Originally posted on MySpace on April 14, 2008.
I went out for a much-needed night with “the girls” on Saturday night. I put “the girls” in quotes because there were actually two guys who ended up tagging along as well, and we made them honorary girlfriends for the evening. Note: I rarely go out to bars with just women. I usually take at least one “Honorary Girlfriend” (a guy friend) along to balance out the Estrogen factor, and to protect us from the pickup artists.
The Posse:
The Muse
The Janet
The Debbie
Glitter Boy (a.k.a. John)
The Patrón Peddler (that’s Patrón as in the tequila, a.k.a. Steve)
The Plan:
Head to Comedy Sportz for a night of improv comedy, and wing it from there.
The evening started out at Janet’s house with four women enjoying their glasses of wine in Janet’s home office, while checking out the men in her Inbox on one of the dating websites. The Janet was still in her robe, complaining that it was too hot to get dressed just yet (Note: it was only 75 degrees, but that’s a heat wave for us this time of year).
Janet finally got dressed, and we hit the road for Comedy Sportz in NW Portland. The Patrón Peddler pulled up at about the same time as us and asked us if we’d like to step up to the bar for a shot of, what else, Patrón tequila (hence the nickname). Let’s call him PP for short. I’m tired of typing Patrón Peddler. The PP had just gotten back from a few weeks in Mexico, where he had leased a piece of beachfront property, so he was very much in fiesta mode.
I introduced the PP to The Janet and The Debbie, and Janet gave him a great piece of advice. She said, “You can’t just introduce yourself as Steve. When you meet a woman you have to say, hi my name is Steve and I own beachfront property in Mexico.” Yes, she was joking but I thought it was pretty funny.
The PP whipped out the Patrón, some salt and some plastic cups. “Hey, where’s the lime?” Janet said.
“Wait!” said the PP, “I have an orange. We’ll improvise.”
Janet’s phone rings… “Hey where are you?” she says to Glitter Boy just as we see his shadowy figure approaching the makeshift bar on Kearney. We all start waving frantically to the man in the shadows who is approaching with trepidation.
“Welcome,” says the PP. “Step up to the bar.”
Introductions all around. This is Glitter Boy, also known as John, blah blah blah.
“Come on, let’s go inside! The show’s about to start,” I say.
We go inside, I give hugs all around (because I used to perform there and I haven’t seen these people in a while), and we take our places in the third row.
We are determined to have a good time!
The show starts, and you can tell in the first five minutes that our row will be the loudest, most raucous in the entire place.
And it starts with me. The referee asks for a European accent for the game of Replay, and I yell, “Dutch!” I get the stink eye from the team that has to play their scene in Dutch, but I know they’ll have fun with it, because no one knows what the heck a Dutch accent sounds like. They usually get French or British. No! I want to see Dutch! And it was one of the funniest scenes all night. The final scene was a pile up of three suggestions: Dutch accent, Horror genre and hysteria. Fantastic.
Then came the game of Pick up Lines (or something) and Janet volunteers to be the victim. She sits on a stool while the two teams vie for her votes with their lousy pickup lines.
And then there was the call for, “I need the name of your favorite movie within the last year,” to which Debbie replied, “Because I Said So!” WTF? Debbie , did you really just admit that in public?
But wait there’s more…
A game of Four Corners, and they need another volunteer. I am telling The PP to get up and do it, when the ref looks at me and says, “We have a rule here at Comedy Sportz. When you volunteer your friends you volunteer yourself.” DOH! I know that rule.
So, up I go up on stage to play the game of Four Corners (a.k.a. Four Square). This is a game where you play 15-second scenes with one other person and keep rotating. My two suggestions were The ’80′s and finger painting. I had so much fun with that. I miss improv!
I know you’re wondering, Kelly, why is this blog called “I have a lot of Johns in My Cell Phone?” I’m getting there!
We left Comedy Sportz after busting a gut for an hour and a half, and headed down to Bay 13 in the Pearl District. We were hanging out having a drink when Glitter Boy (John) asks to see my BlackBerry. “You have a lot of Johns in your phone. If I put my number in here how will you know it’s me?”
I take the phone back and go down the list, “This John directed the only horror film I ever did. This is my friend John in Austin. This is my friend John B. at Comedy Sportz. This is my friend John R. at Comedy Sportz. This John is my C.P.A. This Jon is a local TV show host. This John was my high school Lit teacher, who lives on Bainbridge Island now. I can’t help it! I just know a lot of Johns. Just put yourself in there as Glitter Boy,” I said.
I was the designated driver and the tour guide for the evening, so I said “Drink up posse. We’re heading for some great people watching. Would you like to go watch Cougars in the wild at Blue Hour, or would you like to go to the place where I once saw two girls making out on a couch?”
It was a close call, but the couch scene won out over Blue Hour and Cougars.
I know all of you locals are dying to know where the couch incident took place, and it was… District! I was there one night with a group of friends, seated in a cozy alcove in the front window where there are a couple of velvet couches and some plush stools to sit on.
We were minding our own business when these two women across from us started making out, while the young guy sitting between them tried to figure out if this little spectacle was real or imagined. And people on the sidewalk outside were stopping to stare through the window while this is happening! That guy is probably still telling that story to his friends.
So, we all went to District, and as luck would have it, the alcove seating was open. “I’m telling you,” I said to my friends, “That’s where it all happened. Just watch that spot. It’s like a vortex of bad-boy and bad-girl behavior.”
Sure enough, in walks a couple and they sit on the famed red couch. Not five minutes pass before they are standing up, a foot from the back of my head, doing some dirty dancing.
“See,” I say to the posse. “I told you so.”
Okay, so we didn’t see anything really out of the ordinary, but I’m telling you, the devil is in that couch!
I did, however, find the remnants of what looked like a birthday party and used the little box I found to explain the famed Justin Timberlake video to my friends who had never seen it!
At about 1am I had had enough of the loud music and people watching, and signaled the posse that it was time for the designated driver to get some sleep. We all stumbled (not me, I was sober) back to our respective cars and said our goodbyes.
Booyah!
