Florida

So I finally made it.

The exit row seat I had been given turned out not to be a real exit row seat. It was in the exit row but did not contain extra legroom but instead involved obese woman sitting in front of me and reclining (heavily) into my legs. I shifted and squirmed every ten minutes until we landed. No sleep for the sleepies.

Got my rental car which turned out not to be the Mustang convertible I reserved but a whack-ass PT Cruiser.

Drove 45 minutes up to Amanda's place in West Palm Beach.

And her spread is incredible.



More later.

I need to nap now because I think I'm having an aneurysm.

Early Morning Flights: Bad Idea

So I got to the airport around 2 am, hoping to arrive my usual 4-ish hours early in order to get an exit row seat so that I can stretch out my legs and maybe perhaps not die of a DVT three days after I get off the plane...

Appparently though here at stupid stupid LAX, check-in counters don't open until 4:30am.

Which means passengers can't even go to the gates to wait around in an area where there is seating.



When they finally did open the lone ticket counter there was a mad rush of everyone who had been waiting for the past 3 hours and the airline agent woman was irritated and not very nice and everyone was angry and yelling and there were definitely some European tourists who were just not getting it and holding up everything and making me want to light fires and explosive things and throw them.

In short: Kill Me.

New phone!

Oh. By the way I got the sweetest new phone.

First of all, it's a flip phone (no more pocket calling!).

Secondly I can display all my favorite headshots of people and they pop up whenever that person calls!



And then.... (NO AND THEN!)

And then.......(NO AND THEN!!!!!!)

The bestest thing about my new phone?



Paris Hilton's Diamond Quest.

A reworked version of the arcade classic Bejeweled.

It's amazing.

So good.

I sat on my couch and played for three hours.

Speaking of concerts...

Austin City Limits

Smershy went on a reconnaissance mission to Austin last weekend for the music festival known as Austin City Limits.

If I had known about it I totally would have gone too.

Doh!




While there she bumped into some of our favorites.

Megoon...




And AC...




(AC you totally jacked my shirt.)




Oh and the guy from Superbad.

QueerEye Jai

It's been a slow week workwise.

I'm kind of in a funk.

But today I shot Jai from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.



Also Anne and I just booked tickets to go to HK for New Years.

That should be pretty epic.

Ben on CNN.com

Ben was featured on cnn.com today.

Kinda neat.

Ryan's 27th birthday or something...

I think he's 27.

Or maybe it's 28.

Who knows. We're getting oldddd.

We went to the Parlor.

Got in just under the gun before they started making everyone wait in line.







Ryan did his thing...




I was on shocker duty...




And several beverages later, birthday boy started getting a little aggressive with the ladies...




To the point where he just had to be stopped.



But of course mischievous Matty and several others just kept feeding him drinks, like I guess you're supposed to do to the birthday-person on his/her birthday.



The room started spinning...



And by around midnight it was all over.

Guerilla Gays hit Sonny McLean's

Guerilla Gay Bar is, in concept, a brilliant idea.

An monthly email list of 2,000 gays instructed to invade what normally exists as a typical little unsuspecting straight bar...without the bar owners or patrons knowing.

A couple months ago, GGB was held at the Saddle Ranch on Sunset. Unfortunately, we were too hungover to enjoy ourselves.

But when I heard that this month's takeover would be on the west side, I quickly shot out an email to the masses, hoping we would all gather at Sonny's for what would be an epic evening.

.....................

Pre-gaming was fun.



Gaming...not so much.




Pickings were slim...and old. Among them, a grandpa we called "Dr Pepper"....



The pickings were actually so slim that one of the boys actually considered going back across the bar to "talk to him" and "see what happens" after he had left us alone. We managed to talk some sense into his silly little head.

Afterwards we stumbled around the Wilshire area to some neighboring bars.

Honestly I don't remember much except it was all kind of lame.



Non-epic nights upset me.

Maria Shriver has no business interviewing anyone.

I'm going to try to stop writing mean things about people that are real people with real feelings. I am. Really. It's bad. And I'm sure I consciously or subconsciously do it to feel better about my sad little life...

...but I mean seriously, the woman is terrifying.

And she should deeeefinitely not be scaring the bejesus out of interviewing the children of 9/11 as she was the other day on Oprah.

Denouement

Following Celine we headed over to Mandalay Bay and attempted to get into both Mix Lounge AND RumJungle...unsuccessfully.

I felt pretty pathetic:

A. because I am not as sweet as Naia who can talk/name-drop her way into any bar/club/restaurant.

and

B. because my friend owns them.

-------------------------

Instead we partied at the Kitty Kat Club. Which was actually great fun with a cover band of hot chicks led by a girl who looked just like Elizabeth Hurley singing Nelly Furtado and Sexyback etc etc etc and everyone young and old and super-old dancing up a storm.






Around 1am we headed into the desert.

Because of the VMA's happening Sunday night all rooms in Vegas were like $800 or more and we decided that $800 would be better spent outlet-shopping.



We had planned to stay at Primm, where they have a nice resort/casino where the outlet stores live. But all four hotels in Primm were booked (who the hell stays in Primm????), forcing us to drive even further into the desert until we ended up here:




Katie put it best when she stepped out, looked around, and asked "Uh......are we in hell?"





The place was old obese elderlies, truck drivers, and Gambler Mexicans.



Also they had a single poker table which, instead of offering a sweet cash prize should you score a four of a kind or higher, offered a sweet free denim shirt.



(I played until 5am trying to win it.)




Katie went straight to bed.

Screaming.



------------------------------------------

The following day we woke early to make it over to the outlets which are kind of a mixed bag of really awesome stores and some totally whack ones.





(P.S. Dan bought Emily's engagement ring at Ultra. Don't tell.)

(Just kidding.)

(Not really. I'm serious.)

(No, really. I'm kidding.)

(Maybe...)

.......................................

Unfortunately we didn't stay long enough to catch Lei Qiang and his Erhu.




We did however buy like way more than enough stuff.




And the drive back was cloud-filled, Celine-filled, and absolutely beauteous.