Merry New Year!!!

That's right I said it: Merry New Year!!! If you haven't seen Trading Places with Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy, then you don't get it. And if you haven't seen that comedy, you need to get a serious readjustment to your movie viewing priorities. Forget going to see I Am Legend or Alvin and the Chipmunks (they probably suck) and borrow that damn film from any of your friends. They probably have it.

Anywho, I'm going to skip over a few things from November that although they are funny, I don't feel like taking the time to tell them. I'd rather get to the Holiday Season. Or if you are like many of us and hate living in a politically-correct world, the Christmas Season. There I said it. If I disappear, it's because the PC-nazi-police kidnapped me. If that happens, have a good one and don't get none on ya.


On December 1st I went to the Ptolemy "Holiday" Party downtown. After the party wound down, I went to Spindini with a group from the party. Of course I was still wearing my Santa hat which drew looks of shock and disgust from the pretentious crowd at this supposed downtown hot spot. I ask you, dear reader, how they can get away with judging my Santa hat while we can't mention the miriad of surgical accessories they were displaying, including but not limited to lifted/enlarged bossoms, tightened faces, tucked posteriors, enlarged big toes, hair transplants, and botoxed thumbs. I had a group of folks who were waiting for me in East Memphis at Old Venice Pizza Company. I headed that way to meet up with folks and catch the incredible Roxanne Lemmon. I used to live next door to her in Midtown and have been promising her for over two years now that I would get off my lazy ass and go see her live. I have to say it was well worth it. Anyway on to the pics from that night. I have only one pic from the Ptolemy party, and it didn't turn out that well. So I'm starting my second post in a row with a girl posing in a "Look at me!!! I need attention!!!" picture. This is Theresa (I think), and it happened to be her birthday that night Here's me with part of the group at Old Venice. And you can see the Santa hat too.

Here's the birthday girl again.

Part of the reason I got the pic with her Michelob Ultra is because that is a very important Ultra. It propelled me to the rank of "you're an asshole" status. Now I will admit that's a lot of responsibility for just one beer. Especially a beer as crappy as a Michelob Ultra. Let me explain: the bar was crowded and there were only three bartenders. Actually only two of those bartenders were attempting to work from time to time. So when they finally came to us, my buddy Sam bought a round for all of us. Despite the fact I heard him order the Ultra, the bartender never brought it. It took a few minutes for birthday girl to realize this. Then she started to ask why we all had drinks and she didn't. I turned and got the bartender's attention to order it because I was standing at the bar. The bartender brought it, and I gave Birthday Girl her beer. She looked at me and said something like "about time" with a bit of attitude. I let it slide for a second until she tried to snatch my Santa hat. When I sarcastically told her to say pretty please first, I reached the pinnacle of "you're an asshole" status to her. And I really didn't care. I just laughed every time I got the evil eye for the next thirty minutes. Then she finally forgot why she was mad at me.

Here's a pic later in the night. Nothing like shots on your birthday right?

Here's a pic of the Roxanne Lemmon Band. I personally call her Foxy Roxy, but everyone knows her as Roxanne. She's the one in the middle playing the guitar.

So that was the official kickoff for the Christmas Party season 2007. The next party I took my camera to was a Tacky Xmas party thrown by a couple of guys I went to high school with. You were supposed to dress up in really bad Christmas outfits. There were people dressed like Cousin Eddie from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. There were guys who went and got really tacky turtlenecks from the women's department at Wal-Mart. The ideas were hilarious. I spent more time drinking and talking than actually taking pics of everyone's outfits. But here's one couple. You can see his sweater but I didn't get a good pic of her outfit.

I ran into the "Fun Davis" sister. But after that night, we have changed her nickname to Dropsy...I think. She tried to give a friend a hug and dropped a beer bottle in the middle of the laundry room. I'd change her nickname to Spilly but that's reserved for the originally Spilly from my college days. Here's a pic of the guilty parties trying to clean up the glass next to the 5 gallons of eggnog. Yeah, it was strong eggnog.

Sorry some of the pics are blurry like this. Don't ever buy a Sony Cyber Shot camera. They suck.

There were a couple of girls in charge of the music with an Ipod outside. It was like listening to the thoughts of an ADD kid. One minute they'd put it on hip hop and then they'd put it on rock. But they finally landed on "Crank That" by Soulja Boy. Of course they knew the dance. I got a few pics of them dancing. These two girls actually did a good job.

