Arts & Culture with boy
The Boy. 4 Weeks of catching up. Now I've covered a couple of trifles - like Hooters, overlooked the ridiculous details:
Me: "This is where I met your mom..."
The Boy: (Who knows better): "You know, She's been asking if I think you're still sane..."
Good. very good. Better because I know it's true and she's just cause, but, quite simply, I know that as sane as I am I must appear to be mad in an insane world. Which brings to mind the saying "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king...". I don't know why.
I've recommended him an abundance of films and books. He's finished Laclos: "Les Liasons Dangerous", Maughm "The Razor's Edge", Celine "Journey to the End of the Night". He's doing well. Film, last 3 were "Being John Malkovich", "Brazil" and "Withnail and I". His reviews, succinct, at 15 he still keeps his opinions to himself, he's reluctant to debate, but he notes: "I Think I've found your character archetype in the character of Withnail....I know I must say this after every film...". I'm somewhat offended, I like Withnail, but he's a bit over the top, even for me. Still, it's good to make an impression.
Week ?1 (going back in time a few weeks to days that are unblogged, written and lost and mostly forgotten...):
#1: The Flea Market. It's been a few weeks since I've been, miscellaneous trifles, a WW2 Tommy Helmet for the Boy, he thinks it's cool
#2: We start at the Market Collective. We've vague plans of going to Red Deer, meet Grandpa for lunch, boy calls, no answer. Hippies, local crafts, good Karma. We pick up something for my daughter, a ridiculous felted creature that somehow I imagine she'll like, locally made, expensive, but unique, art, it will be her birthday gift. We get our picture taken with it.
#3: From here to Indian Buffet. Same as every week, balance one's diet, a weeks worth of vitamins and minerals in a day.
#4: Off to a few thrift shops. And in the mileage we stop at a firing range and shoot off some 45's, a HK and SAM, swapping after 25 rounds. I like the HK, my shooting is much improved, most bullets hitting the target's inner 2 rings, I swap eyes sighting but forget to swap hands, hit target to right about 4 inches but I recognize my error, I might just be a great ambidextrous shooter...
#5: On the way back to downtown pass a demonstration in front of City Hall, lots of police, we get out to investigate. Syrian pro-revolutionaries - green flags: "Stop the killing of babies and innocents in Syria" vs Syrian anti-revolutionaries - red flags: "President... is doing his best, let change be gradual and keep killing babies and innocents....".
It's that black and white...
End of day....
***
Week ?2, a film about Charles Eames, ACAD, part of the Fine arts film festival, "Eames: Architect and Painter", worthwhile, if only because we can find these treasures at garage sales, local, they're not inaccessible. And their love affair, despite the trifling flaws, well, it was exceptional. A rare thing.
Midweek: A play at U of C, part of the U of C's Drama Fine Art's Presentation, the threat that if he doesn't start working harder, applying himself, this could be his university...
But, in favour, the theatre's, the lights, I have to laugh, how many theatres offer this? How long will it be before he realizes the standards of staging the university grooms him for? They should provide a single light, a derelict stage, they should hire people to throw bottles...This will be Drama. In the real world.
***
He asks me about my degree. English Lit, he presumes, and I correct him. "Drama". There's a look of horror on his face, the sins of the fathers...
"Not to worry. Dramaturgy, I was more interested in writing. And Psychology. But I've pursued neither, I can't blame my current position on my education...But perhaps we should return to Jubilation's..."
***
We're culturally fluent, a film, play, new restaurant, something new every week. The chore of the part-time dad, I reassure myself that hour for hour I'm still getting more intelligent time with him than anyone else, Mother, father, teacher, but I resent - in a way, - the expectation to forever top myself, introduce him to new things, experiences, no one ever did this for me, for anyone I knew. It's the new parenting thing, "Live for/through one's children", this is the new experiment, I'm uncertain of the results...
And this should catch me up, there will be things forgotten - always there are things forgotten, and the notes once lost are tough to recall...
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Geriatric Conversations
**Note. Absent from blog past few weeks, other things have taken priority. And attempts at blogging last weekend, an hour and a half, were lost due to an ill placed keystroke. Discouraging to say the least. So this reconstitutes - slightly, the non-events of the past month.
The restaurant plods dully on.
J. has finally finished my phones, he's done a good job. I was worried they would never be done, work is precarious, I'm not sure he would have found me if I'd disappeared.
