I had a luxurious sleep in this morning, waking up at 11:00, making myself a pot of coffee in the room, and checking in online.
I had a late checkout at 1:00, and cabbed it six or so miles down the road to the Adolphus Hotel, where I met my friend Irene‘s sister.
We had a delightful lunch at the bistro in the hotel. I had “Buffalo Mozzarella with Tomatoes and Grilled Chicken Breasts.” Absolutely delicious.
Though off to a rough start, we had great lunch conversation the rest of the time. It started off roughly, not between Susan and me, but between Susan and the waitress.
It’s a French place, and she (the waitress) was obviously French with a name like Petrà or some such nonsense. Should have been Petulance (pronounced “peh-shoo-lawnce” of course) in my opinion.
Peshi: “The soup du jour is New England Clam Chowder.”
Susan: “Is that the red or the white?”
Susan said this as a joke in reference to:
|
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1994), |
On the trail of Snowflake, the kidnapped Superbowl dolphin, Ace (Jim Carrey) finds his way to a Death Metal Band club. Picking his way through the mosh pit, Ace bounds down some concrete stairs and hammers on a red door. “What’s the password?’ yells someone. “New England Clam Chowder!” shouts Ace. “Is that the red or the white?” “Ah, I can never remember that. White?” And the door opens to reveal his friend Woodstock (Raynor Scheine), a computer hippy fish specialist who punches a couple keystrokes and gives Ace his first real lead. |
Right after she said it, Susan said laughing and waving her hand, “I’m only kidding. It’s a reference to a movie scene. You had to be there.”
Peshi, not laughing, “I guess you did, ’cause it’s not funny.”
Susan, “Woah-ho, there goes your tip.”
“rien, c’est tout, finis,” I thought in succession.
We just hung out in the hotel this afternoon. I checked in with Robert on AIM, talked to nappy for a while, and we just generally relaxed listening to a lot of Motown on the iPod.
Okay, I need some help with this one. This is the final line of a news article on wral.com today:
“So because most Korean pastors are Korean, they understand Korean culture better than American pastors.”
How exactly could a Korean pastor not be Korean? I mean if he wasn’t a Korean, how could he be a Korean pastor? I must be missing something.
Though it isn’t stated on their web site anywhere, this hotel has a “dress code,” which for anyone who knows me doesn’t sit well with me. I am a shorts and t-shirt kind-of-guy—year-round.
In the evenings, I would peep out of the elevator door, look both ways for the fashion police,
and then sneak down the escalator and out the door.
We cabbed down to Cedar Springs Road by the Round-Up Saloon, which was our final destination.
We were delighted to find a couple of restaurants in the area, since we wanted to grab a bite before starting to drink. We chose The Bronx restaurant, which turned out to be a most excellent choice.
Susan had wine, I had a bourbon and Diet Coke, and we split an entrée that consisted of chicken (which was so tender and moist), mushrooms, spinach, artichokes, fettuccine pasta, and some garlic. Good stuff.
We crossed the street using the “runway crosswalk,” the likes of which I’ve only ever seen in Laguna Beach.
I think having this kind of crosswalk in a “gay part of town” makes it way too tempting to traipse back and forth practicing one’s catwalk. I’m just saying.
We were planning to enjoy the karaoke at the Round-Up this evening, but were delighted when we saw a sidewalk sign out front that said: “Tonight: Drag Pageant.”
This turned out to be a few “booger drag” performances, followed by a few “real” drag queens modeling dresses and being judged.
Susan ordered the “house” white wine, which when she asked the bartender if it was decent stuff, he replied, “Well, it’s not out of a box.”
She tasted it, and I asked her, “Is it tolerable?”
“Well, I can’t drink it all night, but it’s okay.” (Four hours and five glasses later, we’d be shooed out of the closing bar.)
The first thing Susan did was become fast friends with Robbie, who was just an adorable kid (who turned out to be 44), was Hispanic, and loved his family, particularly his mama. There’s a surprise, a gay guy close to his mother.
Neither Susan nor I took to his boyfriend (didn’t hate him, but didn’t love him), as he seemed to have set some kind of personal goal to show off Robbie’s (totally smooth, which didn’t work for me) stomach at least once every ten minutes. Trophy husband.
The bartender’s name was Glen, though we called him Chuck most of the evening, because at the beginning of the evening Susan told him that he looked like Chuck Norris.
“Someone else just said that to me this evening,” he said when she first called him that.
He was a hunk of man, and stayed pretty low-key, in terms of karaoke anyway, most of the night. All of a sudden, maybe in the last hour, he takes the microphone and sings a song. OMG, looks good, and can sing!
I went to the bathroom one time, and in doing so crossed the other area of the bar where the drag pageant had been and was now deserted. Blaine Larsen’s I Don’t Know What She Said came on, and I went out on the huge dance floor, completely alone, and did Annie’s Cha-Cha.
We started talking to a guy named “Braxton” who was there with a lady friend. We got his fag hag to take a picture of the three of us holding two huge blow-up bottles of some kind of alcohol between us. She, the fag hag, wasn’t having any where near as much fun as we were.
The lights came on, those who were left in the bar scattered like roaches caught in the light, and I waited outside the ladies room door while Susan made a last-minute pit stop.
When she came out she told me that when she went in, this girl was in there, and after she sat down on the doorless potty, the girl came up to her and put out her hand and introduced herself to her.
Well (tinkle, tinkle), hello (tinkle, tinkle), nice to (tinkle, tinkle) meet you. How queer.
We cabbed it home, and I did the Pink Panther slither to the elevator doors.