We Gonna Party Like It’s the Top 5
1. Celebrating a welcome layoff
Did you ever have one of those days when your significant other carpools into work with you at 7:30am, only to get summarily laid off by a borderline insane employer at 9:00am? And you come home at 6:00pm to find that she, her sister, and their friend have already worked their way through two bottles of wine and a bottle of vodka? And within about an hour, there are several more people at her apartment and every drop of alcohol has been consumed and it sounds like a fantastic idea to walk up to Deluxe for their $5 burger special? And somewhere along the way some wine is thrown up on the sidewalk and $5 worth of bottled water is purchased from a corner market in order to meet their debit card minimum? Because I have no idea what that’s like.
2. Celebrating a new home and a birthday
Then there are those other days, when you get invited to a rooftop housewarming party on a 6-story condo in the center of Capitol Hill, and there’s a nearly 360° view of the Seattle area, including the Olympics, the Cascades, Mount Rainier, Cal Anderson park, the Space Needle, and any other notable landmark you could care to mention. Funny hats are worn, assorted meats are grilled, and multiple parties end up cross-contaminating each other and poaching each others beverages. And this is before the underage partiers start showing up and acting like jackasses, so you go inside and eat Guinness birthday cake.
3. Free Comic Book Day (Saturday, May 2nd)
I probably should have posted this last week, since anyone who doesn’t know about it has now missed it. But this yearly event is a great way to get non-comics readers into comics shops, out of curiosity if nothing else. It’s also a good way to check out some new comics that you might not take a chance on otherwise. Let’s face it, with comic book pamphlets clocking in at upwards of $3 a pop these days, free sounds awfully tempting.
4. Molly Moon’s on Capitol Hill (917 East Pine)
Ever since I moved from Canada twenty some-odd years ago, I’ve been missing one thing above all else, and that’s black licorice ice cream. I found it, once, at an ice cream shop at a mall in Eugene several years ago, but that one encounter was not enough to quench a two-decade urge. fortunately, Molly Moon’s has answered my prayers at last, with a salted black licorice ice cream. It’s not exactly what I was looking for, but it is a new take on my long-lost childhood favorite. Maybe I can convince them to make a tiger tail ice cream (orange and black licorice swirled), and really make my day.
5. Phonogram 2.2 (Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie)
Speaking of comic books, the second issue in Gillen & McKelvie’s seven part series, offering seven different music- and magic- infused takes on a single night in a London club, finally hits shelves. For those who missed the first series, Rue Britannia, Phonogram is essentially an extended metaphor that disguises musings on the cultural and personal significance of popular music as self-aware urban drama spiced with magic. I mean, really, why would you write a dry essay on the rise and fall of Britpop, when you could instead make it a keenly drawn comic book filled with sorcerous intrigue? The second series expands this conceit, exploring the subjective aspects of pop culture through the eyes of seven very different characters.
