31 Flavors

My father taught me how to write. He would have me write a paragraph, or a page and then tell me to reduce it by a certain number of words. He did this when he was a schoolboy in Malaysia. The idea is that you choose your words carefully and eke out as much meaning as you can out of each word.

A sculptor once described his method as "I take away everything that is not the statue." The key is to recognize when you have truly whittled something down to its essence.

The picture is from my birthday party (photo credit to P. Escobar.) First, I cropped out a friend's coworker (she didn't sign up for notoriety.) After careful consideration, I cropped myself out of the pic. This pic says everything you need to know about my birthday party.

THAT'S RIGHT! I'm finally writing the birthday post!

The scene: Levende Lounge. I am big on the lounge thing, I like the idea of a comfortable space with furniture designed for kicking back and staying awhile. The one thing I hate is that some lounges are about "beautiful people" pointedly not talking to each other (*cough* 18th Street Lounge *cough*.) I'd been to Levende before with la brim and liked the vibe. (And this is despite brimful getting a fist to the eye, and some weird girl putting her head on my shoulder to whine about not getting the bartender's attention.)

The crowd: A veritable who's who: ads, brimful, Roop, P. Escobar, SJM, oodles. Oh yeah - and people I know from outside of the blogination. (Inconceivable, I know!) Unfortunately, we didn't have the place to ourselves. There were about 5 times as many people as the first time I hung out there. Oddly, there were FOUR other birthday parties going on that night. I ran into a coworker who was also having a bday party. Think about how weird that is: I work 40 minutes south of the city, there are a million bars in SF and I ran into a coworker also celebrating her birthday.

The highlights:

Levende makes a very yummy drink out of cherries that they marinate themselves! (I kept telling e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e. about the marinated cherries.) I believe this drink is called an Effen Cherry Bomb. I believe one shouldn't have more than ... three.

A friend of a friend was talking to me about law school, and how mutual friend was trying to convince him to go. I was listing the positive things about it, when he interrupted me to say, "Yes, but the biggest obstacle to me going to law school is that I'm a Marxist." Then, the Marxist proceeded to buy a bottle of Dom for the table. It was a little surreal, but I chalked it up to the Effen Cherry Bomb.

Somehow, I took it into my head that what we needed to hear was Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. I may have dared my peeps to go make a request. ads took me up on it, but to no avail. That's okay, in many ways, it was the trying that mattered.

A friend near the bar was looking for me on the dance floor, and a German helpfully volunteered, "Look for the arms in the air." For someone who doesn't know me at all, that was strangely accurate.

And...scene: I believe a good time was had by all, although the crowd did awaken my misanthropic side. And I was hangover-free the next morning (31 years and counting!)