the winter dance (blurry pics + dress details)

Tuesday, dec. 16, 2003   |   0 comments

This past Saturday was Jill‘s annual holiday RAGER (this year’s theme: “The Winter Dance”). I danced and drank and squeezed people’s parts and generally did whatever I could to migrate my name off the Nice list and over to the tippy top of Naughty. Until like 3:70 o’clock!

The pictures didn’t turn out nearly as good this time around, partly because my supposedly fucktard-proof camera turns out to be for mensa Geena Davises?, and partly because someone effed up Jill’s artful lighting set-up after about only three pictures had been taken. So while this early-on snap of Jill and Rhombus-strapped-into-Santa-suit looks all awesome …

Santa sits in Jill’s lap for a change.

… the bulk of the remaining pics are blurry and dark and unintentionally arty, like:

Huh?

I did manage to brighten/contrast/sharpen a few of the dingy, later-in-the-night pictures, but they’re all still vying for the title “The Compromise”:

Liz and Ivan, in their only simultaneous mug-free shot of the night.

Me, Godzilla-towering over Adrienne and Jay.

This is how you know whose site you’re at right now: terrible picture of Liz, blah shot of Adrienne, the twinkly lights are magically unplugged, but who looks good in this picture? Evany Thomas looks good! Merry Christmas, everybody. (If you strain you can see the barest hint of the pointy, pointy pine and carnation Sweet Gesture Corsage that Jay gave me, right there, stapled on top of my head.)

I wore this really pretty dress — black satin with red and yellow and cream flowery things — that I got at Loehmann’s for just $29.99 (marked down from $179!). It was strapless, though, which just does NOT work with my me — strapless bras hold my rack in place, yes, but in a very bad place, like just above my bellybutton — actually lower than they sit in nature (swear!). So I sewed in some fancy red and black silk ribbon straps, which performed the double-duty of hiding the straps of the BRAbra that held up my stuff AND “pulling in” the red of the stripes on my red-and-cream towering Fornarina ankle-strap shoes, which I was bent on wearing since I’ve managed to put them into action only once since I bought them in January.

Here you can semi-see the ribbon straps I added (notice how they’re bowing and gapping … I’m not the most patient of sewers, maybe).

There was some left-over ribbon, and at the last minute I turned it into these weird, dangly bracelet things, just looped them around my wrist and (Adrienne) pinned them into place using these random two-dollar letter pins from the Gap, an “f” and a “c” (Fucking Cute? Fine Cougar? For sCoring?), and let the excess ribbon dangle down. They made dipping into the salsa careful work, but looked very cutting-edge/confusing.

And here is a slightly brightened view of the quadrant featuring the freakishly high-fashion ribbon bracelets. (I wore them just for you. And you. Hi.)

happy birthday!

Tuesday, jun. 24, 2003   |   0 comments

Last week, for the first time ever, I turned thirty-three. As an early present, Sunny gave me one of her backstage passes to Nick Cave on Tuesday, which was fun even though I’m not the biggest fan of NC’s sad, sad stylings. I actually think not being rabidly into him made it ESPECIALLY fun because I got to enjoy the kooky, blouse-y crowd and backstage dynamics without being starstruck dumb.

Backstage Sunny, backstage Evany.

My actual BIRTHDAYbirthday was Thursday, and even though I took the day off from work, my day still started off rocky — mostly because I managed to make it all the way to noon without eating. When Jonathan called to wish me a happy birthday, I was in tears about something dumb, my computer crashing? And he said, “have you eaten anything yet today?” “No,” I said all sulky and small. He laughed, haha, and said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that first thing!” Then, “A country full of Evanys would be SO easy to conquer. All you’d have to do is stand between them and their elevenses.” And then, “Don’t you have a pot of honey in the house?”

But then Sunny called and said she was ready to take me to lunch. After potatoes and biscuits with sausage gravy, etc., which really helped matters, we went back to her house and watched Old School. (Haha, but jesus christ, could Vince Vaughn be any creepier?)

When we got back to my apartment, lucky dogs Mimi and Leelee were running around on the sidewalk out front, and we got to sit down there on the warm cement and pat them for like fifteen minutes. Treat! So by the time people (Jill, Liz, Adrienne, Caroleen, and Jeff) came over for tacos and beer and ice cream cake and Center Stage, my birthday had officially turned the corner and I was genuinely “happy.”

My birthday PARTY was Saturday night, over at Caroleen and Jeff’s house. (Yeah, I know, could they be any nicer? Weird!) The very first thing I did, before even having one drink, was fall down their stairs. Something about the combo of my gripless high-high-heels and the paint on the stairs made it like walking on ice, and I had only gone down a few stairs when woosh!, I was on my ass, total crackdown. After a startled second or two, I struggled back up, took one more step, and then woosh! Down I went! Again! Right on the exact same spot of my ass. The second time really hurt too, like, am I going to have to spend the night in the emergency room, nursing a cracked ass? But I managed to SCOOT myself down the rest of the stairs (because clearly walking down wasn’t working).

