Per the norm, I'm listening to Guster:Keep It Together, and everything is right with the world. No idea why, it just is.

Last night. Wow. I am the man with the super power. My power: avoiding the soap opera. You know the soap opera of life. You've got a friend or two, does something real stupid and suddenly everyone is having little conferences in the back room, or outside, or upstairs and suddenly I'm deprived of one of my favorite games: tracking who is hooking up with who during the night. It ain't me, so I might as well know and give people shit for it the next day.

So I've got this bubble. Its the official "Soap Opera Prevention Bubble". This bubble extends to as far as I'm paying attention so it can, and will, grow and shrink over the course of the night. How do I create this bubble or field? I have no idea. Sometimes its best not to question the wonders of God's infinite wisdom.

This bubble was invoked well before I realized it. In fact, it was prolly created as soon as I was approaching Dan(notonthisblog)'s house. There's just something absolutely awful and totally fun about New Year's at Dan(notonthisblog)'s house. Good tradition and always a story. Always an awful story that's funny because I laugh at pain, but its there.

The first thing the bubble did was try to get me to go home. It knew it would fail at least a little before the night was over. However, I had spent a considerable amount of money on beer, so I was staying until the beer was done. I'm on my second to last beer and I meet the official bullet head of that party. He's the guy that seems okay at first, bunch of great stories, but he refuses to believe that you ever understand him. He's also the first guy to ever have more impressive "holy shit, last night..." stores than me. Of course, I didn't realize that he was the bullet head until later.

People are showing up, party is, finally, starting to swing. Sexual innuendos are flying. I keep popping outside for a smoke. Its nice and cool out there, and then one time, I come back in. People are missing. This is, by and large, okay. I didn't do a very accurate head count, but I wasn't particularly worried at the moment. Then I got the most intense desire to meet new people. Maybe it was because there were some attractive females I didn't know there, or maybe I was getting drunk. Far more likely is that the bubble new what was going on and needed to get me the hell out of the soap opera that was brewing.

By this point, whatever happened has already happened. I can honestly say, I don't know what happened last night. I was just kinda, you know, there. If last night ever gets turned into a made for TV movie, I'm the lovable dork in the background who makes the comic relief for the people watching at home so they can either A.) go get some more popcorn or B.)Have a nervous chuckle while they prepare themselves for what's going to happen next.

So I'm bubbling, and I've got like 8 people protected by my bubble. Its like I said, its not allowed to happen inside the bubble. And I protected them. And they were glad. Sometimes they would venture out of the bubble for a beer, or a shot or something. That was always a mistake. They would leave, come back like a half hour later with that, "Oh sweet shit, how the hell did I get involved in this particular pile of crap. I just wanted a beer!?!" face. They'd look at me and invariably they would say, "I swear, I'm not leaving again."

Finally I break down the permanence of the bubble by walking around for a bit. People keep walking in and out, get involved and uninvolved and, by and large, this is funny to me. Just watching these things happen around me like some kind of freakish brownian motion where for some reason, I'm always cold.

Eventually, the soap opera dies down and Dan's parents come home. I totally got to drink with them. That's been one of my goals for a number of years. So I'm talking to Ms. Shine and she's all like, "Hey, I've got some Ham and some Mostocolli, DO IT." So I obliged. Got me an eating mate in Ryan Duncan and we went to hit the Ham. We ate like barbarians. I was just hacking off big hunks of ham and passing them out on forks. Kinda like cocktail weenies on toothpicks. So we ate Ham. And Theresa showed up and had carrots. And then the mostocolli, which Brian Tracy and I ate all of.

But, there's a problem with all of this. Note earlier I said the soap had died down, not ended. And now I'm upstairs while the major players, and the Bullethead, are downstairs. Two points if you just guessed that without me and my bubble shit flared. So I eat for like 45 minutes, then go back downstairs. Hid from the bullethead who keeps trying to make me do another shot, and tried to establish some kind of wide angle bubble ray. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was at this point that I noticed that Invader Zim was on Dan's computer, so I sat down and watched that for awhile. Talked to some people, and then, 'round 'bout 6.30 am, I left.

The soap opera was dead.
The bullethead was not.

I got home to my bed while all those other jokers were fighting over broken chairs and thought about my night. I actually giggled myself to sleep for about a half an hour. Yes, I do think last night was that effing humorous.

To recap: I'm a more powerful superhero than Andrew Ballester because what I originally dubbed the ability to "not have stupid people talk to me" has been properly id'ed as "avoiding the soap opera". And his super power of "the reflex" has been killed. Ha-fucking-ha Andy. You're super weak.
- posted by Pat @ 6:55 PM