STAVROS AND EUNICE HIT THE THUMB

This past weekend, Stavros and I travelled to Lexington, a charming little harbor village on the shore of Lake Huron just 18 miles north of Port Huron in the thumb. Whether you're looking for a weekend retreat, a cottage or a retirement home, Lexington is the place for you. Does it seem like I wrote that last bit? I didn’t. I took it from the Lexington website.

I’ve been to Lexington a few times in the past couple of years and Stavros hadn’t been up there for about 20 years. His people used to have a farm up in the thumb and he spent many idyllic summers there, much like my summers in southwestern Idaho, only without all the Mexican gangbangers.

We stayed at a bed & breakfast in town. The house was an 1870 farmhouse with three guest rooms. We stayed in the “Movie Star Room” which had a very nice chenille bedspread, the type that one might expect Jennifer Aniston to have, and a lot of black and white photos of has-beens like Natalie Wood.

Another highlight of the B & B was a room called “Settee.” This is what they say about “Settee” on their website: There is a coffee pot located in the room for early morning convenience. You are welcomed to relax and watch the morning news or read the daily newspaper in your robe on the provided loveseat.


We arrived in town at about 3 PM and immediately went to eat, because I must eat almost continuously. We shared a “pizzette” at a place called Smackwater Jack’s then walked along the breakwall, where we naturally ran into some acquaintence of Stavros’s. We could be rappelling in Brazil and someone Stavros knows would swing by on a rope.

We made our way back up the street and stopped in a few stores. Stavros determined that the attractive people were the out-of-towners and the homely ones were residents. This seemed to reinforce his earlier observation at a gas station in Port Huron: “Say what you will about Detroit….but the farther away you get, the weirder people are.”

We picked up some groceries for the barbecue we were attending later on that evening and returned to the B & B to lie down for while. We ran into the proprietress in the kitchen, who was wrist-deep in what I knew to be “French toast casserole,” because she told me what she’d be serving for Sunday breakfast when I made the reservation. Stavros lay immediately upon the chenille and closed his glorious eyes while I read my book in the nearby chaise and jostled the bed with my foot every time he seemed to be drifting off. Finally, he awoke and we departed for the barbecue at the cottage of some friends of ours. They were up from the Detroit area with their kids; two couples, Pierce and Joanne Nawtee and Krystal and Pete St. Patrick.

The gentlemen had apparently been sampling the contents of the cooler for several hours by the time we arrived. The ladies were busy in the kitchen making salad and mac & cheese for the children. I uncorked my Pinot Grigio and poured three glasses while Stavros trotted out the back door.

“Salud!” I said, as Krystal and Joanne and I touched juice glasses.

I helped Joanne prepare salads and do the dishes then went outside when she got to the “cheese” part of the mac & cheese. There is nothing that smells quite as bad as mac & cheese to me. The guys were standing around the barbecue trying to seem busy when I stepped out the back door. Pierce didn’t put much effort into it and plopped down in a lawn chair, his head lolling backward.

“He’s gone,” murmured Stavros.

“I see that!” said I, smiling brightly at Pierce, who suddenly lifted his head and attempted to focus on us.

We ate and played catch and chased the children and told them some scary lies about what happens to kids that try to go to the beach alone and stuff like that for a few hours. When the s’mores and the sparklers were finally gone, they were sent to bed and the adults gathered around the bonfire. It was very nice, even when the wind changed direction and fully engulfed my person in smoke and flying soot.


This sort of classic summery memory-making went on for maybe another hour and we decided to pack it in. Forgetting nearly everything we’d brought with us, including my sunglasses, the bug spray, and our baseball and mitts, we clambered into the car and bounced down the dark highway the two miles back to town. After the “Zappa Plays Zappa” show, I am all about FZ so we had to listen to “Any Way the Wind Blows” a number of times before I felt we could end the night.

We entered the front door and crept stealthily upstairs to our room. The owners’ room was directly next to ours so we had to be extra quiet. Naturally we both slept like logs and awoke 22 minutes before the official breakfast call. I took a shower and made sure to use some of every product in the bathroom, even going so far as to steal a Biore blackhead remover pad.

