WW07 Part Three of Three: Pool Party (and Noise Violation #2)

So, as I mentioned in my last post, Bob is one of my favorite SCAD grads (behind Mike Dell, the groom…I forgot to mention that). He was one of Mike’s groomsmen and we all had great times partying together at Penn State. So needless to say, he was one of the people I was most stoked to see this week for Mike and Sarah’s wedding. Normally, Bob is pretty laid back and walks with a normal swagger. But if he’s in a hurry, he doesn’t run. He shuffles like Fred Flinstone powering a prehistoric car. It’s more of a “scurry.” Jeff is Bob’s BFF and was also a groomsman (also in our party crew at PSU).

With that in mind I am going to preface the following story with Sarah’s remarks during breakfast the morning after the wedding:

“Around 2 am I heard a loud crash, so I went to the window and all I saw was Bob speed shuffling down the sidewalk topless. And then Jeff ran into our room wearing only his underwear.”

Luckily, there was one bridesmaid still standing at 2am to witness (and take part in) the events firsthand: me.

Let me start from the beginning.

The ride from the reception back to the hotel was an effing quest. Everyone was calling everyone to get beer/to get directions/to ask where their pants were (just kidding. Although it wouldn’t surprise me). About an hour and a half after we closed down the reception, everyone finally showed up to the hotel for the afterparty. Probably one of the most amusing things was that Mike totally just passed out in the honeymoon suite and Sarah was like, “LET’S PARTY!” Just about everyone who attended the wedding came into their room and saw Mike laying on the bed and he has no recollection of anyone coming into the room whatsoever.

Another obstacle we faced was that upon check-in at the hotel, we were required to sign “No Party Agreements.” I’m sure hotel management realized they did the responsible thing when Shamra yelled across the lobby “YO! Leslie! No Parties! Shit!”

I’m not really in the habit of closely reading things like that before signing them, but this one I carefully examined. Especially after our first noise violation in NYC Thursday night/Friday morning. The agreement said that we get one warning call before being “evicted.” But we had a simple solution to the “No Party Agreement.” Move the party to the hotel lawn. It's rooted in the philosophy that if they can’t blame the ruckus on a room, they can’t evict us.

We got away with this for about 30 minutes before "noise violation 2" for the weekend was issued. We were asked to leave the lawn. At this point, most of us had lost the ability to participate in two-way communication, but we did have enough sense to at least move to another part of the lawn.

Meanwhile, there was another party going on in Groomsman Greg’s suite. Apparently at that party, Greg and Kristin played Rihanna & Jay-Z’s “Umbrella” (ella ella eh eh eh) 32 times. It was not played 33 times, thanks to Groomsman Bruce who finally pulled the plug on the laptop and forced the "room party" to merge with the newly relocated (about 100 yards from previous spot) "lawn party."

I noticed that “Room Party” had fused with “Lawn Party (location 2)” when Greg walked by me sitting on the lawn and I heard music coming from his pants. This could be a perplexing situation if you're 17 drinks into the night, but I finally figured out that Greg was DJ’ing the afterparty from his cell phone. Then all of the sudden I heard a “yelp” and a miniature person yell “LESLIE!” When I turned around I saw Kristin pointing to a bloody elbow. I just shrugged and went back to my conversation. This seemed to pretty much be par for the course. I did find out later, though, that Jeff had been carrying Kristin--just for fun--and ended up dropping her on the sidewalk. Then he called her a “prissy bitch.” Although Kristin agreed with his assessment, and maybe in a way respected the fact that he just came right out with it, she went inside to patch up her scrape and go to bed.

Meanwhile, I will note that this entire time, Shamra is nowhere to be found.

So I am left at the lawn party with most of the groomsman and a shitload of SCAD! Grads. Then Bob turned to me and said, “Wanna go in the pool?”

At 2am, taking off your clothes and scaling a fence to go drunk swimming with a bunch of loud a-holes sounds like an EXCELLENT IDEA.

In order to not get caught, there was a lot of whispering and “shhhhhush-ing,” but all that pretty much went to hell when somehow Bob knocked over a table onto the cement, loud enough to wake up Sarah, in “building two,” who promptly went to the window to check out the scattering of SCAD! Grads trying to not get evicted from the Saddle River Residence Inn. That included Bob's topless speed shuffle and Jeff barging into the honeymoon suite in his underwear.

The next morning, before everyone headed home, we all met for brunch and to say our goodbyes. And to ask Shamra where the hell she was all night.

