- at mike's 30th birthday, his parents threw him a surprise party and he was really surprised, although he tried to play it off later like he knew about it, he didn't... he was speechless, and when he regained his speech I gave him a bottle of Jim Beam, and i got a personalized, embossed thank you note...
- for my 30th birthday, mike gave me the most hysterical present i have ever got. ask me about it...
- he made jambalaya, which was really good, and he would even make it "spicy" and "not spicy" so everyone could eat it
- (this I heard second hand, but it is so totally perfect) at Andy Kmec's bachelor party, he rolled up to the breakfast buffet and asked the chef, "What can you show me in the way of salty meat?"
- mike's snored the loudest, anything else you think you've heard, he was louder. when we went out to Utah, we shared a bed and I had to sleep with earplugs. After the Brooklyn beer dinner at my house (7 fancy courses, all paired with Brooklyn beer) mike, Jim and Brooke stayed over. mike in my bed, Jim and Brooke on the couch. as soon as Jim and Brooke sobered up, they had to leave. mike's snoring drove them out from the other room, meanwhile, i was curled up next to him in a little ball, not even hearing it.
- he always worked the pinstripes
- he coined the phrase, "coming in hot" for rolling into Falconers, the bar across the lake from his house, and sousing people with lake water, often he would arrive "without slacks" and stroll in the bar like he owned the place wearing nothing but his boxer briefs
- he sanctioned things - events (Dippikill, our annual camping trip is a sanctioned event), games, (sanctioned game of 99 or bocce), and concerts. if something was "sanctioned" you better damn well show up. mike had a way of making sure he could surround himself with people he cared about
- winter of 2001, his witty banter across Aspen highlands via the walkie-talkies -- nicknaming everyone, talking about the trip, his morning shower, your balls -- he slayed walkie-talkie radio so dead, anyone who used it for non-rescue purposes after that was a tool
- he worked the one-piece white and black ski suit better then Suzy Chapstick
- he was a Heisman trophy Halloween last year, and painted himself, his football uniform, his hair, everything GOLD. I was wiping gold glitter off my stuff for like 2 months. when we got back from the bar we changed into regular clothes, but the two of us wound up sitting out on the deck watching the fog roll on and off the lake until 6am, talking about dogs we liked and what we liked about dogs
- chicks loved mike, i don't think i have ever been out to him at a non-sanctioned event at a bar without seeing him get mad hit on... i probably cock-blocked him at least 50 times. not intentionally, but because we always wound up deep in conversation
- when we were skiing in aspen, we used a punch-code to open the garage door, and then left the garage door to the house open. one day someone accidentally forgot to unlock the door and we were locked out of the house, so we are searching around the garage for a spare key, everyone looking everywhere, but our crew tends to roll a little on the below average height range, so no one, except mike, thinks to look on top of this space heater attached to the ceiling, in fact, no one else could have reached it, he stuck his hand up there, felt around, and a key materialized. we would still be out in the cold if it were not for him.
- he started calling his parents' house in Lake Lackawanna "the compound" -- things were often sanctioned there, he was JFK of the compound, also know as "Sir Mike of the Lake"
- he was in charge of the mortars for Weinburt Aerial Destruction and Pretty Color Company
- at Vin and Joanna's wedding mike was king of the dance floor, if he didn't dance with every girl in the place, he at least danced with every single one he knew
- he played guitar and sang in a band called Flying Fish Sanwhich, but he aspired to start a concept band called The Silk Furnace, which would be "raincoat required" to view
- he stared in Jason Rice's short film for the Tribecca film festival which was picked for the top five out of 500 http://www.amazon.com/gp/film-festival/screening-room.html/104-6576922-1615968?_encoding=UTF8&rate=0&moreFilmsTab=1&movieID=9995 (go to Tribecca Shorts, click on the contest shorts, its called, "Street Therapy" and he is the homeless guy)
- at the pre-party the night before Eric and Colleen's wedding, after having Marie apply her sparkly lip gloss to him, he in-avertedly said something to me that my drunk ass thought was a put down, and I got all upset and told him i thought he was mean. he was so hurt by that he spent two months explaining away his comment, which i had totally taken the wrong way anyway
- at the post-party after Eric and colleen's wedding, he threw a banana at Todd and Todd ducked and it missed him and hit me in the ear
- he and Todd Donnelly once stayed up with me drinking jack and coke until the wee hours of the morning, telling such vivid tag-team stories about growing up together in Stanhope/Netcong/Sparta area that i felt like i knew all their friends from growing up. to this day when i meet people for the first time, I'm all, "hey, you're the kid that..." and so forth
- he once brought bocce balls all the way from the compound to my roof in Brooklyn, expecting it would be no problem to play. why couldn't you throw heavy, weighted balls onto a tar roof of an old building which cants down to the gutters so the roof doesn't turn into a lake every time it rains? i don't see a problem.
