I came home the other night and walked in to find my roommate
watching her new favorite show, “My Super Sweet 16,” as
she ate dinner. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of
watching the MTV show, each episode features a teenage girl going
dress shopping and fighting with her mother over how her dress
really isn’t that slutty, planning an all-out birthday
extravaganza at some place such as a club in Vegas (despite the
fact that everyone in attendance is about five years shy of the
legal drinking age), and hoping that once everyone at school sees
how much money her father spent on the party, she’ll be able
to buy her way into being the most popular girl at school.
And while my initial thoughts during the show involved thinking
about how humble my own 16th birthday, which involved going out to
dinner at one of the few nice restaurants they have in downtown
Baltimore, was in comparison, I eventually moved on to thinking
about how I have celebrated three of my college friends’
birthdays this week alone.
The thing about birthdays is that they allow you to make the
plans for the evening without anyone being able to shut you down,
and you can actually have a bunch of people tell you that roller
skating in ’80s-style spandex sounds like fun. On the other
hand, it means that you sometimes have to spend a night trying to
muster up enthusiasm and shell out money for something that makes
kicking it with “The Complete Poetry of John Milton”
sound like a fun Saturday night.
Recently, I went to Groundlings, a comedy club on Melrose
Avenue, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I had never been to
a comedy club before, since I don’t really consider
someone’s recycled midget jokes at Brewco a comedy show, so I
was kind of excited to see what a real comedy club was like. I had
no idea until that night that all comedy clubs didn’t have
lots of posh people seated around classy tables drinking martinis
like in the movies, and it looks much more like a small theater
where you would see a play. It was quite the eye-opening
experience.
But not every birthday outing has been as positive as that one.
For some reason, UCLA students love to bowl ““ you would think
all these people from Newport Beach or San Francisco wished they
were going to college in some small town in the Midwest. I
seriously think I’ve gone bowling for friends’
birthdays at UCLA almost as many times as I’ve gone bowling
during the rest of my life. And that’s saying a lot,
considering I’m from Maryland.
The people who want to make it sound as though they’re
actually doing something cool for their birthday announce that
it’s drunk bowling. When I went to this particular
individual’s party, half of the people there were under 21.
So drunk bowling was basically the handful of legally aged people
running over to the bar to buy beers and trying to pass them to the
underage people when the manager wasn’t looking ““
high-school style. Needless to say, no one really managed to get
drunk.
So my advice to you is to take advantage of your birthday and
get creative. If you’ve been dying to go to the theater but
can’t find anyone to go with you, make it your birthday
party, and you won’t have to sit by yourself. Love to sing
but don’t have an audience? Say you’re doing karaoke
tonight and head over to Gaslight. Miss the days when you took
horseback riding lessons? Grab all your friends and head down to
the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. Love Michael Jackson? Smear on
white face makeup, wear your pajamas and have an “I Love
Little Boys”-themed party.
My birthday may be three months away, but I’m already
beginning to brainstorm what fun Los Angeles excursion I want to
take with my friends.
But then again, maybe I’ll just treat everyone to the
Franzia and Prestige I have in my apartment and buy my way to
popularity, My-Super-Sweet-16 style.
Rodgers loves crashing birthday parties. Let her know when
yours is at jrodgers@media.ucla.edu.