Her boyfriend of just over a month explained:

“Well, we didn’t get back ‘til about 12:30. At which point she vomited on me. Then punched me in the balls. Then wrote all over my stomach with a Sharpie.”

Sham’s Residence Inn roommate, Kris (the maid of honor), told him that he “hit the Irish Girl Home Run.”

Indeed he had. Welcome to the "Shamra vomited on me" club.

WW07 Part 2: Pants.

Ed. note: Pictures are being added as I get them to my Yahoo! Photos at photos.yahoo.com/lesliegwinn (album Wedding Week 07).

After the rehearsal dinner on Friday night, the wedding party and friends went to the “quad” at our hotel to play a game of wiffleball (my stats: 2 runs, 3 RBIs. Kristin made me a baseball card). After about 6 long innings and losing all of our balls to the bushes, rooftops and dumpsters, we all ended up just sitting on the lawn drinking beer and chatting. Kristin and I ended up sitting and chatting with one of the best men: the groom’s 13-year-old brother, Kevin. Absolutely the coolest 13-year-old we ever met. We basically just sat in a group to the side joaning on people.

Mike (the groom) went to high school at State College High, the local high school in State College, PA (the location of Penn State’s main campus). Sarah, Kfo, Sham and I always used the term “SCAD Grad” (SCAD=State College Area School District) to refer to anyone who went to State High and subsequently Penn State- which was basically Mike and most of his friends. We even wrote them a SCAD! Theme song to the tune of “Fame!” (they hate it. Too bad.). As it got later and later Friday night, more and more SCAD Grads who had arrived in town to attend the wedding Saturday began showing up at the wiffleball field to drink.

One of those guys was someone we will here on refer to as “Pants.”

When “Pants” arrived, he dumbfounded me and Kfo on two levels: 1. How could a grown man be that skinny? 2. How could he get his pants on over his feet without sewing them onto his body? To quote Joe Dell: “There are only two reasons someone walks around looking like “Pants”: A.) He’s a rock star. B.) Heroin addict. We all know he’s not ‘A’.”

Me, Joe, Kristin and Kevin got into a really heated debate about what he was going to wear to the wedding the next day. Would it be something totally weird and edgy like his stretchy pants-wife beater-tight hoodie-emo hair combo? Or was he going to blow all of our minds and expectations by showing up in an Armani suit? We hedged our bets. “Pants” fueled a lot of our banter that night, which only escalated when he sat down on the field to chat with some other SCAD Grads. When he crouched down in those spandex knickers, we were all bracing for a split-pants incident:

Kristin: “If those pants come down any further his is going to shoot out of them.”

Leslie: “One rogue fart and those pants are gone.”

Kristin: “Ya and he would be left standing in only a nude man-beater.”

First of all, it took me a good two minutes to get that line out because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak. Second of all, the next day, “Pants” walked right past me before the ceremony and I didn’t recognize him.

Kristin: “He blew all our minds. He went with a great suit.”

Leslie: “THAT’S Pants?”

I should note, because it’s relevant to this blog and to the chronology of the weekend (but not necessarily this story) that when we got in the Limo to ride from our hotel to the church, there was a big screen playing a bootleg copy of Spiderman 3. Like I told Rachel when I got back: “I try to avoid Spiderman and he finds me in a limo in New Jersey. He webbed me.”

Anyway, the reception was everything I thought it would be and then some. Delicious Italian Buffet? CHECK. Open Bar? CHECK. Wedding party announced to the Bulls Theme? CHECK. Inappropriate dancing? CHECK. Leslie as the slutty bridesmaid with cleavage spilling out of her dress? CHECK.

After about 5 rounds of drinks, it was time for the bouquet toss. And yours truly caught it. The real question was which guy would get the garter? As I was standing up there with the bouquet:

Kristin: Look at Bob. He wants it.

Leslie: I think it will be Kevin It would be pretty funny if a13-year-old caught it.

And then we both saw, in slow motion, something that fate could not have better scripted: “Pants” LITERALLY jumping through the air and snatching it out from in front of everyone. Remember Macauly Culkin’s “AHHHHHHHHHHHH” face from Home Alone? Kristin and I turned to each other and replicated that face exactly to each other.

Luckily, the emcee and the groom didn’t pressure “Pants” to go up very high on my thigh with the garter belt. But after a few more drinks, I decided I wanted to draw this joke out even further, so I downed a drink, turned to Kristin and said “watch this.” Little did I know, the joke would be on me.

