Sunday, April 5, 2009

Preteen Flashback but with Booze

Last night I had the great privilege of helping my friend M celebrate her 29th birthday. Wanting to do it up right, she got a group together for some old school rollerskating followed, of course, by a groupie-band-following experience of which I will describe in a moment.

But first, the Skate Land.

Skate Land, of course, is not as great as Skate World, Skate Universe, or Skate Galaxy, however, it brought me back to my preteen years of owning the skate rink at Shawano County Park in Shawano, WI. And by "owning," I mean "dominating."

When M first invited me to her skating party, she asked that we invitees not think less of her for wanting to partake in such a tween activity. I replied by saying that I owned my own skates, and was hardly in a place to be judging anyone.

The night proved to be exactly what I expected for my preteen flashback, but with the addition of Breakdancing Skate Guy, Twilight Emo Guy, and a good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, who stayed in my locker and occasionally made the evening more enjoyable.

After skating ourselves into oblivion (and thankfully not to the ER), we reverted back to our post-21 selves and headed to the least likely of all places, a "night club" in a bowling alley. I use quotations marks because I refuse to seriously call this place a club, even though the proprietors insist on doing so on their website. I forgot to bring my cleavage with me, or so I assumed when I compared my outfit to whom I can only imagine were townie prostitutes in the establishment's ladies room.

Thoroughly chastened for my lack of adequate fashion, I spent most of the evening in the balcony, raining down my judgment on others. It was fun.

A local band was playing, and the forty-year-old, recently-divorced, female groupies were just as entertaining as the forty-year-old, All-American Rejects wannabe band members. That is, until forty-year-old lead singer got felt up by one overzealous divorcee. At that point it was all I could do to keep down my dinner.

The only question remaining at the end of the evening was how the band could provide a video background that included clips from Dark Knight, among other popular movies. Copyright infringement, anyone?

Nonetheless, some of the tunes were dance-worthy and so I shook my tailfeathers with the best of 'em. However, I refused to dance in the cage. Just because your wood-paneled pub has a stage, dance floor, and cage dancer doesn't mean you've got yourself a hip nightclub. I'm talking to you, Pete Wentz lookalike who was running the soundboard.

All in all the evening reminded me of the time I was in Eagle River, WI, and my friends and I were joking that we should pick up some townies. We succeeded in drawing the attention of two male townies on a crotch rocket, and immediately threw them back in the townie fishpond, then hightailed it out of Eagle River. While I didn't catch any townies last night, the sentiment was the same.

It was a highly entertaining and much enjoyed evening.