We trundled down the stairs and onto the wide front porch, where the B & B’s two other couples were already tucking into breakfast and revealing dull things about themselves to one another.

“Thank God we don’t have to sit with them,” I whispered, as we took the other table.

A margarita glass filled with fruit salad was at each place setting and within seconds, the proprietress rushed out with platters of French toast casserole topped with warm berry sauce and grilled sausage patties. Regular readers of Modern Coastline will not be able to believe the following statement but I assure you it is true: Stavros did not like the French toast casserole. His official explanation was that it “didn’t taste like anything,” but I suspect that it simply didn’t taste like sugar. I thought it was really good, as far as those things go, but the sausage was spectacular. I ate all of my sausage (two large patties) and most of the fruit salad and about half of the giant French toast wedge. The proprietress came to take our plates and looked genuinely hurt that Stavros had left one sausage patty.

“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed enthusiastically as she took my plate. “Those sausages were wonderful! I am just…so full! Aren’t you full?”

“Yes,” Stavros agreed, pushing back from the table and standing up.

“We have a child in Indiana,” commented one of the time machines sitting behind us.

We packed up and left at once. Following a brisk stroll through town, we decided that maybe we weren’t full after all, and we popped into Wimpy’s, Lexington’s famed hole-in the-wall hamburger joint.



We ordered and perused the local “paper,” which was actually more of a pamphlet; a four-page (cover, inside front cover, inside back cover, and back cover) homemade effort. Most of it consisted of ads for real estate agents and rib night at the golf course restaurant, but there was a smattering of “content” also. My favorite part was the joke sent in by a reader about the guy who went to the store to get his wife some tampons but got her string and cotton balls instead to pay her back for getting him loose tobacco and rolling papers instead of a pack of cigarettes the night before. Also I enjoyed the riddle about “I am having lunch with my only sister’s husband’s mother-in-law’s daughter in law. Who am I having lunch with?” (The answer to that one was supposed to be somewhere in the paper but it was not so if you know the answer please tell me.)

“I gotta go the bathroom,” Stavros announced.

While I waited I puzzled over the riddle and stared at the 8-year-old Wimpy’s employed to bus tables wipe counters until Stavros abruptly returned and whispered to me that he hadn’t been able to go because while he was in the bathroom, some man kept rattling the door, trying to get in. I turned around. “Who?” I asked.

“I dunno.”

Two hamburgers (the misshapen blackish sort with greasy fried onions clinging to the surface) and a large chicken fries and order of onion rings later, we were finally really full.

We hoisted our hugely fat selves into the car and made one last tourist stop at the swinging bridge in nearby Croswell, home of Pioneer sugar. I climbed on the bridge and started trying to make it sway.

“Nice Biore blackhead strip,” said Stavros.

My hand flew to my back pocket and felt the edge of the package slipping out.

“You ever use one of those?” he asked. “It’s gross. You leave it on for like, eight, ten minutes, then peel it off and it’s like a forest of blackheads.”

Well, after that special moment, we bade a wistful farewell to Lexington.

And then the drama began.

About 45 minutes into our trip and during the zillionth playing of “Wowie Zowie,” we heard a noise. It was a repetitive sound, the kind of sound that follows the revolution of a tire going about 70 miles an hour. A tire that used to have air inside of it, but no longer does.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” screamed Stavros, “PULL OVER!”

Well, he didn’t curse like that but he did suggest pulling over. So we slowed down and stopped and he got out to examine the suspect wheel. It was indeed flat.

He opened my trunk and fished around under the Tupperware and paperbacks and old sweaters and newspapers and coffee cups, looking for the jack.

“Where’s the jack?” he yelled over the nonstop stream of semis blazing past at 120 miles an hour.

“I don’t have one.”

Well, to make a long, sweaty story short, a very lovely police officer stopped and offered to call a towing associate of his to come help us.

This was terrific because my insurance carrier, to whom I pay a large sum of money for the specific benefit of roadside assistance, chose first to be baffled by my inability to describe my exact coordinates, then to react by putting me on hold for 10-15 minutes.

