A Stripmas Story

Holiday Office parties always go one of two ways: The first is the awkward cocktail hour and hors d’ouevres with uncomfortable small talk and introducing your significant other to a bunch of people you wish you didn’t even know, the second is the good kind—a dinner where a bunch of people who legit like each other (because 5 of the 11 share the same last name), where no subject is off the table. Such subjects include: Christmas (or Hanukah for one dude) plans, stripping, favorite cupcake flavors, semi anti-Semitic jokes, pimps, jokes about half the office blacking out after dinner, followed by half of us blacking out. Thus went our company’s annual Christmas party at The Palm, a NYC restaurant that has inhabited the same lot in downtown Dallas for forever.

If you haven’t been to The Palm, you must. The caricatures on the wall make it interesting from every angle. My particular favorite is Chester Cheetah, while Dad’s (my boss) thought that Big Dick Harvey or someone was just too funny. UNCOMFORTABLE. 

Half-n-Half (BACK OFF)

Once we plopped down, they brought out calamari and half-n-halfs. For you skinny bitches out there, any time you hear half-n-half at a nice resty, it means half fried onions, half fried potatoes. In my case, I don’t care how they are prepared—I would eat a fried finger if it were brought out with a dipping sauce. The calamari is maybe the only thing that sucks—it has no flavor and smells kind of like a dirty fish tank. Yum. So everyone orders salads/soups/etc., none of which I wanted. After I saw that everyone had ordered something I decided that I didn’t want to look like a doosh (and God forbid I miss a course), so I ordered Lobster Biqsue. Welp, I don’t like Lobster. Or creamy soups.  So ordering a creamy lobster soup was prob not my smartest choice. By the time it came, however, I was on my 2^nd-ish glass of wine (4^th), and decided that I should use their jalapeño cheese bread as a spoon to dip in the soup. I. am. HUGE. 

So for dinner, I decided to go light and just order a small steak. A small, bone-in 24+ ounce ribeye. JK, I split it with my mom. By the time it came I had already tried adjusting my belt on my dress to be looser, but I ended up just looking like a creep touching my boobs. Fail. The steak was fine, nothing to call home about. The real winner here is the fact that they give you bibs (if you’ve eaten w/ me, you probably have noticed that I don’t have great coordination and spill everything), and they crack the lobster and crab for you. What greater gift to a fatty then having someone do all the work, tie a bib on you, then tell you to dip your fish in melted butter. Besides giving you crabs, the waiters here would make the perfect husband—they make sure you always have enough wine to tolerate them, they do all the hard work for you, and they offer you drawn butter like its water. In fact, they find it odd if you don’t request more. A man who wants you to be drunk and fat=JACKPOT.  We also had some light sides including fried asparagus, fries, shrooms, and cheesy potatoes.

The "small" Surf-and-Turf (NY Strip and Lobster)

Then, one of my fellow fatnip’s ordered a “dessert sampler,” which came with a huge choco cake slice, carrot cake, crème brulee, tiramisu, and some other chunky kid item. And she ordered TWO of them. WOOF. I don’t love dessert, but when I came to around 8:30 and realized that I had eaten the entire sugar shell off the crème brulee and started going in to some type sugar shock/red wine coma at the table.  When one of our co-workers suggested that a fellow should dance for us, we decided it was best to leave and went on our merry ways (Had it been our other co-worker, I would have stayed for a private dance).

Crab Legs and Butta

I just got grossly full from writing that, but still can’t stop thinking about what to get for lunch…SUGGESTIONS?

 (If only I lived in Austin, I could get a lovely steak at the Yellow Rose, while they wrap Christmas presents for free....)

Fries 'n Shrooms

Fried Asparagus

The. Blog. Is. Back. ALLRIGHT!!! (Dun dun na nuh, uh, uh)

My biggest pet peeve is when comebacks don’t get enough media attention—there are few things that are as important as a celeb or group of celebs second go at fame. Some second time attempts that didn’t get their fair share of excitement include….

1)      1) Cheetah Girls 2 (Which, if were being honest, should just have been called: “Watch Raven Symone get even fatter while eating/singing/being a doosh at the same time”). Just because Sadam Hussein was executed and Brittany Spears was caught without panties and got divorced, doesn’t mean that the weirdo mixed race fivesome shouldn’t have had their fair share of the spotlight in 2006. Don’t even get me started on how Cheetah Girls 3: One World was overshadowed in 2008. Why can’t anyone take Galleria, Chanel, Dorinda, and Aquanette seriously? 

2)       2) Lance Bass going gay on the cover of People. No shit, Lance Bass—pretty sure the entire “Digital Digital Get Down” song was you going gay—you guys only use the term “girl” once, and the song was about you cybering with Neil Patrick Harris. Anyways—people paid attention to him for 5 minutes, then forgot all about him. 

3)       3) Any finally, lest we not forget, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Opening night in 2004, I was at the Highland Park Village theater with a coke/cherry slushie and popcorn. And alone. My fellow Baby Geniuses fanatics (all 8 of them) laughed nonstop for the entire 88 minutes. Babies, talking chemical equations and sneak attacks, while wetting themselves is funny, no matter what anyone says. Also, the fact that Scott Baio and Jon Voight are overshadowed by “actors” who poop their diapies is amazing.

All of this is to get you HYPED UP. I figured if BACKSTREET’S BACK, the BLOG is BACK TOO.

BSB returns to the scene and you guys get excited for 10 minutes until you see Miley sucking on a bong. DON’T LET MILEY MAKE YOU FORGET ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD! BSB IS HANDS DOWN THE GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIMES.  I vow to make 2011 the YEAR OF THE BLOG and The year of the Boys. I am going to make Kevin (if he comes back to the beloved band), Howie, Nick, Brian and AJ proud. So be ready—because it’s going to be better than watching back-to-back episodes of the Suite Life.

Seasons Eatings,

Mrs. Caroline Dourough (you BSB-ers will understand that)