world famous bulgarian bbq

... that had no BBQ.

Such was the claim of this year's Benitez-Marinov bday party, celebrating the bdays of my favorite internationalies - Gerardo and Alex.

I've known Gerardo since college, where we lived three doors down from each other. Almost all of my crazy senior-year tales involve him, including the time we played Ricky Martin in the stairwell at 3am during a fire drill (ppl in our building were severely pissed), the "Gerardo, save me. Gerardo, kiss me!" incident with Becky aboard the Booze Cruise, and streaking down Walnut Walk in a drunken haze.

At yesterday's party, I remembered just how and why we were such good friends :-)

I met Alex through Gerardo, when the three of us started studying for the GMATs together. Gerardo only dates Bulgarian girls, and as Alex is Bulgarian, my first question to him when I met him was whether or not Gerardo had switched teams.

Alex and Gerardo always go all out, and this year, they planned a BBQ with a live band and tons of booze. "Planned" being the operative word, as it rained most of the day yesterday, and so the BBQ'ing portion did not occur. So many people came to the party hungry, that at around 6:30 there was a migration of 1/2 the guests to dinner. We all came back, of course (Fernando and I went to Koo and had not one, but FOUR Spoonfuls of Happiness), and the party continued on into the night. Minus a fridge full of beers and raw sausages, that is.

Drinking since 5pm? Even though it was beer, its still not great for your diet...


Me and Gerardo - blurry, but not yet drunk


The band






Norell, Gerardo and Carolina


Nothing says "classy alcohol" like a foil-lined box


Fernando and one of his many beers of the night