Headed up to Oakland last night to cook dinner with Helen Jane. Without a recipe, we winged it on chicken parmigiana, which came out surprisingly well – particularly the homemade sauce. Apparently, the secret to cooking Italian food is consuming several bottles of vino in the process.

Helen Jane’s husband, James, is recovering from a serious fall that left him wheelchair-ridden for several months, though by now he’s up to crutching around with great aplomb. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with HJ on the set of I Love Your Work, enough to determine she’s one of my very favorite people, but I hadn’t spent nearly as much time with James. So I was particularly glad to spend an evening with just the two of them – sort of a chance to further feel him out. By the end of the night, I’m pleased to say he’d earned the official self-aggrandizement stamp of approval.

As the two had been unable to hit the bars (or, really, leave the house) for the past few months, they’d instead honed their card games skills to an impressive peak. Intermixed with cooking, drinking and eating, we blew our way through several games of Coolio, Egyptian Rat Screw, and an excellent variation of bullshit (possibly called ‘fourshit’?) that I taught. The latter game requires both strategy and the ability to seamlessly lie through your teeth, which left James and I to battle it out while Helen Jane – whose tendency to dissolve into fitful giggles when bluffing put her at a bit of a disadvantage – mainly egged things on.

Eventually, we ended up on their porch, where Helen Jane and I shared blogger gossip (accompanied by much eye-rolling by James), and we all generally shot the proverbial shit. It was one of the most delightful evenings I’ve had in weeks, and as HJ’s best friend Hilary (another recent addition to my very favorite people list) just managed to break her leg in three places and may consequently be coming to stay with Helen Jane for a few nights (thereby expanding Oakland’s apparent mini-Bellevue), I suspect I’ll be making it back at least once more through the course of this quick jaunt out West.

Ah, jet-setting, jet-setting.

Prior to this morning, it had been altogether too long since I came home so late that the sun was already beginning to rise.

This morning, as occurs troublingly frequently, I woke up promising myself I’d never, ever get as drunk again as I did the prior night.

Just in case you were wondering why I don’t normally return home Thursday nights, three sheets to the wind, and comment on friends’ blogs:
– Her entry;
– My (inexplicably pseudonymized) comment.

Late, late, late last night, after a wedding so good it nearly broke me of my secret plans to elope should I ever tie the knot myself, I ended up alone in a hotel room with the three bridesmaids, all of whom were fairly drunk. None the less, I am terribly disappointed to admit that Helen Jane still doesn

Realizing I was much too inebriated to make the half hour drive back to my friend’s house after the party I attended last night (theme: “naughty & nice”), I ended up instead spending the night on the back seat of my rented Focus. When Ford says ‘compact’, they’re not kidding.

From what I can recall:

7:30: Dinner with Sarina, Yoav and Randy. Sarina cooked, I pitched in as potato-masher and wine bottle-opener. Excellent.

9:30: Over to Bemelmans at the Carlyle to meet Shibani (in from Cleveland), her boyfriend Darren, and his mom (in from Australia). Jazz courtesy of Loston Harris, former piano player of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

11:00: Meet back up with Yoav and Sarina at Amelia’s birthday party at Noche in Times Square. Bachelorette party is simultaneously taking place at bar and bachelorette has t-shirt emblazoned with checklist of things she needs to get random guys at the bar to do; Yoav has apparently already given her his boxers (replete with Seven Dwarfs pattern). I escape having only to buy her a round of vodka shots and kiss her on camera.

1:00: Side trip with Sarina, Amelia and Chandre for drunken hamburger eating at McDonalds down the block.

1:15: Back to Noche to assist Yoav in rescuing two early-twenties girls unhappily surrounded by balding men in their early fourties.

1:30: Escort girls to Single Room Occupancy a few blocks away; gain instant street cred by knowing location of the bar, as one of the two had heard that SRO existed, but had never been able to find out exactly where.

2:00: Apparently, second (cuter) girl is in for the weekend from Syracuse, where she’s working on her masters. Yoav and I exchange glances on this fact, as girl seems to have brains of toothpaste.

2:30: Ah, masters is in fitness education. Right.

3:00: Wait, how much have I had to drink by now?

4:00: In moment of clarity, realize would regret immensely actually going home with either girl. Say my goodbyes, stagger back to apartment and, after some difficulty negotiating the stairs, collapse on bed still partially dressed.

11:00: Solemnly vow to never, ever drink again so long as I live. Or at least not until later this evening.

Apparently, the combination of vodka, allergy medication, and very low blood pressure isn’t a terribly good one, as I passed out this morning on my way to the bathroom. After which, I proceeded to get up, walk back to my bedroom and pass out a second time there.

Though I’m nursing a number of odd bruises from the two less than graceful crumplings, there was something oddly pleasant about the suddenly cool, clammy and clear feeling that comes with post-feinting fluttering open of eyelids. Something akin to, though certainly milder than, the feelings Dostoevsky described as preceding his epileptic fits:

“For several instants I experience a happiness that is impossible in an ordinary state, and of which other people have no conception. I feel full harmony in myself and in the whole world, and the feeling is so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could give up ten years of life, perhaps all of life. All of you healthy people don’t even suspect what happiness is, that happiness that we epileptics experience for a second before an attack.”