Feb 16: Happy B-day Jackie!!

Okay, so I just got home from a night of celebrating Jackie's 21st b-day (16 Feb) It wasn't as epic as I thought a 21st would be, but it was really cool and a lot of fun.

After the show we went to tonight (I don't remember it's real name, but essentially it was Macbeth II, dealing with the events right after Malcolm claims the throne, and the queen, and etc. which will be saved for tomorrow's writings.) We went to the Swiss Cottage, which was a nice little pub but not too many drinks. I tried a lager (sorry, I forgot what kind) and Jackie was bought two of the same lager, one from Ro and one from Phillip. After that a bunch of us decided to check out this place we heard about near Aldwych which supposedly had open mic nights. The drink prices were insane, but Emily wanted to buy Jackie a drink so they went to the bar, told the bartender it was Jackie's birthday drink and she wanted some Baileys.

The bartender immediately proclaimed that not to be a 21st birthday drink, and made her something else entirely. People debate over whether it was a shot or a double shot. All I know was that it was set on fire, and consisted of 68% alcoholic rum AND wormwood. The bar was really small, but they had some awesome LED lights that kept changing various colors, but especially blue and red, which was pretty cool. While there we 'met' a man named Alp- "like the mountain" he said, complete with fingers in a triangle hand motions. I say 'met' because it was more like he was moving back and forth between people and breaking into the conversations. There was a talk about how Courtney looked like Ariel from the little mermaid, and he sang Jackie happy birthday along with some other guy and a few older ladies sitting nearby, and followed it with "but she's a jolly good fellow." Somewhere along the way he decided to attempt to guess everyone's names. My name became "Kelmno" (like lmno from the alphabet...Kelemenno?) and Annie and Alison became "Curly Sue and Curly Blue" and then there was this part where he would get 10 guesses to figure out Ro's name, and if he did then Ro would get a drink. Ro didn't realize that they meant water, even though the bar was closed and the bartender was too smug about repeating himself and saying "don't worry Alp I've got you" or something. Oh, and did I mention that somewhere in that story after the flaming shot but before the Ro bet that Jackie also had a double/shot of whiskey? Yeah.

So by the time we were leaving Jackie was fairly unsteady. We got out of the club only to meet a woman named Vicky on the steps, with her boyfriend Sam (I think?) and this guy who was being their driver who was dressed to the nines, including a pimp cane and top hat. Basically, the dude was just awesome.

While standing out there, Jackie wanted food, but Vicky was telling us about some kind of heavy metal club that was open till 4am, and the bartender recommended a good bar with supposed fantastic mexican food. While Ro attempted to work with boyfriend-man to figure out walking directions to both places, Vicky begins belting the words to the Lion King's 'Circle of Life.' This would probably be more random, but the bar was right outside the Lyceum Theatre where the Lion King's been doing a show for years now, so the posters were everywhere and I guess Annie and Alison had gotten on to talking about it. So we were all standing there for perhaps a good 5-10 minutes; I was laughing that Vicky + Lion King posters + A Capella singers + alcohol = spontaneous Disney A Capella in the middle of a side road at 1am. Following the performance Vicky managed to get Jackie to take a puff on a cigarette, and then suddenly everyone sans me and Annie seemed to have taken a puff and/or a cig. It was weird! But I still vote no on the smoking. I don't care if "eating is cheating," or that it's all the rage and normal in Europe. It's not what I want in my life.

Rather than going to either the mexican or heavy metal bars, we ended up in the Strand at McDonalds. Really nasty bathrooms, a special late-night menu with about 5-8 options, and a bunch of really drunk people. The only ones who didn't seem drunk were two women who came in a bit after us, an asian girl and a redhead. They seemed pretty nice, and were really well dressed. In comparison, a small group came in when we were almost done, completely out of it. One girl was wearing stockings and a trenchcoat/peacoat, but her dress was bunched above her hips or something and you could totally see everything. Thankfully I only saw stockings and looked away. Alison and Annie and Emily got into discussing how they wanted to tell her but were pretty sure that she wouldn't understand at all, but they didn't feel comfortable pulling the dress down for the woman since they were strangers, and how they would help each other out if it got that bad, and why weren't her friends taking care of her? blah blah. Somehow in the middle of talking about it the girl and her friend came over asking us where we were from. Apparently they were Americans (a part of me was disappointed that they were keeping negative stereotypes alive) and started doing the "USA! USA!" chant when we told them where we were from. Then we found out they were from North Carolina, and the trenchcoat girl had a thick slurred southern accent. At this point we decided it was time to leave. So we caught the night bus home.

While on the ride back home Alison started acting funny. She and Annie got into a debate about Harry Potter, decided they would listen to HP on tape every night and watch it, and blah blah, and Alison was drawing on the windows (they were covered in dew/water/fog) so Alison drew little footprints and hearts and stars and started writing checkerboards and words. She started to write "Curly" but Annie suddenly launched up and hugged Alison tight being like "ooookay Alison I'm cutting you off now" which led to a rather interesting playful struggle so Alison could write the Sue part, which turned into a crazed squiggle. Behind me and Cat, Emily and Tony were having some weird conversations, though naturally I don't remember them now other than that they were random, and they were being loud, and it was funny and Annie called them out on it when Emily protested that they were having a normal conversation. Something about sex and cigarettes and something else, I really can't remember.

I think that's my cue to go to bed. I'll write about the normal stuff tomorrow. Night!

Now that you've read about (what I think) was an interesting and exciting night, here's a quick rundown about the story about my day:

-Theatre class: usual, interesting. We were learning about how the stage expanded as we moved through the centuries, and that was how melodrama began, and the outrageous hand gestures needed so people could be seen. There were multiple schools of gesturing, and so he split us into three groups to perform a play (something about the Inchsomething bell) using the schools of gesture he's assigned for homework this week. It should be interesting.

-After class I came back and ate a salami and cheese sandwhich and some of my casserole. It's still not as tasty as the one I made at Christmas, but I think I'm just using the wrong cheese again. Still good though.

-Music class we watched Brassed Off, some weird music movie with Evan McGregor in it. Apparently he plays a pretty good French Horn in real life, or so my prof says. It was about coal miners who play in a brass band, and the struggles they face as their pit gets closed down and they attempt to make it to national finals.

-After that class I came back to the dorm to discover that people had bought Jackie a hedgehog cake!! It was cute and awesome with cadbury finger things for spikes and cadbury chocolate flakes for fur. Nobody could eat the face though, it was watching them- I think Jackie's having that for b-fast.

-We went to watch Dunimerre? I don't really know the name or how to spell it, it's scottish. It takes up the events in Macbeth right after that play ends, except now Malcom's kind of a narcissistic and the scottish queen is really awesome. Yeah. I'm not really sure how to explain it anymore.

And that was my day.