because there's nothing funnier than a drunk cat

I suppose I should be blogging about the NFL draft right now, but since the Steelers took a punter in the fourth round (and traded up to do it), I'm having a hard time mustering anything akin to excitement about the whole process. So instead, I'm offering a dispatch from the heart of Central PA, courtesy of my road trip home this weekend for a friend's birthday party.

So it's creeping up on midnight on Saturday night and a brilliant spring moon is shining down on the rolling hills of the Susquehanna valley. I'm standing next to a roaring bonfire sipping on a National Bohemian ("the pride of Baltimore… $10 a case" my pal Steve keeps yelling to no one in particular) as the soundtrack to "Super Fly" rolls out across the expanse of farmland that's our base for the night. About 20 of us have been bar crawling and carrying on for more than eight hours at this point, and the evening feels like it's teetering on the brink of either mayhem or exhaustion (it was really a coin flip at that point).

Suddenly, the door of the farmhouse bangs open with a clatter and our pal Brian marches out with a portable filmscreen and sets it up in the middle of, well, nothing. A few minutes later, he's wheeling a cart carrying a 16mm projector out into the yard and snaking an extension cord into the house. A film canister clangs open, the machine is loaded, and soon the garbled fanfare of a thousand educational films sputters from tinny speakers. For the next 12 glorious minutes, we were introduced to "The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much."

The producers explain: "Pat the Cat started innocently enough with a drink or two with meals, but progressed to sneaking drinks, being obsessed with drinking and experimenting with other substances. Finally, Pat the Cat couldn't take it anymore. Pat needed help and the help was there. "

What's not mentioned in the official description above is that Pat the Cat's journey includes shots of an actual cat lapping from what looks like a tumbler of Scotch, licking at a bottle of pills and eventually moving on to cocaine. Pat spirals out of control (swatting at other cats, falling lazily from her cat condo) until she eventually gets behind the wheel of a toy car... tragedy, of course, follows (and the chief rule of comedy -- at least around the bonfire -- is that tragedy + alcohol = comedy). Adding to the film's surreal vibe is the fact that all of this is told to us by a narrator who sounds eerily like Buffalo Bill from "Silence of the Lambs." The post-screening workbook was the icing on the cake. FMS Productions notes that the film has won 24 major awards… undoubtedly one of them is "Most Awesome Movie Ever About a Feline Junkie."

I had hoped that YouTube would provide a chance for repeated viewings, or that at least a tribute site or two would have captured this in all of it's glory, but it seems the internet has failed me (at least it turned up that Mean Joe Coca-Cola ad).

There were certainly other highlights -- the fire, the clothing-optional foosball, the tales of alcohol-related incontinence, the Redd Foxx albums, the breakfast buffet, and my brief stint masquerading as a mailman -- but Pat was clearly the MVP. Consider this a personal heads-up... Pat the cat is worth hunting down.