M and Z argue about who has more experience in the restaurant industry, each claims 30+ years, neither of them can be told what to do. There are various discussions about arthritis, rheumatism, insomnia, other ailments. Oddly enough, when things need to get done neither of them, despite their years of experience, is around. They scurry from the kitchen like frightened rats, preferring to hide in the front and polish glasses, cutlery, nothing that involves stretching, lifting, climbing stairs, or even the clearing or setting tables. They're of limited value, but I'm, we're, G and I, sympathetic, one day that could be us...
Z, slow, far too gregarious, greets and meets every customer, asks their name, introduces them, asks about them, their children, grandchildren, shuffles cutlery, candles, napkins, obsequious. The nephew does an excellent impersonation. And all this "attention" makes him as well slow, too slow, a quick and lucrative 3 person night is now divided amongst 4 and runs half as smooth. The nephew is loud and long with his complaints, he doesn't understand that he's not the person to be talking, half his night, easily, is spent texting upon his cell phone...
There are complaints about M - customers called, the stench of liquor was too heavy on his breath. The owner wants to fire him, so do the others, I understand, there's better waiters by far, he fucks up orders, brings the wrong bills to tables, forgets to ring things in, forgets, sometimes, even where he is and what he's supposed to be doing, but I kind of like him, he's the epitome of the older drunken waiter, timid about the kitchen, gregarious and loquacious with the tables, too loud about not really needing the job ("then why are you here???" I want to shout, he's endearing in an odd sort of way. The Nephew hates him, wants to replace him, both of them, M and Z, sees them as useless and for some reason his imagination has elevated the Talking Waiter to the status of Godliness. The Talking waiter was as well useless, but in the Nephew's eyes far more entertaining.
The conversations, though, are another story. I've heard them all, heard them all on the first day we worked together, still he repeats them daily in case I wasn't paying attention:
"So I was in Italy and going to cross the border and...'Spiechen Zie Deutch?' he said to me, which is high German for 'how do you speak such good German', so I replied 'Auch toch niederhelmen', which means 'I lived in Germany', ....so we went for a drink, I ordered...."
They're absolutely grueling. All of them involve running into, by accident or contrivance, an old friend in a foreign country, crossing a border and having a drink. He tells them first in German, translating variously into English or Italian, depending on who he's speaking to, he has the knack of remembering every non-event in his life and stretching them into the longest and most pointless stories, made even longer with the retelling and translations.
The Nephew observes: "He is the typical Alcoholiste, every story involves rum and coke..."
Another regular table that know him, no one's asked but he's inspired to tell another story...The nephew simply swears in disgust and walks away, he continues unperturbed...
"Old friends, old old friends, reminds me of..."
***
In an effort to raise the caliber of conversation I solicit the opinion of the Nephew on a recent high rollers remarkable streak of wins in Atlantic City, 4, 5, 6 million dollar nights playing blackjack. "Drunk ass, he's lucky" is the Nephew's assessment, me, I'm not convinced. I'm thinking he has a system. For me it's proof that there's a crack in every system through which the light shines, if only you can find it...Think the Leonard Cohen song. And, sure enough, an article in the Atlantic confirms it. It doesn't change his opinion, but it does change the conversation, now the Nephew's on about the Oxygen in Vegas, pumped into rooms to keep patrons awake so they gamble more, this leads to the theory that the gas masks on airplanes don't feed you oxygen, they tranquilize you so you don't panic and have a good last few moments on earth, maybe something fun like Nitrous Oxide, a laugh filled party before the plane crashes into the earth. Although the G force would kill you first, and when I question this (there are no G forces in free fall, save the big one upon landing) he thinks about it and recants, a rare moment of lucidity...from here to discussion of the new Star Wars Porn Parody, he's ordered a copy, 3 discs, looks good...I have nothing to contribute.
***
Reservations don't show up. Wrong names, parties, written at the wrong times. The owner is infuriated, he blames the new waiters, they're not so good at taking reservations, skip irrelevant details like the name of the party, date and time, number of people, irrelevant things that infuriate everyone. Their spelling is atrocious. We have a party, similar last name, 2 different times, quantities of people, same night. They don't show. The owner is quick to blame M, his Nephew, doesn't recognize that the handwriting is his own, somehow it's someone else's fault...