A tow truck arrived lickety-split and a burly sort changed the tire after being sort of a prick to Stavros when my dear asked a simple question about my being billed. We chalked it up to the distance-from-Detroit thing and let it go.

Forty-five minutes later we were pulling off the freeway on our exit when Stavros received a text message from his next-door-neighbor, Arnie. “'Fuck the cops—Arnie,'” he read aloud. “What does that mean?” He called Arnie back and got voicemail. We decided to drive past his house—maybe there’d been a break in over the weekend? Some sort of crime on their block?

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I bet he was driving by and saw us on the side of the road with that cop.”

Stavros turned and fastened his heavily lashed orbs on me. “My God,” he said. “You’re right.”

Moments later Arnie called and confirmed my guess. He couldn’t believe what a dick the cop was, making us both get out of the car after pulling us over! We all were laughing, whooping, and hollering and high fiving over that one for a while.

ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA

Last night Stavros took me to Zappa Plays Zappa at the Motor City Casino’s Soundboard theater. Neither of us had ever been to a show at Soundboard before, although apparently he has spent quite a lot of time in casinos for gambling purposes. Because of my good breeding and natural aversion to all aspects of life’s underbelly, I was wholly unfamiliar with what to expect but looking forward to a new adventure.

We left slightly early because I fantasized about getting a cocktail at a fancy casino bar while lights flashed and jackpots clanged into buckets and lovely women in sequined gowns threw dice on felt. The glamour factor began to dissipate as we exited the freeway and passed the bombed-out building adjacent to the casino’s parking lot but still I clutched Stavros’s hand in anticipation. As the parking guard pointed us toward the proper entrance, we noted a mid-fiftiesish hippie couple standing just outside smoking. The female squatted like an old Chinese woman waiting for the bus as the man chatted jovially with the black security guard posted at the doors. Both hippies had long, curly gray hair and wore loose tie-dyed outfits.

“That’s about the gist of what you’re gonna see in this show,” Stavros commented, a Zappa fan all his life.

Hmm, I thought, okay, mentally adjusting my image of the artsy, eccentric, brunette, glasses and vintage outfit-wearing audience.

The security guard pointed us up an escalator to the theater. We stepped off into what amounted to a large food court with the theater at one end. At the center was a coffee island. There was a really crummy-looking bar that looked like they lifted it right out of Metro Airport next to a huge dining room. Four middle-aged women sat at a table along the rail in the bar and guffawed their brains out as we passed. They were either drunk or recently released from a mental institution because nothing’s that funny.

“I bet they don’t have Stella,” moaned Stavros glumly, gazing at the scene.

There was a lobby just outside the huge dining room with an “associate” (which is what the casino calls employees, I know, because I saw a lot of doors marked “Associates Only”) stationed at a podium monitoring a long line of people waiting to enter.

“What is that?” I asked Stavros. “What are they waiting for?”

“To get in,” he told me.

“Is it free?” I was amazed.

“No,” he said.

As we rounded the corner, I stared in at the restaurant, wondering what was so tantalizing that people would be willing to stand in line like starving Russians to get in. The place was about a quarter full, so it wasn't like it was at capacity or anything.

“I think it’s all-you-can-eat,” my brilliant Stavros said.

“Ah!” said I, as I watched a man in a trucker’s hat salt a giant bowl of rice.

We approached the cadre of guards and associates standing in a line of defense at the theater’s entrance. We were still a good 12 feet away when one of them announced loudly in our direction: “Five minutes.”

We looked at each other.

“Let’s walk around,” I suggested, and we turned and headed toward the casino itself. We walked through a smelly but well-lighted tunnel with glowing aqua walls to another wing of the building from which noise and lights emanated. Yet another associate stood at the gate of this area.

“IDs,” he commanded blandly.

Stavros and I looked at each other again. This was just too much hassle.

“No, thanks,” we said, and started to turn away.

“You gotta show ID to get in the casino,” he said.

“That’s okay; we’re just killing time till the theater opens,” we said, and left, thwarting his attempts to boss us around.

By the time we got back to Soundboard five minutes had passed. We were required to present our IDs and my handbag for a thorough scouring. I actually had to pass it through a metal detector before spreading it open in all its pantyliner/lip gloss indignity before the glassy eyes of a becornrowed guard.

