Joy Your Stay: Halloween Recap

First off, a big thanks to Sybil Law for being on SecondHand Radio last night. It was nearly a 2-hour show and kind of a roller coaster for a while there. Louie B called in and so did Dawg and let’s just say that the two of them don’t get along. For a minute I thought we were on the Jerry Springer show. You can listen to the show at Talkshoe or download the podcast from iTunes (just search for SecondHand Radio).

I appreciate the others who called in, and those who hung out in the chatroom to listen. You guys are the best.

Now onto an abbreviated recap of the Halloween party last weekend.

That was our hotel shuttle, which many of us used a great deal since it took us most everywhere we wanted to go during our two-day stay in Orlando. For some reason the sign said “Joy Your Stay.” That kind of became our motto for the weekend.

So I’m not going to post as many photos as I’d like because my freaking image uploader still isn’t working properly in Wordpress. You can see the entire Avitaween Flickr Pool here. Lots of great photos. Like I said, I left my regular camera in the room so I wouldn’t have to lug it around all night, and it’s probably a good thing since I would have likely puked all over my fancy schmancy Fujifilm camera.

Many of us got to Orlando on Friday, the day before the party. I’m not linking to everyone because that would take days. But I drove up Friday afternoon…a 90-minute drive for me. Most everyone else was flying in from all over the place. There was Turnbaby, Mr. Fabulous, Delmer, Christine, Janelle, Sheila, Becky (a different Becky than Hello Haha Narf), Mike, Crys, Poppy, Dawg, and…I think I got everyone. We hung out in the hotel bar for a long while before we caught the shuttle over to a great restaurant called Bahama Breeze.

Then it was yummy food and yummy drinks and yummy friends and yummy laughs. We went back to the Hilton after that (Joy Your Stay!) and back to the bar. We, in fact, closed the bar down. Adam showed up to hang for a while with us.

While we were sitting there, singing impromptu 70’s karaoke thanks to our Internet capable phones/lyrics, Sarah finally arrived around 11:30 or so. Her cabbie was incompetent – got lost on the way – and wanted to charge her $70 for the ride! Adam went outside and bodyslammed the bastard and got her bill worked down to a reasonable $50. Relatively speaking, of course.

So the bar closed and we were hungry/thirsty for more booze and decided to make a booze run. Thanks to Adam being a non-drinker, he agreed to drive a few people to a liquor store, but alas, everything was closed so we were screwed. Some of us – *cough*Turnbaby*cough* – didn’t really need more alcohol, anyway. The rest of us found we were all pretty tired, anyway, so eventually we all split up and went to our rooms.

Saturday I got up around 9am, woken by the beautiful Christine, who continued our coffee tradition from Tequilacon, where she wakes me up with a lovely cup of coffee in hand. I love that woman. I managed to squeeze in one story for Famecrawler and then got a call from Sheila, who wanted to go to McDonalds for breakfast. Since I had my car (and the power) I immediately said, “Sure, I’ll drive,” knowing damn well we weren’t going to McDonalds. Instead, I took the girls to Dennys. There we were tantalized by the balloon-animal woman who refused to make Sheila a cool snake balloon animal without a tip. Bitch.

Back to the hotel, where I hung out with Dawg, Poppy, and Mike in the hotel restaurant while they were at the tail-end of their $20,000 brunch. Then, I saw the Bat Signal. Adam needed help decorating because Clown’s hot water heater burst. Mike and I were all over that like stink on dirty baby diapers. “We get to see everything before everyone else!” we exclaimed.

Drove over to Adam’s house and it was. Magnificent. You can see all the decorations and props in the Flickr pool…more specifically, Adam’s Flickr. There was a great neon sign outside the garage, along with a ticket booth. You had to walk through a “tunnel” to get into the house, accompanied by the eeriest fucking calliope music I’ve ever heard.

As you walked through the dark tunnel, you passed this spooky white Styrofoam wig-heads with black lights on both sides of you. Then there was a turn and a scary little mannequin girl, then you came to the final turn, where there were MISSING posters with all of the kiddie photos many of us sent to Adam months back. Here’s mine, thanks to Adam for posting these on Flickr.