Then this new girl jumped in and knew a little bit of the dance. That was the most comical part of the whole dance. She'd keep bumping into them and apparently doing it wrong, but she'd never stop and try to correct herself. Hey, everyone had fun so who cares right?

Everyone's favorite Memphis Celebutante Mendi was there of course. Here's a pic of yours truly with her. The antlers, sweater, and scarf are nice, but I wish I had a pic of her elf stockings. Those were classic.

We always have to keep up with our traditional shot pic. But there was nothing to shoot. Our drink choices were limited to wine, beer, and eggnog. So I chugged beer while she chugged wine.

This is a pic of one of the hosts, 3D. I'm not sure exactly what he was doing, but I think he may have had a spark land in his hair or something. They had two fire pits going, and that's really the only logical explanation I can come up with for this pic.

Here's Mendi again. No, Mendi! He's not a candy cane! That's just the wine talking to you!

No matter how gangsta you are, sometimes you just need someone's extra large glasses to make your gangsta image stand out that much more.

After the cops shut the party down (how old are we?), some the walking wounded including myself went to Newby's. Some genius (not me) said we needed shots. Some other genius (this was me) decided to buy a round of jager shots. Ugg. There were 12 of us. I bought 12 shots. And yet even though "everyone" took their shot, there was one left. Hmm...

No one was stupid enough to actually drink it so it was there after we left the bar. It was one hell of a party, and I'd like to thank those guys for having me there.

A few weeks later I went to a Christmas party thrown by a few guys from work. I'll post the video of this in my next post, but here are the Steps of Doom. There are two reasons for that name. For the first you'll need to see the videos. The second is because the damn bottom step was not as deep as it should be and the rest are very unsteady. So that makes walking up and down them very fun.

The last holiday party I went to was again downtown at JK's on December 23rd. I was probably the youngest person there, but it didn't really bother me because there were plenty of friends there. I had been hunting early that morning and the morning before in Tunica with Scottie Too Hottie (now known as Sloppy Scotty in honor of the appetizer at the Brookhaven Pub). Down on the farm there are several trees where mistletoe grows so one of the guys with us, Ford, shot down some. And when I say some, I mean a ton. Ol' Sloppy Scotty brought several bunches to the party and left them around the party. Most of us let them hang from our Santa hats. After most of the crowd started to leave, one of the guys hooked up his laptop to the stereo and they moved the coffee table from the middle of the living room. I'm kinda glad he did, but part of me wishes he hadn't. Why the conflicting feelings? Because although I said the girls above had ADD DJ syndrome, this guy actually did. He was HORRIBLE. He'd let 30 seconds of a song play and then skip to the next one. So you'd start dancing and then the music would stop. Everyone in our group was complaining loudly but he never paid any attention. He kept ruining the mood.

There were certain songs he'd play completely through though. One was that Soulja Boy song (twice in one post!). I tried to do a little bit of the dance based on what I saw at the Tacky Xmas Party (somehow the vodka I had been drinking messed up my good judgement). I was quickly told I was wrong by one of the women at the party (she's the second from the left in the next picture). The fact that she said it isn't that great, but the way she said it is priceless:

Her: "Look, you're doing it wrong. You have to do it like this." (she shows me)

Me: "I don't think you're right."

Her: "I have a 13 year old son. Trust me, I know this dance."

I really wanted to tell her that her son was born before I was even out of high school, but I really didn't want to ruin her Christmas by making her feel that old. So I just said ok and let her keep dancing while I stood to the side with my friends until the next song.

So we kept dancing. Sloppy Scotty put his moves out on the dancefloor. I have to say, no one will ever mistake him for Fred Astaire. Here's a pic of him with DD.

Here's the final pic I took that night. It's Ford and Brooks standing on the sidelines while all the old women were on the dancefloor going crazy for "Baby Got Back."

Despite what you may be thinking, I believe Ford is probably saying what the rest of us were thinking: most of those women didn't need to dance to that song and draw any more attention to their "backs." Btw we did have a nice conversation trying to figure which ones were cougars and which ones were future cougars (I told you I was probably the youngest person there).

I hope you had a fun Christmas Party season. I'll try to get the videos up tonight or tomorrow, but you know I can't promise anything.