Laborious

I woke up at 8:22am this Tuesday after Labor Day to the sound of two houses sawing each other in half. In actuality it was most likely the jackhammer being operated across the street, but the noise penetrated every inch of my skull, as if to send a direct signal to my brain that today was the day the rest of the nation went back to work after a long, luxurious summer of discovery and mischief.

I attempted to fight off the din for an hour or so managing to get a few minutes of shut eye during each pause pregnant with the possibility of an even greater pandemonium. I even managed a quick dream in which I was trying to cross a desolate two lane blacktop under the cover of night only to be repeatedly discouraged by the threat of nearly invisible motorcycles racing by without headlights on. Though I’m not quite sure what it meant…I think the motorcycle noise just came from the jackhammering and the crossing the road part was me trying to get back to sleep.

Defeated at 9:20am I awoke to face the week…the summer gone…but this is not a moment to fret over the passing time. It’s time to celebrate that which has most recently passed as is the tradition with all weekend recaps.

The lengthy labor day festivities got off to an early start on Thursday night as a group of friends gathered at Kishore’s to watch Andy and Jeff’s latest television triumph, Jacked, a reality show about the vehicle theft police unit in Newark, NJ. Prior to the airing of the show we did what we usually do when the weather is nice and we’re in a Fort Greene apartment with a back yard and grill…and barbecued up some meat and burgers and various other forms of tasty goodness.

Ready For The Grilling

Vegetables Are Good Too

Which One Doesn't Belong: Andy and Lauren In The Kitchen

When the time came we settled in Kishore’s sunken living room, Jayvalyn, Jeff, Andy, Andrea, Enisha, Suli, Miller, Flosario, Rich, Lina, Dmitry, and Nina to watch Jacked on A&E projected on the living room wall. I have to say, I think if you have a big blank wall a projector is a more than quality investment. It makes watching anything on TV that much more enjoyable and cinematic. The show itself was interesting enough. It was semi-fascinating to see how Cops in Newark spot stolen cars and then go about boxing them in, but I can’t believe that any of the episodes are going to be drastically different from each other. That being said, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. I’m sort of thinking that the show will end up going into the category of yet another of the long list of shows about professions we don’t need to know about, but seeing as my friends work on it, I remain cautiously optimistic that it will end up being better than that.

After Jacked ended we watched Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech. Miller left because he has insane political beliefs and was just going to end up saying stupid things all speech that no one wanted to listen to. I sort of give him credit for not staying around and ruining it for everyone else.

I’ll say this, whether you like Barack Obama or not or believe he can do the job of President of The United States of America or not, the man can give an eloquent and stirring speech. I think he hit on all of the key points he had to in order to give himself a bit of a boost in his race for the White House. I still remain pessimistic of his chances, despite being the slight front runner for the sole reason that the Republicans are better at mobilizing people out of fear of things they should not be afraid of.

Political blah-blahs aside…after the speech, it was time to walk home after that and ready for the rest of the weekend. While everyone got the remainder of their work week out of the way on Friday, I sort of gave myself a day off from responsibility because I had been very productive the day before. I had sent out a book proposal and felt really great about finally just sending it to someone. To celebrate my forward progress, I met with my brother for lunch at Delicatessen and took a walk to Strand where I picked up three new books on the cheap: Salinger’s Franny & Zooey, Twain’s Roughing It, and Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicles. It always feels good to have a nice little reading queue all ready.

I returned home to Brooklyn after my Strand run, ready for the evening. I waited it out a few hours before making it to Filler and Jenny’s at 7pm for our friend Robert’s 26th birthday. The party didn’t start at 7pm, but me, Filler, and Arby grilled up some sausages for dinner and watched the Mets game before the proceedings began.

Slowly but surely partygoers arrived and Marie and Abbi began to fashion Robert’s birthday cake. During our time watching the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, I learned that Robert was fascinated with Denmark, and in tribute to Robert’s fascination with Denmark, the birthday cake was done up in the shape of a castle with Danish flags complete with a champagne mote, and a graham cracker drawbridge. It was quite the cake-complishment.

Abbi and Marie Working On The Cake

Matt's New Skirt

Robert's Own Personal Elsinore

The party itself was quite the pleasant and amicable affair, with plenty of enjoyable conversation in the backyard and I believe we may have even delved into the merits of Guns ‘n’ Roses “November Rain”. There were certain a wide variety of pop culture conversations, much of which was between myself and Robert’s roommate Megan about our 3am HBO2 viewing habits. Undoubtedly though, the star of the night was the birthday boy Robert and his Castle Cake with Champagne Mote.

