Oh the joys of the holiday season. You get to see family, see family get drunk, take care of said drunken family, and try to spend the rest of the weekend forgetting how annoying said drunken family members were.
To take our minds of the irritation of something that happened to us, that I don’t really want to repeat here, we did quite a few things, and they’ll pop up here once I get all the thoughts together into cohesive, and hopefully humorous, posts.
First things first, we went to a party. The party was in one of the remaining older sections of Fell’s Point, Baltimore, that isn’t immediately off of Broadway. More specifically, the party was in a house that was built by Frederick Douglass. Yeah, that Frederick Douglass. Apparently he had built the whole row of homes connected to the one we were partying in. According to one of the renters, it wasn’t uncommon for him to stumble out of the house on a Saturday morning to get the mail and some coffee, while throngs of tourists snapped photos of the rows of houses, and quite frequently, the hungover, stubble-faced homerenter in question. I wasn’t even told as much until after my brother and I had started making a fire in Mr. Douglass’ barbecue pit.
I was quite excited that I was starting a fire in the same barbecue pit that Mr. Douglass may have cooked food on, but I was pretty sure the fireplace was built in the 70’s.
That’s right. Other people go to parties to get drunk, high, laid, or some combination of the 3. I go to parties and treat the house like I live there. It’s not uncommon to find me at a party cooking for people, playing DJ, reading books, or in this case, building a fire. Now, I never treat anyone’s home with disrespect, and this time was no different. The keg was outside, it was freezing outside, and people were running back and forth, inside to out, outside to in, to get as much beer as they could before they couldn’t stand the cold any longer.
My brother and I stepped in, and started to clear out the outdoor fireplace. We had it cleaned out, and the wood prepped, though there wasn’t nearly enough wood to keep the fire fed at a constant rate. We had to keep dealing with wet wood smoking, and trying to feed the fire, and people complaining about the smoke. When we would close the door to the fireplace to keep the smoke output, the fire would get low. People would complain about the fire being low. We’d open the door, feed the fire, and people would complain that it was smoky. There was no pleasing these people.
While we were trying to figure out how to keep the fire going, I was approached by a young woman who was wondering what we were doing. This young woman was dressed as most of the party guests were; completely inappropriately. For the women, summer outfits in the middle of the winter. For the men, goofy accessories like oversized suit jackets, and I even saw a guy who had two collared shirts on. Two. One on top of the other. Let’s hope he doesn’t breed. I doubt 2/3 of this crowd knew, or cared to know who Frederick Douglass was. I looked at my brother, or he looked at me, and one of us called the party goers no-talent ass clowns, a reference to Office Space*.
The young woman asked whom I had called no-talent ass clowns. I told her that I called Michael Bolton a no-talent ass clown. (Because I’m a liar.)
Her: Why?
Me: Because my name is Michael Bolton, and everywhere I go people ask me if I’m related to that talentless hack. And I don’t think I should have to go by Mike just because of him.
Her: Well, he was born first.
Me: Right, but he didn’t start winning Grammy’s until the mid 80’s, which is after I was born. So I have every right to go by Michael without being associated with that no-talent ass clown.
Her: Oh, that’s a shame. You do look like a Michael though.
Me: Thanks. So are you from the Baltimore area?
My brother, who had initially been listening, but then stopped, came over to me and said, “[My real name] ACWGF wants to leave.” So I said, “Nice to meet you,” to the completely oblivious young woman who, incidentally, was wearing a white halter top in 30 degree weather, who was also now completely dumbstruck by my answering to a different name.
So the next time you go to a party at the home of a historical abolitionist, and while your starting a fire in a potentially historical barbecue pit, I encourage you to pretend you’re unfortunately named after a talentless celebrity to the first person you see. It’ll change your religion.
*Samir: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It’s not that hard: Samir Na-gheen-an-a-jar. Nagheenanajar.
Michael Bolton: Yeah, well at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.
Samir: You know there’s nothing wrong with that name.
Michael Bolton: There was nothing wrong with it… until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.
Samir: Hmm… well why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?
Michael Bolton: No way. Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.