I went over to “Pants’s” table, where he was sitting alone:

Leslie: Thanks for going easy on me.

Pants: Huh?

Leslie: I’m Leslie. You just felt up my thigh.

Pants: Oh. Right.

Leslie: So you wanna dance?

Pants: I don’t really dance.

Leslie: It’s a slow song. You just go like this (motions slow dancing).

Pants: Where’s the fun in that?

Leslie: Are you kidding me? We’re at a WEDDING.

(Pants’s friend arrives at the table and tries really hard to get “Pants” to dance with me.)

Leslie: It’s no use. I don’t like your friend anyway.

...

Kristin: What was that about?

Leslie: I just got rejected. By Pants. (explains situation)

Kristin: (points to cleavage) Who says “no” to those? (Shamra and Jess concur.)

...

Bob: What’s wrong?

Leslie: I just asked someone to dance and I got shot down. Who says “no” to dancing at a wedding?

Bob: (rhetorically) Who would say no to you?

Leslie: Pants.

Bob: Oh. Pants. I went to school with him. He’s totally weird. Did you see what he was wearing last night?

Leslie (shouting down the head table): KRISTIN! Bob commented on the pants too!

Kfo (shouting back): Tell him about how we thought he was going to shoot out of them.

Leslie (to Bob): So do you want to dance with me?

Bob: Of course I do.

And that’s why Bob is my favorite SCAD Grad.

WW07 Part One of Three: Strip Club Island on the Hudson River.

As you know, for the past week I have been in New York and New Jersey for a hotly anticipated and much-hyped wedding: Mike and Sarah’s WW07 (Wedding Week ’07). I took the train up Tuesday evening and stayed with my friend Sarah (a different Sarah totally unrelated to the wedding). We had a lovely dinner at Patsy’s—a pizzeria in Midtown and then I crashed on her guest bed in Queens. (Thanks Sarah :) !!)

Wednesday morning I met up with my best friend, Kristin (KFo) at our hotel in midtown Manhattan (right next to the Waldorf Astoria. Schwing!). Kristin’s Dad (D-Fo) travels for work pretty much every week of the year and has accumulated a ridiculous amount of air miles and hotel points. So he graciously allowed us to use his “Royal Ambassador Hotel Status” to book a room for this trip. As part of the agreement, we were instructed to “behave yourselves and don’t disgrace my name.”

I believe in the literary world, that previous statement is what they call “foreshadowing.”

Wednesday went fine—went to the Met for the Costume Institute special exhibit, browsed a bit on Fifth Avenue, met Mike and Sarah back at the hotel and checked in and had our bags taken upstairs. At the special “Royal Ambassador” check-in desk, we were informed that as “Royal Ambassadors” we automatically received a 4pm check-out and COMPLIMENTARY MINIBAR.

This is when things started to get awesome.

Mike polished off every scotch and whiskey airplane bottle within the first hour of checking in. Kristin (who has a very low tolerance for alcohol) had no idea if her clothes even matched as we were leaving for dinner. And true to form, Sarah removed every Amstel Light can and Wine bottle from the minibar and hid them in her suitcase so that we could get a full re-stock when they came back to refill.

Sarah, Kristin and I had reservations at Nobu that evening. Mike and Joe (Mike’s brother/Best Man) decided to find a place nearby in Soho to eat so that we could all meet up at a bar afterwards. As we left Nobu, we called to find out where they ended up so we could meet them. Diva. They ended up at a restaurant called “Diva.” The rest of the evening was a bar hop of sorts from Soho to Midtown and a led to a very hungover morning—particularly for Kristin.

I was the itinerary nazi and made everyone get up in the morning so we could fit in the day’s activities. That included lunch at The Spotted Pig, shopping at Marc Jacobs, cupcakes at Magnolia, a trip to Sephora to get makeup for the wedding, and the last stop, which will here on be referred to as “Chinatown Pashmina Incident 2006.”

Our bridesmaid dresses were halters, so in order to cover our shoulders in the church, we decided to get matching pashminas for all the girls to wear during the ceremony. These run about four bucks a pop in Chinatown. However, after a day of walking all about downtown in 91-degree weather and rushing around in crowds, nearly all of us were about to snap—and we could not find 5 matching pashminas to save our lives. Finally, we got to a street stand where I am on my hands and knees pillaging as quickly as possible for a 5-matching-set of neutral/light pink/nude-colored wraps. For every color I found that worked, there only seemed to be 4 that matched. So I asked the lady at the stand if she had anymore that matched any of the many 4-sets we’d pulled out. She said that two of the sets matched. I said “no. they don’t.” Even though she seemed to disagree that the colors weren’t matching (THEY TOTALLY WEREN’T), she said “which color do you want me to find?” I said it didn’t matter as long as there were 5 of the same. Sarah (the Bride) said “at this point I would accept Gak Green if we could find 5 matches.”

