Partyhoppers

Marvelous Darlings--"I Don't Wanna Go To The Party" (mp3)

As we head into the holiday party season, I've been thinking about partyhoppers. You know who they are--people who are so popular(?) and so overcommitted that the night that you are having your party they have been invited to several others. And they intend to make them all.

So they'll drop in, exchange some pleasantries, probably make it very clear on the front end that they "can't stay" as they turn down or minimize various offerings from their host or hostess of a drink or something to eat or participation in some activity. Even as they say hello, the look in their eyes says leaving soon.

I suppose that this could be seen as a kind of sharing the wealth. If everybody wants you at their parties, then who are you to deny anyone? It could be seen as kind of a way of meeting all of the obligations in one's life, but in a sweeping, unsatisfactory way. Because here is the reality--even if you only partyhop to two parties, you're going to leave one too early and arrive at one too late.

There is no way around that. Maybe that's the way that it has to be now, but I don't think so. Is it really essential that you be everywhere on that one night? Is someone really going to be crushed if you let them know that you have a previous commitment?

Back when there used to be etiquette, there was a very simple rule that one followed: the social engagement that you were invited to first was the one that you went to. Period. Someones got their acts together and planned something far enough in advance that everyone had a chance to keep their calendars clear. And that was that. No need for haggling with your spouse or checking with pals to see where the action might be or coming up with righteous self-justifications for why it would be okay to go to these other places instead. That didn't mean, of course, that you had to accept that original invitation, but if you did, you were committed, regardless of what "better" offers might arise.

That would never work in today's world. We poor social butterflies, trapped between unpleasant invites and last-minute plans would never be able to guarantee ourselves maximum fun. Or maximum social cache. Or the ability to decide which location we absolutely have to go to, for whatever reason, at whatever moment prioritization strikes us.

Of course, if you know me, you know that there is one kind of partyhopper in particular that sticks in my craw. Yep, it's that certain kind of Christian. That Christian partygoer will determine that a Christian social engagement supersedes any other social engagement, even if it was only planned the day before and the other one has been on the books for months. Why? Well, because it's Christian. If I have to explain beyond that, I might as well move out of the South. Which doesn't mean that he or she won't drop in at your place or show up at your dinner party having already eaten, but it will become quickly clear that there is a broader agenda at work. If the people of the Lord summon, the concerns of the world must be set aside.

The other strange, perhaps related, permutation is the separation of husband and wife partygoers. This accomplishes two things: 1) it allows for much greater coverage for that family as social unit, and 2) it allows both partners to go to the place(s) that they really want to go. What it does not accomplish is that indefinable synergy that occurs when the couple is there.

I don't think that, most of the time, when a host invites a "Mr. and Mrs." or whatever, that he or she only wants one of them to show up. Most of the time. There are some spouses that never come, and so we all get used to them not being there, and when they do show, that is its own kind of awkwardness. But most of the time when couples come as a team, they bring a confidence with them that allows them to spread positive energy throughout a party, drawing single people into conversation, supporting the vibe. A person who comes to a party without his or her longtime supporter tends to be a different person.

In the worst case scenario, the person hosting the party has tried to create a careful balance of men and women and finds himself with, for example, a bunch of husbands, as happened to me on Halloween. One wife no-showed, one never comes to anything, one stayed 10 minutes, one was up the street at a high school friend's party, even though she had cornered me in an earlier situation and demanded to know whether I was having a Halloween party because she was inviting herself. She was at my house for about 15 minutes.

There is no doubt that managing a social calendar is a skill, but it has become clear, to me at least, that it is a skill that few people have. As always, I don't exclude myself from that criticism. But I do think that the more parties one actually hosts, the more sensitive he or she is to the unacceptability of having a bunch of part-time or part-couple guests giving lip service to what can be an exhausting and expensive endeavor.

The ultimate solution, dare I say it, is to throw your own party. Then you know exactly where you're supposed to be. At least for one night. And I will be happy to drop in, for a little while, but I've got this other place I need to go. Would it be okay if my dog dropped in for awhile instead?

Not much rocks these days. "I Don't Wanna Go To The Party" does. 'Nuff said.

Leaves You With Nuthin' Mister

"Where Do You Think You're Going?" - Christmas Vacation (mp3)
Mele Kalikimaka - Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters (mp3)

Here is the honest first-person account of one man’s attempt to do something amusing, fun, and mildly noble. And also just damned foolish.

