I guess Saturday night will go down in legend as the 'baby oil party'. It was my flatmate's Chad 30th birthday so I suppose extreme wastageness was always fairly likely but I think this surpassed most expectations. Being Chad we had a week's worth of him bounding around like an excited puppy whilst he sent out various emails and facebook missives telling us the exact schedule for the weekend's activities. Things weren't looking good at about 2am on Saturday morning when he was sprawled on the bathroom floor spewing after a session at Cloisters but Chad rallied manfully and put in a sterling performance at the party.
Now there probably ought to be a rule about whatever happens in the Towers stays in the Towers but in the best traditions of tabloid gossip columns, I reckon the dirt needs to be dished. We probably should've realised things were taking a turn for the sordid at the volleyball game on Saturday afternoon. At this point I better explain that the party was a Tom Cruise theme one, so volleyball was being played in homage to the most homo-erotic movie scene ever - the game in Top Gun. This resulted in the rather incongruous scene of Viv, Kiwi Steve and Chad on one side, topless except for dogtags and a liberal coating of lube (and with Steve sporting a fine tache especially cultivated for the occasion) playing playing volleyball sober at 4pm on Bruntsfield links. This actually attracted less strange looks than might be expected but by the time bad light stopped play about 40 mins later the first baby oil bottle was alarmingly half empty and proceeded to be drained further in a congratulatory lube and beer session back in the towers. The slightly worrying thing is that most of the photos below were taken fairly early on in the evening before things really kicked off and most of them feature Kiwi Steve in some disturbing pose or other.
When you're hosting a party there's always that alarming moment early on in the evening when nobody's there and you're starting to realise that nobody either likes you or is coming. Luckily this moment normally passes and between 10 and 12 (the first complaint) the party was really rocking. The living room was already descending into the post-apocalyptic gay disco hell that it would become, Rik was doing an admirable job mixing cocktails, Chad's parents were getting down with the best of them and the flat was packed. Some of the younger lot in attendance were shocked at the hardcore level of partying that the oldies were capable of, admitting it put their own efforts to shame and TOG was heard to utter that he'd never seen so many oiled up people in one place before. At this point the mandy began to kick in and everything became a little bit more hazy. The council noise officers turned up at around midnight and Mrs Leith made her first appearance of the evening. This was largely because the flat next door was having a party as well and had come up with strange idea of filling a room with about a 1000 balloons and then running into the room to pop them at some point. This resulted in most of the balloons cascading into the stairwell and being burst by various people which sounded like rockets being let off, aroused the wrath of most of our neighbours and resulted in a slightly wires crossed scuffle (Russell looked very worried).
After a while things settled back down again and the vibes returned. I spent most of the time in sanctuary of my room or the kitchen, the strange topless goings on in living room being slightly too much at this point, I can remember helping a worried Kiwi Steve locate a new (half litre) vat of baby oil which I'm sure went down well with Chad, Huw, Viv and Duncan. I did pop in to watch a rendition of YMCA - which may have scarred me for life (available in video form on Raph's facebook). At about 2.30 Mrs Leith came up and properly blew her lid, being very scared I hid in Chad's room and left others to deal with her, thanks Susie, Alice and whoever else intervened. I think this was a result of enthusiastic dancing in the hallway that convinced her that her ceiling was close to implosion and the resumption of the party tunes probably didn't help either, nor the roof malarkey. 
Things began to settle down bit at this point, Will and Russell indulged in some quality loved up 'your my best mate' action and Russell had the great scheme of coming to the party, putting his girlfriend to bed in my room ,getting fucked and then getting her to take him home at the end of the night. Nul Points to Helena and Clare for making me (and others) feel more self conscious than I thought was humanly possible (although they weren't the only ones...). Kiwi Steve got himself full marks for disgracefulness when whilst talking to Konnie he managed to perform a full length dive through my bedroom door (probably grease assisted), cut his head on impact on some ice screws and then vom all over the floor. Duncan 'the drugs don't work' Steen (only cos you're a reet fanny). Viv popped in every now again looking more and more like a greasy guido and I'm sure I had some funny chat with Jones and Gaz (fresh from his tasty vodka, raw egg, olive oil and tabasco cocktail with Chris) at some point, it's all a bit fuzzy.
Sunday morning was spent in very pleasant manner whilst we listened to the rest of my flatmates get involved in the cleaning up and at about 4 O'clock we emerged to find the place lookin pretty spotless. Cleaning up Steve's vom was a bit more grim and Chad and I had a half hour chat with Mrs Leith who'd calmed down from the night before and was suurprisingly understanding about the previous night's shenanigans. Top Gear, Ewan Macregor's motorcycling thing and the footie highlights provided excellent sunday evening entertainment for my fragile being. The thirty pound parking fine I got this morning was less cool. All in all a top quality evening, the best (and probably last) party we've ever had here, met some cool new people and saw some things involving baby oil that will stay with me for ever. It's awesome when a plan comes together and loads of your friends are all having fun together in the same place (that sounds uber cheesy but I'm still enjoying the glow of an awesome evening).
A new mix online as well, this one is spacey disco thing that has my three current favourite tunes on it, the Lindstrom remix of 'Just an Illusion', the Tim Goldsworthy Maps remix and the 'Still Going Theme' plus LCD Soundsystems 'Someone Great' - best tune of the year? Get it here!
Tracklisting
1. Weirdo Police - Full Moon & Thunder (Wolf Den Mix) [Redux]
2. Holy Ghost - Hold On [DFA]
3. LSB - Original Highway Delight [Eskimo]
4. Magnus International - Kosmetisk [Full Pupp]
5. Michael Mayer & Reinhard Voigt - Transparenza [Speicher]
6. Still Going - Still Going Theme [DFA]
7. Lindstrom - Breakfast In Heaven [Feedelity]
8. Audiofly - Miscalate (Partial Arts Remix) [Rekkids]
9. Peter Visti - Dolly [Mindless]
10. Randaberg Ego Ensemble - Vestamaran (Prins Thomas mix) [Full Pupp]
11. LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great [DFA]
12. Imagination - Just An Illusion (Lindstrom Vocal Mix) [Juno]
13. Maps - To The Sky (The Loving Hand remix) [Mute]
14. Hatchback - White Diamond (Prins Thomas Miks Del 1 & 2) [This Is Not An Exit]
Most of the photos here courtesy C.Harrison & R.Bleakly
