The luge ice has melted, the cameras have stopped rolling, and the hangover has lifted. As the haze cleared, the Luge Effect film week made a few things apparent to me. I have some really cool girlfriends. There are both man card heroics and violations to dole out to my guyfriends. The Luge Effect party was the best one I’ve thrown. And I have no idea if we have a movie or not, but it was a really fun week. We have to plow through almost 20 hours of footage to see what made it on camera. You can see photos of the party by clicking here. I kept a running mental diary of the 24 hours of Luge Effect preparation and execution-
Saturday-
11am – My phone is blowing up with texts. People are fired up. Paco is actually ahead of schedule on coming to help with the luge and keg acquisitions! He has never been ahead of schedule on something that I can remember in 3 years. Great start to the day.
Noon – Order a bloody mary and a burger at Third Rail in west loop
1pm – bonn has already texted twice about the damn party waiver. He had made a huge ordeal about signing it. I was irate and threatening to dis-invite him during my pre-party stress. I decide not to answer it in my inflamed state of mind.
130pm – No bullsh*t…the burger has finally arrived. And the place was dead! So much for being on schedule.
145pm - $80 for 3 burgers and 2 rounds of beer. This makes no sense. But we are behind schedule so we pay and run out of there.
2pm – Pick up lighting at Jen’s. They are already partying on their deck. I wonder if they’ll make it to the party. The burger I ate gives me a deep food coma feeling. I feel like I could sleep longer than Rip Van Winkle right now.
3pm – Negotiate a luge & ice price at the Ice Supply store. It is $38 for 6 foot block of ice and a few random bags of ice. Every year I explain why I am buying the luge to the ice guys, and every year they get all excited about it.
4pm – Luge and keg back at the house. We are precariously close to being off schedule. We have 20 gallons of vodka lemonade, 2 gallons of kamikaze shots, and 2 gallons of melon balls to concoct. An executive decision is made not to eat dinner. I am a big proponent of keeping things simple with my stomach – liquids or solids, don’t mix the two. I decide to ride the liquid train until the inevitable derailment that leaves people running horrified from the scene like Japanese citizens run from Godzilla.
5pm – Mark, a former bartender, has just made me sample at least 10 different versions of his kamikaze shot. He has lost his touch because these taste horrific. And I’ve now done and bunch of shots without eating. I feel happy. Additionally I have to keep testing the vodka lemonades (VLs), it is an art to get the taste right. The “right taste” of a vodka lemonade is one where people drink it and say there is no alcohol in it, while in the meantime you poured a shocking amount of vodka in the mix already. I was in the zone on the VL mixing, I had been putting in at least 2 full bottles of 1.75L vodka for every 5 gallon jug, and still couldn’t taste any alcohol. I kept adding more until I got nervous that my taste buds could not be trusted. How could I still not taste the vodka? Perhaps it was because every taste bud on my tongue had been acidly burned out from so many samples of Mark’s kamikaze disasters.
530pm – They definitely aren’t kamikaze shots. I am not sure what to call them, we have literally been grabbing bottles of random liquids, pouring them into the drink mixer, and then taste testing. Dave our film guy says I should slow down. The mixture has turned some sort of off-red (according to my admittedly bad color identification skills). It is barely drinkable. We label a few of the jugs “XXX” and figure that a sign of a good party will be when people are liberally doing luge shots of XXX.
630pm – Luge carving. I have 2 luges stacked up in my bathtub. The first one carves out way too easily. Normally carving a luge causes your forearms to bulge like Popeye’s. (How esoteric is the knowledge of how luge carving affects arm blood flow?) I am able to use a knife sharpener to quickly groove a path for liquid flow, and then do some fine-tuning with a butter knife. My 15 years of luge experience tells me that the viscosity of the luge sweat means we have a risk of runny luge later on in the night. I decide that instead of having dueling luges, one should stay in my bathtub under ice until later in the night as a precaution.
7pm – We are 90% setup, but drenched in sweat, can’t host a party looking like I just did a triathlon. The luge party preparation triathlon consists of 3 ‘events’. – Lugging/carving the luge, carrying/tapping the keg, and mixing 20 gallons of VL.
730pm – City people do not arrive to a party on time. It is sacrilege. Whatever time is on an evite is the time you debate on when to shower, not attend the party. I know this, this is what I do, a 7pm evite means get to the party 930pm. That is why I picked 7pm for the party. However it is 730pm, we have an immense amount of booze, cameras are ready, and it is just Mark, myself, my friends from the suburbs, and the camera guys. People from the suburbs are so nice, they come to parties on time and everything. I can’t help feeling nervous, I do a luge of XXX to calm down.
9pm – Around 40 people are here already, this is a great start. However, they are all mortified of the camera. I had thought people would show off in front of the camera. Instead they are shirking from it worse than Bonn and a time commitment. (Note: Bonn is a friend of mine who cannot show up less than half hour later than when he says. He once showed up for an 8pm Gibson’s dinner at 945pm, because he had to ‘grab a run’ at 8pm)
915pm – HP furiously texts away with an unidentified female, Bonn furiously texts away with his pseudo-gf.
945pm – Peter arrives. When asked what he is up to, he replies “Just being Peter”
950pm – Sally, Lisa, and Brandy make a glamorous entrance. The hotness quotient just got dialed up on the festivities.
