by Mamrie Hart
Anyway, Scotty and Flula and I were shooting the shit over some cocktails and got around to talking about Halloween. “I don’t remember what I’ve done once for Halloween since I moved here,” I admitted.
“I went to a party last year, but I don’t really want to go to one this year,” Scotty said.
“But I used to LOVE Halloween,” I said, beginning to get really bummed about a love that was once so passionate. At one point in my life, I had started planning my costumes months in advance, and now I would just ask my friends what they were up to the day before and half-heartedly do whatever was easiest, like a lover planning intricate dates for their partner, then years later just saying, “Meh, let’s order Domino’s.”
“Let’s do something very weird this year. Very strange,” Flula said after his third Bulleit on the rocks.
Now, I don’t remember what sparked this idea, but by our fifth round, we had decided that the funniest thing alive would be if we, along with some other recruits, went out for Halloween in Seattle dressed as the cast of Frasier.
In case you aren’t well versed in Kelsey Grammer’s catalog, Frasier was a TV show that took place in Seattle. It was 100 percent silly sitcom antics at its finest, involving two uppity brothers whose crotchety, masculine dad comes to live with them and high jinks ensue. When I watched it as a youngin’, I don’t think I even understood most of the jokes, but I still loved it. They spoke so eloquently and were always drinking sherry and quoting old plays. I felt classier just watching it, despite being a kid in Bumfuck, North Carolina, sitting on a tie-dyed beanbag, eating veggie nuggets.
“I would want to be the dad’s recliner and make people sit on me,” I said, having no fucking clue how someone would even pull off making a recliner costume.
“I would be the Space Needle!” Flula said, his eyes getting as big as Ping-Pong balls.
“You would both be inanimate objects?” Scotty asked as we nodded. “Well, I would be Frasier. I think if I grew my hair out for a couple of weeks, I could pull it off.” The night progressed, and our ideas for the event got more and more specific. We would have to have a solid crew of eight to round out other characters and prop pieces. Seemed doable. And then someone had the genius idea that we could rent a party bus and do a bar crawl, blasting the Frasier theme song each time we rolled up to the bar.
“We can call it Frasierween,” I said, knee-deep in vodka at this point. “Frasierween!” we all said in unison. We kept on brainstorming till the place closed, which wasn’t that late, because, as I said, the majority of the clientele are well into their seventies.
The next day we all texted about what a fun idea it was. We were fired up and wanted to pull it off. But days turned into weeks, and all our schedules becoming insane, and, sure enough, Halloween was right on our heels and we hadn’t done any planning. We found ourselves back at Taix.
“We really dropped the ball on that one,” I said. “I guess we can always do it next Halloween. Frasier is timeless, after all.” I looked over to see Scotty scheming. I can tell when he has an idea that he’s excited to share but is still gathering his thoughts, because his eyes squint a little and his upper lip curls in like Fire Marshall Bill, displaying his front teeth.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be on Halloween,” he said. Flula and I leaned in, ready to hear what dumb shit was about to follow. “What if we went up there for New Year’s? It would almost be more fun because people would be so confused why we’re all in costumes.”
Flula and I looked at each other. It was taking an already weird event and making it even stranger. “But everything is so packed on New Year’s Eve. Do we really want to go out in big costumes to packed bars?” Flula asked, concern in his eyes.
“True. Last year I wanted to avoid crowds so bad that I literally went and ate Chinese food three blocks from my place, drank a couple of glasses of champagne on my couch, and was asleep by eleven,” I said.
“What if we went out on December thirtieth?” Flula said with a mischievous look. We all sat there thinking about it for a second; then one by one we grinned like silent idiots. “That is perfect,” I said. Scotty leaned back in his swivel chair, folding his hands and nodding at the ceiling. A modern-day equivalent of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker.
“This could work,” he said, still nodding. “That way the bars aren’t super crowded and then when we are all hungover on New Year’s Day, everybody can do whatever they want. There’s no pressure.”
IT WAS DECIDED. THIS WAS HAPPENING.
Despite my doubts, I knew it was locked in when Scotty sent his flight info to Flula and me, a move more official than tagging someone you’ve just started dating in a pic on Instagram. We needed to invite more folks, but who would be willing to travel to Seattle? Luckily for us, we had a few friends from New York City who were going to be there anyway. Scotty invited his girlfriend, and Flula had a friend who lived there who was also down. It was all coming together. We had a solid eight folks, and we were off and running.
Anticipation grew with the coming months, until, finally, I was on my flight to Seattle. My heart was filled with excitement, and my checked luggage was filled with the recliner costume that I had made with foam core, hot glue, striped fabric, a nude onesie, and a lot of hope that it wouldn’t fall apart immediately.
I got checked into my hotel, which was a corner suite, ooh la la, and waited for the rest of the crew to trickle in throughout the day. That night we sat at the hotel bar, drinking too many rounds and figuring out our bar route for the next night’s festivities. We were all going to do our thing during the day and then meet downstairs at five for a drink. The party bus would be arriving at six.
