Springs Into Action

Oh goodness how is everyone today. Delicious!? Me too! I love you all. You might be wondering why I'm so pert and refreshed this enchanting evening. Well, I'm just going to tell you right now so pay attention. David and I just got back from a wonderful weekend vacation in Palm Springs! "Wait, why Palm Springs, Brett?" is what some people might be continuing to wonder. For those curious people, I'll just say mind your own fucking business. I have actually never been to Palm Springs so I thought this would be as good a time as any. I always thought Palm Springs was that weird, arid, muggy desert enclave where glistening nubile homos go to sweat themselves stupid by hotel pools and leathery seniors go to retire and gnaw on soft foods all day. While that prove to also be true, it also happens to be a fun little place!

Once I realized it was a three day weekend I just texted the D-man and planned a spontaneous little getaway. We booked a room at the Parker with his bosses advantage points and everything was set! I figured some place like the Parker would be good, being that my body image issues were hovering around "manageable" so I thought I'd take myself down a peg. Plus I don't stay anywhere unless a NBC subsidiary network with a gay demographic has based a reality show on it. Anyway, on Sunday morning, once we rolled out of bed, scratched our balls, washed our hands and brushed a tooth or three we were ready to get out there. The first thing we did was stop in Cypress Park to get Burger King for breakfast which boded pretty damn well for the rest of the trip if you ask me. I think the entire car ride was only like an hour and forty five minutes which isn't bad considering the distance but is still a long time to pretend like you don't have diarrhea from eating a double whopper with cheese at 10am. We got to the hotel, some flippant queer in salmon slacks parked the car while we checked in and then it was off to Indians Canyons! Every once in a while I like to act like I enjoy exercising and do something vaguely healthy like hiking. This place was absolutely incredible. It was this little desert-y oasis of palm trees and mountainous rocks and shrubs and ponds and fountains and...yeah! At first I thought it was just the leftover backlot from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but once I realized it was comprised of thing that like, you know, occurred naturally I was even MORE impressed (I'm from LA so I didn't get that at first). A long sweaty day or gorgeous hiking and mountain climbing subsequently ensued. I of course cut my hand on some shrub because god forbid I go outside and not injure myself like some kind of invalid. So that proved to be a rousing romp of a good time, and when we were finished it was time to go back to the hotel and check ourselves on in. Now being that we were at the Parker I of course had to reference 'The Comeback' every 9 seconds and quote Valerie Cherysh like it was going out of style. Our room was RIGHT by the pool where Valerie was harshly rebuffed by that chick who played Jan Brady so I was very excited about that. And might I just add that this particular pool was the "Family Friendly Pool" which I thought was terribly ironic. At first I felt a little out of place because I wasn't an entrepreneur who just launched a brand new mobile gaming start-up while on my vacation with my Finnish wife but a few hours later it was like we owned the joint!

After stopping by the room and washing off the 19 layers of Sunscreen I had on we stopped off at one of the little food/drink stands they had there and got some cocktails. One thing I will say about the hotel is that as famous as it is, the decorating concept is pretty underwhelming. Our room consisted of a framed picture of Phyllis Diller and some groovy tapestry that I'm shocked didn't have David Cassidy's portrait embroidered into it. Also, there was this totally bizarre photo of a young Dustin Hoffman peering over the roof of a limo just above the toilet (????) so he was just there watching you as you poop! I should have turned the photo around and said something cute like "Hey, I'm pissin' here!!!!" (Get it? Like from Midnight Cowboy? No?). Sorry, I digress...I don't know if any of you know me intimately enough to realize this, but I fucking love drinking so I was very keen to sit my ass down and throw back a stiff one (stiff DRINK). We chatted it up with the bartender. Sweet ol' gal, that one. I didn't bother to learn her name because she works in food service but we yakked about the weather and Coachella for an hour while David and I got sensibly hammered and stuffed our face with $25 felafel. Of course immediately after this we went to dinner. David knew a dude who owned this really subtle, understated Chinese place called Wang's (WANG'S). This place was so classically Palm Springs I couldn't handle it. First of all we were the youngest people there by about 82 years (well, we were until two queers in checkered shorts and Mossimo graphic tees walked in 10 minutes later). The meal was stupendous and by the time we left I about Hulked out of my pants because I was about 37lbs heavier than when I walked in. We then went downtown and took a little stroll downtown, had a milkshake, saw Kathy Griffin's star on the Palm Springs walk of fame and called it a night. Oh, wait, back up, we also managed to squeeze in some professional darts competition on some niche sport network on TV before bed which blew my mind a little bit.

The next day we woke up and realized it'd been like 6 hours since we'd eaten anything so we made a b-line for the restaurant for brunch. This was quite a procedure. I guess there was a wedding party that overloaded the kitchen with their nuptialness and they weren't seating people for like another hour while the staff recovered. If any of you know David, you know that put him in a MOOD. Ugh my god you guys you should have seen him, he just climbed up on this cross and there was just NO talking to him. I'm totally kidding he was fine. By the time we went to the room, came back, relaxed and read Stephen King's 'The Stand' 4 times it was time to be seated! We had a lovely time, the waiter brought me the wrong kind of Eggs Benedict (in case this wasn't a first world enough post already) so we got a free glass of champagne out of it! There was this really hip gay French couple sitting beside us who MAYBE spoke 3 words to each other over the course of an hour. Eerie stuff.

Later that day we took the Palm Springs Tramway which, seriously you guys, was AMAZING. We drove up to the parking lot where it was like 81 degrees, got on a tram, went on a 5 minute ride and then plopped out onto a mountain with snow. SNOW! Is anyone else still reeling because I sure am?! It was the best. We hiked ourselves silly! I slipped and nearly faceplanted in the snow at LEAST 11 times, which is weird because you would think my overt athleticism would really kick in at a moment like this but alas! So we hiked and I was Instagramming pictures like there was no tomorrow and we just had a fantastic time! We BARELY made it back to the base before it was dark and then sat down to dinner! The most enjoyable part of the meal was perhaps eavesdropping on the young British couple next to us asking if there was a sheep's milk cheese plate for dessert when the waitress was most likely grappling with the difference between red and white wine. Once the meal was over, our mini-cation was unfortunately over. We plopped our buns in the car, slapped on some music and headed back home!

The point of the story is, it was a really boss trip and the dessert is good times. I'm off to find an outlet for all this vitamin D fueled energy. Or eat some Milanos and watch 30 Rock...whichever's easier.