It was officially the second ‘Four Horsemen” trip. The Beast (my brother), Chris Murray, M. Knight and I all booked a trip to Park City Utah for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
We were staying at the good ol’ Silver King hotel. I can’t say that the establishment’s reputation preceded it, but what I can say is that it sounded pretty solid. It was cold as fuck for a Vancouverite. Minus 10 or so, and we were poorly prepared for the elements. The cabbie dropped us off and we immediately ditched our bags to check out our surroundings.
We were on high alert for stars and the Beast kept saying that he spotted people that barely even bore cousin-like resemblances to their purported celebrity counterparts. We decided to get some booze first thing, and walked around a few blocks to the main marketplace.
Murray and I decided to duck out for a snack and made our way into a baked goods shop while the Beast and M. Knight continued on with the booze run. Always on the lookout for a quality cookie, I went with a normal-sized chocolate chip. Murray wasn’t too impressed with anything and made a head nod move to indicate that he wanted to quickly get out of there. As I took a bite of the treat and started to walk with Murray towards the door, there was a bit of a commotion outside.
At that point, Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs himself came strolling through the door in his trademark shades, a long white fur coat, and with a very attractive blonde by his side. He looked straight at me, nodded his head and gave me a fist bump as we crossed paths walking in opposite directions. I didn’t make too much of it for some reason but Murray was quite excited and kept repeating that he couldn’t believe I bumped fists with P Diddy and that nobody would believe us even if we told them. I was more focussed on the unusual salty taste of my cookie and concluded that it was likely due to the presence of salty lakes all over the state.
As we walked down the street, we saw M. Knight and the Beast already heading back towards us. Murray recapped the P Diddy encounter at the bakery and we made our way back to the hotel. As we started to settle into our two-bedroom suite, out of nowhere the Beast put me in a massive bear hug from behind and tried tackling me down. I instinctually started to wrestle back and somehow we both went crashing towards the fireplace. A loud bang was heard my friends. Marble mantles may or may not have been avoided. Murray claims to have heard the bang from outside our room and in the hall as he was calling his girlfriend at the time.
Murray re-entered the room, at which point I shoved the Beast hard into a lazy boy chair, which somehow reclined back and nearly tipped over. M. Knight started laughing and I started to rub the side of my head, which took the brunt of the initial assault. Murray said we were going to get kicked out and implored us to temper things down. I was apparently unbreakable and there was no major bodily damage to speak of. The Beast, feeling bad about the incident, classily offered me a newly purchased but warm Heneiken. We all cracked one open, did a cheers, and immediately noticed that it had only 3.2% alcohol content.
The Beast, as usual, started to put some things strategically aside so that he would be ready to quickly re-pack when leaving, on the first bloody day there. What a fucker. And when we went out for lunch he saw some flat caps for sale and maintained that the famous paper boy saying was 'Get it! Get it.
From there on, for the sake of my word count, I would love to say that it was anti-climactic but that’s far from it. I pretended to be Diego Luna that night and snuck into some B-list party. Murray and I hid out in the bathroom of Tao Lounge for over three hours trying in a quality attempt to sneak ourselves into an exclusive A-list event the following evening, and almost got ourselves pummeled by large pasty white Utah security guards in the process. We all failed to understand the somewhat incomprehensible Saloon boozing regulations; Murray tried to stiff a likely illegal Mexican alien waiter for poor service with a crappy tip and he chased us down the street yelling profanities; we went to a Sushi restaurant where all the staff was white; and I made an entire auditorium laugh during the Actor/Audience Q&A following a terrible screening (Adrift in Manhattan) by insinuating that I was stalking Heather Graham.
It was good times indeed, mantle bashing and potential concussion like syndromes aside. But the main thing we all learned is that you shouldn’t offer someone you injured a 3.2% beer. Have some class.
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