man."

ahahahahahaha!

more girl glancin' and fingers-on-formica tappin' as hank told us about some skin-tight, brown velour pants he had sported recently. vaaaaleeeeeour, he pronounced. latin-based, no doubt. hank disclaimed that he would only wear the fuzzy pantalones in style-appropriate venues. like "rowdy, rowdy lifeguard parties."

after the fashion update, hank told about how he had given up on true, lasting love. he was recently burned by a jealous czech girl. "remember that little...well, she wasn't little...that medium-sized european girl i was seeing?" he inquired. "yeah, well, it didn't work out. you know, me and joe are kinda in a place where girls aren't a part of our top game right now. you know, it's cool. life goes in cycles."

then he inquired if me or steph knew of any jacuzzi action in the immediate vicinity. we had none to proffer, so we hugged our goodbyes and retired to our respective cribs, post haste.

god bless you, hank. i hope you found a bubble jet at just the right height. for real.

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