so happy 4th and stuff! i know it's been a little while, and i'm sure you're all salivating for an elscorcho update so here you go. in this episode, we envoke images of years past and a time when elscorcho was more pure... or at least a more pure form of rage.

anyways, the weekend started out on friday, when ken and thad came from their respective smallish new england towns to teele square, home of ryan and myself. they came up, we played lots of video games (i procured soul calibur II for this weekend, and it was/is worth it). we fucked around saturday and went and got burritos from anna's around 2. parker met us in davis, and things started coming together. i got a new tshirt from the goodwill store. parker started discussing the plans for thad's birthday. it was good to have the guys around.

we went home. we felt lazy. jen came. it was wonderful to see her. we sat around and watched tv and waited for ryan, making the normal banter, falling into the same patterns... being friends, you know? it was cool. ryan came home from work around 6 and we sat around some more, just being wonderfully lazy on this fine saturday afternoon.

earlier, urs invited us all to a bbq. the catch was that she wasn't going to provide anything other than a grill, basically. this annoyed me greatly. if you don't understand why, i can go into more detail, but i feel like i've ranted about this enough.

well, fuck it, let the ranting begin.

i am a strong believer that if you have people over, you take care of them. when there was a super bowl party on college ave, back in soph year, we provided the foods, because thats what people do! the last two years at warner we've held countless cookouts, and being hosts, we provide meat and some appetizers, and graciously accept any donations (food, drink, or monetary), but we don't expect to make back anything.

now this is the second time the girls we have invited over on more than one occasion for a cookout or dinner or something, this is the second time they have skimped out on us. i got more and more worked up over this, and i decided not to go to this event.

i know it seems like i wanted to spend more time with jen. and fuck you if you think thats wrong, because i did. but she was insistent that i plan on doing things with my friends if i wanted to, because she had other people to be with this weekend, and she wasn't like dependent on me for company. she was insistent. but then some lame shit gets pulled, and it turns into another "provide your own meat and watch everyone play beirut" fest, which is what every fucking lame fourth of july turns into up here... yeah i decided not go on my own.

anyways, parker and i had discussed taking thad to daisy buchanan's later that night for his big two one. so i'd see everyone then, right? no biggy.

i was planning on moping until later, but jen talked me into going with her downtown to see her friends, who i know by this point. i mean, i don't just know them, i am friendly with them, they are all good people. (it's strange that i met a ton of new people in the last 2-3 weeks of college that i never saw or knew or anything... ) we got chinese food. we hung around downtown. we went to the charles and we saw the fireworks. this is the first time i saw the fireworks live, not just on tv and not from my window in my room. it was really fun, and i was really happy to be out. and parker called me right before the show, telling me that daisy's was still on, and that thad was getting pumped (and sobering up from his previous drunken state, which was a result of the aforementioned beirut).

it's all coming together.

except then it all fell apart. the fireworks ended, and the events that transpired next are hazy at best. no one told me how, exactly, flori and jill and beth left. i just know that they did leave. i do know how liz and lauren left - with parker asking them, disbelievingly, if they were really going, and one of them responding with the question "are you trying to make us feel guilty?" i know ryan left, but that thad wasn't surprised by this at all because he didn't really expect ryan to stay around. but i wasn't there. all i know is that parker, ken, thad, medford bill, and urs were there.

how this happened is beyond me. i wasn't there, so i don't know what wonderfully valid excuses everyone had to bail on thad for his 21st birthday. all i know is that everyone who bailed on him killed thad a little bit. i turned 21 after sophomore year, so i've been going out to bars since then, and thad's been quite aware of it. slowly, as our friends, as HIS friends turned 21, the group of people that went to bars grew and grew. we tried often to go to places where thad could be with us, but he missed out on a lot, and he knew it. he missed out on every ridiculous night at the burren. he didn't get to go to bar nights on senior week, or any senior pub night. he never got to see phil turn on his charm and go home with the beauty queen, he never met colin's girlfriend's ridiculous friends, he didn't get to see the stupid band in the backroom play bon jovi.

and finally, he turned 21. for one night, while everyone was still in town and no one had anything to do the next day (except ryan, who had to work), he could have seen some of the world that everyone was starting to take for granted, starting SO SOON to take for granted. all of us have given countless bouncers our driver's license, but he was going to do it for the first time.

everyone left him, though. he didn't get a proper 21st birthday, let alone a proper birthday at all. he got dragged by medford bill to jordan kivelstadt's house. he then got fucked over by the T, and wasn't able to even meet me downtown at a bar near fenway, where i hoped that at least i could buy him a drink and spend one of his most important nights with him, because he's one of my best goddamn friends, and he's stuck by me through everything, which is a hell of a testament to him.

it makes me so mad that people would bail on their friend for his birthday. it makes me madder when its a 21st birthday. and it makes me maddest of all when it's thad, the nicest, sweetest, most loyal friend one could ask for.