10pm – The place is rocking. Folks were hiding out in the darken areas from the brightly lit camera area. We move the luge, keg, and VL stand out in front of the lights. I turn on all of the pool deck lights, sorry neighbors. The light is now bright enough to film anyone. People scurry away like mice.
1030pm? – The doorman calls and he has run out of the release forms we are making people sign to attend the party. I had given him 75 or so. Sweet! Mark and I congratulate ourselves on the number of good-looking ladies in attendance. When throwing a large party, the only concerns you need to have are attractive women and enough alcohol. There are ALWAYS going to be enough dudes. We have achieved that.
1045pm – HP and Bonn have not touched their phones in an hour due to the wealth of female talent flocked around the pool.
11pm – There is now skinny dipping in the pool. Unfortunately it is a guy, who appears to moon anyone that walks by the pool. He is trying to get his lady in the pool, she isn’t having it. We are supposed to be out of the party room at eleven. Yeah whatever.
1110pm – I scream at Sara Dick that she is a major disappointment to be hiding out on a lounge chair in the corner.
1111pm – Sara Dick gets a strange glint in her eye about being called out.
1112pm – Sara Dick receives a huge luge of XXX. I love being able to say “received a huge luge”.
1115pm – Sara Dick gets a guy to admit on camera he had 13 hookers while on a trip to Argentina. Now that’s good content.
1125pm – Jen pour Dan a mouth-gaping amount of XXX down the luge chute. He will eject this liquid approximately twelve hours later at brunch the next day.
1130pm – The luge is now flowing continuously. I see a few post-luge makeouts, gotta love the Luge Effect baby! The doorman calls, he has run out of the additional 30 odd release forms. 105 people so far. It is controlled chaos. One bad part of hosting a large film party, you constantly have to be checking things, watching over people, running up to make more VL, etc. I decide to pretend that I am an attendee at the party, and go chat up some ladies.
1145pm – Kevin pours me a luge. My eyes widen as the size of the shot causes it to overflow from the sides of the luge chute. I relax and try to achieve zen-like luge focus, I will drink all of this. It roars down the luge like a tsunami, up my nose, I snort it back out reflexively. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but perhaps late night luge shots aren’t the most hygienic.
1155pm – I try unsuccessfully to convince the Ukrainian female contingent to demonstrate the Ukrainian hankerchief ritual. Apparently it is a variation of spin the bottle, but kneeling on hankerchiefs, and you are making out with hot Ukrainian women. No luck, they prefer to sit on lounge chairs and receive guests like royalty. Infuriating.
Sunday:1201am – Pool deck closes at midnight. I go down and chat with the new doorman on shift. He is an amateur filmmaker – we have all night if the neighbors don’t complain.
1215am – 20 gallons of VL is gone. There is a huge contingent of people doing keg stands. A few of the ladies got this started, how cool is that! Neighbors are pressed up against the glass staring out. They are getting flashed or cat-called. There goes my party room deposit.
1245am – The doorman calls to say that unfortunately his phone is ringing off the hook with horrified neighbors. We begin the process of moving everyone back into the party room. The Luge gets tossed in the pool…probably not a good idea to go swimming tomorrow.
1-2am – Can’t remember this hour. Loud happy drunk people doing lots of funny things. Camera crew is getting sloshed so I don’t know if any of it is on tape.
2am – The party room appears to be clean. We begin the painful process of kicking people out. Mark is getting angry. His lady is there and he wants to leave with her, but realizes he can’t and this drives him semi-insane for a few minutes.
230am – The people that stayed to help us clean are invited up to my place to help kick the keg. Frank, Dan, and HP get huge man card props for helping clean. Noonan came up double clutch. He not only helped pick up, but then rolled out with a lady friend. Hoping that is on film, Noonan getting properly rewarded for his efforts.
330am – Keg is kicked, time to go to bars. There are some partygoers at Bijan.
4am – Dave the film guy and his friend Scott get snuck into Bijan’s at 4am. Dave has this game he runs on every girl within 30 feet of us. He walks up to them and says “Hey, my friend over there is really upset, his girlfriend just broke up with him.” In the meantime, his friend is supposed to act upset. However, his friend Scott, after having been drinking with us since 5pm, is slightly over-dramatic about being upset. Plus, Dave and Scott are 20 years old, hitting on girls from 5 to 15 years older than them. While the game they are trying to run on the ladies is not the most effective, gotta love their balls, they will do well when they get older.
430am – Food!! Bijan’s still has a wait for a table at 4am. Eight of us are strewn across the bar. I haven’t ate in 16 hours. I resist the temptation to order a filet…it is 4am I am not going to remember what anything tastes like at this time of night. I wolf down a burger.
445am – Tankalicious and I debate the merits of hitting the Red Head for one last beverage. Like there is any good reason to go to the Red Head at 445am. I walk in and look around while I am on the phone w/him, it is a train wreck in there. So I call it a night.
I love your rants....ha! BTW, I was not angry, I was frustrated, big difference.
The Luge Effect continued taking effect well after saturday, and byproducts seem to be popping up everywhere...success.
Posted by: Mark | June 19, 2007 at 07:33 PM
Aww, not one picture of Mark...
Posted by: Julieann | June 21, 2007 at 08:55 AM
I hate to get all Noo Yawk on you, but as Chicago is the "second city", this sounded like a second rate party. Piss poor planning, crappy alcohol, I suggest that Scotty make it to a Jersey "shore whore" party and see how things are really done.
Your the Best, Scott!
Posted by: Nelson | June 21, 2007 at 01:04 PM