Once upon a time in a land we will call The Beach in a time circa the Not-So-Distant Past, three girls tore up that shoreline with their own agenda (“Is that part of the program?" or "Let's add this to the program!"), their own jokes (“Sweet. To the left. You know who is going to love this?”), and their own posse (“The circle of trust. You in or out?”). We walked to the beat of our own drummer – one who played bagpipes.
Enough with the inside jokes, right? Well, let me just say we weren’t the only Self-Indulgent Humor Whores this summer. Other people had their own gimmick going too. There was the Guy who looked like Brad Pitt In Disguise, who later became Porn Star Joe, who wore a certain necklace that I am not giving name to. He worked it. There was Doogie, or NPH. He stayed at our house! Poor Doogster had no choice - we gave him his gimmick. We gave him celebrity. Otherwise, he was just some guy with a really bad underbite. And on any given weekend, it was not abnormal to see people in full costume either. You know, like it was Halloween. There was the guy in the Bunny Rabbit costume offering his carrot up. ("I'm not bitin'.") Or those whose costume was really the lack of costume, like the guy with the British Flag bikini bottoms. ("Let's keep it clean.")
And so, Mav and I had a term for this phenomena: The Freak Show. With each new oddity, one of us would just look at the other and laugh. Our code for, “Yep, a freak show.” And we meant this in the most fun-loving way. Our own little Cast of Freaks was any person with the balls and comic instinct to pull off a costume and who works and dies by the motto, "The joke is on me." So each new oddity became a new character in our Cast of Freaks. And we could pull mention of one at any point during the summer and anybody in the House could get it. To this day, you may hear one of us ponder, "Is Joel the Grillmaster?" The Grillmaster being one such Character. They became part of Our Joke. (And just so you know, one time Mav wore her Foxy Cleapatra wig. So Mav as Foxy Clea became one such character. As an example. See? The joke is on us too.)
OK. All that to get to the Meat of this post. One such character we threw into the Cast of Freaks was the Guy in the Cougar costume who drank his beer through a straw because, you know with that cougar head the law of physics state that, "Costume Heads will Get in the Way of Drinking." And Home Ec taught him that, "Straws aren't just for the Kool-Aid!" This Cougar was a Problem Solver. So this costumed character crawled the bars for the weekend dressed like that. Do you stop for a second to wonder Who would wear such a costume? Is it the guy who sat in the back of class cracking jokes, disrupting class - the guy who spent his afternoons in detention and now does the open mic comedy circuit in hopes of getting discovered? Or is it some shy introverted type who needs to be in character to emote? Is this the guy who thinks he is funny and who his housemates egged on to ridicule him behind his back? Or some damn goofy guy who is all about having a good time and making laughing - at yourself - the main goal? Or maybe you don’t even give person to this Character. He is just that – a character in the Joke Book. Another character gone on record. So if I say to Mav one day, "Let's drink like the Cougar would." She knows to drink with a straw.
And she also Gets It when I call her and leave this message circa sometime late Saturday Night: "Guess what? The Cougar? I'm drinking with him. That's my date. He has been unmasked. Ha ha ha. Bye."
And I thought this stuff only happened in the movies.
Damn. A Character has now been given Person.
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