Once I was on firm ground, I stood up and did a few tentative shakes of my ass and it seemed to be in working order, but sore, so sore! Fast, fast I knocked back a bunch of Advil and drinks, and managed to remain at least serviceable for the rest of the night. In fact, I think the busted rump prevented me from getting really drunk — the pain sponged up all the booze, so by the end of things, around 3:30 or so, I was totally sober. Nice.

Two days later, I’m still like the ingredients of a hotdog, all bruised asses and elbows. Notice the two separate lines in the bruise on my ass … one for each time I landed! (I was kind of hoping the “kiss my” message — from the crazy underwear that Jill gave me that has a string along the top rim that you can thread letter beads onto and spell out words — would have branded into me, too, but no soap. So far. The bruise gets bigger every day, so maybe it’ll show up soon!)

Lots and lots of my all-time-most-favorite people in the world showed up, and I spent the first hour or so just squealing and squeezing.

Nice fur ear holsters! Nice Rob Cockerham!

But somehow, and this is my one big regret of the evening, I didn’t get a chance to really talk to anyone. Once the dance music started, and once I switched into my dance-sensible outfit (complete with different shoes, hair accoutrements, ring, and bracelets, uh huh), I pretty much spent the rest of the night shaking my cakemaker.

The four hours of DANCEDANCEPARTYUSA music I’d burned went down pretty well, but I learned a valuable lesson about how some songs may be GREAT on the headset (Crazy Train, Hot For Teacher, Xanadu) but just freeze up a dance floor. Keeping people dancing was kind of like stoking a fragile fire — I really had to use my birthday-girl tyranny to keep people shaking, especially for songs like “Oops, I Did It Again” — as Britney sang “I’m not … that … in … oh … cent,” Luke leaned over and said, “consider my dancing to this a birthday present.”

Apparently once I hit the dance floor, I didn’t close my mouth once.

Pretty much the only time I stopped dancing was for cake. Jill made me this amazing yellow cake with chocolate frosting, which I think I ate at least three pieces of that night. And then there was Liz‘s Cake Trough:

Frew, Greg, and I were just a few of the many who spackled their cakeholes full of frosting, no hands!

The next morning, Liz and I went back over to J and C’s to help clean up (I managed to spill coffee in my crotch on the drive over), then we picked up Jill and went over Berkeley for hamburgers (I got catsup on my right tit) and Beck. (He covered “Hot in Herre”! I sat in the sun for three hours! On a plastic cushion! And the sweat stain on my ass after all that looked just like I’d peed in my pants!) Then we came home, ordered pizza, and watched Mumford and the season premiere of Sex in the City, which was better than I thought would be (the irritating “Oh So Quiet” ads, with Carrie running around with that bunch of balloons?, that they’ve been running for months didn’t exactly give me that warm, anticipatory sensation … more they just made me want to shit everywhere, so the show was a mildly pleasant surprise).

All in all, a happy, happy birthday. Thank you easter bunnies!

hot prom action (with pics!)

Thursday, may. 29, 2003   |   0 comments

Wow so Jill’s prom-themed prom party was way, way better than my actual prom, like by a factor of at least eleven. Though really my senior prom wasn’t that hard to beat as it involved, a) me wearing a puffy taffeta dress with mutton-chop sleeves that was so insanely 80s, it had to use one of those walkers with tennis balls on its feet (wait no, “so insanely 80s, George Michael was all, ‘wake me up when it’s gone, gone!’”), b) me french-braiding my hair into a baby’s breath-stuffed braid that went over my head from ear to ear like some kind of horse-girl headband, and c) me not drinking anything, not even kahlua milkshakes. I swear, I think I was in bed by midnight.

But I didn’t get home from Jill’s until four in the morning! And I danced so much, I bruised the tips of my toes! I named the punch Jill made “One-Two Punch,” and then drank the shit out of it! And there are pictures! Lots and lots of pictures.

Is that me? Doing the robot? TOTALLY IRONICALLY?	Oh but that’s definitely me, yes, holding a dove to my breast. And thinking of YOU!	Hey! You! Get off that ass and come buttress my rear, super-freak style.

And here’s a sampling of the Prom-y prom pics (Jill set the whole thing up, built the background, got a tripod for the camera, no lie.):

Apparently Jill is carrying my baby? Is the water warm enough? Yes Adrienne. Shall we begin? Yes Adrienne. Caroleen and Jeff, hahah! Hot Sunny-and-Leisa, proving you don’t need a time machine to acheive that look, just green contacts and lots and lots of self-tanner. Me and Richard, balancing our hands on an invisble cane. Jill, Caroleen, Liz, and … and … I’m sorry, I completely forgot your name — your searing hotness must have burned it right out of my mind. Nope, sorry, still can’t remember your handle, you NAMELESS SUPER FOX.*

And I leave you with these stirring images of me and my pal from school, Mark, thrown together in this lametastic animation, the sad, low-rez result of excitedly downloaded free animation software that I just didn’t have the patience to figure out how to use. Much like life! And love. And titty pancakes.

