Some Motta, Kinsella, Chicken, and Drums

A weekend of visitors it was. That may not qualify as a sentence. I'll just lay down the weekend's frivolities, but not is list format, because every detail deserves more than a bullet point. (Burn.)


Ms. Motta came through town from her Brooklyn abode to pay us all a visit from the real big city. True to Somerville form, the town invited her back by slapping her with a parking ticket in what I would call record time. Incredible. Additionally, incognito man, a.k.a. Mike Chop Kinsella also visited and decided it was necessary to call me at 8:24am to see if I wanted to go watch some people play crew. Rightly so, I asked him if he was from another planet, and respectfully declined that invitation based on the premise that it was 8:24am on Saturday morning. Ms. Motta on the other hand, who believes in civilities, informed me of brunch plans at maybe 11:30am. Long story short brunch was a rabble rousing occassion (not really, if we're going to stick to the legitimate definition of 'rabble rousing'), Gabbysaurus (Rob), Mr. Arp, and Kat and Jojer joined the party, and then like an apparition Mike just materialized at the same brunch place and stopped by to say hi.


1) Mike materialized.

2) This follows with his incognito themed visit.

3) Why is he a ninja?


After exchanging cordials with everyone, he gave a speech that was filled with shock and awe points. (Me stands for me, MCK stands for Mike Chop Kinsella)


Me: Hey man did you swim?

MCK: (very matter of factly) No, they ended early cuz some autistic kids had to use the pool.


(A bunch of how is everyones? And a smattering of jibba jabba)

The following is abridged and edited, and strictly from memory)

MCK: Oh, god, I got a great story you guys will appreciate this (looking at Jojer, Kat, Ms. Motta, and I), so I was at this crew thing this morning and this girl comes up to me and says, "Are you...are you Mike Kinsella?," and I was just like (in head), "Oh god this can't be good," so I was like "Yeah, I am," and she said, "Were you the guy that always brought townies over to Jeff's house?" (laughs all around). (To us): "I was like what?!, I may have 'consulted' (I may need a correction on the word used there) with townies that showed up at the house but I didn't bring any over."


Ah, yes, and after all that, with some necessary stage directions, I've surmised that you definitely had to be there for that to be funny. Apologies all around.


The rest of the day can pretty much be summed up with 4 words. Guitar Hero World Tour.


It was decided that hanging out at my place might be kind of boring since I don't have much to do there so we convened at the GHWT residence. Apparently Greg spends his Saturdays mixing mortar and building bridges to parallel universes that are accessible from his basement. 1 Point for particle masks, 70 points for spelunking headgear, and an additional 35 for not bathing.


It started off small, Pat singing and complaining about sound lag, Carlo on drums, me on guitar, and Ray on bass. Schism. That is all I have to say about that. Oh, and that Pat wanted to know why the game creaters didn't include graphics of the fan's ear's bleeding from Ray's bass playing abilities..."And we'd like to apologize ahead of time for our bass player!"


This turned into (after like 2 hours), "Let's play career mode and get more songs (even though we'd already cheated and gotten all the quick play songs)." This spiraled into a marathon of roughly 9 hours of this game that consumed much more of my life in one sitting than I could have possibly imagined. Fortunately for everyone else, there was some instrument rotation. Unfortunately for me, I was designated guitar player for the duration of roughly 9 hours, punctuated by 1 bathroom trip, 1 stoppage for food (more on that later), and 1 stop for beer.


That was absurd, 9 hours. The highlight, or low light, was probably when the Wii got turned off in the middle of a set and we had to play Sweet Home Alabama for the 12th time so that we could play Everlong. Bakers dozen. The highlight, I think, was continually reciting disbelief that it'd been so long since we started playing, and then ordering wings from Wings Over. I called thinking we were getting a Concorde, only to find out that the reason we were splitting flavors 6 ways is because it was necessary for us to get the Zeppelin: (http://www.wingsover.com/menus/somerville_menu.pdf)


True to form, we only got 1 flavor that wasn't spicy, and I think that may have been a total of like 7 wings. The other 43 (total guess), were spicy, and luckily, despite desires by some to try and sneak in ONE after burner flavored wing like a ticking time bomb, we did not follow through.


Finally at 11pm or so we all lost the will to rock (after beating the game, watching Greg stand up, shout yes with drumsticks in the air in triumph, and hear MCK say "That was the geekiest thing I have ever ever seen the 4 hour bus trip was worth it just for that."). We were also, I think, single handedly heating the apartment with our rocking, and according to Lisa we made the place smell dank, stale, and sweaty (that's sort of how I interpretted it). In addition, we were also told that we looked miserable (MCK), and that the display in the living room was something akin to the saddest, nerdiest sight to be seen. The payoff: Everlong, Crazy Train, glory.


I'd like to say, those wings are so delicious, those little pieces of chicken candy, but all of us felt like they were eating our insides after we ate them, and there was ample concern about the Bud Latté's that were going on top of them, and the aftermath that was sure to follow the next morning (read: beershits, voiced first, by Ray). Additionally, we all turned down invitations to go out and be social in commune with others to sit, or stand in my case, and play GHWT. If I don't play that for another 3 weeks my life will be no better and no worse.


The rest of the night panned out as expected, with the exception of the golf club game that took place in the middle of the beirut table, and the construction of a stunning replica of Stonehenge with beer cans.


Unfortunately on Sunday I both missed the Bills game even though they lost, and we lost our soccer game 4-3 after a solid effort. Too bad the winners got chump tshirts that they'll never wear, and we got pint glasses for 2nd place. Boo hiss to team forest green, yay rah team shit brown, oh I'm sorry we're "dark chocolate" and then when it's raining when we play we become team diarrhea. Thankfully, East Asia, a solid Celtics win, and half a pint of Dublin Mudslide cured the day's misfortunes. That was long, I'm at work, and somehow haven't been caught doing this yet. Oh, probably because no one is here and I saw them all walk out the door before (did I miss the bomb scare?). Admittedly, I figured I'd be doing most of my posts from work anyway. I'm going to cut myself off here, go Celtics, José Calderon looks like sort of like Ralph Fiennes (spelling?), which makes him that much closer to Voldemort, which makes it even more imperative that the Celtics beat the Raptors tonight. And...I'm spent.