We strode immediately to the bar just inside the gates to wait for the theater doors to open. The bartender approached us at once and asked to see ID.

“Again?!?” we cried, reaching into our wallets.

“Sorry,” he replied, “What can I getcha?”

“Do you have Stella?” Stavros asked with a challenge in his voice.

“Nope,” said the bartender, with what I felt was a certain pride, “Nothin’ fancy. Bud, Bud Light, Miller, MGD, Corona.”

“Corona,” grumbled Stavros, swiveling toward me on his stool. “It just pisses me off,” he hissed, as the bartender poured his beer into a plastic cup.

“What, baby?” I asked.

“This…beer situation,” he whispered, then: “Can’t I have it in the bottle?” he said in an irritated voice to the bartender.

“Nope!” said the bartender, with the same smugness as before. “What can I get you?” he asked me.

“Um, what kind of…white wine do you have?” I asked fearfully.

“White Zin, Chardonnay, Riesling,” he answered.

“Uh, the Chardonnay,” I said, turning to Stavros and putting my hand on his arm. “It’s okay, baby.”

“It’s going to be like twenty bucks!” he predicted, getting out his charge card.

The bartender returned with my wine. “Thirteen dollars,” he said.

Stavros smiled murderously and slid his card toward the man.

Around this time, people began arriving to the show. And by “people,” I mean men. Middle-aged men. Hippie men, hanging-out-on-the-boat men, lawyer men, all kinda men. Every now and then one of them had his woman along, but for the most part, it was a real sausage-fest.

“See what I mean?” said my Stavros, as he eyed the testosterone pouring past the guards.

We slugged down thirteen bucks’ worth of booze and entered the theater. We were instantly assailed by yet more associates who wanted to see our tickets. After presenting them, we were directed down a flight of stairs to the main floor. It was very dark and spotlights shone from all directions. An associate at the bottom of the stairs led us to our seats. There were bars on both sides of the stage which I thought was very convenient. As we settled into seats one and two in row F, section 150, Stavros noted the projection of Frank Zappa’s face that shone on the back wall of the stage.

“The aspect ratio’s off,” he declared. “Let’s get a drink.”

“May I see your IDs?” the bartender asked.

The show began promptly at 8 PM. The place was almost entirely filled, from what I could tell, with sausages and the occasional roll. One prim-looking woman sat on the main floor just below us with a paperback and a sweater draped over her shoulders. A lone man sat in the chair in front of hers and he excitedly chatted her up until his friends arrived and he was forced to slide down into the last chair in his row, crushed up against the wall. The prim lady’s husband arrived shortly thereafter and handed her a Little Caeser’s mini-pizza and two packages of wet naps. She looked very pleased, although the arrival of the ex-con looking hippie couple who took seats on her other side resulted in the discreet sliding of her own chair four or five inches to the left.

It was a long set, the final 45 minutes or so punctuated by the more or less continuous ear-splitting whistle of a beer-chugging blonde woman in front of us. Sax solo? THWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET! Dweezil Zappa says anything at all? THWEEEEEEEEEEEEET! Xylophone magic? THWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET! There was literally nothing this woman wouldn’t blast her whistlehole over.

Another fun sidebar was the total incompetence of the A/V techs. Particularly whoever was manning the big-screen cameras. Shots abruptly cut from camera A to camera C to camera Z with no apparent logic.

The theater itself was a very good place to see a show once you get through the hundreds of security checkpoints. The sound was great and the seats were really good. It was a little expensive, $50 each, although my dear Stavros paid. It was a wonder that nearly the whole place was filled considering Detroit’s dreadful economic picture. I guess what remains of southeast Michigan’s well-heeled just about fits into a medium-sized auditorium.

As we left, Stavros pointed out that a door emptying out on the sidewalk led directly from the theater, and all the escalatoring and stair-climbing we’d done was just window dressing.

“What?” I said, too tired and Chardonnay-logged to compute.

