All hell breaks out in Melrose (Part 3) OR The Grand Kahuna of All Parties
Okay, before I get into this I just have to relay something I saw today. I’m driving down the road to my house and I see this truck that says across the back Jesus Plastering. WTF? I thought Jesus was a carpenter! Who knew he did plastering too.
So, now that I’ve had a day off from retail hell, I’m back on the Millipore team building party thing. As time passed, my department had a goal: We wanted to get the division VP (and our immediate boss), otherwise known here as SV, to one of our parties. We had a plan. We started leaving her anonymous voice mails and notes. We threatened to show up in her neighborhood if she didn’t show up at one of our parties. Of course, we’d show up as only we could. And she knew that.
I’m know there were parties after the Grand Kahuna party but, frankly, I can’t
remember them in comparison. Let me tell you how this one started out: It started out with Bruce and I driving up to the Lewiston-Auburn area of Maine in search of mushrooms. And I’m not talking about the fungi you cook with either. I’m talking mind altering mushrooms. Not peyote buttons, mind you. Those are disgusting. You actually hurl before you hallucinate on those babies. Only did those once. Never again. These were not as potent, but combine them with a little weed and tequila and you’ve got a pretty good buzz on hand.
Not much to do up there in Lewiston but drink, so we did that. We stopped in this little craphole of a bar and watched a rare afternoon Celtics game on television while we tried to find his friends who had access. After about five hours, we finally hit paydirt. Needless to say, we drove home and tested them out. Yeah, we were ready.
This was the infamous jello shot party. Everyone dressed in sixties garb (peace signs and paisley shirts everywhere) and several brought jello molds. The winner was the bed pan of yellow jello with tootsie roll pieces in it. I’m not quite clear on who brought that one, but it may have been Brian. Yeah. Disgusting. Sat it right in the middle of the food table for good measure.
By this time, there was a core group that arrived early at the Party Zone. The group consisted of my departments and my landlords. But an unusually large number of people showed for this one for some unexplained reason. A lot of people from work showed and a lot of our suppliers did too. Not only did my niece and her husband show (as they always did), but so did my nephews that were of legal age at the time. It took only about an hour or so for the party to ramp up. People were just crazy that night. The music was blaring and a “band” had already formed in the dining room. Then there was a knock on the door. All we heard was, “Oh my God!” and several of us ran to see what was up.
There stood our boss dressed in sixties garb, replete with the most incredible beehive hairdo you’d ever want to see. “I hear there’s some kind of party going on around here!” Then, she started laughing and so did we. Everyone was psyched. We weren’t the only people on her staff there. Many of her product and marketing managers were as well. The great thing about SV was that she didn’t cramp anybody’s style. People were just amazed and happy that she showed up. And she fit right in. A couple of hours after her arrival, she said, “Now I know what everybody’s talking about on Monday mornings and why they’re talking about it!”
The place was absolute craziness and those mushrooms went over big time. Then, the bell rang. It was late and nobody else was expected. My nephew had the intelligence to look out the window, then he turned around and looked at someone in the living room and said, “Get those bags off the table, man! It’s the police.” Some people reacted and got rid of the bags. The majority of the people just went back to partying. My nephew buzzed them in.
I’m dead sure they were expecting to see a bunch of teenagers raising hell and destroying the building. Instead, they found a bunch of thirty- and forty-year-olds acting like, well…assholes. It was loud and the windows were all open, so I’m sure the sound was spilling into the street. Somebody complained, but it wasn’t anyone in the building because they were all in my apartment partying. The police walked in and started looking around the apartment. I wish I could say that everyone stopped what they were doing, but they didn’t. In fact, SV had gathered a few people from my department into a corner and was leading them in a very cockeyed version of “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Their version was called “Bringing in the Sheep.” It was hysterical. She just smiled at the police as they walked around. Then they headed for the door again. They turned around on the way out.
“Do us a favor. Close the windows and turn on the air conditioning if it’s hot. We don’t want to have to come back here. And be sure the people who are drunk stay here. Okay?” They opened the door to leave. “By the way, have fun.” That was it. This particular party didn’t end until about five in the morning. There were several people camped out on my floor.
Like I said, there was never a party of this scope again. But I have to tell you, the police stationed a cruiser outside starting at midnight for each and every party to follow. I wonder why?
Never let it be said that business travel isn’t sometimes adventurous. It is especially adventurous when you’re somewhat fearless and have no idea WTF you are doing or where you are going. That would sum up my trip to Chicago for the Pittsburgh Conference. I’m not sure when this little event took place, late eighties maybe early nineties. The Pittsburgh Conference is an analytical instrumentation show. Prior to moving it to the McCormic Convention Center in Chicago every other year, it had always been held in New Orleans. At the time, I was the Marketing Services Manager for Millipore’s Analytical Division, and was attending the show to conduct a Press Breakfast and work the booth.
schedule. We got to Chicago and got settled into the hotel. Then, we headed over to the McCormick Convention Center to check on the progress of the booth assembly, and go through a dry run of the press briefing. The booth looked great so far. There were no problems there. But I have to tell you the worst thing about working with tekkies is that they just don’t get what kind of material to present to editors. These guys were writers, not chromatography scientists. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to drill that into their heads before the trade show. Now, I was at the trade show going through the dry run and they were editorializing again.
So, Brian and I started walking. “Can you see that they are walking with us across the street?”
I’m willing to state that I was once a certified party animal. I still can be under the right circumstances. When I am in that particular frame of mind, I am very adventurous. It’s not like that is something I like to do every single day or night (anymore), but I was up for it in my younger days. And that included experimenting with mind-altering substances.
something you simply cannot live without. It ceases to be pleasure at that point. I never entertained touching the stuff and I never did, even though several old friends did. I went as far as coke, and that was more than far enough for me.
Dunaway and made the mistake of taking THC before going into the theater. By the time Peter Finch got to, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna’ take anymore!” I can assure you that was the last place we wanted to be. We made a beeline out of that theater, laughing like hell all the way. We never did finish watching the movie. Another time, Greg, Jack and I met up somwhere and decided to go back to my place in Melrose to cook dinner. On the way home from Boston, we took purple microdot (mescaline). I have no idea where we got it, but it was just peaking by the time we got to Garniss Market to buy some food to cook. We never bought any food and we never cooked dinner.
