After a hard Thursday of flame throwing and monkey making, I didn’t pay too much attention to the message on my voicemail. I was pleased to have been invited to a Friday night party, but did the aural equivalent of skim reading on the other details.
By Friday evening, after some ‘chicken on crack’ boxing my energy levels were too paltry for me to even dream about moving from my house. My phone rang and the screen told me that it was “Dave My Hero”. This made my phone into the bat phone – the call was coming from my equivalent of Commissioner Gordon, and I was now a super hero in demand. I thumbed the button on my cell phone which bore the symbol of a green handset. The handset in the symbol does not resemble my cell phone, but fortunately this did not stop my cell phone from connecting me to Commissioner Gordon. After a brief discussion and some coin tossing to determine who was going to phone to find out further details about the party, I hung up. Dave My Hero Commissioner Gordon called back shortly afterwards, and I did the trick with the button with the picture that doesn’t resemble my phone again. Dave’s voice was in my ear again, and he told me that it was a super hero party, and that we should meet there in two hours dressed as super heroes. I was already a super hero on the inside, but not so much on the outside.
Two hours to rustle up a super hero costume at seven o’clock on a Friday night. I thought of a friend’s approach to problem solving for inspiration. The general plan was to approach any problem in three stages. The first stage was to ignore the problem and hope it went away. The second step was to throw money at the problem to see if that made it go away. I can never remember the third stage, so I set about stage one, and resolutely refused to believe that there was any costume problem.
After 90 minutes of studious problem ignoring ignorance, I went to buy some cider from the petrol station nearby. In Britain, they don’t sell alcohol in petrol stations. Perhaps this is an approach to discouraging driving while drunk and thirsty. In Australia, I’ve bought booze from a drive-thru grog shop – you don’t even have to get out of the car to get loaded. The US approach seems to strike a middle ground – you have to be sober enough to drive to the petrol station and stagger into the store to pick up the booze.
With my cider in my hand, I walked home and stopped by a local coffee shop to say hello to a chum. Stage one of the super hero costume problem resolution strategy was still in effect. I had ignored the hell out of the problem for a good two hours, which meant that I was already late to meet Dave My Hero aka Commissioner Gordon. I returned home and attacked a bottle of vodka for some problem-solving inspiration, given that I wasn’t in a position to go to stage two and throw money at the problem.
Dave is My Hero. It said so on my cell phone. It must be true – I always believe what my phone tells me, even if it contradicts the instructions given to me by the voices in my alarm clock. Maybe I could dress as Dave and claim that I was Dave My Super Hero. Probably not too convincing though. There was nothing else for it. I went to my cupboard and pulled out my Lord Satan costume. Well it said Lord Satan on the tag in the costume shop, but no-one really thinks that someone with ginger hair wearing a tight red polyester jump suit with a satin cape looks much like Satan. More Santa if anything. But I was in a total Mister Benn moment when I bought it – I had never spent an hour in a costume shop before.
Inspired by vodka, clad in red polyester I made a mental note that if I stood up straight at any point in the evening, I would probably castrate myself given the tightness of the outfit. I put on my red Elvis sunglasses and mentally conjured up the name “Hellvis” to describe the super hero that had just burst forth from the cacoon. Hellvis left the building, and strode up to the coffee shop to wave at his chum, before setting off to the party.
Many, many, many hours later, three decidedly worse-for-wear super heroes sat discussing menu choices at a Whataburger drive-thru window. Hellvis, Dave My Hero and Slacko the Clown were at a total loss as to what disgusting grease injected sugar products to order. Dave My Hero lived up to his name, and came through with the goods at the last moment. He blurted out something about all of the desserts and some onion rings, and before long we had escaped the super villainous fast food debacle.
Scarcely five hours later, Saturday rapped loudly on Hellvis Lord Santa’s skull, and he whisked himself off to a “project party”. The project party is the renamed “work day”, an event at which projects are undertaken to prepare one of the theme camps for the upcoming Burning Flipside event. After a hard day and night of hangovering, projecting and partying, he arrived home again, and put himself to bed. None of this explains what happened when he woke up. He had an urge to listen to Kenny Rogers and Bon Jovi. Strange things are afoot, as he types post 665 in his blog.