Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Road Trip Diaries, pt. 2: award ceremony, hot dogs, and back to G-Vegas with time to drink.

Alright, having successfully found something to eat (the best jerk chicken wings I've had in a long time, for the record), we hurriedly got dressed for the Just Not Famous Enough awards ceremony. Since we didn't have a hotel room in which to change, and we couldn't change at the site of the show, we had to get creative. And by "creative" I mean the girls got dressed in the truck on the side of the street as evening traffic crawled by. My favorite moment from getting dressed was when I was getting changed. I crawled into the back of the truck, stretched out as best I could and started changing pants. When I was done, Su had to let me out. As I climbed out, I caught a glimpse of us in the glass storefront of the F.W. Woolworth's: Su was standing over the gutter using a water bottle to brush her teeth as I climbed (half-dressed) out of the back of the truck. I remember thinking, "Gotta say one thing about Pitt County folks, we sure know how to make in impression." We actually managed to get three girls into their fancy dresses (and me into my outfit) without getting an indecency citation. No small feat, considering the wind kept whipping Su's dress to dangerous heights. Finally, everyone was dressed, and we headed out. The plan was to drop Su off at the press box so she could get pictures of people walking the red carpet. I was to take the girls to the Marriott down the street to meet someone (still don't know who) then come back to drop the girls off for their turn on the red carpet. When we got to the hotel, the only familiar faces I saw belonged to guys from Irvine, who were scheduled to walk the carpet just after us. After getting up with Su and finding out that we were expected on the carpet in 3 minutes, we hauled ass back to the awards show. We pulled up, I hopped out and opened the door for the girls, and they had their turns looking all hot on the carpet. They then went inside to finalize their plans with the event organizer. Meanwhile, I stayed in the press box with Paula and the other journalists, freezing our asses off. The temperature was dropping along with the sun, and it got ridiculously cold out there. Cold as it was, I was kind of having fun watching the local "celebrities" preening and showing off for the (bored, cold, and mostly unimpressed) members of the press. Finally, we were allowed inside. I was in desperate need of something to warm me up, so I quickly ordered a stiff vodka-n-tonic with lime. After all, nothing warms the spirits like some chilled spirits. Once that began to kick in, I started to relax and check things out. Things were a little unorganized at first, but that's to be expected since this was the first event of its kind to be put on in NC. Between awards, there were bands and artists representing each of the nominated genres performing. My favorite was a hip hop group called Liquid Sun (http://www.myspace.com/officialliquidsun). It was a foursome, consisting of three (very good looking) Black guys, and one (pretty-fly-for-a-) White guy. They had the crowd hyped, and wound up winning the award for their category, so it was a good night all around for Liquid Sun. Morgan and Ashlee had been asked to present the Just Not Famous Enough award for alternative rock band. The whole way there, they'd been rehearsing their scripted bit, trying to come up with ways to deliver the lines smoothly. I'm not sure how, but the subject of Legally Blonde came up, particularly Jennifer Coolidge's line, "...makes me wanna hot dog rrreeeeaaaalll bad!" Morgan jokingly said, "I should say that when I get on stage!" and the joke was born. I dared her to do it, and sure enough she did. When the girls took the stage, Ashlee set her up: Ashlee: Well, I'm really excited to be here. What about you Morgan? Morgan: I'm soooo excited. Ashlee: Oh yeah? How excited are you Morgan? Morgan: I'm so excited, it makes me wanna hot dog rrreeeeaaaaaal bad! Unfortunately, no one else was in on the joke, so it sorta fell flat. But the girls looked so hot, I don't really think anyone gave a damn. In any event, the girls did a great job and I was really proud of them for representing the magazine so well. In no time at all, it was time to begin the drive back to Greenville. We were using Morgan's GPS (named "Gypsy") to navigate our way home, and it was giving us constant updates about our expected time of arrival back in G-Vegas. When Gypsy indicated that we'd be back home at about 1:30 am, all it took was Su saying "That's enough time to head downtown for a cocktail..." and suddenly we were on a mission. After a brief pause outside of Durham (where I peed for about 10 minutes), we arrived back in G-Vegas at around 1:37. I managed to down four (maybe five) beers and two shots of tequila before last call. I'm more than a little proud of that--I think that might be a personal best for me.

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