26 August 2001 - 11:47 p.m.

Had ourselves quite a time at the Sichuan House this evening.

We were seated next a retarded middle-aged man and his aging mother, about whom I shouldn't complain much, since I swear to God, I have never seen anyone be so polite to his mother as this retarded guy was, and his annoying factor decreased to almost nil after he was through going to town on his crispy wonton appetizer. I have never heard anyone chew quite so loudly, though his entree didn't seem to pose a problem.

Of course, by the time his crunching jaw had quieted down, the 12-year old girl on the other side of us started asking questions like, "Are chicken and beef different kinds of meat, or are they just served differently?" Her mother answered by saying something to the effect of, "Well, as you might imagine, chicken comes from a chicken. Whereas beef is derived from a cow." She said this in such an appalled and sarcastic way that I almost laughed out loud, but realized that if her mother was this dismissive throughout the girl's inquisitive phase (which I can only hope started before the age of 12, let alone tonight), this girl would be making people like me want to shove thier chopsticks into their eyes for many years to come.

But the best was the 50 year-old-guy behind me who had recently been mistaken for 65. (Note to self: People talk to loud at the Sichuan House on Murray Avenue. You should really not know the exact ages of these people just because they happened to want dinner at the same time as you today.) He was going on and on really loudly about stuff that he knew about entertainment, starting with Your Show of Shows, and moving on to Woody Allen, and then inexplicably to Frank Sinatra, as if to tackle each subject in order of how much I increasingly knew and cared about each one. The older couple across from him rarely responded to a thing, which makes me wonder if they might have been foreign, from a country where no one cares about American TV, Jewish-American filmmakers, or Italian-American pop stars, because I was able to respond to everything he said. Yeah, I responded under my breath, but still.

I'd transcribe the whole thign here, but that would take too long, and I'd feel like a wanker showing off my vast knowledge of pop-culture. But here is a snippet for you:

HIM: Now Woody Allen, there's a brilliant director.

ME: Ok, now you know what you're talking about.

HIM: He directed some brilliant movies, Play It Again, Sam. Ever see that, it's a great one.

ME: Um, he didn't actually direct that. He wrote and starrred in it, but that's all.

HIM: You know whose movies I really love? Frank Sinatra. (Procedes to name some Frank movies, while I cringe, waiting for the inevitable fuck-up that's going to get on my nerves. Gus begins to snicker, waiting for it as well, when, all of a sudden -) You know, HBO made a movie abotu the Rat Pack.

ME: Yeah, it was ass.

HIM: And the guys they got to play them were just great.

ME: If you mean that in the sense that they were great at being ass.

HIM: The guy who played Sammy Davis, Jr. was amazing.

ME: That's why he one a cable ACE award. Unlike the others.

HIM: But it was just incredible to watch these actors...

ME: If you only looked at the guy who played Sammy.

HIM: It was just like looking at the real thing!

ME: Or not looking at the real thing, and looking at Ray Liotta play Frank Sinatra.

So that was pretty much dinner until the guy somehow shifted from Frank, Dean, and Sammy to Archie Bunker, and, seeing how I had not gone to dinner to spend the whole time chatting with Mr. "Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, I Look 64," I left Carol O'Conner to him and Gus and I chatted about the Reiners and opened our fortune cookies. Mine said something to the effect of, "Experience is often better than percept." Well, great. "And good fortunes are often better than bad, but we don't always get the better of the two, now do we?" I said to the small, defenseless piece of paper, which I later decided to scoop into my purse, not because I liked it, but because I had liked my witty response to it, and was too lazy to write it down.

Tomorrow I start my screenwriting workshop class. Guess what caustically clever bit of business will be popping into my first assignment?

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