I've spent most of today writing a long two-part post chronicling my reflections on the Joel and Alana situation - the conversations with him and then with Alyssa on the night of the break-up (for want of a better word), the parallels I see with my own life and philosophies, and the talk I had with Joel yesterday afternoon which led him to credit me as his saviour. In the meantime, Alyssa's been here reading JONKOJ and wearing a skirt that keeps getting twisted and there's been all kinds of rockin' going on (Hummer, Big Head Todd, Afghan Whigs, Smiths) and not a whole lot else has happened.

I was mostly here yesterday too, missing dinner because nobody cooked it (we thought Nori was but then she went to Gabe's), instead Joel and I played abbreviated Trivial Pursuit while we waited for Alyssa, with each square good for a pie piece. Even though I had a full pie and was gunning for the center when he only had two, I was going back and forth across the middle for so long that he ended up winning. I put on Hello Nasty to get the party started right, and eventually Claire and Alyssa showed up, cold rockin' it in jaguar print and lacy/pink, respectively. I put on my newest tie (gold and blue one from Mike) with the olive green shirt and light striped jacket - Rebecca called the ensemble David Byrne - but we still had to wait for her to do stuff and get dressed, and Joel looking up Lithuanian first names on the 'net ("They should cancel the internet and just keep this site") But eventually we got there, shuttled over. There being Blair's 21st birthday party in the WRC. Alyssa's skirt matched a lot of things - the Royal Tennenbaum's soundtrack and parts of the butt of the Beanie Mandrill ("Cheeks - he's named for…can you guess?") that Blair had recieved as presents, the leftover decorations from the Lambda Latke Pi party ("No Hazing" sign), individually wrapped Jelly Bellys, some of the frosted drinks that waistcoated, tattooed Marvin Barron was serving up (from an amazingly extensive bar including sour apple liqueur with which I mixed myself an "appletini"), Blair's cheeks, etc. Downstairs I talked with Lindsey Newbold, Emily Clough, Chris Keary, Peter Wirzbicki (who had apparently just sort of wandered in from somewhere), Liane Rice, and later Adrian Daub; eventually the party shifted upstairs (some people even went to the third floor for drinking games sundry and sordid) where Blair was trying to get people to dance, but having mixed luck due to a somewhat haphazard selection on her mix CD - P-Funk, Run-DMC, Salt'n'Pepa interspersed with the Nields, Pete Yorn, the Replacements, Joe Jackson, and the George of the Jungle soundtrack? Her friend from Oberlin was happy to dance to most of it though. And eventually she put in the fast hits disc from the Luaka Bop anniversary comp. In the mean time I was enjoying the sociably drunk company of Laura Hirschfeld (whom I had never met before, but who was pleased to welcome me into her onion - the metaphor we were expanding on for most of the evening), her jersey-wearing Temple boyfriend John, Emily and Peter. It was really extremely silly. A little later on I came to that group attending to Kellam Conover, as he expounded on gay sex, hilariously making Peter a little uncomfortable by using him in his examples, and telling really confusing stories. It got late really fast. I had been expecting my roommates to be watching "L.A. Story" by the time I got home, but they weren't even back until quarter to three.

Well the sun has gone now (in the most spectacular fashion I've witnessed in quite a while) and its probably nearing dinner time. A little while ago Nori came in and fetched me to join she and Rebecca practicing and teaching Joel how to do pelvic isolations in the kitchen, with Stankonia accompaniment. An extremely, extremely amusing sight.

i pray so much about it, need some knee pads