BP2K6

Since the weather's starting to get warmer, I thought I'd share a fond summer memory with all y'all. Circa July 2006:

I get back from the gym around lunchtime and park my car around the corner on the next block over because our street's been barricaded off for today's block party. I expect there to be music blasting, people out on their lawns barbecuing, kids playing in the street, but except for the lack of parked cars — replaced by party tents and patio furniture — it could be any other dull suburban weekend. But I guess it's still early.

An hour or so later, though, after I've showered, changed and read the paper, there's still nothing going on. Unless you count the people across the street blaring an instrumental lounge version of "Gangsta's Paradise" from the stereo of one of the trucks still parked in their driveway.

"Man, this sucks!" I complain to my brother. "Doesn't anyone on this block know how to party? What the hell did they do with the 20 bucks everyone paid? We don't even have one of those inflatable castle bounce things [which, by the way, are AWESOME]! I guess it's gonna be up to us to get something started."

His response is: "Hey, what would you do if I just started walking up and down the street buck-naked, making small talk with the neighbors, like there was nothing weird about it, and if anyone asked me what I was doing, I'd just be like, 'Man, I did so much acid last night I don't even know where I am!'?"

Well, I guess that's one way to start something...

A quick scan of the neighboring houses leads me to the conclusion that our set-up is definitely the lamest on the block. While everyone else has circus-size canopies and ping-pong tables set up on their lawns or matching white plastic patio chairs and picnic benches lined up neatly along the curb, my family's rocking a chaise lounge without a cushion relocated from the back deck, a folding beach chair my sister pulled out of the trunk of her Jeep, and the wooden park bench from off of our front porch. The only way we could look more ghetto would be if we had saved the old living room couches we threw out a few weeks ago and set those up on the lawn instead. And maybe if we were drinking 40s wrapped in brown paper bags instead of Mike's Hard Lemonade.

A few hours in, after the DJ has set up and people have started to slowly venture forth out of hibernation, there's a commotion on the corner: everyone's descending on these two guys pulling a giant cooler down the street on a little kid's wagon. "Are those Jello shots?" my sister asks excitedly, and faster than you can say "power of suggestion," we're running after the guys, too. My brother tries to box me out, citing my notoriously low tolerance for alcohol of late, but the way I figure, I'm already in my own yard, so if I get trashed and decide I want to sleep under a tree, at least no one will have to ditch their beer pong partner and leave the party to come pick me up from the park and drive me home with my head out the window, puking, like they did the last time. I mean, just hypothetically.

Turns out it's just ice cream, which I guess is still good...until you consider that every house on the block paid $20 for this shindig and this is what they decided to spend it on.

What would YOU do for a Klondike bar, motherfucker?! [to be read in the manner of Stephen Baldwin's character during the line-up scene in The Usual Suspects]

So now it's after dark, we've done a few laps [highlights: our end of the street is the deadest (lucky us), the castle bounce is around the corner on Johnson (bastards!), and no one but my brother was really into the idea of banding our side of the street together and calling them out, starting a neighborhood civil war], and the DJ is still playing disco and that god-awful baseball-metaphor Meatloaf song. "Let's request something," we decide. "Yeah, something actually good." Opinions on this vary from "Ice, Ice Baby" to "Ghostbusters" to "Riding Dirty." We decide to go with anything by Bob Marley, in honor of the kids smoking pot across the street.

The DJ waves us over. "So," we mock, "is this the most rockin' block party you've ever worked or what??"

"Bro, I want to kill myself," he replies.

"I could be on Fire Island right now with half-naked drunk chicks climbing into my booth, and instead I'm here." With boozy middle-aged suburban mothers apparently requesting the entire Billy Joel back catalog, I imply. Poor guy.

He never plays our song, though, so screw him.

"Next time, bro, I promise," he calls out as he's packing up.

Yeah, right — like we're actually going to do this again next year.