The situation at this point is that I am standing there about to explode, while this little pissed-off Asian lady goes wandering around for a good 15 minutes to other stands trying to find a matching colored pashmina. I would have bet a million bucks she’d come back with the wrong color, but instead I just stood there impatiently, checking e-mail on my blackberry while waiting. She came back, I glanced up from my blackberry and looked and said totally non-chalantly: “That’s totally not the same color.” She said “Yes. It same.” I didn’t even look up. “No. not same. Totally different. They need to match exactly.”

“They same color!”

“NO! THEY NOT SAME COLOR! [still reading e-mail]. This is ridiculous. We’re going somewhere that knows how to match.”

The determination and fury that fueled our pashmina shopping for the next 5 minutes was unparalleled by any shopping phenomena I’ve ever witnessed. And in the end, we came out successful with five matching pashminas, a $20 tab and one relieving subway ride back to get ready for dinner and the bachelor/ette party.

For the bachelor/ette party, Joe and I booked a club that I’ve been to several times before: Ava Lounge on the penthouse floor of the Dream Hotel. The area reserved for us was directly overlooking Times Square and Kristin’s favorite Diddy (Sean John) billboard. This was the part of the weekend where all the groomsmen showed up—two of whom were majorly responsible for Shamra and I not remembering most of our senior year: Bob and Jeff—and we hadn’t seen them in three years. At this point, Shamra had also joined the group as well as two of the other groomsmen, Bruce and Greg. Bob’s sister was also there and a few other area friends. By 2am, management kicked us out of the main part of the lounge and onto the roofdeck. This is when and where we decided it was time to go to a strip club. So I started asking around the club for venue suggestions. The first strip club we ended up at had a cover that they wouldn’t waive for the ladies at the party, and before Jeff could get out money to cover the girls to get in (who all said “If I want to see boobs, I’ll just look in the mirror”), Bob’s sister suggested a place downtown. So we all got on the Subway and headed to Spring Street.

We walked around in circles downtown for about an hour and ended up at the Hudson River. 12th Avenue. As we were on the phone with another friend who was out, trying to tell her where to meet us, she said: “Does 12th Avenue even exist?” Indeed, it does.

I was fed up at this point and got in a cab with Sham, Sarah and Kfo back to midtown. The rest of the group followed us. I had the key and raced upstairs with Kristin because I had had to pee since the Subway ride. It was in the elevator that I am realizing that I’d lost my wallet. I knew I had it in the cab, because I paid the driver. But I am also inventorying the contents of the wallet: my ID, all my credit cards, all my cash and my ATM card...aaaaaaand I am having a panic attack. I sent Kristin downstairs to deal with the situation and find out what she could. What we found out was that apparently Sarah is autistic because she had memorized every number on that cab. This was very helpful, but still panicked, and thinking it wouldn’t be returned, I said: “I’d make out with that cab driver if he brought me my wallet back. Hell, I’D MAKE OUT WITH ANYONE WHO BROUGHT MY WALLET BACK!”

No sooner did I verbalize that than I hear cheering in the hallway and my panic quickly turns to jubilation. Jeff, who pulled up in the cab behind us, saw my wallet in the middle of 48th street and knew it had to be one of ours. This is me with my newly recovered wallet:


He however, was unable to collect his reward because Jeff, Bob and Bob’s sister had gone to find beer for the hotel room and sent the others up with my recovered wallet. Otherwise I probably would have jumped him. (I knew he wouldn't have a problem with that.) When they returned from the beer run there was beer leaking out everywhere because they had dropped it on the way. Beer all over the Royal Ambassador suite carpet. Awesome.

About an hour and a half later, around 5:30am, we kicked everyone out because we had received our first (but not last) noise violation of the week..

The next morning, Kristin found a slice of pizza behind the living room couch.

Kristin: “This better not go on DFo’s permanent record.”

At that, we headed to New Jersey for the rehearsal. That trip ended up getting us lost in the Bronx for about 10 minutes and a coining of the term “tool douche” as a general road rage expletive.

Coming up in part two: “Pants” and the bouquet toss.
Coming up in part three: Noise violation #2.