Notes on TPfest
June 25-27, 2004 : NYC
page 1 - page 2 - page 3 - page 4 - page 5 - page 6
SUNDAY
Obviously, I woke up on Sunday earlier than Scott did. He was still
feeling the after-effects of his 48-hour no-sleep marathon. Sitting
quietly in our room, I decided to write the full Stupidfriends theme song.
It goes like this.
Flying far, we don't know where we are
Lost my car, where is the VCR?
We are the Stuuu-pidfriends!
We are the Stuuu-pidfriends!
S - T - U - P - D - F - R,
We're the Stupidfriends!
In the rain, we look like we're insane
We laugh at pain, cause we've got half a brain
We are the Stuuu-pidfriends!
Table for Stuuu-pidfriends!
We're going straight down the drain!
We're the Stupidfriends.
Oh, here in New York, it's so hard when you're doing stuff
We are the Pigs who are just about tough enough
We're not bright, don't get much sleep at night
Hangin' tight, we are an awesome sight
We are the Stuuu-pidfriends!
Help, it's the Stuuu-pidfriends!
What was our name? Oh, that's right!
We're the Stupidfriends!
Insert fanfares and flourishes.
Anyway, it's a bit of a slow start all round this morning, as you might expect after last night's mess. Isha, Cathy and Alaina are still sleeping it off as the rest of us assemble for a groggy breakfast at a nearby diner. There isn't much to say about this breakfast -- we were unusually quiet.
Sadly, Tom and Kellie had to leave to head back to DC at this point. I was still a little sleepy, but I'm pretty sure Tom was there. I remember saying goodbye to some kind of Tom-shaped object, but it may have been swamp gas or a weather balloon. Anyway, we're very sad to see them go.
The folks who are checking out have to check out at this point. Amy shows
up, as advertised, along with her husband Rob and her daughter Emily.
She's all excited and happy to see us, so it's a shame that the rest of us
are kind of in "the party's over" mode. I think Amy thought of
it as: The weekend is Saturday and Sunday, so I'll be there Sunday and
I'll still be around for half of it. Ah well. I didn't actually get to
hang with Amy much while she was there; a lot of her focus was on her
daughter. Emily has a tough time with crowds of strangers, so Amy spent a
lot of time harnessing Emily.
One thing about Amy: She remembered to report to us that Quinn, Daniel, Nate, John, Yancey and David B are all super sexy groovilicious hotness. I think that's all the people she mentioned; she basically rattled off a string of names and told us how groovy and hot they all are. Apparently they all made her promise to say that when she saw us. We agreed, so it was a happy time.
Back up to Guillermo's posh room to assemble the crew. Cathy has woken up by this point. She hasn't showered or dressed or anything, but she's sitting in G's room and seems okay. Patrick and I stage a half-hearted intervention. We tell her that we're concerned about her drinking, that we care about her and that we want her to face up to what she's doing to the people that she loves. She's unresponsive. We agree that she's too far gone; we can't help her now. We just have to wait until she hits bottom.
We all have the yearbooks that Martha gave us, and this is the time for us
to sign them. We sprawl out everywhere -- on the beds, on the floor, in
the chairs -- and we start signing each other's yearbooks. Naturally, you
can't just write, like, "Hi Alaina! It was great to see you this
weekend! Love, Danny!" -- no, no. It has to be witty, it has to be
heartfelt and insightful. It's a long job. It takes us maybe an hour and a
half.
During this period, Guillermo's parents come back to their room, hoping to grab a little mid-day nap before going off to whatever they're doing next. They're a little nonplussed to find their room taken over by scrawling Pigs, but they're completely impossibly nice about it. We offer to leave and go find another room, but no no, they won't hear of it. They hang out for a while -- and when they see that the yearbook signing is an eternal process, they take off, saying that they were happy to meet everyone. They are the sweetest people in town.
Remembering last night's party, I start singing the "Donald Duck Is A Bug" song. It's not much lyrics-wise, but it's a fun party tune. It goes like this:
D'-doo d'-doo-DOO,
D'-doo d'-doo DOO-doo-doo.
D'-doo d'doo-DOO,
Donald Duck is a bug.
Repeated infinitely.
And then each verse gets its own weird scat singing or random phrase thrown in, just to keep it moving along. Everybody claps, everybody makes noises or scats or something. We trade off who sings the "Donald Duck is a bug" line. It doesn't sound like much, but when you all sing it together, it's the greatest song ever. I hope Guillermo recorded some of it, cause just thinking about it makes me happy.
Anyway, we finally finally finish the yearbooks. Scott wants to go to the
Empire State Building, which is just down the street -- he wants to take a
picture of himself with some recognizable New York landmark, holding up a
sign for Gillian so she can see that her daddy was thinking about her when
he was in New York. This is an important goal, so we all head out.
We get to the Empire State Building, and find that we're just half a block away from where the Gay Pride parade is passing by. We stop by and have a look. It's your typical pride thing; lots of crappy dance music, and floats going by with half-naked muscle boys. Cathy and I dance a bit. Patrick does a really cute dance move with his hands.
