Death To Hollywood

Hi readers!

before coke...

I’m back, did you miss me? I missed you but I was recovering from my 4 day coke binge with my sister, Kris. I think any of you on Facebook may have seen that she “checked in”everywhere we went, so you could see the latest place where she was snorting coke off stripper’s asses. She really wanted to go to Jumbo’s Clown Room where Courtney Love used to strip, but we never got there. We were too busy frolicking in the Frolic room. Can you believe there’s actually a place called Jumbo’s Clown Room?  It’s a fact, I’ve been there.

Of course, two coked up people talk a lot and that got us talking about the wild keg parties we used to throw in the funeral home when my parents went away for the weekend. Let me start by saying that if my Dad ever found out about those parties, he would’ve killed us.  He would have killed us more than once…we wouldn’t be dead enough. Luckily, he never found out, but we eventually told him after he was retired. He thought it was funny but assured us that if he had found out at the time, we wouldn’t have lived to tell about it.

The way it would usually go down was something like this; my parents would go away for the weekend and leave in the afternoon. Kris and I would immediately snap into action and start making phone calls. The first call would be to one of our guy friends who would usually arrange to get the keg or he would call one of our friends who worked for a beer company as a delivery guy, and this really came in handy. Once we knew we could get the beer, we would call all of our friends and tell them to spread the word that we were having a party. We knew the word would spread like wildfire and my brother would call his friends too. The great thing about our neighborhood was that all of our friends knew each other so there was no uncomfortable, awkward, “so what do you do?” type of conversations. Everyone was already comfortable with each other.  It was nothing like LA parties where no one knows each other and therefore no one talks to each other, and so all the parties basically suck.

A couple of our guy friends would carry the keg/kegs up the stairs of the private entrance. There was no way we could’ve rolled kegs in the front door of the funeral home, as that would have aroused suspicion from the neighbors. All of our friends knew to go in the private entrance and depending on the size of the party, and some of them were huge, we would have one of my brother’s friends play bouncer at the door and collect $5 a head so we could get back the money we spent on the kegs. He even charged his own sister! We had three kegs at one of our parties. That’s a lot of beer and they were finished before the party was, so we had to send one of the guys out for some extra cases. God forbid we stopped drinking just because the kegs were empty. 

I forgot to mention that we would “party proof” the house before anyone arrived. This included rolling up the giant oriental rugs that we had in the living and dining room. My mom had all these valuable, breakable statues in a curio cabinet in the dining room, so we would take them out and put them in a room with a sign that said “DO NOT ENTER” and for the most part, everyone respected the sign. Our friends usually respected the “law” of not going downstairs into the funeral home during a party too. I know some of them escaped and went down out of curiosity, but got freaked out and never stayed down there very long.

The parties went through the entire second floor of the house, excluding the eldest sister’s bedroom. She was older and was dating guys and wasn’t really friends with our friends so she wasn’t too crazy about our parties. She would come home from a date and there would be swarms of drunk teenagers and young adults being loud and obnoxious. She called the cops on us one time. We were pissed, but my brother knew the cop who came to the door because he would sometimes direct traffic during the funerals, so my drunk, 16 year old brother assured him that we would keep things under control. Most of us were drinking underage by the way.

the kitchen was the white area on the second floor and my bedroom was where those three little windows are right above it on the left

We kept the kegs in the laundry room and blasted the stereos in the living room and in the kitchen. One time the cops came because some douchey neighbor called them because the music was so loud. We had all the kitchen windows open and I guess the whole neighborhood could hear it. But we’re resourceful. We closed all the windows, turned on the air conditioner and that solved that problem forever.  Everyone would dance and some people would try to score, of course. After all, isn’t that why we have parties, to get drunk and make out? A couple of times I caught people making out in my bedroom. It was on the third floor so people thought they could sneak up there and get away with it, but if anyone was making out in my room, it was gonna be me, so I would keep a close eye on that staircase and if anyone went missing for awhile, I immediately stumbled up those stairs and told them to get the hell out!  Getting drunk at home is the best.

When the parties died down, usually around 3 or 4am, a bunch of our close friends would usually crash on the floor, the couches or empty caskets. Just kidding. Some people would stumble home early in the morning and others stayed for breakfast. Some of our friends even helped us clean up because they knew what would happen if the parents found out. So there we were; all hungover and cleaning our asses off to secure a future life.

Some of the parties got pretty wild. I won’t go into the dirty details (after all, my mom reads this), but let’s just say that sex, drugs and rock n’ roll was just how the Donohue’s rolled back then, but not intentionally. There was a rumor that someone had sex underneath the kitchen table, but hey, it’s just a rumor, Mom. I didn’t witness it. How drunk do you have to be to have sex underneath a kitchen table at a party anyway? They were probably lying in all my food crumbs. I am hands down the messiest eater of the family, so I’m sure there were plenty of varied crumbs underneath that table. But then again, when you’re that drunk and a little whorish, who cares if you’re having sex in food remnants?  I do remember seeing one of my brother’s friends’ projectile vomit in the hallway, which we made him clean up, but drunk people don’t do a very good job of cleaning up their own vomit.

One party got out of control and we had to start kicking people out. People we didn’t know from other neighborhoods started showing up and a fight broke out and it started getting crazy. I think that was one of the last big parties, but we had plenty of them and everyone loved them.  I miss those parties and I miss my homies because “there ain’t no party like a funeral home party cause a funeral home party don’t stop.”

By the time my parents came home everything was clean as a whistle. We would get that powdered stuff for the beer-soaked carpeting that took away the beer smell and made it smell “fresh,” although I don’t know if I’d actually call that smell “fresh.”  Then we’d roll back the untouched Orientals to further hide the evidence. We would take the kegs back to the beer distributor and clean the laundry room from top to bottom. The bathrooms and kitchen would be sparkling (even underneath the table) and everything was put back in its rightful place. If my parents ever suspected anything, it was just that we had a few friends over, nothing even close to the truth. But hey, that’s what you get for having a bunch of teenagers.

If drunken teenage parties weren’t so great, they wouldn’t be in so many movies. There were plenty of fun keg parties in the park too, but they always ended up being broken up by the cops which sent 50 drunk teenagers running, and let’s face it, no one likes to run when they’re drunk, which is why our parties were so successful. No one had to run, you could just pass out on the floor at the end of the night.

Did you have or attend wild keg parties when you were growing up? I know some of the people reading this may have been to at least one of our parties. My brother and I used to throw wild rooftop parties when we lived together in Hollywood. I’ll tell you about those another time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again….the Donohue’s love to party, and who wouldn’t after living in a funeral home?

Tips for a successful party:

1. Never-ending booze. You cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT let the booze run out. And if it does, you better find someone who’s willing to drive drunk and go get more.

2. Music. You must have fun music playing all night long and it has to get progressively louder as everyone gets progressively drunker.

3. You have to let people pass out on your floor at the end of the party so that when everyone sobers up, they can help you clean up.

What is YOUR tip for a successful party? Does it involve strippers and/or coke? I hope your day is as fun as a keg party!