Failure of the Day: The Year’s Monday
Sorry… whose idea was it to begin this whole long ordeal we call “a new year” by drinking vodka tonic after vodka tonic* and wandering the streets of North Beach, and then waking up with Holiday Inn sheets plastered somehow to the roof of my mouth? Oh, right. Mine.
The Patton Oswalt/Dana Gould NYE midnight show did not disappoint.** Aside from his being one of the sharpest writers around, what I like best about Dana Gould is that he has followed a personal trajectory that I deeply relate to, going from seriously damaged emotional fuckwit to someone who has at last begun to get his psychological shit together. His closing bit about what would have happened if he had spent his life giving angry anonymous blowjobs just to spite a homophobic comment his father once made about his decision to move to San Francisco was both hilarious, and, I thought, very powerful.***
And then commenced all the aforementioned wandering, notable only for our complete failure to find a bar to go into—in North Beach, on New Years Eve—and for the fact that literally every person we passed on the sidewalk was stumbling drunk. Chris, who drank more than I’d ever seen him drink and yet appeared suspiciously sober, very sweetly announced each and every curb we approached. I told him that even in the worst of times, I never tripped over a curb—it was really the flat sidewalk that gave me the most trouble.****
We were tucked neatly in bed by 2, and other than a brief, unfortunate incident involving a motherfucking asshole cocksucker who pulled the fire alarm and the entire hotel being evacuated at 4am, it was a spectacular NYE.
*That’s no exaggeration: I had two entire cocktails on NYE, tying a personal best.
**Not counting the horrible host, who didn’t so much tell jokes as describe them, and the opening act, who more or less just reprised my old phone sex operator script, but without the friendliness.
***Have I even begun to do this bit justice? Not even close.
**** In the end, he declined to announce every square of sidewalk, but I believe he considered it.
The Patton Oswalt/Dana Gould NYE midnight show did not disappoint.** Aside from his being one of the sharpest writers around, what I like best about Dana Gould is that he has followed a personal trajectory that I deeply relate to, going from seriously damaged emotional fuckwit to someone who has at last begun to get his psychological shit together. His closing bit about what would have happened if he had spent his life giving angry anonymous blowjobs just to spite a homophobic comment his father once made about his decision to move to San Francisco was both hilarious, and, I thought, very powerful.***
And then commenced all the aforementioned wandering, notable only for our complete failure to find a bar to go into—in North Beach, on New Years Eve—and for the fact that literally every person we passed on the sidewalk was stumbling drunk. Chris, who drank more than I’d ever seen him drink and yet appeared suspiciously sober, very sweetly announced each and every curb we approached. I told him that even in the worst of times, I never tripped over a curb—it was really the flat sidewalk that gave me the most trouble.****
We were tucked neatly in bed by 2, and other than a brief, unfortunate incident involving a motherfucking asshole cocksucker who pulled the fire alarm and the entire hotel being evacuated at 4am, it was a spectacular NYE.
*That’s no exaggeration: I had two entire cocktails on NYE, tying a personal best.
**Not counting the horrible host, who didn’t so much tell jokes as describe them, and the opening act, who more or less just reprised my old phone sex operator script, but without the friendliness.
***Have I even begun to do this bit justice? Not even close.
**** In the end, he declined to announce every square of sidewalk, but I believe he considered it.
posted by Nancy @ 4:21 PM
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