Times like this ain’t easy for nobody. Not for people, not for businesses, and not for non-profits, which depend heavily on people and businesses doing well. In tough times, water cooler talk mutates. It used to be highlights from last week’s Saturday Night Live skits or Sunday’s best NFL games. More often lately, the talk is like those anvils in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, sort of darkly cartoonish, but heavy, burdensome.

Backseat driving other people’s jobs. Lamenting that too many people have grown too mentally slovenly, having dined too bountily on the fatted calf of the Good Times. Decrying all the ways we have lost our way as an institution. Twenty years of no job cuts and only the occasional year without any raises is pretty good stuff. Too good, really. It takes you off the edge, which is where Maverick swears one must be to survive.

Early in the year, the noble fisherman best known as “TroutKing” joked that it would be cool if we DJ’d the annual faculty Christmas party. He got the idea while driving from one fishing hole to another that summer while shuffling through his iPod.

Who knows why for sure? (Well, troutking does... but it doesn’t serve my narrative or deadline to ask him.) Further, who knows why he asked me to join his folly? Was it like Bill Murray dragging Harold Ramis into the Army in “Stripes”? Was it because I have some vague knowledge and appreciation for rap that evades him? The world may never know.

Regardless, I made note of the idea and in October mentioned it to the boss. He was foolish enough to accept.

Trout and I spent a decent amount of time trying to get things right, trying to satisfy the event’s theme -- “Caribbean Christmas” -- while also minimizing our own nausea (read: not too much Jimmy Buffet). Trying to structure 3 hours of dance-friendly music for a crowd with a 50-year age range and a strong majority of employees born prior to 1970 is a hopelessly-doomed task.

"Electric Slide"? No. "Cotton-Eyed Joe"? Noooo no no. "Cha-Cha Slide"? Aww helllll no. Love Train? They’re gonna demand it, I say. Over my deaf body, Trout says. It’s inevitable, like death, I say. Then kill me now!! Trout says.

Meanwhile, we’re both being bombarded with requests and suggestions from friends and enemies alike. For every one “you should play...” we receive 10 “please don’t play...” And then, early last week as we sit in Trout’s office sharing our concerns, fears and excitement, our boss walks in. He wants to make sure “Love Train” will make the list and that Trout won’t go off the rails playing too much Bob and Bruce.

It’s his party. He can train if he wants to.

The event itself went off as well as could have been expected. A tough grader like myself would give us a B. Dollar for dollar, getting a B-quality DJ experience was a damn good investment, so there’s no shame in our performance.

Yet, much like my experiences teaching classes almost a decade ago, I couldn’t help but feel this heavy weight of disappointment in all of it. Feeling like we did something “pretty well” and “OK” doesn’t make me proud. My expectations of myself are too high, perhaps too unrealistic. When we turned off those speakers after the party was over, the look of joy on my face was 3/4 a look of relief that it was over and done with.

When it became clear that our boss was regretting (or at least fearing) his decision to grant us DJ privileges, when everyone was spouting off divergent notions of great songs, when the “Love Train” drama came to a head, all these things piled into the clown car of melodrama and tension far surpassing anything that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with “Play That Funky Music” or “Mony Mony.”

We just wanted to have some fun, play some music, and get people to dance. That’s all.

During the party, the micromanagement continued. It wasn’t so much his wanting to stick his nose in that hurt, because as I said, it’s his party. Rather, it was the look of abject discomfort in his eyes, his lack of confidence in us. He wasn’t the conductor of the “Love Train”; he was the conductor of that runaway train in “Unstoppable.”

Our hopes of doing something nice and mostly harmless, that would save the school a few bucks (between $600-1,000, actually), was making the experience much less enjoyable for the boss. Not the goal I had in mind, not by a long shot.

There was a silver lining, however.

Many of our friends and colleagues wanted us to succeed. They wanted it almost as much as we did, maybe more for a few of them. Friends who just don’t dance, hardly ever, and rarely for more than a song, were out on that dance floor for almost the entire time. They dragged their spouses out there with them. They all cut rugs much longer and plusher than is their nature. They did this not for the music, and not for the party, but for us, the two nerds behind the mixing board, panicking over whether “Superstition” or “TikTok” would better serve the immediate needs of the dancing masses. (Important Side Note: “Funkytown” no longer holds sway over anyone, especially the syntho-’80s version.)

We the DJs were out on a limb. Our friends went out on a limbo. For us.

