And we took off for Eeyore's Birthday Party. Now for a bit of an explanation of what Eeyore's Birthday Party is...
Eeyore is the tailless donkey from the land of Winnie the Pooh. For my entire life, I have been going to Eeyore's Birthday Parties. People come in costume, the Hell's Angels are the park guards, a drum circle unparalleled by any known percussionary phenomenon, mud women (women covered only by dried clumps of ex-wet dirt), Men with socks over their privates, Kids in Spiderman Costumes, Jamine costumes, Aladdin costumes, beer, turkey legs, giant jigsaw puzzles, a May Pole, insane masking tape sworded dweebs beating the holy crap out of other insane masking tape sword wielding dweebs, egg tosses, punks, yuppies, rednecks, hippies, bankers, lawyers, video clerks, all walks of life. Midgets, dwarves, women of loose morales, men of no morales, nuns, priests, and a donkey named Eeyore. It is a celebration of the absurd, a day in which we celebrate the world of a tailless donkey. A world I love.
This year seems as though it will be the last. The last time all will gather in a park named Pease, save for one letter it is the embodiment of peace. When I was a wee chap, and a Three Mile Island was a polluting and CHINA SYNDROME was in the local theaters I went and won the contest as "I SURVIVED THREE MILE ISLAND". I was wearing glow in the dark masks and gloves, and a t-shirt that had a death shroud with an atomic symbol in the darkness of the hood, and the words NO NUKES. It was very cool. I won the costume contest for 4 years in a row, then they (the judges) made me an official judge. That's when I saw my first perfect naked female body. In the adult category there was a geisha that came up, opened her robe up around me and gave me an eyeful of heterosexual joy. Ahhhhh, I'll never forget her.
This is quite simply a great party. THOUSANDS come, and the rich people in the hills can't stand it because for ONE day they have bad parking, and they hear the coolest drumming ever. GET OVER IT.
ANYWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY....
Me and the Okies arrive, and make our way to the beer stand, where we supply ourselves with liquid refreshements of the distilled variety. We then make our way to the beginning of the DRUM CIRCLE.
When we arrived there were but 4 drummers, but as we sat down, the flow of people began to surge. We sat around talking, doing that life bit. You know, a group of friends talking about the strange inaccuracies of the human existance? Looking around looking at the normalcy of having women in Sheena costumes dance to a drum beat, will a midget photographer snaps off some photos. Or watching the myriad strange four legged Alpo eaters pulling their pet humans around. Or watching the strange pierced people with tattoos to and fro upon their brow. Ahhhhhhhh... the normalcy of Eeyore's.
Tom and Annette were so into it. We felt the cool blades of grass against our legs, the breeze cooling the sweat on the back of our necks, and then the sound of the druming. Snare drums, bass drums, paint buckets, tamborines, Oasis water bottles cut in half, two sticks, a biology lab skull, their empty plastic beer cups... drumming drumming drumming... A beat quite pagan that drove home the tribal nature of man. (Pretentious ain't I?) More than anything else the drumming was cool. It was a scene from a film, one that you would remember. It was a point of existence, of which you could look back and smile. Hours melted away like that, faces, asses, bellies, and hands passed by as minutes ticked. Constant motion of people, branches and music. This was what it was to be at Eeyore's. Then we saw we had to leave.