- we tried our first Rheingold together. they were $2 at the Deli magazine premiere party John Schaeffer's band was playing at Sin-e, so we tried it. blech. we tried it with lime, worse. we tried it with lemon, hmmm, slight improvement. we tried it again, plain, to see if it was really all that bad. it was. we sucked it up and bought Amstel lights
- he called cigarettes "smoky treats" like, "hey, ya got a smoky treat for me?" which would then be lit with a "hot rat heater"
- when mike was a baby, his parents taught him to growl instead of cry
- mike got really into Harry Potter and started calling everyone muggles, which if anyone else had started doing that it would be so dumb, but mike made it work, so much that I found myself calling him a muggle right back, never having picked up a Harry potter book in my life
- we always used to call each other really late at night, esp. hammered, but not always so, esp. when one of us was supposed to be at whatever the other had plans for that evening, like if everyone came out to the compound and i stayed home sick. 3:30am, my phone rang, "Steph! What are you doing?" "watching Babe, I love this movie" "are you serious, I was helping Eric back his truck out of the driveway tonight and told him ,'that'll do pig, that'll do'" this happen quite often (not watching babe, but being on the same wavelength no matter how obscure)
- when entering anywhere, bar, party, sporting event, etc, his two opening lines were always, "let's sack this place" and/or "giddi-yup"
- when dawn and i had the Cuban Christmas party two years ago, i made a 16lb leg of pork, cubano style. after we ate some of it and carved the rest, Toddy shoved the bone in Mike's face and we took a picture of him biting it. i still have it on my fridge to this day
- he once volunteer to join my friend amber's vegan motorcycle club just to be nice, mike was the original carnivore,
- he did things "ninja style"
- he once came over after he Doug, Marie and Blythe had gone to see blues traveler at PMC art center, the show sucked so they left early, because they preferred to be hanging out on my roof in Brooklyn. mike hid his ticket stub on my fridge (which is so completely covered with ticket stubs from games, concerts, museums, basically, anything I do, as well as novelty magnets, postcards and pictures) and didn't tell me for two weeks to see if i would notice, i didn't.. then had to do a where's waldo trying to find it, it was stuck in their good
- he has gotten ridiculously lost trying to get from my house to the 24 hour gyro cart on the Manhattan side of the 59th street bridge, on several occasions, and spent 45 minutes extra time fixing his mistake to get to that gyro cart. he would buy two, one for the ride and one for the morning.. or later that night
- on fourth of July this year, he proposed to me, twice in the backyard, and once at Falconers, and got mad cause I wouldn't propose back, ostensibly because he lived with his parents. because of that I did get to tell him even though i wouldn't propose back, "you know I love you" and he said, "i know, I love you too!" and we hugged for a few minutes, and I am so happy I got those words out
**A Quote from Mike's Journal, March 12, 1987 ** "It is getting late and I am tired, therefore I shall close with the comment that I think life is an adventure if you want it to be."
In loving memory of
Michael Benjamin Weinberg
December 1, 1973 - August 10, 2005
"(my middle name is) either Benjamin or Trouble, depending who you ask" - MBW 1/4/03
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived... This is to have succeeded. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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