Then we had our own Norma Rae moment. The boss was calling it a night, but Trout wanted to play “Glory Days.” It was the one Bruce song he had insisted on including. The boss demurred. Strongly. Trout was stout. In bold defiance, he picked up the mike with a call of duty to his colleagues. Sing with him! Dance with him! Show Bruce the love and respect the REAL Boss deserved!!

And, by God, they did. One of our coworkers -- a guy who could hardly be considered a close friend -- even organized a “Soul Train line” and got people dancing down the middle. It was the damn coolest Last Song dance moment a dying dwindling crowd could have had.

With friends and coworkers like those, one hardly need ask why I’m still at the same place after 14 years. It was one of the best and most uplifting Christmas presents I’ve ever received.

Observations from The Strut

Strut - Sheena Easton (mp3)
Strut - Cheetah Girls (mp3)

The Bessie Smith Strut is an annual Chattanooga tradition, a Monday around which all portions of The Noog community gather on Martin Luther King Boulevard to enjoy music, vendor grub, and beer all in the name of togetherness, drunkenness, and blues baby blues.

For the second straight year, I was bullied and intimidated into attending Chattanooga's largest annual no-admission event by my BOTG partner in crime, and that's why you've gotta love Bob.

Originally I'd planned to write something about vampires today, but you can't be all hungover from Strutting and then not write about The Strut. So here are some observations from this year's adventures:

WHERE ARE YOU DIAPER LADY?
Last year, a super-skinny black woman in a neon shimmery green matching bonnet and diaper hung out near us and danced almost as badly as she dressed. There was no such lady this year. The freak eye candy wasn't nearly as fun this year, although we did have one guy who looked like he'd been excommunicated from the Hari Krishnas, and a large number of people with their entire bodies covered with terrible tattoos. (No, I'm not saying tattoos are terrible; I'm saying that the tattoos covering these particular bodies were terrible.)

POLISH SAUSAGE IS DA BOMB
After four beers, and after standing in 93-degree heat (heat index: 101) for a couple of hours, very few food items would taste bad. I ordered a delicious Polish sausage and ate it so fast I had to convince myself it wasn't just a dream. Unfortunately, Bob forgot a very important rule of food purchases: Make sure your Polish Sausage isn't charred black to the core. In all my years of knowing him, I've never seen Bob react to a bite of food like he reacted to his first bite of that Polish Sausage. In fact, his reaction was almost exactly like the lady's reaction to her Whammy Burger at the3:32 mark of this clip from "Falling Down."



GOD IS WATCHING US... BUT FROM A SAFE DISTANCE
It's called "plausible deniability," and God wants it as much as anyone. He's definitely watching us, as Bette Midler insisted so many years ago in her cheesy awful song, but I think He stays at a distance more for His sake than for ours. At moments, being at the Strut reminds you why humanity is so cool. Then overweight redneck white men start showing up with signs and handing out cards explaining why we all shouldn't get along because God will smite those who don't worship Jesus exactly the way overweight redneck white men do.

IF IT WALKS LIKE A DUCK...
Chattanooga, for all the great reasons to enjoy this town, has suffered a little bit of a crime relapse lately, and especially in gang-related matters. We had a shooting in a downtown park a few months back where the police insisted it "wasn't gang-related" even though numerous bystanders observed that the conflict involved two different groups sporting two very distinct and consistent color choices in their clothing. Last night, the Strut ended with serious crowd panic and dispersal -- although I never heard a gunshot, someone familiar running past me said he did. As I hopped on my scooter to find my next bottle of water, I motored past nine young black males, all wearing either red shirts, red bandanas, or red belts. Lot of red. Now, with as little as I know about anything, particularly inner-city life, maybe I'm jumping to unfair conclusions to say it was members of a gang. Maybe they were a soccer team. Maybe they were all wearing Spain jerseys in anticipation of their World Cup match. Maybe they're volunteer firemen. But I'm gonna go with the theory that it was a gang.

TANK TOPS... A GUILTY PLEASURE
This one probably speaks for itself. I probably shouldn't make much of an effort to explain it further. They're kinda cheap and low-class, but my goodness they can look nice.

"ARE YOU GUYS GAY?"
Bob and I concluded our evening at a local dive where they were holding Trivia Night. After we proved ourselves marginally useful for one team of competitors, the crowd mostly died down, and Bob and I sat at the bar nursing the night's final beer. Some early 20s dude in a white button-down over a white wife-beater and carefully-manicured hair pulls up next to Bob with the tremendous introduction: "Are you guys gay?" Bob and I looked at one another and shrugged. If I recall, Bob's response was something like, "Maybe, but we have five children between us."