Yeah, that’s me when I was 3. Yeah, I had glasses then, too. From 18 months old I’ve had glasses. Yeah, I’m fucking cute as hell. Yeah, I’m totally available.

So Mike and I helped further darken the dark tunnel with more pieces of black vinylish tablecloth, duct tape, and spray adhesive. We thankfully did NOT have to stick the fucking polka dots all over Adam’s living room ceiling, since that was done already. We helped with some balloons out in the Florida room (what they called a screened-in porch down here). We helped cut the purple and yellow tablecloth strips to hang from the walls and ceiling. And we all sweat our asses off. Thank God it cooled down by that night.

Mike and I left and went back to the hotel. Then a big group of us went back to Bahama Breeze for lunch. Dave2, Diana, and Sybil showed up while we were there. Then a handful of us went to the movies to see “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” the new Kevin Smith flick. (I enjoyed it, but Poppy is right…it started out with a bang and kind of ended in a whimper.)

Then it was back to the hotel around 6:30 to get cleaned up and dressed in our costumes. As you all know by now, I went as a half-man/half-woman, shaving my month-long beard right down the center. Christine helped me immensely by cutting half of my wig and then applying my make-up (thanks to Sheila).

There are a few shots of me at the party, which you can find in that Flickr pool. There were a shitload of people there, about 15-20 more than what Adam expected.

The decorations were even better than when Mike and I left. Adam and Clown did a phenomenal job with these props, folks, working on it since the summer. Words just can’t do it justice.

Great food, great drinks (with bartender), great people, great conversations, great costumes. Sensing a theme?

As I said on the radio show last night, the conversations were many, ranging from the inane to the esoteric. I talked about living in Europe with a few people, my Katy Perry video came up a multitude of times, and I talked politics with a pimp. I met and fell in love with Faiqa (damn her Love Guru husband!), fell in love (again) with Finn/Megan, fell in love with Sybil Law – okay, I fell in love with a lot of women – I sang karaoke several times, watched Christine dance with a LILF (Lesbian I’d Like to…), and drank copious amounts of strong drinks.

I was doing just fine. UNTIL Sybil Law (in a hot Wonder Woman outfit) made me a drink after the bartender left. She poured in every alcohol on the bar…Jaeger, Tequila, Rum, eye of newt, and I don’t know what else. She insists there was a splash of Sprite in there, but I don’t know about that.

At any rate, my next memory is me projectile vomiting somewhere in Adam’s house (hopefully the patio), being rushed out to the back yard where the vomiting continued, and then being escorted to one of the chair loungers, where I proceeded to lay down and pass out for hours.

Then I woke up around 4:30am or so and stumbled through the house, where someone led me by the arm to the front, where a taxi awaited with Delmer and Sybil already in the back seat.

Back to the hotel. Woke up rudely at about 9:00am. Sybil overslept for her flight home, which was scheduled to leave at 10:30. She called and asked for a ride to the airport. I packed all my stuff in record time, taking time to shave the other half of my beard – I may show my jinglies on video but I wasn’t about to wear half a beard the rest of the day – and rushed downstairs to the lobby.

The rushing continued as I checked out, quickly shook hands and gave hugs to Poppy, Christine, Dawg, Mike, and others, and drove light-speed to the airport. The whole way Sybil was moaning about her head and her black-crunchy hair. Even doing 90, I pulled up in front of her terminal at 10:15. We hugged, said it was a blast, and she zoomed off to the terminal…where she waited for hours in line at the counter, totally missed her flight, and subsequently waited until 6pm to get the hell out of Orlando.

I got home around 1pm, forgetting about the time change overnight. And I pretty much went right to bed when I got home.

And that was the party in a nutshell. A big, winded, nutshell.

Whew! I might make note that this was the first time I’ve EVER thrown up due to alcohol. For decades, I enjoyed this magical switch inside that tells me, “One more sip and you’re gonna puke.” Apparently, that switch is now broken.

Thanks and many apologies to Adam for a tremendous party. Dude, you rock.

Joy Your Stay.

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