One thing that nobody can avoid during the summer months is the probability of attending at least one backyard party. There's nothing like it. A backyard party can take almost any form, from the all-out drunken festival (known affectionately as an "Irish Family Gathering"), to the more sedate graduation parties. Nobody can escape attending at least one of these get-togethers most worthy of the title, "shindig."

Even if you thought you were out, they'll pull you back in. You just graduated, you're living in the big city and you think that since nobody has a back yard in New York, you're essentially freed from that summer duty. Just as you are thinking this, you're going to get a call. There's always something you forgot -- your little cousin Celia has just graduated high school, and you will be promptly summoned back to the suburbs from whence you came to sit under a large novelty tent in someone's backyard wondering when the immense number of beers you are drinking will finally kick in.

Nonetheless, all college students find these shindigs hard to avoid. Someone is going to throw one and you are going to have to go. Maybe an older friend graduated, maybe a younger brother or sister, cousin, etc. finally got their ass out of high school and wants to summon family, friends, friends of friends, and their sibling's friends to their backyard to reminisce about the high school years that they ended only a half-week ago, and brag about their full scholarship to Bucks County Community College to study ghetto linguistics.

You'll suck it up and go, and while nobody is looking, quite a few of those beers that had been stashed away to make sure that the party remained entertaining after Uncle Marty and Aunt Broomhilda had their epic fight over the ketchup packet (which, you found out, would later lead to their divorce). Who knew that Aunt Broomhilda had been sleeping with the manager of the local McDonald's in exchange for free Quarter Pounder's -- well, the whole family knows now.

After it gets dark, the backyard party changes, and becomes more exotic. With every mosquito bite, you imagine that you are in the rain forests of Panama, and now must find the cure for the malaria, which you are now surely infected with. It turns out that the cure is gin, and thanks to Grandma's distaste for beer, there is a stockpile of it nearby. In a vain attempt to ward off the minute attackers, the backyard is lit up with a series of burning torches, which gives it the feel of an episode of Survivor. Who's going to get voted off? Will it be Uncle Ernie, the drunken slob? Or perhaps my favorite, Aunt Rhonda, who was being a bitch all day -- nobody cares about your son's new job giving pedicures to little yappy dogs. By the way, he's gay.

---
Now I am going to go scratch my mosquito bites until they bleed with sweet, sweet, relief. Ahh...
Click the "Extra Good" links, they hook me up with some sweetness.

#|