Wasted?
So today was my first day off in two weeks. My wife and I had planned to get up early and go into the city for lunch and some book shopping, however we stayed up too late last night watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back…and thus slept until mid afternoon.
I was kind of feeling that the day was going to end up being wasted, so I asked my wife where she wanted to go out to eat in town tonight. She didn’t want to go out. So I just wound up going downstairs and ordering a seafood Bolognaise for myself, and she had me get her a three cheese specialty pizza. Of course, I got hooked up on the Bolognaise being that I work there-certainly I paid the full price for it (the fuck if I would go down there on my day off and expect a free 26 dollar menu item. I’m a dickhead, but not that big of a dickhead) but when I got it the take out container was full almost to overflowing with Chef B.’s massive good Bolognaise sauce, pappardeli pasta, scallops, shrimp and jumbo lump crab meat. Actually, it could have been just a regular sized order because they always give customers a ton of food. I don’t know, either way I wound up stuffed to the gills. My wife ate some of her pizza and liked it, though she said she likes the way the other pizza chef makes it. The guy down there today was split between doing pizza and work in the kitchen, and it was pretty busy so I think he just rushed my order out.
While I was there waiting for my food I went back to the kitchen and asked Chef B. if he wanted me to catch up some dishes or anything till my order was done. But he was like NO, it’s your day off. Enjoy it. I’m paying him for today anyway. He was talking about the other pizza/utility guy I mentioned before. The guy who got sent home Saturday night because he was sick and left me on my own with 120 customers worth of shitwork to do in the kitchen that night. Just how sick he really was is open for debate, but Chef B. wasn’t about to chance him getting anybody else sick. He had a severe cough on Saturday, got the night off, Sunday he came back, no cough. R., the other pizza guy, told me he stopped coughing as soon as he found out he was getting sent home. I don’t know. I try to give motherfuckers the benefit of the doubt, to a fault really.
So anyways, after we ate I got super lazy from my belly full of grub and I laid on the bed while my wife played her *ville flash games on the computer. I love watching my girly girl, ostensibly prim and proper mate become totally unhinged and utter a string of profanity that would make a convict blush when someone in internet land cuts down one of her gnome trees or something in whatever game. Tonight she was telling me how awesome it was that she emailed Zynga when the game fucked up and borked her for a bunch of stuff..and they gave her tons of free game shit. I was like, oh, so it’s like when a crack dealer gives someone double up on 20 instead of fifty. She looked at me funny, and then said “these carrot cakes that have the energy points are way better. They take 14 hours to make, and they gave me like ten of them” Can’t argue with that logic. After all, even double up on a twenty of ready rock wouldn’t last the average smoker forty-five minutes.
Then I finally got the wherewithall to get up. My wife had mentioned that she had to buy another card for her game this week, and I needed cigarettes and Pepsi, so I went to the pharmacy and got everything in one fell swoop. Plus ice cream. I couldn’t buy her another game card without throwing in ice cream and a pack of smokes for her. I got to the register and Marie was working. She’s a bundle of fun. How she has kept her job there is beyond me, because she’s like thee most absentminded clerk I have ever met in my life. She saw me buy a phone there once, so now every single time I go in there she asks me for my card then tells me she has the same phone carrier, and do I know if they can make international calls. I always tell her I don’t know, I’ve never tried. Then she asks me “what kind of the phone is yours?” I tell her LG. She says, invariably, “I like mine. It is Kyocera. But I left it at my friend’s house to charge. That is a long time ago. I should get it, you think?” Yes, I reply. This conversation has repeated itself, nearly daily because I’m in there for smokes almost every day, for going on three years. Tonight I threw her a curve ball though. She asked me for my card-you know, those stupid fucking discount cards that every place has nowadays-and I told her NO. YOU CANNOT HAVE IT. with a stern look on my face. She looked frightened, like honestly scared. So I told her I was kidding and gave her the card. Then she asked me about the restaurant where I work and we talked about that for a while, about the coupons in the paper and shit. No mention of the phone tonight.
Anyways, after that I just came home and gave wifey her presents. She was stoked. She gave me a big kiss and told me that she loved me. The day wasn’t wasted after all.
End notes:
1) Some time back I asked Chef B. how to make the seafood Bolognaise sauce for just pasta sans seafood. It’s really simple and I’d share it here but if he ever found out he’d flay the skin from me with a metal spatula. But without getting specific it’s like a classic vodka sauce only with sambuca-but what makes it so good is the other stuff you fry the seafood in then add all together.
2) I’m going to start an antisocial network focused on disconnection. I guess it will be hard to get funding for my start-up since the thing will never become a popular trend.
3) Something that never ceases to raise my ire are would be music critics taking shots at punk as being “formulaic”, “staid”, or as having dumbed down musicianship. Given, there is music out there in the world from every era that is just boring as fuck and is made by people who should have taken up painting or fashion designing or whatever instead. However, when spinning the musical roulette wheel I’ve generally found that betting on punk rock leads to the most desirable sonic results. Sometimes though I’ll even be sitting here with that certain form of existential nausea that cant be budged by music made after around 1994. And even then, I’ll dredge through my 500 some odd albums trying to find something that will give me that particular kick in the ass.
Well, it happened tonight and luckily I have a copy of Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare by the Rich Kids on LSD. Fuck yeah. I remembered why this album blew me away ten seconds into my first listening in 87. Unfortunately I couldn’t find videos for Alone Inside and Lay Your Weapons Down, my favorite tracks…but this one is pretty fucking awesome. And it speaks volumes to musicianship within hardcore punk-albeit furious and imperfect like a good sloppy improvisational jazz piece. At least way back when hardcore was moreso a subterranean phenomenon and punk was still a four letter word. Though I could give contemporary examples like, well, the guys from Annihilation Time certainly have some chops for starters..but I’m trying to finish this so just enjoy the RKL
