Silly putty penis firmly in hand, Graham blows out the candles on a decidedly non-chocolate homemade birthday cake.

Earlier, at the celebratory dinner, there was more homemade goodness: [Graham's housemate] Melissa's delicious lasagna and [Graham's girlfriend] Ashley's salad, which I tentatively decided was an antipasta, whatever that means. Thinking it was white wine, I brought Graham two bottles of champagne to make up for several giftless years.





A shocking amount of naps and bad television later, we assembled at the Turf Club for Graham's power hour. Friends of Graham's who'd missed our intimate dinner showed up for the midnight drunkening. Mercifully, the (deafening) live music finished playing soon after we arrived.





Having slept on not a few Hamline couches in my day, I was already acquainted with most of Graham's well-wishers. Here, the one they call Barry (left) and the one they call Kevin both take a shot with Graham. In a departure from Lawrence's unspoken 21st birthday etiquette, many of the people who bought Graham drinks were not so good as to drink the same thing along with him.





And then there were the Brainerdites. Jenna showed up with the two guys shown above, and well, Manney lives with Graham, so he was with us all day. He showed us a park controlled by some Christian gang. I know it was just the Hawaiian shirt and facial hair, but on Sunday Manney seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to Rupert, one of my favorite Survivors.





My friend drank a lot of alcohol. I've lost count now, but there were at least four shots, and of course I maliciously suggested a Long Island Iced Tea, which didn't help matters. Meanwhile, I'd only had two beers when we got kicked out at closing.





For all that, there was little damage. A beer got knocked over during some ill-advised girlfriend twirling, and Barry decided to playfully attack Graham for some alcohol-related reason. No one threw up at the bar, and even while inebriated Graham still managed to beat me at pinball, with his hoity-toity "technique."

It was a nice night, and after a pleasant, nearly fisticuffs-free walk back to Graham and Manney's, no one was quite ready to go to sleep. But even Cartoon Network can't keep me up forever, and at 3:30, reasonably confident that there'd be no death-by-misadventures that night, I laid out on a living room couch.