Point is, if some dude you've never met comes up to you and starts his conversation with that question, please don't let him sit down and destroy whatever conversation you were having with your not-gay friend of the same sex. Especially if the kid was home-schooled and looks like a mix between Ducky and Patrick Dempsey from Can't Buy Me Love.

Consider yourself warned.

The Grind

Move This (Shake Your Body) - Technotronic (mp3)
Dancing in the Dark - Tegan and Sara (mp3)

Dancing is of the devil.

Anyone who's ever danced right knows exactly why Baptists are against it. The John Lithgow preacher in Footloose, the shocked adults in Dirty Dancing, the honkeys in Save the Last Dance. Anyone who fears suggestive sexual expression -- be it for the mere symbolic nature, or as a means of communicating future plans -- has every reason in the world to fear dancing.

Christian defenders of dancing will cite David as their reason for being OK with it. He danced and sang naked in the streets in jubilant celebration of his love of God. Yet I find it not the least bit ironic or difficult to predict that the very guy who danced to celebrate God is the same one who poked his gardening gloves in another man's petunias.

To bastardize Lewis Grizzard, there's dancing, and then there's dancin'. The first is when you move your body, and the second is when you move your body and you're up to something. The problem is, most folks who enjoy the former are the very ones who really enjoy the latter.

I'm not saying that a person can't dance without doing other more nefarious deeds. Dancing isn't a bona fide gateway drug. Much of my life is a standing testament to the fact that one can dance the night away in a wide array of environments and situations yet walk off the dance floor with no attachments, no phone numbers, and no hotel keys. God knows my entire college existence was an attempt to prove that dancing had to lead to sex, with female after female proving this to be agonizingly untrue.

The reason I love dancing actually has little (directly) to do with sex, although some similarities inevitably abound.

No other public activity so completely frees the body from its self-consciousness more than dancing. Although I often dance to get attention, or to make a goofy spectacle of myself, putting my body on a dance floor inevitably leads to this joyous and possessed explosion of expression. At its orgiastic peak, it doesn't matter who is watching or what they think of my ability. All that matters is that they know I'm happy and can't help but show it. If you're happy and you know it shake your thang.

It's in those moments that dancing is most like sex. Free your mind, and your ass will follow. In the midst of the "Oh Face," the mind is free. Nobody gives a shit what's happening around them when they've got the "Oh Face," because they're in the middle of a friggin' OH.

At our annual faculty and staff Christmas party, the dance floor opened up for a second straight year -- replacing a more traditional house gathering sans music and booty-shaking -- and I felt compelled to make up for an utterly lackluster appearance in 2008. I even wrote the headmaster's wife a note in advance, which I handed to her upon arrival at the party, in which I thanked her for the party and great food and apologized for having too much to drink. "But dang I had fun!" it concludes. (I didn't have the balls to write "damn" even though she probably wouldn't have cared.)

Nothing about my dancing was aimed at getting me laid or increasing my erotic value to female onlookers. At moments it was about connecting with someone else, a kind of wordless means of telling another man or woman, "Look at us! We get along very well! We both can lip-sync 'Play That Funky Music' while gyrating our hips in a very Caucasian manner!" At other times it was my way of screaming out to the gods, "I don't care what people think, because I love hopping around to 'It Takes Two'!!"

But at the best of times -- and alcohol has plenty of positive responsibility here -- dancing sets me free, and it invites others to join. The sense of liberation, of loosening the restraints of stress and pressure and expectation, becomes almost evangelical.

In ways both fortunate and un-, I am at my most attractive and appealing when I'm being true to myself. Fashion and artifice rarely help me. Lipstick on a pig, as they say. What seems to make for the most appealing version of ME is when I embody the words of Bill Murray in Meatballs: It just doesn't matter!

In my day to day life, I'm shackled and weighed down worrying with what others think of me, frequently trying -- and plenty of times failing -- to impress them or please them or leave them happier or better than I found them. It makes me attentive to people, to their moods, to their words. It makes me a pretty good listener, I think. Ultimately, however, it's selfish, as I seem to base my own worth on how well I impact others. Which means I'm kind of using everyone to fill in some void in myself. Right?

But dancing? At it's best, it's Billy being Billy at the same time it pulls my soul away from the burdensome gravity of everydayness.

Thank God for dancing.