The Travails of the Astounding!

On Friday, Jon Jim and I threw a party at our house, the second of the semester. With the playlists cued, Jon's tables amped, and the fridges (yes multiple) filled with cases of beer, and Teamster margaritas (a funky lime, beer, tequila concoction), it was decreed that fun would be had.
It's funny how quickly an intimate gathering swells to a near capacity crowd. At one point I turn to Jon's ultra chill friend Jay, who had been one of the first to arrive, and we flash each other the "where the hell did all these people come from look".
When I was introduced to Jon's friend, Izzy, from Pitt-News I immediately exclaimed that given my past history with certain persons who shorten Isaiah to Izzy (or have it shortened for them), I knew we'd get along just fine and dandy.And Izzy, the student filmmaker who has aspirations of starting up a Pittsburgh production company, and I, somehow managed to find SOMEthing to talk about. Certain personality types are instantly recognizable to me, and the Izzy phenomenon, apparently is one of them.
I met some other cool folks who seemed earthy, edgy and interesting. Thinkers, and rock-n-rollers to be sure. Anyway, we started talking about how it seems like everybody these days fancies themselves a poker shark. It's Americas new non-sport, puting golf into second place. One of these folks pulls me aside and tells me it'shis friends (Jess) 22nd birthday in 5 minutes, but he feels rotten because he nearly completely forgot, and hasn't a gift. I think they might have been an 'item'. In which case he was in REAL trouble. Well, 2 minutes and a guitar tune-up later he played and I sang her a birthday song for the ages. Mariachi style!! I really belted it out. FUN FUN FUN Coincidentally thats the most use ole Matilda has had since I bought her from Sam Ash with Hara on MY birthday 3 years ago.
SIGH, Hara, a friend I have neglected to call in far too long. That ought to be remedied.
So, it's around 5 and things were finally starting to die down, when suddenly we got a weakly persistent banging on the door. Friends I tell you that it reeked of angry neighbor energy from across the room before the door even opened, to reveal our next door neighbor, in slippers and robe. Apparently we'd been keeping him up for hours, and if you refer to the picture of my house, youll understand why, after all he lives under the same roof we do. Although he has an entirely seperate...unit, space. It's odd living in the same house with your next door neighbor. I doubt we share landlords... but how is that possible if we all live within the same building...? ANYway, our ear-plugged, 60 something neighbor, who was deaf to our apologies and mollification, made a slightly enigmatic racist comment to the tune of "I've heard better music come out of the jungle", muttered loudly to himself for a moment, and was gone. . . 30 seconds later, the entire room burst into a raucous laughter. Myself included.

With that, the clock struck 5:30 and we decided to head to a local restaurant. Where a gay waiter with too many tables to tend undercharged us and got a great tip for it.
On the walk back home we stopped by to pick up some complimentary pumpkins that were nicely (and convieniently) placed outside of the supermarket around the corner from the entrance and out of sight. (Unattended merchandice, and they call this a city?!) At Jim's suggestion we embarked on a community beautification campaign, which consisted of plucking Bush/Cheney lawn signs and sticking them into the stolen carts with the stolen pumpkins. Rascals that we are. In a sad show of futility, Jon, our poor fool-of-a-Took Libertarian roomate, responded by grabbing a couple Kerry/Edwards signs. Phase Two of the 'campaign' is systematically replacing the Bush signs with Kerry signs the closer we get to elections.
I also met some other new VERY interesting people, and found one person who I had previously met to be quite intriguing, but these observations are for other conversations.
Oh hey, Jon carved one of the pumpkins up good.