On the Lodge freeway on the way home, we saw the worst drunk driver ever. He or she was swerving slowly from the slow lane to the passing lane, cruising occasionally in the middle lane for a while before edging into another. I wanted to call the police but Stavros said that we should just let that person die. Actually, he just got onto the Davison and we marveled about it for a minute then changed the subject and went home and went to sleep.

TOWN TAVERN AGAIN--GUEST POST

Today's post is from my mother, Bonita Sigmundfreud. Please enjoy her delightful recounting of a grim experience.

Our family probably will stop having birthday dinners in restaurants for the rest of the year at least. So far, our luck has been bad. For my birthday last month, we had dinner at Hong Hua and were terribly disappointed; it certainly is not the splendid restaurant it was a few years ago (see my daughter’s review). Last night, for my husband’s annual 29^th birthday, we tried Town Tavern in Royal Oak.

The restaurant is attractive. There are a few patio tables, and, thanks to doors that run the width of the place and are left open in good weather, the tables in front present an illusion of being outside, too. The interior is clean and sleek, the only drawback being the inevitable television set over the bar. (Can we not lose the tv, folks? Please? It is SO ugly.)

We sat at one of the front tables and enjoyed the breeze while we waited for our server, who was wonderful: professional, thoughtful, and prompt with service. Drinks were lovely, wine was lovely. Our waiter brought a basket of hot bread slices dusted with a little parmesan. Delicious. And the chopped salad my daughter and I shared was very nice.

The whole trouble was the entrees. Drill Press’s (daughter’s) buttermilk fried chicken looked terrific, but she said that the breast meat tasted as though it had been thawed, frozen, and then thawed again. I didn’t try it, but it looked dry. She ate very little of it, and believe me she can pack it away.

The commander’s (husband’s) New York strip was medium, which would have been okay, except that he had ordered it medium rare. And it cost twenty-five bucks for eight ounces. The commander sort of picked at it and left it alone. Luckily the asparagus was all right—a little woody, but all right—and he’d had some bread.

My turkey enchiladas were lousy. I think that they must have taken some diced turkey breast from the refrigerator, rolled the meat up into flour tacos which were placed in a small casserole, spotted with a little tasteless salsa and unidentifiable cheese, and zapped in the microwave. Honestly, there was no flavor to the thing, and it was dry. Really dry.

Our waiter apologized, took the enchiladas off the bill, and asked that we come back and sit at one of his tables again so that he can try to make up for the experience. He was a doll. What is so distressing is that we ordered very simple dinners, and the restaurant couldn’t manage them. I will give the place credit for not serving entrees large enough for three normal people, a common problem today.

There is far much too emphasis on style over food in many of Royal Oak’s restaurants and a tiresome tendency to cater to unattractive singles (or would-be singles) crowds. These people are there only to impress each other and arrange sexual liaisons. They do not deserve to be catered to. Food comes first if the place is called a restaurant. If I have to stay in my own kitchen to get good food, something is wrong. 

~Bonita Sigmundfreud

LEFTOVERS CRIME SCENE

This tray of leftovers is in the kitchen at my work right now. The rules around here are that if there is food in the kitchen, it is up for grabs. The food sits out on the counter for hours and hours. I think this started out as some kind of middle-eastern buffet.

 

A—2/3 of a gnawed-upon pita. Notice it’s mostly wet. Is that grease? Meat juice?

 

B—Cajun carrot. One of many pieces of thoroughly blackened and dried-out vegetables.

 

C—A couple of crumbs of chicken. I think. It may be something else.

 

D—What is this? Correct guess wins a soul kiss from Stavros.

 

E—Meat. I don’t know what kind but it looks and smells like dog food.

SHITTY PAPER DISCOVERS FAVE WE LOVE LONG TIME

"Jane Slaughter"

INYO!

We had been looking forward to the opening of Inyo as much as our ill-fated anticipation of Da Nang (see “THANG LONG”). For months, the signs in the window along Woodward had been taunting us with the promise of a new Asian restaurant. I checked their website every day. Finally there appeared the option to make a reservation, so I put us down for two for last Friday.