Ah, WUNDERBAR!

* OK, Jill just called, and her name is Genevieve. Foxyhot Genevieve!

hot dog action

Wednesday, feb. 12, 2003   |   0 comments

Last night, a bunch of us got together to drink Squirt, eat slabs of vegetable-cheese-melt matter, down organic lemon buttercream jam swirls, and watch Mick the sprightly, knightly, manly kerry blue terrier take home top-dog honors in Westminster Kennel Club’s “Best in Show” competition.

It was much better than last year’s “mimosas and samosas” event, and not just because a ridiculous toy poodle won the 2002 title. Last time I went all out, inviting tons of people, making decorations out of cut-out pictures of doggies, buying special bowls from Old Navy that when pushed together formed the complete shape of a bone (originally marketed as food-and-water dishes for dogs, but whatever) and then filling them with gingerbread cookies, also in the shape of bones. Et cetera! So I was already prepped for a fall, because unless a party is AWESOME, and not that many Tuesday-night parties are, pouring that much effort into an event puts too much pressure on your guests, and maybe makes them feel just a touch sorry for you? Plus it wasn’t really clear if it was a cocktail party or a “watch the TV” party, so everyone kind of did half and half. There wasn’t enough seating room, so people stood or perched like they would at a boozy event, but they weren’t chatting and making merry like they would over cocktails out of some strange sort of reverence for the television, and that cast slightly uncomfortable quiet over everything. Sexy!

But this year was a totally last-minute thing so I only had a couple hours to do my usual “company is coming!” panic wind-sprint clean and then fling together some food (Liz brought fancy walnut and olive breads, plus some individually wrapped treats from her bakery, Sunny brought beer, and Leila brought the Squirt). Plus only seven or so people came over, so there was plenty of ass-room and everyone seemed to feel plenty comfortable talking, yelling, or awwwing at the screen. And a good time was had by all. Bark at the moon!

In other news: More layoffs last week, another 25-percent hack. Once again I was spared (yeah, I don’t know why either), but even so, it was a stressful, unproductive week. Between the pre-D-day gossiping and the post D-day scramble to discover whether the person I’ve always relied upon to do X is still here, or worse the sinking suspicion that now X is my job, it’s next to impossible to get any work done. Gross.

Also, school started, and I’m taking a Directed Writing class, which means that every three weeks, I meet one-on-one with my favorite teacher of all time and we discuss whatever I’m working on in gory detail. Our first meeting is tomorrow and we’re going over the piece I handed in last week, a 20-page story … well, twenty Courier pages — it was only sixteen in Times New Roman. How is it that I’m 32, in grad school, and still fudging around with font sizes and margins? So pathetic. Yay!

six year anniversary at the lex

Saturday, feb. 1, 2003   |   1 comment

That’s me, karaoke-ing in the middle of a huge hairstack.

On Friday night I went to the sixth anniversary party of the Lexington Club — six years! I can’t believe it, I remember when the bar wasn’t even there, my god — and, for the first time since the “American Woman” debacle, I karaoked.

The song? Billy Joel classic “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” which went pretty well considering I started off super low, leaving me nowhere to go when it came time to really get down at the end of each verse or stanza or couplet or whatever.

Me and my tight, free, limited edition Lexington tee! (This one goes out to my awesome e-pal Gene, who says I never post cute photos of myself. Look, I even put on lipstick! And I cropped out my ass, which is really swollen.)

But I couldn’t really hear myself anyway, maybe the mic wasn’t even on? I also managed to do a strange sort of herky jerking movement piece without falling off my shoes or spraying urine. All in all a triumphant return to the stage! They even gave me a free tee-shirt for my troubles.

The rest of the night I spent drunkenly trying to get people to set me up with their brothers, or their friend’s brothers, or their brother’s friends, and “dancing,” really more just jumping up and down in one, three-inch square spot. It was impossible to do much more than that because the place was so cram-packed with like 7000 hot ladies. But out of all those fine felines, Jill was the fairest of them all, what with her Fornarina choker and grope-tempting top. I took a herd of photos throughout the night, and just look how ridiculously cute Jill looks in every shot!

That Jill!

Jill, me totally checking out Jill, and Liz (with new pink streaks, looking good, Liz … ouch!)

Jill and Leila, owner of the Lex

Jill, and that’s me looking heaven-ward and sighing “Oh Jill!”

After about three hours of all that action, I had to leave because my dogs were barking for serious, so at 12:30 I hobbled, oui, oui, oui, all the way home.