Like many Americans, I punctuated the beginning of the season with a house Memorial Day barbecue with more food and booze than was possible for the 6 barbecue attendees to consume. In the name of moderation, we chose not to worry about the food and mostly just tackled the booze. While we began the afternoon by respectfully honoring the fallen through consumption of various meats and saucy side-dishes and PBR, the celebration escalated until we were all outside at 1 AM, howling along to the most obnoxious sing-along song of all time, James's "Laid" (hello, I'm back in high school?) while our neighbors, no doubt, sat inside their bungalows and conspired our assassinations.

My roommate, the next day: "Do you remember playing the tambourine to Daft Punk?"

Me, surfacing from my hangover: "No ... YES! I remember the tambourine. Not the Daft Punk."

Roommate: "Do you remember [Male Guest] dry-humping the shit out of me 'til I banged my head against the wall?"

Me: "Vaguely."

Roommate: "Do you remember everybody singing 'Laid' on the front lawn?"

Me: "Oh, God."

I also remembered ending the evening with a shot of the mescal we keep in the house for emergencies (i.e. when the rest of the booze is gone). I might as well have stabbed myself in the eye instead; it would have had the same effect without the lingering flavor of lighter fluid, celery, and pee.

And THAT'S how I came back to reality after a week in Hawaii! Segue!

You know, reviewing my sparse entries from the past couple of years, I've written mostly when I was either coming from, or heading to Hawaii. Rest assured that despite that, most of my life these days is spent decidedly not galavanting across the Pacific. But Dean and I have managed to plan visits during my semester breaks, which is also the time I am most available to write, and so there you go. A disproportionate amount of entries about Hawaii. It's math! Or logic. Or something.

I appreciate the turn my life has somehow taken, though, leading me to take biannual trips to Waikiki to drink booze and get laid. Makes me look like more of a rock star than I really am.

Dean and I do manage to fit at least a couple of rock star items in our itineraries when we plan these visits. We've swum with dolphins, done a fair amount of snorkeling, flown for a quick tryst to Kauai (where we stayed in a cabin in the jungle owned by probable cannibals), and, on this most recent trip, we dove into a shark cage a la Jacques Cousteau and watched while blue sharks devoured the fuck out of a bouquet of fish carcasses.

It was awesome. I even almost got a tan.

For these shark tours, the guides ship you and up to eleven strangers to the middle of the ocean, where a steel cage awaits. Then, dividing into groups of six, you all don snorkels and take turns playing in the cage while the guides dangle mackerel off the side of the boat. If you're lucky, the sharks will come right up to the cage. Dean and I, in our group, weren't quite so lucky ... but we did get within arm's length of a few of those big, hungry, serrated-toothed fish, and were mere feet away from one that got dragged halfway onto the ship deck by one of the trepidatious (and insane) guides.

Okay, sharks might be scary, in that they are large and strong and have horrible table manners and are known for dismembering, but they really aren't looking to do so. Only if you're in its path when it's hungry will a shark attack you. I think. Or if you taunt it. I think. Anyway, whatever -- I was safe behind bars, or on a boat, when the sharks were in jumping range. Face to face, sharks look velvety-soft and sort of out-of-it. I might not tell one to its face, though.

I think we should go skydiving next time. Because nothing says love like pushing someone out of a flying death machine. Into a VOLCANO, please! Awesome.

Aside from that, we went to a quiet beach where a happy, fat lab named Koa decided to be our friend and insisted that we play fetch with him for about half an hour. I exlpored downtown art galleries and bought a pair of vases shaped like pink gogo boots. We attended a "singles" party for the classifieds section of the Honolulu Weekly, where Dean works as calendar editor and news writer, and we plotted absurd alternate identities so we could pretend to be whackos, get picked up by other people, and eventually go home together anyway. (We didn't actually follow through with that plot. Most of the party attendees were other Honolulu Weekly staff members, and not there for the hookup. I did get approached by one guy when I went out on the deck for a cigarette, but he was really nice and I would have felt like a douche bag if I had wound into our conversation some false story about being Lola, a puppeteer from the deep south, while he was putting himself out on a limb, so I didn't follow through.) We hung out with Dean's friends, who kept me nice and drunk and talked convincingly about my possibly moving to Hawaii.

We also spent a lot of time just hanging out, watching horror movies, and cooking. The two of us cooked and ate about five pounds of crab with garlic butter. As the grocer behind the seafood counter said, handing Dean our package-o-crab and looking sincerely aghast, "That's a lotta crab for two people." Hot damn, it was so good. And interactive! Crustacean is great when you have to work for it.

Dean came back here with me for a couple of days, specifically because he is a dork. Oop -- I mean, because he wanted to see the live Mystery Science Theatre 3000, with the actual MST3K cast commenting, of "Over the Top," the heartwarming (read: TERRIBLE) story of a trucker (Sylvester Stallone) and his estranged son, and how the two of them overcome obstacles and clashes of lifestyle to help Sly win the national arm-wrestling championship in Las Vegas. I think it's my new favorite movie. Oh, Sly.

Dean's airport shuttle picked him up Memorial Day afternoon, which was sad as always. Shortly thereafter, my friends showed up with barbecue victuals and libations, and helped me forget about him completely.

Oh, I'm kidding. From the week, all I forgot was the Daft Punk. Dean and I were bloody adorable in our messy way until the very end of the trip. At least, I think we were. I may have been drunk.

Next time: LAVA DIVING! SHARK RIDING! PARASAILING WITH PAINTBALL GUNS!

Hey, that last one sounds fun. Pt-CHOO! (That was the sound of me shooting a paintball gun.)

~ Last Five Entries ~

Days and Nights - 10.01.07

Eye-Boners - 07.20.07

Something About My Big Frickin' Bed - 07.11.07

Summertime Fix in Hawaii - 06.12.07

About Zigs - 04.26.07

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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