BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Mandy looked over at me and said, “Merrrba… gimmin suey sass.”

I nodded and replied, “Shooba. Yooben neeb hat pemmer doo?”

Everyone else around the table just stared. Well, almost everyone. Some of them were slumped over in their chairs, or pitched forward with their faces in their plates. The Evil Redhead was among them. In fact, she had been the first to go after staring off into space for several minutes.

I readjusted my chopsticks – all eleven of them, or so it appeared to me – in my hand, then chased a hunk of steak around my plate, batting it from one side, then over to the other and back again. Finally I just gave up, stabbed it with one of the plastic sticks, then spent another three minutes trying to hit my mouth.

“Nom thiggen…” I muttered, waving the now empty, imitation ivory stick at the watery sauce on my plate.

“Ahm nobissed…” Mandy said with a nod

I stared at the sauce for a minute then asked, “Wunner by?”

Mandy didn’t answer me this time. She had already fallen out of her chair as she passed out and plopped onto the floor.

Okay, so I guess maybe I should rewind a few frames… Maybe even more than a few.

You see, we used to have an almost weekly get together with a group of friends, generally on a Friday or Saturday evening. We’d pick a “theme” for a meal, even if it was just potluck, and then cook together, eat together, and just generally hang out together. On this particular evening, as evidenced by the chopsticks in use, the theme was “Asian-American” food.

Now, I have to admit something here… I haven’t been entirely honest with you in the past. The truth is, in all of the blogs where I have pointed out that the Evil Redhead requires strict supervision in the kitchen, and would starve if there wasn’t something on hand to subject to the timed bursts of a microwave’s magnetron, I’ve been making it sound worse than it is.

The Tuna Helper incident notwithstanding…

So, it’s time I come clean: The Evil One prepares the best damn stir fry I have ever put in my mouth. Seriously. No kidding. Beats the holy hell out of Happy China Buffet, La Choy, Mandarin House, ad infinitum. You name an Asian-American restaurant out there and E K will whomp ’em good with her wooden spatulas and Wok.

Except that one time… And, as you are sure to have surmised, that one time is what this blog is all about… And, to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t ALL her fault. She just started the rice ball rolling, so to speak.

(Oh, and just so we are all on the same page – Yes, I know Sake is spelled Sake, not Sockee…)

The evening started out like any other weekly dinner gathering evening. Mandy and I were in the kitchen taking a backseat sous chef role to the Evil Redhead who was in charge of the meal, obviously due to her prowess with a wok. The rest of the crew were enjoying some before dinner drinks and wandering in and out of the kitchen to chat with us. As usual, we were having a before dinner drink or two ourselves.

Herein lies the problem – by this point in our marriage E K was already out of practice on her drinking AND she was imbibing on an empty stomach. Therefore, about halfway through preparation of one of the stir fry dishes, she crashed. Not hard, but she announced in no uncertain terms that she needed to sit down. This meant Mandy and I had to step up to the plate.

No biggie. I can cook, we all know that. Should be easy like pie… I mean, E K had the recipe sitting right out there on the counter, and several other folks were more than happy to roll up their sleeves and pitch in as well, lest E K beat them for not helping out. You know how she is…

Can you see where this is going yet? If not, keep reading… If so, still keep reading…

I jumped to the stove and took over the spatulas. One stir fry dish was already done, and Mandy was working on a batch of fried rice.

“Where did you leave off, Legs?” I asked my almost catatonic wife.

“Soggy,” she mumbled.

“Soggy?”

“Uhmmm-hmmm,” she said with a nod. “Sohhhggggeeeee.”

I ran down the list on the recipe and suddenly it made sense. Sake. Okay, all good. There was a bottle of it right there on the counter, so I tossed the sizzling meat around the wok then added the shot of sake called for on the ingredients. Back to the table I went to finish chopping the veggies.

“Do you want me to watch this?” Mandy called out.

I answered over my shoulder as the knife in my hand beat out a rhythm against the cutting board. “Yeah. I’ll be done here in just a second.”

“Where did you leave off?” she asked.

“Sake,” I told her.

“Okay.”

A few moments later I was tossing the veggies into the wok. However, instead of finding Mandy at the stove, one of our other friends was standing there, spatula in hand, looking somewhat lost.

“Where’s Mandy?” I asked.

“She had to use the bathroom. She asked me to watch the stove.”

“All good, I’ll take over now.”

“Thanks.”

E K mumbled something from behind, “Saaahhhhgggeeee.”

“What?” I asked, then looked at the recipe. “Oh yeah, Sake.”

I added a shot of Sake.

I could go on, as it didn’t end there, but I suspect you are all with me now if you weren’t already. Yep… When we compared notes the next day – post hangover, of course – we discovered that a recipe calling for 1 shot of sake had received something on the order of a half bottle of the rice booze and nowhere near enough stove top time to evaporate the alcohol – just enough to get it nice and warm…

Of course, it all worked out for the best. We all ended up drunk from the meal, so we had plenty of our other booze left over for the next dinner party…

More to come…

Murv

If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time whatsoever, you already know that I’ve made no secret of the fact that E K and I were married on Halloween, way back in nineteen-hundred and eighty-sevum…

For several years afterward, in addition to treating ourselves to a night out with dinner and all the trimmings, we would either attend – or on a number of occasions hold ourselves – a costume party. Sort of a combination Halloween Costume/Anniversary bash. There was even a stretch where the parties had “themes” to coincide with the number of years we had been married. Of course, life can tend to get in the way, as we all know, and those parties have gone by the wayside. We’re seriously considering resurrecting them, but not this year.