Our reservation was for 6:45 because we had plans at 8 to go to the local comedy club. I was kinda nervous that we’d be the only people in the restaurant but I noticed a few other tables occupied by fellow early birds when we walked in. We were greeted by a tall, blonde Russian woman in a stunning black pantsuit. She showed us around so that we could get a feel for the place and choose our seating. In addition to a large bar in the front, tables are lined along the L-shaped northern half of the restaurant with a handful of very cozy, high-backed booths beyond them and a small, dark sushi bar in the rear, although it was a struggle to make note of these things because I was totally mesmerized by the swish-swish of the hostess’s pants in concert with her Slavic sussurations.

We selected a high window table along Woodward so we could keep an eye on the door. And when I say “we,” I mean I exclusively close the table for this reason. I don’t think Stavros cares where we sit as long as there is no heavy a/c blowing in his face. The table was set with red plastic chopsticks and black cloth napkins (chic!) and everything smelled new, new, new. There was the requisite techno music that every Asian restaurant in town (Ronin, Sakana) seems to favor, and two televisions above the half-circle bar, but the atmosphere was nonetheless reasonably pleasant. An abundance of wait staff stood nervously about, and a tallish fellow I presume was the owner hovered between the bar and the door all evening, making fleeting, suspicious eye contact with me, which added an element of intrigue to the evening that I found refreshing.

Our waitress was a very perky and white-toothed Katie. It seems like everyone lately has unnaturally white teeth. It’s very distracting. Anyway, Katie took our drink orders and I was pleased to note a lot of wine by the glass available. Stavros and I looked over the menu and decided to try a bunch of things and share instead of ordering entrees. Most everything on the menu was Japanese, with the exception of a few side dishes (fried rice) and I think two out of three of the poultry entrees (General Tsao’s Chicken, etc). We stuck with the flavors of Nippon for the most part. Here is what we ordered and what we thought:
• Hot and sour seafood soup—Excellent job on the “hot”; not too much white pepper. Could use some more of the “sour,” though.
• Seaweed salad—Good, standard seaweed salad, only served in a martini glass atop three thin lemon slices which made the bottom of the salad very lemony and not so good.
• Agi dashi tofu—Very, very good deep-fried tofu with bonito atop. Only complaint, was supposed to have sauce accompanying, none was provided.
• Ohitashi—Boiled spinach with bonito and dipping sauce. This was great; I have never seen this offered in Detroit and all it needed to be perf was a little soy sauce. (NOTE: We had to ask for soy sauce; none was on the table)
• Fried noodles—This was a $4 side dish that was unexpectedly great. Julienned celery and carrots with bean sprouts and scallions mixed with fried thin egg noodles. See pic here of Stavros with fried noodles and the next item on our list.

• Tempura bowl—Also great. Perfect crispness outside, no greasiness inside. Shrimp, squash, onion…I think that’s it.
• Pickled vegetable roll—Good, nothing crazy but what do you expect with such a pedestrian dish?

I am pleased to report that the ladies’ room is very well done also. In the aforementioned Ronin, I get the distinct feeling they either ran out of money or interest by the time they got to the johns. Junky, dark, and shitty stalls. Inyo may not have a cheesy make-out-on-the-sofa zone with big, open windows, I grant you, but the food’s better and it’s cheaper. It’s also a lot nicer. It’s cleaner. There’s no sleazebag element. Yet, anyway.

Items of note:
1. While I was in the can, the suspiciously spying owner man approached our table and asked Stavros how everything was. I think he waited for me to leave to talk to Stavros alone. Why? I don’t know.
2. The blonde Russian was replaced by a tall black girl in an ill-fitting sari and hideous clunky shoes. Put the blonde back.


Our bill, as you can see here…

…was not that much. You’ll note we each had two drinks, and Stavros’s beers were pints, not the 12-oz versions. I think we’ve spent that much at the Emory (although at the Emory you’d have to combine our bills to come up with a total; see “GALL AT THE EMORY” and “EMORY ON NOTICE”).

We left without dessert (tiramisu and mango something but we were stuffed and we never get dessert but I did ask what it was nonetheless) and went across the street to the comedy club, which was noteworthy only because of my terribly inappropriate attempt to join in the fun of the audience participation of improv. (Was that sentence a bit long and clumsy? Sorry.)

