July 11, 2005
The Jeff Stripped Bare By His Bachelor Party, Even
filed under: Idle ChatterBuddy and fellow treader in the vineyards of obscure theater Jeff Lewoncyk is getting married this week - he and his lovely bride-to-be Hope Cartelli are having a little civil ceremony at City Hall on Thursday, to garner themselves a swanky Bastille Day anniversary (trumping Lisa's and my Veteran's Day), and having a party at The Brick in Williamsburg on Saturday. Due to the non-traditional nature of the proceedings, it transpired that there was no formal Best Man to coordinate the Bachelor Party.
Meaning last Monday 20 or so of Jeff's guy pals got a nearly panicked email from Michael Gardner, pointing out that appropriate festivities were needed but unplanned.
In a nifty bit of social engineering, we discovered what happens when a score of strange, creative, insecure, opinionated young men jointly plan a bachelor party: reply-to-all emails fly at the rate of hundreds a day, plans become more and more intricate and surreal, cars are rented, grooms are abducted, masks are worn, strippers are hired, video is taken, ponies are played, a speakeasy is created, and everyone has a rip roaring good time. Just ask Jeff:
Yes that is a bra on his head. Of course it is.
More after the jump...
Jeff was expecting a party on Saturday. Unfortunately, the party had to be scheduled for Saturday. The Gentlemen (as the planners/participants will heretofor be called) objected to the loss of the element of surprise, so it was recreated manually: first, there was a Fake Surprise Bachelor Party on Friday night, where a handful of guys surprised Jeff at a bar, bought him drinks, slapped him on the back, and went home early.
Jeff staunchly refused to be disappointed by this poor showing, despite believing it to be his actual Bachelor Party. As he said, "Hey, people were buying my drinks - so I'm thinking 'this is the best night OF MY LIFE!'"
Then, at 8:30am on Saturday, the "Psy Ops" began.
Jeff was awakened from a dead sleep to find his bedroom full of men in ski masks, panty-hose masks, ninja masks and maybe a werewolf or two. He was abducted, dressed in a grass skirt and coconut bra, and paraded around the park (while being videotaped). He was then returned home, only to be re-abducted half an hour later, this time for brunch. (Anyone who actually made it to this part, feel free to flesh out the narrative in the comments - I didn't join the group until later that night).
The whole cavalcade then caravanned off to Belmont and played the ponies, which they seem to have enjoyed mightily. "I won $26!" shouted John DeVore at me when I saw him that night. "And I only had to lose $53 to do it!"
After Belmont came the Beer Garden in Astoria, where the party reached a nice rolling boil of intoxication. And then the Brick theater itself was converted into a Speakeasy, complete with cheap cigars ("Are those Cuban?" asked one of the Gentlemen. "No," was the reply, "Philadelphian!"), bourbon, card games, and nude cutie movies projected onto the wall-sized screen:
The Smoke-Filled Room
Attack of the 50-foot boobies
Jeff was plied with drink, substances, and vintage Penthouse magazines, in which he found a portrait of the original cast of SCTV, and began pawing over it in masturbatory rapture:
To round out the Gentlemen's Club experience, nouveau vaudeville impresario TravSD secured the services of Miss Dottie Lux and Veronika Sweet of Red Hots Burlesque, who shook their groove thangs old skool feather-fan-and-pasties style to the delight of the assembled Gentlemen, and gave the Bachelor the requisite flirtatious titillationment:
Jeff checking out Veronika Sweet's attributes
Jeff no longer able to handle the majesty of Veronika Sweet's attributes
There were many bouts of near anarchy, as tends to happen when eight or ten postmodern surrealist performers spend more than five minutes in a room together when none of them are supposed to be performing. There was a near street-fight with the hipsters living in the dumpster next door, and Uncle Mister DeVore, eager to prove his status as my son's most dangerous faux Uncle, almost assaulted me when I suggested he lay off the Maker's Mark:
After 24-plus hours of merriment, Jeff appeared bedraggled and wistful but bathed in sweet, sweet, manly contentment:
Well done, Gentlemen. Well planned, well executed, and well enjoyed.
Hope, we did our best to get it all out of his system. From here on out, he's your problem. Enjoy him.
UPDATE/ADDENDUM: From Mr. Honeywell (Psy Ops commando/wheelman of the 2nd vehicle) come more details of the Psy Ops:
for fact-checking accuracy: the kidnapping psy-op actually happened in two stages: first we assaulted him as you described, and threw him in a van and drove him around the neighborhood for a while -- and we returned him to his comfortable apartment. that was designed to create more psychological instability by leaving him wondering what the hell just happened, and could there be more? uncertainty is as important an element of torture as surprise.Posted by rjt at July 11, 2005 03:26 PMthen we returned 30 minutes later for a second kidnapping -- which appeared to concern him greatly, as I saw him leaning out his 3rd story window with neck extended like a panicked crane, seeing us approaching again. this time they re-enacted the first kidnapping, and in slow motion for the benefit of the videotape. then we decorated him in girly-gear (coconut boobs, bra, grandma underwear, etc.) and paraded him around a kiddy-park -- until the groundskeeper kicked us out because we didn't have a kiddy.
then onto brunch & the tracks, and the whole sordid mess after....