To say the next night was epic is an understatement. To say it was very drunk is a lie. It was BEYOND. Here we all are before the tsunami of mayhem and Jägermeister kicked in.
Yep, we had a fake Eddie the dog and a REAL dog. Then later I had a stuffed dog to attach to my seat. We did not come to play.
As you can see, we had our classic Frasier, brother Niles, dad Marty, producer Roz, a recliner, the Space Needle, a piano, and Eddie the Dog. The real dog was just a temporary loaner. Despite Seattle being all cool and weird, they wouldn’t let a canine come on the bar crawls.
The rest of the night became a blur of bars, doing as we promised and blaring the Frasier theme song from a portable speaker we carried with us. In fact, that is the only thing we played in the party bus, too. If I had to guess, I would say that we played that theme song four hundred times.
Every time we entered a bar, we were met with two reactions. People would ask us what we were doing, and one of us would say, in our own variation, “We are celebrating Frasierween, a holiday we made up where you go on a bar crawl dressed as the cast of Frasier. The only rule being that it can’t be on an actual holiday.”
People either went, “Ohhhh, got it,” and nodded, clearly confused, or said, “That’s amazing! Can I get a pic?” By the time we were all very inebriated and got to our fourth bar, a tiki-themed spot with karaoke, our group started dropping like flies. My friend dressed as Niles got to the point where she was just housing pizza at the bar, looking so upset you would’ve thought Daphne had just dumped her.
“Excuse me?” A lady with a sweet face approached me, holding her boyfriend’s hand. He looked nervous, perhaps because he was watching a striped recliner do the Dougie. “Excuse me, I hate to bother you, but my boyfriend and I saw you all and we were wondering . . . Are you the cast of Frasier?”
“You know it!” I said, still dancing. At this point, the boyfriend face-palmed his forehead and started shaking his head and grinning ear to ear. “I told you. Oh my god, this is amazing.” He was in awe. The girlfriend piped in: “You don’t understand. That is his favorite show. He’s obsessed, so when he saw you guys walk in, he freaked out.”
“With good reason! It’s an amazing show,” I said, taking
a seat in a chair beside me. I went on to explain to them at length what Frasierween was. I mean it when I say that the boyfriend’s eyes were lit up and he was open-mouthed smiling like he was in sex ed and just learning about the glory of doing it. When I finished, the girlfriend chimed in again: “Would it be okay if he—”
He cut her off, looking bashful. “No, it’s okay.”
“Don’t act embarrassed. I’m drunk as a skunk dancing in a recliner costume. What do you want?”
Girlfriend continued, “Can he take a picture with you?”
“Only if he sits on my lap.” I patted my seat cushion, and he approached me with the excitement and hesitation that is usually only seen when a four-year-old is next up to see Santa Claus. He plopped down on my lap, his girlfriend snapped a few pics, and then he hopped right up. “Thank you so much. This . . . this . . . this is incredible.” He smiled and started to walk away. His girlfriend lingered for a second and then leaned in when he was out of earshot, which wasn’t hard because someone was wailing on some Radiohead* on the karaoke mic. “Seriously, thank you. We got engaged over Thanksgiving, and this moment is probably the highlight of his year.” That alone made this entire spectacle worth it.
After that bar, the night got blurry. The next morning I woke up, and it looked like someone had hired a set designer to make my suite look like a drunk girl had come home to it. It was textbook: My purse was dropped right at the door with all its contents sprawled everywhere. My bodysuit was crumpled right in front of the toilet, indicating I had pulled it down to urinate and just kicked it off right there. An entire bottle of minibar wine was opened, of which I drank two sips before passing out but definitely forgot to recork, so that forty-dollar bottle was ruined. Twenty dollars a sip!
Fun fact: We got so drunk that Flula woke up in my recliner outfit and I woke up as the Space Needle. Not even together. We just randomly switched costumes at some point and don’t remember it.
I spent a good part of that day recovering before dragging myself out to explore. Our hotel was a block from a pier with a Ferris wheel on it. I trudged my crazy-brained self down there, grabbing a snack on the way. That snack being a pack of candy cigarettes that allowed for this official Ferris wheel pic.
The rest of the day was perfectly lazy. Everyone came over to my suite to receive their surprise satin baseball jackets complete with the official “Frasierween #1” patch Scotty had designed. We got Thai food. We all piled back in my suite wearing robes and watched some New Year’s Eve coverage. We were zonked and so happy to not be out in the madness.
When the clock struck midnight, I found myself sitting in a hot bath with a glass of wine. Ringing in the New Year in a tub . . . sound familiar? It’s exactly how I ended my first book. But unlike a decade earlier, I wasn’t on mushrooms and sitting in six inches of room-temp champagne. I was submerged in hot bubbles and drinking a classy red. I was a mature woman in my thirties now, and times were changing faster than ever.
Ashleigh, the girl I used to drink bottles of Popov vodka with, would soon be giving bottles to a little baby. I was dating for the first time in my adult life. My friendships with women had grown stronger and more supportive. I could focus on my career and pursue opportunities unabashedly. And I was happy.
