Potpourri 14

The Kids' Table

My brother Dave and I went up to Rochester for ChrisKwanukah this past December and as a rite of passage we did dinner at my stepmother's family's house for the big day. This year, we had a few more folks than normal...and, with 26 bodies needing to be fed in a house not built to house more than about 20 of them at a time, my stepmother's mom approached me prior to dinner.

"Justin," she started, "you can tell we're pretty packed tonight, so we saved two spots for you in the kids' room."

I looked up from my holiday Fanta to make sure that the words I had just heard were in fact the truth; my third grandmother doesn't do the poker face very well, so if she was laughing, at least I would know that I would not be relegated to the kids' room as a fucking 30-year-old.

"Are you kidding?" I responded, half-kidding.

"No. We just have a few more folks than normal this year, and if we can get eight in the small bedroom, we'll be good on space."

I walked over to Dave and told him the situation; it looked like he was going to do a spit take when I gave him the deal. "The kids' room? Dude, you're like 30!" I agreed; I also realized that I hadn't been in the kids' room in about 10 years, even then too old to be in the kids' room. However, suddenly realizing that this would be fun, I grabbed my plate of food and headed into the room.

Dave and I hulked over the others at the table: my sisters Cate, 17, and Sydney, 16; my cousins Karly, Kyle and Austin (who I believe are 18, 17 and 14, respectively); my cousin Brenna, who is 11. We sat down with a mountain of food and the real kids immediately stopped talking, for fear that high school business would somehow matter to Dave and I, or maybe for fear that we might sell one or more of them out to their respective parental units. Brenna, who didn't seem to know any better, wisely ate her food and kept watching me struggle with the tight confines of the table.

The silence, deafening, became too much for me. "So...how's school, Austin?"

"Uh...it's good."

"How about you, Karly?"

[giggling] "It's good."

This went around the room, at which point Dave looks at me with that "we TOTALLY got sold out" look he does so well and I realized that these kids weren't going to say anything. For about ten minutes, no one said anything to anyone, and I eventually excused myself so that the real children could go ahead and talk about how hot Orlando Bloom is or something. I think I normally relate well to kids but adults and kids really do need to be separated during holiday meals.

New Year's at the Playbill

True to form, it was 11:15 PM on December 31st and the plan for New Year's was still TBD. That didn't leave much time for our ring-in-the-new-year activity To Be Determined, so after running through Plan A (Saint X, near the U Street corridor, was packed to the hilt) and Plan B (hit the bar next door, which had Saint X spillover), we came up with Plans C through F:

Plan C: Walk from that bar to Helix (four blocks away) and go into any bar that looked decent;
Plan D: Go into Helix, which had a cover;
Plan E: Go to a friend's house party in Capitol Hill (10-minute cab ride);
Plan F: Buy 40s and hang out on somebody's car hood, ringing in the new year by synchronized cell phone times.

While we were walking to Helix, we walked past a small bar on 14th Street called Playbill Cafe, and our traveling team (Gordon, Jellybean, Colleen and Kelly) all saw that it was pretty quiet inside, but the womenfolk seemed less than thrilled at hitting a local dive-ish bar that had a bunch of 40- and 50-somethings chilling in front of Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. So, we kept walking, but ran out of real estate.

Lesser individuals would have gone ahead and catered to their indulgences for sexy people, brighter venues and the appearance that the bar they have selected (be it New Year's or any other time) is "cool." But, at this moment, we made the call to hit the Playbill...and, it turned out to be one of the better New Year's I have had.

We rolled into the Playbill and secured a spot at the L-shaped bar, got a round of drinks and proceeded to chat while everyone on the team could hear everyone else's voices (although there was initial hesitation when Amy Grant's "Baby Baby" was playing over the bar speakers). Drinks were cheap ($4-$6) and with two bartenders, it was easy to keep plenty coming. At 11:45, the staff brought out free shrimp and wings; at 11:50, they handed out party hats, tiaras, noisemakers and the champagne toast for all of the customers.

Mind you, there were not more than 30 people in this bar when the ball dropped in New York. The five of us looked around and began patting each other on the back; it's lovely to go out for New Year's when you can go somewhere like the Playbill, where service is attentive and happy, not overwhelmed. It always really hits you during these occasions that it is never really about the venue, anyway; it's about the people that you party with and we've got some pretty cool friends. It's also about Mariah Carey's burgeoning bosom, which couldn't even be contained by small 17" televisions in the corner at the bar.

Damn, I love that bar. You can count me as a customer going forward!

THIS is Why They Hate Us

Our crew of 16 people came back from South Beach on Martin Luther King Day (a holiday celebrating an historic man, doubling as a day off where 90% of Americans don't even pass the man's name or his mission through their mind) last week, refreshed and nearly bankrupt. It's hard to tell the South Beach Stories over and over again; even for me, having been seven times and having written three different essays on the experience in years past, I can only talk about how cool the clubs are, how hot the people look, how acceptable my all-white suit & pink dress shirt are and how late the nights can go but so many times.

But, during this past trip, it hit me, along with Gordon "The Professional" Stokes: THIS is why "they" hate us.

Foreigners hate Americans (I can only attest to this in certain parts of the world--Europe, Canada and Wyoming) for good reason; most of those reasons are on display in South Beach. Free enterprise? Check. Perfect weather in January, 73° with completely blue skies? Check. Hot women everywhere, bundled up in the cold weather with scary tight jeans and t-shirts that are audibly whispering "I can't hold these fake globes any longer!"?? Check.

We were at the Art Deco Festival Parade once again, and everywhere I looked, more reasons why I loved this country--and why the Burmese fucking hate us--continued to surface. Street vendors, selling empanadas for $3 a pop. Open container laws, meaning that I could stop by Wet Willie's, pay $5 for a frozen margarita, and stroll Ocean Drive without a care in the world. Instead of chilling in a re-education camp somewhere in North Korea, I was standing in the middle of the road wearing swim trunks and a Transformers t-shirt, talking about how much I loathe the current U.S. administration while eating a hot dog and talking to "Jellybean" Grant about the upcoming season of "24." After posing for pictures with a couple of very friendly transvestites, I wondered for a moment what I would be doing in downtown Port-au-Prince if I got stuck there; certainly, it wouldn't be arranging for a day on the beach while planning a steak dinner, even if it did involve fighting off an insurgent with a fucking steak knife.

After a few people in the party glimpsed our C-list celebrity for the weekend, Jose Canseco, I walked over to Stokes and pointed out a few more reasons why "they" hate us so much: food, drink, man & woman available for reasonable prices; topless beaches; fantastic music selections, in this case Latin but in many other cases beautiful international sounds; dogs that wear handmade doggie sweaters. It's random, it's ridiculous, it's absolutely beautiful. And, it's easy to see why others might hate us. Shit, if I wasn't an American, I might hate us too.

For a little while, anyway. Then I would go back to plotting my overthrow of the Sri Lankan government.

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

The trailer for "Miami Vice": Opening Weekend
Asian-Americans from Georgia competing for Miss America: $9.50 Show
Kobe scoring 81 points...Kobe scoring 81 points: Matinee
Getting your car radio stolen twice in the same week: Rental
A men's magazine celebrating a woman as its "man of the year": Hard Vice

bellview--i love to nibble

Potpourri 14