Still, I thought it might be fun to dig through the archives and see what we had in the way of pictures of our costumes back in the day. Of course, nothing will be able to top our 1987 Bride and Groom costumes pictured above.

Unfortunately, as I began digging I discovered that many of our costumes over the years were never photographed with our own cameras, therefore we have no pictures of them. Someone out there does, I’m sure, but that doesn’t help me much as far as this blog is concerned (LOL). So, I will see if I can rattle off the costumes I can remember, and post the scant few pictures I was able to find.

I’ll tell you up front, a not so surprising theme starts to develop…

1986 – Shortly after moving in together we attended a costume party at the apartment of a couple we knew. Being on a tight budget we used whatever we had on hand – E K was a Dominatrix and I was her Slave. I somehow doubt it surprises anyone that The Evil Redhead already had the necessary clothing and props to pull this off…

1987 – The wedding, pictured above. E K reprised her 1986 costume by attending as a “Dominatrix in White.” Me? Well, I officially became her Property in the eyes of the law. Trust me, she has a piece of paper from the State of Missouri to prove it.

1988 – We attended a MAJOR costume party at the home of a friend of one of  E Kay’s co-workers. This was one of those legendary, long-running, gi-hugic bashes with overflowing attendance, plenty of booze, and a costume contest that required knowing the right people in order to wrangle an invite. Fortunately, we did.  E K was a Dominatrix Cop and I was her Prisoner/Punching Bag.

We weren’t flush with cash at this point in our lives, however we both had good jobs with steady paychecks, and we were keeping the bills paid – and had a little extra. Given that, we used some things that we had on-hand, but also invested in some props and other accouterments to really jazz up the costumes. This involved some trips to surplus stores, toy stores (back when plastic toy guns actually looked like the real thing), and even some sewing. Of course, E K already had the leather skirt and stiletto heels on hand, go figure.

The Evil Redhead spent the entire evening dragging me around the party by my shirt collar or by the handcuffs she had slapped on me (and didn’t take off for several hours). To the delight of the other party goers – and her own as well, I suspect – she kicked, stomped, slapped, beat, and threatened me the whole night as well.

Some of the attendees, while realizing we were in costume, actually thought E K was a real cop, albeit a very mean and nasty one. By remaining in character we were nominated as finalists for the costume contest, which in and of itself was a major accomplishment. When it came time for the vote and the nominees were brought into the center of the party, E K played it up like a pro by slapping me around some more, yelling at me, then tripping me and holding me to the floor with her foot on my chest while posing for countless pictures taken by the applauding crowd. (Not the picture shown here. That one was taken pre-party.)

In the end it paid off. We tied for the win. Actually, the host had previously had a single winner at the parties so he only had one prize, but this particular year he created a single and couple category. We won the couple category hands down. The prize? The winners (single and couple) split a case of Budweiser longnecks. Hey, a 12 pack is a 12 pack, and it’s even better when you don’t have to pay for it.

1989 – 1993 – Costume parties were sporadic during this period. When we did happen to attend one, we resurrected the Cop/Convict, Dominatrix/Slave outfits because we had them on hand. Although, there was one particular party where E K donned a long, frizzy wig and some sixtiesish garb and went as a flower child. For some long forgotten reason I was costumeless at that particular shindig.

1994 – The themes start taking shape. Our costumes that year were simple, but effective. It was our 7th anniversary so we held a huge party. We both wore gray sweatshirts done up like jerseys with a huge number 7 front & back and our names across the shoulders. Of course, our names that night were Itchy and Scratchy. We rented the classic movie “The 7 Year Itch” and played it in an endless loop during the shindig.

1995 – In keeping with the “numeric” theme idea we needed to find something that worked with 8. Being Halloween and all, spiders seemed to fit the bill.

We went with a Bride & Groom sort of idea, but turned it into a creepy “Black Widow” and her bitten, corpsified prey sort of thing. E K looked smoking hot in her long, black lace gown, of course. She also added the red hourglass marking for effect. I did a tux shirt and tie, then she covered me with the fake cobweb stuff and little plastic spiders. As an accessory decoration – one that freaked out many of our guests – we had a huge, twine spiderweb strung up in the exposed rafters of our living room, and in the center was a gigantic, 3 foot wide rubber spider hanging over everyone’s heads. We added to the ambiance of the Addams Family/Muenster Household decor with strategically hidden coolers filled with dry ice to generate a misty fog.

1996 – Anniversary number 9. I have searched high and low for pictures from this party and can find none at all, which is a total bummer. E K focused in on the whole 9 = 9 Lives sort of thing, so our costumes that year were “The Cool Cats.”

The evil redhead did the black turtleneck and leggings thing, with a black cat tail and cat ears sticking up around a beret. I was in similar beatnick garb with an orange tail and ears. I had a toy saxophone hanging around my neck, and we both had our faces painted with whiskers and were wearing cheap sunglasses.

1997 – The big 10th anniversary, and to be honest it snuck up on us. The only quickly doable theme we could come up with was the children’s song, “10 Little Indians.” Not exactly P C, but we were in a rush. We picked up a bag of tiny little “Indian” dolls at a party supply store and sewed 10 each to the front of our shirts. I know, not exactly inspired, but like I said, we were in a rush.

1998 – 11 years and going strong. We had absolutely NO clue what to do with the number 11, so it turned into a free for all. Any guesses on our costumes? Yeah, Dominatrix and Slave. See, I told you there was a definite pattern developing…

That was the last costume party we hosted, and the last one we have attended to my recollection. As I said, we are considering a revival, perhaps next year.

Any bets on what our costumes will end up being?

Hey, I’m not complaining. E K would REALLY hurt me if I did…

Happy Halloween – Samhain – Great Pumpkin Night to all!

More to come…

Murv