I heard once that with the rate that your body regenerates its cells, you are basically a new person every seven years. I felt like my heart and brain had been on a regenerating fast track those past twelve months, learning who I was on my own. Truly independent, not just an independent mind with someone to seal in all the cracks. I was proud of myself. Proud of the boozy, solo-dancing adult I’d become. Proud of my Southern accent that I still clung to. Proud that I was unapologetically driven by work, which allowed me this ridiculous life that I was so thankful to carve out. I was proud of this new brain and heart. . . . But I was also exhausted.
Perhaps I should take a few months when I get back to LA and take it easy, I thought as I turned on the shower because I’m no animal that just sits in their own stew without a rinse afterward. Buckle down and get my adult on for a minute.
And that’s exactly what I did. I boarded my flight to LA the next morning, content with my adventures from the year before and ready to drop anchor.
When my plane started taxiing that next morning and the pilot came on the intercom, he greeted us with a “Happy New Year, everybody, this is your pilot speaking. Our flight time to Los Angeles today is about four hours and twenty-five minutes.” I snuggled into my window seat and looked out as we ascended into the clouds, knowing that when we touched down, I would be taxiing into a calmer, more mature year ahead of me. . . .
GUYS. Come on, we’ve been together a couple hundred pages here. You should know that there’s no damn way I was going out like that. Instead, the captain came on and let us know that it would be a smooth and easy flight to New Orleans.
Remember that first guy from Raya, who caught my attention by complimenting my dog? Well, after I got out of the tub that night, we texted about how fun it would be to spend the first few days of the new year ripping it up in the Big Easy. Naturally, I changed my flight.
. . . After all, I don’t want to be telling the same stories over and over again. It was time to go make some more!
Until next time—
XOXO, Mamrie*
Acknowledgments
The acknowledgments page kind of feels like an acceptance speech at an awards show. Except this time, it’s like, “Thank you to all these people for actually accepting me.” So, here goes . . .
First of all, a massive thanks and hug to Kate Napolitano, my editor extraordinaire for both my first book and this one. That woman knows more about my vagina and inner thoughts than I do. I will gladly pay for your inevitable therapy, Kate.
A huge thanks to all my friends who have not only put up with me the past couple of years but also threw caution to the wind and went on so many adventures with me. And then, so lovingly agreed to let me write about it once I had them good and liquored up. Maegan, Ashleigh, Melissa, Veronica, Hannah, Renata, Renee, Tess, Jess, Hayley, and, of course, some honorary dudes as well . . . Jarrett, Frasierween crew, and Dustin.
Special shout-out to Grace Helbig for being on the maniac train with me, but also for being a constant source of inspiration and creativity and an overall badass comedy partner who I can’t wait to Golden Girls with in Palm Springs.
And biggest thanks to Joselyn Hughes who, these past two years, has not only been my travel partner and absolute rock (yes, both supportive and very Dwayne Johnson–esque) but has also stepped in to so many roles. Which include but are not limited to: roommate, ledge-talker-off’er, personal chef, dance partner, dog aunt, spiritual guide, sister, and so much more.
I’d like to thank my family, obvs. Thanks for letting me let it all out there and still supporting me . . . or at least doing a great job of pretending to but secretly cringing. Especially my brother, Dave, who lived with me during the summer of single mayhem and is always ready for tacos, a drink, and a bitch fest. And to Seth, who isn’t family but feels like it. Wouldn’t be here doing all these wonderful things without you being in my corner for a decade.
My team of professional peoples who might have freaked me out at that Rockefeller Center lunch but pushed me because they believe in me, even when I’m having doubts. C.C. Hirsch, Cait Hoyt, all the folks at CAA. Tess Finkle (and Duff) for being not only an idea machine and cheerleader but also helping me make these adventures happen logistically and then giving the best performance the Red Light District has ever seen. And, of course, Vincent Nastri, manager and friend, who always has my back and an available pack of mints.
About the Author
Mamrie Hart is an actress, comedian, and New York Times bestselling author who established a standout presence in the pop culture zeitgeist with her hit YouTube channel, You Deserve a Drink. Reaching more than three million followers across her
social media channels and more than eighty-four million views on YouTube, Mamrie’s influence as a creator earned her a coveted position on Variety’s annual list of Hollywood’s New Leaders 2016 and a spot on The Hollywood Reporter’s 2017 Digital Disrupters list. In 2016, Mamrie wrote, executive-produced, and starred-in Lionsgate’s feature-length comedy, Dirty 30. Her other writing and acting credits include Camp Takota, a feature that outperformed Oscar-nominated films during the week leading up to the Academy Awards on iTunes’ top downloaded movies chart. Mamrie is from middle-of-nowhere North Carolina. She now lives in Los Angeles with her tiny hairless dog, Beanz.
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* If I ran out, I would just delicately pick up the unused pile of flyers from the top of the bin like when George Costanza ate that éclair out of the trash because it was still pristine.