The Birthday Prince Receives His Kingdom

I’m not sure what time I left but it was probably around 2am or so. I didn’t sleep as late as I thought I would on Saturday. I suppose that’s because we had a party to get ready for. My housemates and I were having our end of the summer bash to celebrate my roommate Mike’s 30th birthday as well as the arrival of our new roommate Sarah and there was cleaning to be done. Mike and Laura did a bang up job on the deck making it cleaner than it has been on years. I cleaned the grill and some of the chairs, a little bit of the kitchen, and of course my room which could perennially be described as in a state of squalor.

The first person to arrive on the scene were Pete and Dan. I was a little out of it at the time they showed up, but I think they played a role in getting the keg to the house as well as the projector. The get together was supposed to start at 6:30pm, but Suli showed up at 6 thinking he was fashionably late only to be rebuffed with the fact that the party hadn’t yet begun. We sat on the porch for a little bit hanging out, but then joined Dan and Andrew who had just shown up in projecting cheesy music videos off of youtube from Dan’s computer onto the wall, which was hilarious. As the party began and people started to file in they saw Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract playing on the wall, as well as the theme from Vanilla Ice’s “Cool As Ice” amongst various other past hits. That later gave way to the DVD of The Song Remains The Same, which seemed to have lasted the duration of the entire party.

Dan And Agatha Kick It 875 Style

Soon enough our apartment was overflowing with people. Many were familiar faces and many I had never seen before. i guess that’s what happens when you have four other roommates and they invite their friends over. Nonetheless, it was a peaceful, fun, get together. I felt like I was running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to talk to everyone and so I didn’t really spend any quality time with a single person. Either way, I spent the evening fully entertained as I intermingled with various groups of my own friends and others. There’s worse ways to spend a saturday evening than being surrounded by great people. There was even some live band karaoke type thing going on as Mike played the drums and Pete the guitar for a sing-a-long rendition of Baba O’Riley.

The Amazing Pete On Guitar

Mike Keeps A Steady Beat

The Ladies Love It...It Makes Them Dance

Towards the end of the night after the beer well had run dry, some time after what might have been called the witching hour, there was more fun to be had with youtube projections as we dance and rocked out to Phil Collins “Easy Lover”. Andrew, Dan, Pete, Laura, myself, and an unknown mystery girl who knew our names despite us not knowing hers were somewhat out of our minds as we put on the “November Rain” video and performed along with it.

The Cast of The Movie, Best Budz

After the last element of sing-a-long disintegrated, someone thought it would be a good idea to go to Union Hall and get a drink. As we arrived there they announced last call. We all grabbed a beer to finish the exhaustingly fun evening. However, I was still oddly curious as to who this mystery girl was. I asked Pete, Dan, Laura, and Andrew, and none of them knew her name even though she was one of the earliest and last people at the party. It was funny that a stranger had been so active in the waning hours of the evening, but as long as she was having fun I suppose. A few days later I learned it was Marissa and was a friend of someone that Mike worked with or something. Whatever, it’s cool.

I woke up close to 2pm on Sunday afternoon. The previous evening at the party I had told my friend Lauren and her brother Nick that there was a 95% chance of me attending their get together the next day. When I awoke I knew that number was closer to zero. Thankfully, we had dealt with most of the bottles the evening before and by the time I woke the apartment had been cleaned, because I had no energy with which to do so. I more or less spent the entire day in the safe confines of my bedroom recovering. I did walk to get food and eventually around 10pm, my roommate Sarah joined me to watch Be Kind Rewind.

My slovenly Sunday made for a slightly more active labor day. I woke up at a reasonable hour and futzed around for a bit. I went to the upper west side for lunch at 3:30 with my cousin steve and from there I found my way over to Morwin’s for a labor day BBQ that had much of the same cast as the get together that kicked off the long weekend on Thursday. Again, we partook in meat and enjoyed each other’s company. I only stayed for about three hours but it was quality time, much of which was marked by my hummin of the guitar part to “November Rain”. I even got a new book idea out of it. It never hurts to have a bevy of projects you want to work on. Anyway, that was it…that was Labor day weekend. Everybody get back to work and stop reading this. It’s business time, not summertime.