Of course I did not belong to the beaky crew, but nobody could tell that. I simply slipped in behind my housemate, and stole a little plasticky sign, upon which I later scribbled some ridiculous sounding name and let swing around my neck boldly, fingering my Grammy in such a way that I sent out the clear message "Hey, I am so damn important you better at least pretend you recognize my name," and of course they all did, they were more than happy to oblige and then I pretended to believe their nametags said something, too, and a couple of bottles of wine later we were all laughing and squatting down as we laughed, and then standing up all at once, which of course only made us laugh harder, it sort of reminded me of that scene in Evil Dead 2 where Ash is laughing with the house and the deerhead on the wall, except in this case instead of a deerhead I had the woman with four vaginas, who was screaming Brilliant! Brilliant!, and the twins in the yellow sweaters were smugly stuffing Gouda in their faces, skinny necks and high cheekbones, hell, I only encouraged the chaos and was happy to see that Erin could finally drink to her heart's delight, she had waited since ten am, and now she knew she could fit right in. I left her to practice my Tai Chi by the tall oil paintings of flaming oil wells, feeling myself fall immediately in lockstep with the true Feng Shui of the large pasta bowl by the door.

Eligonq Reticula eventually pulled me over and tried to convince me that he was changing the film scene with his new forty-minute short about the film scene, and in turn, I told him I was getting into a new field, perhaps a field on the edge of a cliff, one where there is an ocean of gulls clamoring about me, one where I scream out names of holy offenders and smear cold tallow over my sharply-angled shoulder blades, a field where I crucify myself in the name of the long-dead King. As I said this, I swooped down entirely parallel to the floor and and extended my leg perfectly while looking up somewhat casually, as if to say "Isn't this pleasant conversation?"

He pretended to find crumbs in his wine and disappeared before I could straighten up to exchange business cards with him. Again, I marveled at the complexity of social situations. Hell with it. I just lined my pockets with hummus and ditched.

Say Obladi-blada!