What happened to me Saturday night

I spent yesterday afternoon on a fruitless search for buttondown shirts (i'm skinny & picky; buying shirts is incredibly difficult). After being foiled by store after store, i was annoyed and tired and wanted beer. So i summoned an old friend to meet me for dinner. I was actually impressed by how quickly we went from "Hey, have you guys eaten yet?" to "Ok, meet at the Cheesecake Factory in 20 minutes." During undergrad we used to sit around for *hours* trying to decide where to eat, and while we're better at making plans now, those old tendencies are still there. But it would seem that indecision is easily countered by hunger & annoyance. I'll take it.

So we've been talking about starting up a weekly viewing night. Maybe work through the original Star Trek (i actually haven't seen most of the episodes yet) or get to a few anime series which have been on my list forever. We finally decided to start with Buffy The Vampire Slayer (one of my personal favorite shows of all time, ever). I insisted that we must start with the original Buffy movie (with Kristy Swanson, Luke Perry, and Donald Sutherland - released in 1992 but falls squarely in the genre of campy-80s-goodness). Then i insisted that we go home and watch it after dinner (i'd bought the dvd years ago, but still had it in the shrinkwrap).

So we did, picking up some beers on the way. I can't believe i didn't like this movie the first time i saw it! Maybe i just didn't have an appreciation for campy film back then. Or maybe (more likely) it's because i didn't have beer.

After Buffy we moved on to The Lost Boys (another 80s vampire favorite). So awesome. I always enjoyed that movie on its own merits, but now it's downright hilarious to see Jack Bauer as a teenage hellion (complete with motorcycle and bleach-blonde mullet) and Grandpa Gilmore (Lorelai's dad from Gilmore Girls).

The hour late and my stash of 80s vampire movies exhausted, we called it a night and i dropped my friend off at his place. On my way back home, i was stopped at a traffic light and noticed a big red balloon floating above the lawn just a little way up the road (next to the sign of an apartment complex, i think). I was intrigued by the way it slowly rose and fell along a perfect vertical axis without flying away. Maybe it's because it was 2am, or maybe i'm just easily distracted ("Ooh, shiny object!"), but i thought that red balloon was the coolest thing i'd ever seen. It wasn't even tied to anything (that i could see); it just floated on.

So i think watching the Lost Boys just triggers the teenage mischief in me. I mean the last time i watched that movie i ended up stealing a parking cone (granted we were drunk at the time, but i still blame the movie).

I decided to gank the big red balloon.

The light changed, i drove up & pulled over next to the balloon, popped my trunk, made sure the road was clear, then ran out and snagged it out of the air. It was much, much larger than i'd thought it was and i realized that it wouldn't fit in the trunk. So i decided to shove it through my door into the passenger seat instead. Well, it turned out to be way to big for that too and quickly got stuck in the door. I continued pushing and the balloon resisted the best it could before finally exploding...in a SHOWER of CONFETTI, covering me and the inside of my car with little pieces of colored tissue paper.

Behold (the big red red splotch is the shell of the now-dead balloon):









Oh, i wish i could have seen the look on my face - the milliseconds in the transition from "Get in, you stupid red balloon" to "Aw damn, it popped" to "SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP! MY CAR!"

So that was Saturday. I think we all know what i'll be doing with my Sunday :-)