So my birthday was this past Monday.  I was up in State College for a job interview on Sunday, so I decided to grab some friends and celebrate my birthday a few hours early.

The first place we stopped at was The Deli.  We wanted G-Man, but they’re closed Sundays.  We had just started our appetizers when Jon began choking.  None of us realized what was happening until he gave the international sign for “I’m choking”.  I verified Jon’s international sign for choking, and signaled the waiter with the international sign for “my friend is choking, I don’t know the Heimlich maneuver, could you call for help.”  The waiter, in turn, responded with the international airport signal (you know, by using those orange light wand things) for “I don’t understand your last sign.  I was raised in the mountains of Japan and do not know all of the standard international signage.”

Despite my flight training, I’m a little rusty on my airport signals and couldn’t figure out what the waiter was trying to say.  Mak jumped in by doing his best to sign “my friend is now almost unconscious” using Japanese Kabuki.  The waiter mistook this sign for the Tibetan dance of “The Waiter Is On Fire”, and began doing the international sign for “I’m on fire”.  Unfortunately, this closely resembles the Pueblo sign for “I hate accountants”, causing a group of accountants seated two tables over to become outraged and respond with the Accountant Dance of War.  Upon hearing the disturbance, the manager arrived and gave the international cry of “Everything is okay, big misunderstanding, everything is fine.  Except for the guy at table 4, who is now unconscious.”  Calm returned to the restaurant, and the waiter signaled for the busboy to get a stretcher for table 4.  The busboy was dyslexic, however, and mistakenly brought us a year’s supply of radishes.

Nothing goes better with radishes than Long Island Iced Tea, and The Deli happened to have LIIT pitchers for $3 that night.  I’m not talking about Harrisburg-style 20oz pitchers; these were full-sized, 64oz pitchers filled with well-mixed LIITs.  They don’t even bring you a cup; how awesome is that?  However, any drink over $1 is considered fairly expensive in State College, so we went around the corner to Bar Bleu.  It was apparently Wink 104 night at Bleu, because I have never before heard Billy Joel beatmixed into 2 Live Crew (it was Uptown Girl into Me So Horny, for those of you scoring at home).  This was only topped by Pour Some Sugar On Me into Gangsta’s Paradise.  Cosby does some pretty cool eclectic mixing at The District, but nobody has even come close to the … “mixes” … we heard that night.

Little bit of trivia on State College.  There’s an ordinance from 1856, still on the books and actively enforced, that requires all liquor license holders to have happy hour specials at least 20 hours daily.  Technically, you can lose your license if less than 50% of your revenue comes from drinks priced under $2.  Bar Bleu is no exception; I purchased eight martinis for the group in one round for $2 total (and an $18 tip, of course; I consider myself a 900% tipper).  Tim got pretty much wiped out just by coming within ten feet of the glass, which was good since he had just driven all the way up from Harrisburg.  Also, Bird Girl was there, which you would think would add more to the story; it doesn’t.

Long story short, our few short hours at Bleu passed before we knew it, and our desi assumed the task of driving us back to the Frost WHQ.  Tim, upon entering the house, immediately started throwing cups of pudding in the sink, while Jon tackled the couch.  I’m reasonably certain that our Brazillian neighbor put out a few contracts on us, but it was fun.