three catholic cheers for meehan!

Meehan has a flare for finding snazzy places to live. In L.A., she hosted bimonthly FROG salons in her Furnished Room Over Garage. And when she moved to Santa Barbara, it only seemed right that she host some kind of 30th birthday extravaganza in her new place, which, we discovered this weekend, is kind of like a Tucson spa, with looottts of natural wood, a jacuzzi, Navajo Persian rugs (apparently there is such a thing) and some kind of crazy jungle fern that eats banana peels.

Because Meehan is very brave, and not like other people, she invited her dad's band, Dave and the Droolers, to perform. He sang some pretty catchy songs with titles like "Communist Girl" and "Asshole the Cat." I proudly performed backup as a Catholic cheerleader for his song "Catholic Cheerleader."

Because Meehan is very brave, and not like other people, she performed at her party. She's been taking a songwriting class, because apparently being a lawyer and a fiction writer and a marathon runner and tall and thin just isn't enough to show for her 30 years. And what do you know, she turns out to be great. At the funny Dave-and-the-Droolers-style songs and the melancholy love songs. Seriously, if she weren't so nice and didn't throw such fun parties and wasn't always talking up her friends' talents too, in a convincing way that makes you believe she's not just trying to make you feel better, I would hate her.


In lieu of gifts, Meehan asked everyone to bring an ornament for her Christmas tree, so A.K. and I made shrinky dinks (thank you, Craft Night!). It's hard to tell, but one is a reindeer and the other is a tiny Meehan.


For a while, my camera disappeared. When it came back, it had a bunch of pictures of these guys on it.


But I can't blame them for the fact that most of the rest of the pictures I took that night seemed to be on firecracker setting. I'm pretty sure that was A.K.'s doing.


We ended the night in the jacuzzi, where we gazed at the banana-eating fern and Meehan's landlord vacuuming the floors before the party was even completely over (a man after my own heart).


The next morning we had brunch with the other folks who'd stayed the night in Santa Barbara. Two of them looked really familiar. "Hey," I said, "I have a bunch of pictures of you on my camera."

"That was yours?" said Brian. "I'm glad I didn't take a picture of my dick. I thought about it."

"Will you send me those pictures?" asked Dave. "One of them was really good of me."


We drove home just in time to catch the tail end of Meg's holiday open house. Once the four-year-olds went home, it was decidedly low-key. But, with help from some very tasty snacks, we made our own entertainment. Try playing "Eat A Cheese Puff Without Removing Your Hands From Your Toasty Warm Blanket" sometime. I recommend it, even if our disapproving friend Emily does not.