The music is loud, so Cathy and I have to shout to talk over it -- singing, making stupid jokes. It becomes obvious that we're both a little pissed off that there's all these people gathered together to pay attention to something, and that something is not us. We're trying to compete with a parade for people's attention -- and, in our own limited sphere, it's actually working.
The most amusing thing that we see is the Armenian group, marching along sullenly between a big bar float and another big bar float. There's maybe ten gay Armenians walking along in the hot sun, carrying a banner and a flag. They look a little droopy, cause there's only ten of them and they've been walking this whole time. Cathy and I try to cheer them up by screaming ARMENIAAAAAAAAAA! WOOOO! It doesn't seem to help, probably because everybody has been shouting Armeniaaaaaa, Woooo at them for hours, and they've already figured out that the people going Woooo don't really give a shit about Armenia. Still, I would think that when you're gay Armenians, you gotta learn to take the love where you can find it.
We head into the Empire State Building, where we get on the first of many lines just to do something simple like get on an escalator. Cathy and I are still going Woooo about the Armenians, and at some point we start singing the Armenia Fight Song, which goes like this:
Armeniaaaaaa, Armeniaaaaaa
Armeniaaaaaa, Armeniaaaaaa
Armeniaaaaaa, Armeniaaaaaa
Armeniaaaaaa, Armeniaaaaaa
Repeated even more infinitely than the Donald Duck song. We sing Armenia, Armenia all the way up the Empire State Building, even though the people in front of us on line are trapped just like we are and have done nothing to deserve this. We're completely aware that we've just gone way over the edge from enthusiastic and happy into total bugfuck annoying by now. There doesn't seem to be much we can do about it. At least we're spreading a bit of Armenia spirit.
So it turns out that going up in the elevator in the Empire State Building
costs twelve bucks a pop, which is too rich for about half of the people
in the group. They all bug off and go watch the parade some more. But
Scott really wants to do this for Gillian, so Cathy, Martha, Jog, Isha and
I go up with him.
I wish I could say that it was a fun experience and totally worth the twelve bucks, but it was not by any means. The promise to Gillian is the important thing, obviously, and it's worth anything to make Scott and Gillian happy. But if it weren't for that, then it would have been hugely unsatisfying. I would recommend to any New York visitor to please not bother.
You wait on a long line to pay, then you wait on a long line to
walk upstairs, and then you wait on a reeeeally long line to take the
elevator. The elevator takes you up to the 80th floor, where you wait on
another long line to take another elevator. They don't tell you that this
elevator is only taking you up six more flights, so you could have walked
it instead of waiting on this extra line.
Then you get up there, and you're, like, oh. Top of a tall building. Check it the fuck out. You take a bunch of pictures, you look out at the view. You point out random landmarks to each other. The novelty wears off somewhere around minute three, and then you realize that you're going to have to wait on some more fucking lines in order to get back down. So you hang around on the observation deck with kind of a fixed smile and a weird empty feeling, hoping to stretch out the experience just a little bit more so it won't feel like you've wasted so much time and money. You look around at all the other people with fixed smiles, trying to do the same thing. And finally you lose heart and just head back downstairs.
It's a joyless experience. Still, we have some nice pictures.
We fight our way downstairs, out into the light, and meet up with everybody at Starbucks. While we've been gone, Amy's family has gone off home -- but we meet up with Guillermo, Patrick, Frank and Alaina, and we go have lunch at a pizza place. We're pretty tired and drained by this point; see photo for more details.
So it's back to Guillermo's room at the hotel for the big farewell. We're all tired, but one of your better varieties of tired -- the kind of tired that you feel when you're just full up on great happy memories. We take some more pictures, we record some more video. We sing another resounding rendition of Donald Duck Is A Bug.
We talk a lot about how we all feel like we're better friends now than we were before. People who were already good friends feel like that friendship is stronger now. People who just met this weekend feel like real friends. We all agree that this was a kick-ass time, one of the best weekends we've had in a long long time, and that everybody -- are you listening, everybody? -- needs to move heaven and earth to be at the next event.
And that, really, is the reason why we've been talking so much about the weekend on the forum over the last week. We want to share all these memories -- the stories, the in-jokes, the drawings, the songs -- because we wanted you all to be there with us. We're also hoping that this is all one big ongoing advertisement that will motivate you to come to the next one.
We really just started thinking about it, but the thing that was discussed at the end of Sunday was a trip to Boston in the fall, probably October. We'll try to come up with a date soon, and then it's up to you. If we're talking mid-October in Boston, then you have three months to get ready.
If taking time off work or school is going to be a problem, then start planning for that now -- request the time off, do what you have to do. If money is going to be a problem, then start putting a little cash aside now. The whole weekend for me -- including two nights in the hotel, round trip on the train, buying meals and Vitamin Water, Moomintroll toys and Sesame greeting cards -- it cost me $400 total. I bet you can save $400 between now and October.
And, as everything that we've been posting and talking about proves: It's worth it, it's worth it, it's worth it. See you in Boston, baby.
page 1 - page 2 - page 3 - page 4 - page 5 - page 6
