Areas of Unrest

3 October 1999 - In Party-cular

QOTD: "It's the bottom of the ninth with two out and the tying run on third. The starter has pitched a great game, but he's struggling. The manager leaves the dugout and walks slowly to the mound, where he takes the ball from the relief pitcher and sends him on his way. The relief pitcher jogs in and takes his eight warmup pitches. The game is on the line, and the closer is ready to do his job. The batter - a pinch hitter, the best on the team - is ready to do his job too, and he steps up to the plate, adjusts his headgear and anything else he can think of and assumes his stance. The count goes to full, and the crowd is screaming. It's Casey at the Bat. It's four out of five Red Sox games. It's getting three chances to change the world. That's baseball." - Kathleen Moloney

Reading: Robert Falcon Scott, Scott's Last Expedition: The Journals

Listening to: The original Broadway cast recording of Hello, Dolly!

Imagine a house. A house that feels large and airy, stretching between two side streets of a beach town. Venice, California to be specific. The neighborhood is one of those semi-gentrified ones, a mixture of artists and yuppies and industrial wasteland, within the official bounds of a gang-containment area. From October 1985 to March 1990, I lived about six blocks south of this house and I'm surprised how little the neighborhood, has changed, despite having always been on the verge of change.

I was there for a party, specifically a gathering of people who write on-line journals. The logistics had been debated over email over the weeks, two people had dropped out at the last minute, and eight of us made it there. Which was pretty much the perfect number of people for the space and time. The attendees (besides myself) were: Beth, Chuck, Diane, Mahrya, Meg, Nancy, Ri, and Tamar. Ri brought her fiance, Bill. Nancy's husband (also named Bill) was there, too, presumably because the house in Venice I described above is theirs. Oddly, he was having a party, too. I never figured out if these were always supposed to be two separate parties, but that was how it worked out, with essentially no mingling between the groups. I should also mention that Meg was the prime organizer of the event and I really should ask her for tips on how to have a party at somebody else's house as that might get me to actually do some entertaining someday.

There was food, there was conversation, there were journal entries read. The readings were interesting, particularly for the wide range of styles and subjects. I'd agonized over what to read, largely because I'm so concious of the difference between oral and written language. In the end, I had brought two pieces with me and read Happily Ever After because I thought that the Grimm references would help in translating it to speech. Also, the other piece I'd brought would have been sort of cheating as it was from the travel dispatches, not this journal per se. (If you are really curious, it's Pixieled.) At any rate, I don't think I read particularly well, for a number of reasons. Let's just say that I am aware of being more comfortable performing comedic material than serious material and the entry is one that has a drastic mood shift in the middle. But at least it was short.

Other than the readings, there was the usual party stuff - food and general conversation, with a certain amount of journal gossip. Overall, I had a good time and I think that the party was a success in general. Of course, you can go read everyone else's versions to find out if I was merely deluded.