duck-shaped pain

Z. came over again last night. We went out for Mexican food. Originally, I had planned to cook, but there was one family barbecue/picnic/wingding too much this weekend, and I was sick of preparing things for other people. I was going to roast a chicken and even went out and bought a whole one for the occasion, but I just stared at it sitting there on the kitchen counter and decided that, no, I am not up for the task of subduing this poultry today.

So we went over to Leon's, a pretty good restaurant in a perfectly crappy location. It's in a strip mall near the railroad tracks, right next to a gun store and right across from the Salvation Army. The rule, though, with ethnic restaurants is that the shittier the building that they're in, the more money have to devote to food and spices. If you don't feel right parking your car there, the food will be pretty good.

We had this weird waiter. Normally when I go in there, I get this really muscular, suave waiter, who seems to communicate only by winking, moving his eyebrows and odd little curled-lip half-smiles. He puts the plates on the table with a lot of finesse and never forgets the tortillas. He was there, but we were relegated to a table belonging to the new waiter. Who was about five feet tall, and every inch trembled with nervousness.

Z asked if they had any Pacifico beer. The waiter said he didn't know. Z. opened up the menu and there it was, right on the beer list, with all the other famous Mexican beers. The waiter looked confused, and said, "let me go make sure." He left, and he never asked ME what beer I wanted.

He came back beerless, but with water and chips this time. I nearly startled him out of his pants by asking for a Negra Modelo [1] and he ran off.

I think he'd had enough of us at that point, what with all our requests and demands and always taking without giving anything back, so Smooth Muscle Man took over from that point. Nervous Guy wandered close to the table once or twice after that, so see if we wanted any water. If he could have just thrown the water at us and then hid in a corner, I'm sure he would have done that. But the whole pitcher-glass system required that he at least be in close proximity to the table.

Nothing hurts like karaoke. It's just painful to do it, but overhearing it is worse. You feel really bad and ashamed for the people, which you try to mask by thinking, "at least they're trying." No. This is wrong. They should not be trying at all. We should all stand up together and unite for dignity.

After the chiles rellenos, we went to the local entertainment superstore to look for CDs. Nothing really promising there -- Z. found a used copy of the last Godspeed You Black Emperor! CD for $4 (which makes two copies total in this town, the other belonging to me) and I found jack squat. It was karaoke night, though. One of the employees, this incredibly tall guy named Mike, was in charge. He wore his special sparkly shirt, which was intended to get everyone in the karaoke mood. I don't even remember what songs people did -- they just stood in the middle of the store, singing, while their efforts were broadcast over the store's PA system. Even people in the far reaches of the store, near the Spanish videos or role-playing games, could be aghast to their heart's content.

My own karaoke experience is very limited. When I was in Japan seven years ago, I got suckered into going to this karaoke palace. It was this building made up of all these tiny rooms, all facing a central courtyard. Each room had a glass front, so anyone standing in the courtyard could look into the rooms and see schoolgirls or salarymen singing intently and flailing their arms about. We got a room and some beer and went in.

It was me, this other guy that had come on the trip with us (who I was not speaking to) and three Japanese girls. One of them was the person who had brought us on this trip and the other two were some friends of hers from school. So we get in there and start perusing the book of songs. To be expected, most of the songs are in Japanese. There were only two English songs -- "Happy Birthday" and "I Left My Heart In San Francisco". We exhausted their potential quickly -- I did a real cheesy lounge singer version of the former and my compatriot stumbled through the latter.

The Japanese girls, though, had a more amusing time, often singing in unison and trying to get some sort of girl-group vibe going. They came up with hand movements, even. All they were missing were sparkly gowns and bouffants. When it came time for my turn, I just started picking random Japanese songs and making up my own lyrics.

"Yeah, yeah mama, this is a real nice library/Take me to the place where the black bear hides/I am nine feet tall and don�t no one mess with me/There's a cr�me brulee in my pants for you�"

Or something like that. I kind of got into it. Then I looked up. In the sea of Japanese out in the courtyard, there was one tall gaijin, sticking out like a sore thumb. Since the karaoke performances were broadcast out there (if you stood in the right spot, you could hear all of them at once, which was total overload), he had heard my command performance. Cr�me brulee? Pants? I do not understand.

[1] King of Mexican beers!

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