I realize that I’ve been lame of late. Adam’s office party was simply disappointing. I mean, the party was great. But my general behavior was so good that it it was terrible. Then a few nights later, we went to a swanky 40th birthday party for an old friend of Adam’s. The whiskey sour was amazing. The wine was free-flowing. The potential was there for me to make a total ass of myself… and yet, I behaved like a grown-up. I know! So disappointing!
To make up for this dismaying lack of lack of decorum on my part (did you follow that?), this past weekend I hosted a special movie night for my movie night gang. I have five friends who come over once a month (it was six, but Sunrise decided that trivial things like children, community obligations, and a healthy spousal relationship took priority over our movie night; I know, we’re better off without her kind!) to watch a movie, eat popcorn with too much butter, devour buckets of Trader Joe’s chocolates, and consume gallons of red wine. It started after the New York trip when Sunrise declared she had never seen Heathers. As soon as we got back, we scheduled a movie screening. Movie night took on a life of its own and every month the next movie has just been something that made sense. Something we all agreed upon for whatever reason. We’ve watched Class (Andrew McCarthy!), Broadcast News, The Big Chill, St. Elmo’s Fire (more Andrew McCarthy!), the original Women (Jungle Red nails!).
I don’t know how it happened, but at our last movie night, the conversation somehow turned to Cougartown. Yes. The TV show. Here’s a secret about me. I am obsessed with this show. Obsessed. I am devastated that it hasn’t been on the air in just about forever (but it is coming back!). Hey, even Abed on Community can’t get enough of Cougartown. Turns out, two others of our sixsome also like Cougartown. So we decided on a Cougartown marathon for our next movie night. But somehow, things went wonky. I’m not sure if it was the chocolate or the butter or–could it be?–the red wine, but someone came up with the idea of making it a family event. Of subjecting our husbands to Cougartown as well.
And so it was written. And so it was done.
Sunday was our Cougartown marathon. Children were banished to the basement with juice boxes and Daddy Day Camp on DVD. To make the event a little more tolerable to the husbands, we combined our TV marathon with a bourbon tasting. Nothing makes Adam happier than bourbon. Except for perhaps lots of bourbon.
Of course, as anyone who watches the show knows, Jules has a love affair with her wine and her wine glass (is this the appeal of the show? A 40-something woman who drinks too much and gets snarky with her best friend? Naaahh. No resemblance here). Her first glass, Big Joe, comes to a sad end, and it replaced with Big Carl. Of course, we couldn’t have our Cougartown night without our own Big Joe’s, which are apparently called Big Bens:
We had pizza and wine and bourbon and popcorn and chocolate and birthday cake and non-birthday cake and screaming children and scheming children and not enough chairs and more wine and more bourbon and a happy time was had by all. Nothing too wild happened. Well, nothing that I’d ever share. Because what happens at Movie Night, stays at Movie Night. But I didn’t want you folks thinking I’d lost my edge. I’ve still got it. And it’s sharp!