***
3 women, one younger, tall, slim, 20 something, cute in that way I would have overlooked at the same age but somehow more attractive now that I'm older. The other 2, one perhaps her mother, grandmother?, the other, who knows. The owner talks with them...
...to me: "What do you think?"
..."Cute" I concur, she is, after a fashion.
"I'll set you up. That young one is her daughter..."
"NOOOOOOOO!"
I don't get this, his setting me up with women I have no interest in whatsoever, always older, plump, they look always like they could be my mother. Maybe it makes him feel more attractive? Or we're equals in some perverse way, in age at least, only I could never hope to have a woman as beautiful as his wife. I don't get his reasoning, only that I have such withering contempt and disinterest, dissociation from our customers that there's no one here he could introduce me to that would be of interest, usually he intuits this...
***
Departure is appraised at 3, maybe 4 weeks. I still haven't told the owner. I don't look forward to it. He's making longer plans, May, June, July. I go along, I hope not to be there. The Ex, whose abode I occupy, has suddenly taken exception to my departure, more obstacles, drama. I have perhaps 5 weeks of prospecting, if I'm lucky. With slight success I could return after the summer, when my daughter has returned to Qatar, September and October if the weather holds. No success and it will be time for a job in a hurry. The staff all expect my leaving, sad, in a way, I'll miss them all, my routine and family for the past 2 and half years. But too much my routine, not enough of my own life, days off spent with boy, never a chance to put brush to canvas, read a book, it's time to move on. I haven't told the owner. His madness is contagious, in a sense I'm furious at having been so deprived of any chance of life these past couple of years, in another way I'm sympathetic, he just doesn't get it, the feudal Italian system of government. Finances are tight, planning for failure and the hurdles that await upon my return, there's an abundance of things that need to be done before my departure, a couple of short kids manuscripts I hope to have out (to publishers for rejection), longer projects that I hold little hope of completing, art projects, cleaning, cats, and now the added worry of finding a new place on a tight budget...
Time passes.
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment"
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Andrew Bird - Fever Year
Music doc at the Plaza, link here: http://www.calgaryfilm.com/2011/schedule/film/2002.
Which proves to be good, and confirms some of my observations and speculations about his music. That said, no one has done more covers of Andrew Bird songs than Andrew Bird has, he reinvents every one for pretty much every tour. So if you're expecting to hear a favorite song, that may happen, but it might not be the way you like.
Personally, I'm a big fan of tenuousness done live in the basement.
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Hooters
It's been a long running joke, threat, that I'm taking the boy to Hooters. And on Sunday, and not really keen on another Indian Buffet and having already visited our thrift shops and tried on some transsexuals discarded 4" stiletto heels (Who could resist? Especially with the boy along. Part of it was for the boy, the other part I won't discuss here), Hooters seemed the natural next destination.
If I'd bought the shoes I could have applied for a job. But if I'd bought the shoes I'd had to buy the pedicure, the nail polish, the stockings, skirt, corset and trench coat, make up and lipstick, I would doubtless have made a new world of friends but it would have cost me (and part of me is saying "Hell No, you MAKE money with an outfit like this...."), and somehow or another it wasn't meant to be. Boring old straight dad.
So we end up at Hooters, where I seem to remember kids eat free and I ask for a kids coloring book and crayons in the hopes that it creates, supports, the illusion.
The boy's not playing along. 15 and he's thinking for himself....
The first waitress, a tall brunette, boring, that bored "can I help you" look on her face. We look like we're having too much fun. The second, blonde, a little friendlier, she's the ticket. And I color, with my left hand, the backside of the coloring paper, with a big heart and "her name+dad" in the middle and little unicorns and rainbows and flowers all round, and whenever she approaches flip it over and shove it towards the boy.
We let her order. Then menu's pretty boring, wings and such, I'm not guessing that's why people come here.
The food, good for what it is, but before you rush out let me tell you anyone with a deep fryer and a can opener can pretty much open a Hooters. SO what you'd expect, but that's not a good thing.
For dessert, a brownie, giant, even sharing with the boy we don't finish half. If somehow they could have condensed the quality into a quarter the size it would be a tasty treat, as it is it would be easier eating sugar from a bag.
Tip, pay, leave, the boy wants to stay and see the waitresses reaction to the colored placemat, but as he refused to assist me in this I'm not staying, he reports from the car that she's smiling at the table reading it...
1 more off the bucket list. Now to go parachuting...
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- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
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