On Sunday, MHG and I treated her younger brother to a birthday. Poor guy was Born on the Fourth of July and has to deal with Tom Cruise and Oliver Stone coming to visit him every year with diatribes on the way Vietnam War veterans were treated upon their return. Then, Cruise eventually resorts to blaming the vets for their own crippling trauma and how taking a Flintstones vitamin would save them from all their pain. Stone responds by drinking a quart of alcohol distilled from Hummer fuel, battering Cruise with a Guns and Ammo Independence Day Special catalog, then guiltily adopting four more Vietnamese orphans and signing them up for the level 3 Scientology Anal Exam.<\/p>\n
So, it’s not all bad.<\/p>\n
But since his family has been into Revolutionary War reenactment for almost two decades, B hasn’t had a proper birthday since age ten. This year, we decided to get some people together for him and take him out to a Brewers game, as he enjoys watching the American baseball. Most of the people that could attend were friends of B’s that we had only met a few times, but they were cats cool as cats so it wasn’t long before we were all acting friendly. And it took even less time for most of us to get friendly with the booze. which didn’t hurt.<\/p>\n
By the seventh inning stretch, C. and P were definitely becoming “that guy” as they boorishly shouted the lyrics to America the Beautiful. We all snickered through their interpretation and reassured them when they apologized for their behavior, thus encouraging more. Throughout the entire game, however, the most entertaining part was when the opposing team finished a double play at first prompting P to admonish them with a heartfelt, “Aw, don’t do THAT.”<\/p>\n
P continued to bring the entertainment as he enticed one and all into games of charades and an impromptu dance competition simply entitled “Let’s do it!” The birthday celebrations continued on into the night, landing finally at a bowling alley. We all shuddered a bit as we entered the venue to Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.” What had we gotten ourselves into? It turned out that they played no New Country, so we were safe, but for a moment we all considered a rapid egress.<\/p>\n
P had to borrow some socks from B to bowl, since he was wearing only sandals. They went out to the car, and returned with what became the crowning story of the entire day. As they re-entered the bowling alley, two men in a pickup truck laughed from their open windows at P, who had his pants rolled up to about mid-calf, much like Huck Finn might have.<\/p>\n
“Nice capris!” the redneck voices snickered, attempting to provoke their assumed fag into crying or something. “Nice…guy,” P retorted, in what I think is the most classy and witty verbal riposte since Black Adder went off the air. You see, most of us would have either shrugged or bit back (B thought of “Nice life,” for example), but P was able to return the jibe, instill no malice and shine light on the lameness of the original insult all in one flashing motion. Bravo, P – honestly.<\/p>\n
And many happy returns to B, who proclaimed it to be his best birthday celebration ever, with due respect paid to the fact that the others have not been very good at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Sunday, MHG and I treated her younger brother to a birthday. Poor guy was Born on the Fourth of July and has to deal with Tom Cruise and Oliver Stone coming to visit him every year with diatribes on the way Vietnam War veterans were treated upon their return. Then, Cruise eventually resorts to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p73iP8-5L","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":351,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=351","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":0},"title":"Tom Cruise Is Nuts","date":"7\/11\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"In case you didn't know, Tom Cruise is a verified loon. I don't even have TV in my house, I don't read magazines or newspapers, and I only surf the internet when I'm waiting for a DVD to finish burning before I go to bed (and all eight hours at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Link Larceny"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":342,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=342","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":1},"title":"My heterosexual girlfriend crapped her pants.","date":"6\/29\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Other Things that Tom Cruise Knows More About Than You, blatantly ripped off from Dynagirl. Spread the word, bitches.","rel":"","context":"In "Link Larceny"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":77,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=77","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":2},"title":"How to achieve nothingness.","date":"3\/16\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The internet provides. You can now be at peace. If that doesn't work, try this. I find it calming. And since today is my birthday, I authorize any of you to buy me this.","rel":"","context":"In "Found Art"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":366,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=366","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":3},"title":"This is the best way to learn history.","date":"7\/22\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"If World War II Was an RTS, as referred to me by the birthday Czelt. Go make fun of her being old. See also Fuck this website.","rel":"","context":"In "Link Larceny"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":521,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=521","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":4},"title":"The only verdict…","date":"3\/8\/2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Bugger. My birthday is coming up. While I typically celebrate by relaxing and doing nothing or whatever comes to mind, I had my heart set this year on taking in a specific motion picture. V for Vendetta was announced some time last year, with the hopes that it would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ennui"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=24","url_meta":{"origin":357,"position":5},"title":"Belated, starring Darren Stevens","date":"1\/15\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Checking my contact information at my domain registrar, I found that steelbuddha.net is one year old as of the 8th of January, 2004. Merry birthday! I'm not sure what that makes this site in blog years, but I'll sneak it a beer all the same.","rel":"","context":"In "Self-service"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}