Don't bunny in my hair, I just washed it

Happy Easter! I trust that you all had a good Sunday with family and friends, and that all was enjoyable?

As some of you know, my Easter Sunday normally involves Church and dinner with my mother...sometimes accompanied by my uncle and/or grandmother. Since my family has never been large, holidays like Easter are never anything more than dinner, for the most part. This year, however, I was introduced to the world of big family holiday insanity. My guide for said event was my girlfriend Jenni, who tried her best to prepare me for "Meyer Easter Bash 2005".

In the morning, I met my mom at church for Sunday Easter service. It was nice, and I left with a general good feeling about life, the universe, and all the birdies in between. My mother even gave me an Easter basket, filled with eggs of all colors, which were in turn filled with goodies galore. Chocolate eggs and jelly beans and M&M’s abounded; topped off with a nice bottle of Merlot. Ah, yes. Wine and chocolate…the cornerstone of any perfect Easter basket.

I said farewell to mom, and headed back to the apartment to pick up Jen. Together, we headed towards her aunt’s house where the festivities were going to be held for the day.

We were among the first to arrive, and so much of the first part of the day was spent standing around and waiting for the other guests. This proved to be more difficult than it sounds, since Jen was still not 100% over her chest cold, and I was only on day 2 of my horrible stomach bug. So, needless to say, standing around sipping water for 2 hours was not the speediest road to recovery we could have been on.

Nevertheless, we managed to munch on some snacks and sip some drinks, and generally had a good time chatting away with Jen’s family and friends of the family. Now, when I say “family” I mean FAMILY. You know…like “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” family? Well, they aren’t a mob family, or anything. But there are enough of them, that I feel if they wanted, they could really create havoc in the crime world. They would be called the Meyer Mafia, and they would strike fear in the hearts of men…or something like that.

Anyway, she has a big family.

Eventually, they started the Meyer Easter 2005 scavenger hunt. Everybody was split up into teams, and those teams were then given tasks to complete. I guess this has been going on for years, and it’s become quite the reason for attending said Easter party. I’ve heard Jen talk about it before, and I was very curious as to what would be involved.

I looked on the team sheet, and saw that I was on team #7, while Jen was on team #2. Crap. That meant I would be on a team with people that I did not know, and that bodes badly. Although, it turned out that I already knew 2 of the members of my team, and Nelson was the only member I had to be introduced to. So, it turned out fine.

After the teams were together and ready, we received our “clue” sheet. It was basically a cryptic page about bunnies and the Oscars, the result of which would lead you to:

1-Name an Oscar-Winning actor who has the same first or last name as one of the Plaza Bunnies, that matches the clues on your team’s game sheet
2-Name the movie that actor won their Oscar for
3-Get a photo of your group along with the bunny statue on the Plaza that matches your team’s Oscar-winning actor
4-Figure out a scene from the movie that your team will act out for everybody else, later on

Whew. I was now knee-deep in the famous Meyer Family Easter Bash.

My team’s actor turned out to be Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. So we piled into Nelson’s car, and drove down to the Plaza to search for a bunny named “Nicolas” or “Cage” or some other derivation. Luckily for us, Nelson already knew where a bunny statue was named “Nicolas” was, and so that saved us a heap of time and trouble. So we found the bunny, and gathered around it to take our team bunny photo. Then, we headed to Nelson’s house for a few props for our movie scene, and then headed back to Easter HQ.

After all the other teams arrived at the house, they began to prepare their skits and such, and so my team did the same. We decided to let Nelson play Nicolas Cage, and that 10-year old Madeline would play the hooker. Nice, huh?

Well, we also decided it would be too hilarious if we grabbed direct quotes from the movie, and had the two of them read them in a “dramatic scene”. This would have been funny enough…but Nelson had the great idea to replace every bad word with the word “bunny” to keep with the theme.

Example: You can bunny me in the bunny. You can bunny on my face…just keep it out of my hair, I just washed it.

How great is that?

So needless to say, after Nelson completed his very serious and dirty Nicolas Cage monologue using the term “bunny” every few seconds…the crowd was roaring with laughter and my team won the competition!

Yay!

Jen was happy for me…but also annoyed. I guess that in the 11 years she has been playing this Easter game, she has never won before. Bummer. I got a nice blue ribbon, and (from what Jen has told me) bragging rights for the next 6 months, so I was happy.

After the competition was over, we had dinner. Around this time, I checked my watch to notice that we had been a part of the Meyer Easter bash for almost 6 hours, already. Wow. Jen was feeling bad, and I was ready to go, as well. So after dinner, we decided it was time to leave.

So, I survived my first Easter Bash, and I must say it was a good time. I think next year I’ll try really hard to win again…just so I can have bragging rights over Jen for a long time!



Nelson's Bunny Monologue:
"Are you bunny? Are you bunny? Maybe if you drank bunny with me, it would help. Maybe if you bunnied me and I could taste the sting in your bunny, it would help. If you drank bunny with me bunny. If you smelled of bunny as you bunnied me, it would help. It would increase my esteem for you. If you poured bunny onto your bunny body and said to me "bunny this". If you spread your bunnies and you had bunny dripping from your bunnies and your bunny and said "bunny here" then I could fall in love with you. Because then I would have a purpose. To bunny you up and that, that would prove that I'm worth something. I'd bunny you clean so that you could go away and bunny someone else."