Thanks for coming out, part one

Thanks to everyone who showed up to Pogeypalooza. It was a charming little soiree that wouldn’t have been the same without you. I’ll get the pictures off Paul and post them later today or tomorrow.

The first guests

Noel, one of the programmers who started at the company just after New Year’s, was the first to arrive. He joined me out on the back deck while I barbecued the burgers. He asked me what my plans for the future were, and I told him about Peekabooty. Once the burgers were done, we took them to the dining room table and Paul joined us.

“Your burgers are good, but you have a little way to go before the burgers are like Rob’s,” Paul said between bites. “You used the same ingredients, but I think he puts more love into his.”

“Hey buddy,” I retorted, “any more love in the burgers and I would’ve had to take my pants off.”

The crock pot incident

About midway through the party, Karen saw something on my kitchen counter that caused her great concern. I was making my way to the fridge when she buttonholed me to voice said concern.

“I can’t believe that Joey deVilla has a crock pot!”

(While I don’t like talking about myself in the third person, I find it flattering when other people do so when talking to me. In the future, could you please phrase it as “The Joey deVilla”?)

“That’s so wrong,” she continued, “the guy who used to DJ at Clark Hall Pub and who plays accordion on the street should not have a crock pot! That’s for when you’ve settled down!”

She mentioned that Martha remarked that such a transgression of cool could be forgiven if my grandmother had given it to me. Hasn’t she heard of the phenomenon called “Just Gay Enough“? Sensitive and manly, all rolled into one? The kind of guy who’ll bake you some really good toll house cookies, then take you very roughly from behind?

“Both my grandmothers died in 1997. You can’t give crock pots from beyond the grave,” I said.

Paul piped in. “I gave it to him for his birthday,” thereby condemning himself in Karen’s eyes too. He might as well have said “I hold the sheep reeeeeal tight, and Joey porks it reeeeeal good, hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.”

“I could have understood,” she continued, “if it were a Star Trek crock pot.” I made a mental note to go to the Silver Snail and buy a Seven of Nine sticker for the crock pot. I also decided not to tell her that I was interested in getting one of those George Foreman grills.

Paul to the defense again: “The crock pot is cooool,” he said, in almost the same tone of voice he uses when Britney appears on TV and he says “she’s hoooot.”

“And what’s with the Swiffer?”

“Hey,” I replied, mounting my defense, “it’s not un-edgy to want to have a clean house. Like the saying goes, ‘you don’t shit where you eat’. Even Shaft kept a clean apartment. And the crock pot, well, it means I like low-fuss meals with only one thing to clean at the end of it all. Gives me more time to be ‘edgy’,” I said, pantomiming the quote-unquote marks with my fingers.

Apparently Karen didn’t want me to be too edgy; much later in the party, she complained that I’d run out of hand soap in the bathroom. I should’ve offered to Swiffer her hands clean.

More stories from the party in the next posting…