inflatable Darth Maul chair

It started out simply enough.

Just a party, a gathering of friends, up in the hills of Redwood City. Starting to get chilly, probably early fall. Kids are back in school. Fifty or sixty people on the porch, on the terrace, in the house. Everybody mingling, having a good time. Many alcoholic beverages were consumed by all. Inside, a DJ spinning tunes into the cool night air, people dancing. Randy the chemist brought an excessive amount of home-made GHB to share. But, everyone is smart, they know "no mixing" is the rule with G, due to its multiplicative effects. So you choose your "medication" for the evening, alcohol, weed, or other, and go about having a good time.

I'm watching down on the terrace, as Adam breaks out his ganja stash. A circle of friends, maybe half a dozen, passes the pipe around a few turns. Nothing but light humor, modest detachment, everyone a little giddy from the weed. I'm just settling into nice buzz from some G I took up on the porch, and wander down to the terrace. Ease into a plastic lawn chair facing down the hill, got a sweet view of the valley lit up beautifully, can see the stacked up planes coming into SFO, trailing through the night sky. The ritual pipe-passing protocol continues, ebb and flow, inhale and exhale.

Then Adam's plastic lawnchair buckles. A leg digs into the grass as he leans back oh-so-slightly, and then all his weight is on that one leg and it deforms, bends, twists, taking him right into the grass. He's not a huge man, so this is stunning to watch. Happens in the span of three seconds, feels like super-slo-mo. We're all looking at him on the ground, in disbelief. The look on his face is 100% "Why me?" No one knows what to do at first, then we are just laughing until we cannot breathe. Adam thinks it's pretty funny too, gets up and starts to berate the chair, giving it all he's got. Picks up the shattered remains of the green plastic chair and hurls it towards the hedges. He's getting really worked up, taking out his aggression on the chair, giving everyone a little show. And then he spies it, down at the other end of the terrace.

The inflatable Darth Maul chair.

It's sitting there, looking comical in its over-stuffed "I can't believe I became Star Wars merchandising"-ness.

Everyone on the terrace knows what is coming next. Up on the porch, no one is pumping the keg or making margaritas anymore. They're looking down to see what the ruckus is.

"You wanna piece of me?" -- Adam calls the chair out.

At this point most of us are drunk/stoned/high and nearly about to suffocate from almost three minutes of non-stop laughter. The time-expanding powers of the chemicals don't hurt either. The scene feels like it has lasted ten or twenty minutes.

Adam sprints the length of the terrace, bull-rushing Darth Maul Chair. As he arrives at the point of impact, Adam lowers his shoulder into Darth's "chest," about half-way down the seatback. Unfortunately the chair is full of air, being inflatable and all, and has almost no mass with which to halt Adam's forward progress. Adam flips heels-over-head and lands upside-down on top of the seatback, on the ground, stunned.

I seriously can't breathe now and I'm crying -- I am laughing so hard.

Adam shakes it off, picks up Darth Maul and gives him a good flying elbow drop to the ground, using all his weight. Darth seems unfazed by all this, sort of a "weebles wobble but they don't fall down" type of vibe. Adam, wary now of Darth's ethereal nature, bull-rushes Darth again but doesn't get flipped. This time he aims a little lower and just lands on top of Darth, riding him along the grass. Adam pummels the blow-up chair with his fists. This is, of course, completely ineffective.

All fifty people at this party are now watching a grown man attempt to wrestle with an inflatable chair in the vague form of a Sith Lord (and lose, badly).

Knowing there is no possible outcome of victory, Adam kicks Darth up to the porch edge and saunters back to our little stoner-circle. Pulls up Andy's chair like nothing happened. Andy's happens to be available because he has fallen out of it, and is still on the ground spasming with laughter from what he has just watched.

"Wassup fellas?"