Tagged: birthday

Party Pooper

My wife likes purple. I thought it would be cool if I tossed a bag of purple candy in her Christmas stocking. I looked in every supermarket and big box store but purple colored candy just wasn’t something any of them offered. Online wasn’t an option. Christmas was just a day away and I don’t fall for the “Prime” extortion.

I was about to give up when I decided to try my luck in a store that was all about celebrating, since purple seemed to be a celebratory color, if not exactly appetizing.

Yes, Party City had bags of it. Tubes of it. All the purple M&Ms any number of humans could desire simultaneously. It had so many pieces of purpley pills that would melt neither in ones mouth or hands I had to contain myself. Hell, I wanted to toss myself a party for popping into Party City. It would be a theme party with purple hats, cups and paper plates and plastic utensils. Everyone I invited could take a whack at a purple pinata in the shape of a lavender lizard. I wouldn’t even have to leave Party City to get all that stuff because it was all there.

In fact..on the Party City website you could actually search for stuff not only by theme or occasion, but by color. Click on purple and voila, it’s a grape new world!

Now the suits who run Party City say the entire chain is closing down. They say the Party City poopers are discount stores, online marketplaces, people not throwing parties at all that require bundles of balloons or paper tablecloths and napkins with pictures of ponies or super heroes.  

What are kids doing for birthday parties? Maybe there’s an app for that, like everything else. How do you play pin the tail on the donkey—close your eyes and take a poke at a smartphone screen? Feels ass-backwards.

Where do you get party favors? You know, those little tchotchkes you give each kid who is sure to either break it or choke on it before the candles are even lit? I’m told you can get that stuff at “dollar” stores. Heh. Even those have given up the ghost now charging at least a buck-twenty-five for their wares that were barely worth a single in the first place and it’s never as cool or in the variety Party City offers.

I always enjoyed watching some poor mom or dad trying to schlep out to their car with a bundle of a dozen helium balloons, struggling to get out the door without cursing as that big Mickey Mouse one got loose and headed to oblivion in the troposphere.

Where do you even buy helium-filled balloons now? When I was growing up long ago, Party City didn’t yet exist. It was hard to find a place to buy helium balloons, so my father figured out if you rub an inflated balloon on your pants it created enough static electricity for the balloon to stick to the wall…for about 10 minutes.

Oh, you might find another store that sells helium-filled balloons but only Party City has them for every freakin’ age decade–although I’d be afraid to buy one for someone turning 80. The damned thing bursts, scares the crap out of the new octogenarian, that’s their last birthday. Too bad because Party City has balloons for when you turn 90 or 100. So deflating.

I’m not much for dressing up for Halloween, or even to go to the store, but hell, you never know when you’ll get the yen to pop on a Green Glam Wig when you’re too lazy or late to wash your hair..or you just wanna look greeny-glam.

I never really got the thing with “gender reveal” parties. I mean, when we had our kids the nurse or doctor just kinda looked, er, under the hood, when the cherub made his or her way into the world from the tunnel of love. But nowadays couple want to know in advance so they can decorate the nursery gender-specifically, advise attendees to their baby shower not to gift jock straps when they know the lil’ darlin’ about to emerge will have nothing to strap in.

I know, I know. You can find them online. I did, but hell, you don’t get the satisfaction of watching the smirk on the face of the pimply teen-aged cashier or the opportunity to tell a bad dad joke while cashing out. “Yeah, the wife and I are celebrating our second honeymoon. Heh-heh.” Then you apologize as the kid makes some rude remark about Boomers.

Sure enough, Party City carries just the right accessories for gender reveal soirees. I love the paper plates that say, “just here for the SEX.” Heh. I’m here for that! Where will you buy those now?

I could go on and on about all the party paraphernalia at Party City, but you get the idea. We’re just losing too many go-to chains that we long depended on for one reason or another, like Big Lots—cheap stuff, tacky furniture, giant containers of cajun snack mix and a hundred varieties of ear buds and pods for Keurigs.

But I mourn the passing of Party City the most. It’s not that I visited the store very often, but sometimes it’s just nice to know a place like that is there when you need it. Like when your partner in life decides she has a new favorite color M&Ms, or when a friend turning 100 boldly requests a helium balloon and doesn’t care if it bursts, because they can’t hear it anyway.

So long, Party City. I’d say “party’s over” but that’s just too trite..and I won’t be party to that.

Me and the Queen’s Shared Milestone

Hear ye, hear ye! It is hereby noted on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70th anniversary of her reign, it is noted her ascension to the throne occurred just two days before the birth of a short little shlub in Woodbury, New Jersey whose parents mercifully moved back to their native New York City just six months later, thereby avoiding any memory whatsoever for their infant son of his Garden State origins.

Indeed, many years later when registering to vote after moving to Tucson, Arizona, he stated his place of birth as New York City which prompted a laugh from his wife who took joy in correcting him while the elections official smirked.

Though his years have paralleled the monarch’s reign their lives took wildly divergent paths. She has sat upon a throne in royal majesty. He has done so in almost daily episodes of, ahem, blessed relief.

While the matriarch of the House of Windsor has ruled as the Queen of her Castle, the knish-noshing 1965 Bar Mitzvah boy has been steadfast as Master of His Domain.

As monarch of the United Kingdom and its affiliated kipper cafe’s she and her late husband spawned offspring of which only only one, Prince Edward, obviously named after this writer, actually works for a living. Princess Anne was once an accomplished horsewoman as opposed to her eldest brother and heir to the throne Prince Charlie, who is simply a horse’s ass. Prince Andrew is a persona non grata after making a poor choice of friends in the late Jeffrey Epstein and who, by the way, lives with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson whom he divorced in 1996.

This writer has been married almost 49 years to an obviously patient and tolerant saint of Irish descent who has dutifully learned key Yiddish phrases such as “I’m schvitzing!” “Oy vey is mir!” and developed a taste for pastrami and matzoh farfel, while he never allows the supply of Jamesons to run dry.

They have two grown eventual replacements…a man and woman both in their 30’s who provide much joy as well as themselves as convenient heirs but no grandchildren which is good because neither this writer nor his amazing spouse who remain youthful in appearance and bearing will accept being called “grandma” or “grandpa.” We do, however, accept senior discounts.

In comparing this writer’s accomplishments with the Queen’s, there’s really no comparison. She got right to work in 1952, waving demurely with that little wrist pivot, and mostly made her subjects happy while providing a lucrative tourist attraction for her country.

He mainly played stick ball, came close to failing math three times and played in two garage bands—the Scenics and Purple Perception, both of which promptly went from the garage to the scrap heap, before landing his first job as CIT at a day camp for the princely sum of $25 plus tips for the summer, moving on to a part-time job during high school as a linens and domestics stock boy at a local department store which provided an apt foundation for his eventual career as a journalist.

Somehow he took a turn to the “dark side” doing PR for a car company that couldn’t hang onto an owner starting as DaimlerChrysler then Chrysler LLC then Fiat Chrysler and now they’re hooked up with the French and sporting a corporate name that sounds more like a treatment for eczema. He mercifully retired in 2016, several years before this latest metamorphosis.

Yes, seven decades is a considerable amount of time and leads to episodes of reflection and napping. I give Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II heartfelt congratulations on her ability to remain alive…and myself cudos for remaining… awake.