Tis the season - Pt. 1

It's barely December and I've already attended two holiday parties, both on Saturday. First up was Bret and Happy's annual cookie party. Every year, Happy (below, Bret is above) bakes a load of cookies and invites tons of people to their swanky pad off Melrose. The crowd always includes the coolest blend of skaters, designers, rockers, and daddy/mommy-and-me classmates.


This year's batches were vegan because their daughter doesn't do well with dairy. Varieties included chocolate chip, gingerbread, oatmeal, and gingerbread. On top of that there were brownies, satsuma tangerines, and drinks of both adult and family varieties.


Happy's old bandmate Ray Barbee made an appearance. He's made a couple changes in the last year or two. Now he skates for Element and has some WESC headphones coming out, too. (I think he's wearing Vans and playing Fender for life, though.) Flanking the legendary Bones Brigade member are Max and Nolan.


One GR's ace photographers Doug Kim used his tack-sharp eyes to keep an eye on the cider. It was pretty good. Ben slipped away before I could shoot him, but he was in my blog the other day anyway.


Jeannie (did I spell her name right?) used to work at the GR stores, but now she's at Trader Joe's. One day, she's going to be on the GR softball team. We could really use her this season, but she works late on Thursdays.


John and Grace have been helping Wendy and me with a top secret project, so we had to pretend like we didn't know each other. More on that in the months to come.

Later that night, Wendy and I got dressed up and went to fancy company holiday party in West Hollywood. It was at an upscale restaurant called Eleven. You can't really judge a restaurant on a buffet, but I thought the food was pretty good. The two types of ravioli were fairly light and the broccoli wasn't steamed to death. I thought the macaroni and cheese was a little too close to Kraft and could have used a little extra, though...


As is often the case with company bashes, there was a raffle (Wendy won a Body Shop gift certificate) and entertainment. In this case, the performers probably came with the venue. Dudes in leotards were lofted up onto a ring where they performed Cirque du Soleil-type gymnastics! For a gay nightclub, that's not shocking. There were definitely some quizzical looks, but the performers still did it even though the crowd was mostly breeders