As anyone who has been to one of these things knows, the emcee asks the audience to provide words or scenarios for the comics to work into their acts. Well, as you can see by the bill above, I had two Chenin Blancs at Inyo. I ordered a house white at the comedy club, which turned out to be an especially vile Chardonnay, which I guzzled down quickly to get it over with. I then ordered another one to rinse the rancid taste of the first of one out of my mouth, and the second half of the show began. I should mention that the place was half-empty (optimism varies by locale and temperment; see “CAFÉ HABANA”) and that we were seated at the front table, stage right. So the emcee’s having a hard time generating much enthusiasm from either the boring crowd (a handful of women having a pathetically sedate bachelorette party and a Chinese couple and their underage son who sat in total boozeless silence the whole time) or the performers, who seemed to be going through the motions despite each having profoundly agitating personal problems. I found myself wishing we’d gotten seats in the back so we could slip out. Instead, I guzzled down approximately nine glasses of rotgut Chardonnay in preparation for the nadir of the evening, which can be described thusly: The emcee asks the audience for a three-syllable word beginning with the letter “B.” He keeps talking, apparently describing the part of speech in which this word is used, but my mind was off and running, trying to think of a three-syllable B word.

“BUCHENWALD!” I yell out.

The emcee, who’s standing on the other side of the room, the entirety of the audience between us, glares up from his notes as me and hisses, “I said ‘adjective,’” as all other persons in the room stare poison hate daggers at me.

“BUCHENWALDIAN!” I try again.

At this point, Stavros lays an okay-shut-the-fuck-up hand on my arm and I try to make myself as small, silent, and apologetically posed as possible. Obviously I did not “participate” in the show any more that night, and when it was over, fairly ran to the car. Later I justified my contributions by thinking of the great comedy clubs and comic performances of yore. What kind of stiffs are we growing around here? Reminded me of the time I had the chutzpah to stand up at an Elvis Costello show at Pine Knob and the lady next to me threatened to call security unless I took my seat.

See you at Inyo.

HONG WHA?????

My mother’s birthday fell on Memorial Day this year and since the only place open was the very bogue Bastone, we decided to hold off on going out to celebrate. Last Thursday was the first night we all had open, and my mother chose Hong Hua of Farmington Hills. When this place opened, I remember them getting a ton of ink and being touted as The Most Exquisite Place Ever so I was intrigued and looking forward to our dinner.

The parking lot was pretty full for 6:30 p.m. “They must have a hella rad bar in there,” I commented to my stepfather as we crossed the parking lot.

“Very good,” he replied, as he does to 99.9% of my remarks.

My mom had made reservations for 7 p.m. and said as much to the host when we walked in. He nodded politely and led us into the front dining room (past a sign reading “Proper Attire Requested.”) “It says ‘requested,’ not ‘required,’” I whispered to my mom.

“Obviously they didn’t see it,” she sniffed, gesturing toward a couple sitting to our right. I glanced down at my own torn dress and said nothing.

The host led us to a booth under a window with its shade fully drawn. I slid in and my mother slid in next to me with her giant handbag between us. “Can we move your bag?” I asked, and she picked it up to hand across the table to my stepfather.

“Let’s sit someplace else,” I suggested, realizing that the booth was just way too small for three people, enormous purse or no enormous purse, plus the unavailable window was making me feel even more trapped. The waitress showed us to a four-top which was much better. We ordered drinks and looked over the menu.

I was expecting something really daring inside, dishes I’d never heard of perhaps. Instead, I was staring down a list of items straight from the door-tag carry-out menu from China Buffet on Wyoming and 7 Mile. The waitress reappeared and we ordered—I got Szechuan Chicken, extra spicy, and a fried tofu in “pepper salt” appetizer—and before she left the table, she placed all our napkins on our laps for us, a step I felt she needn’t have taken as I was not really properly attired, after all.

While we waited, my mother informed me that she and my stepfather had recently instituted some cost-cutting measures. Among them, slicing their $14K annual wine budget in half, and contributing less to their favorite political organizations. As I considered spending $14 thousand dollars on wine each year, I gazed around the restaurant, which did not turn out to have a kickin’ bar at all, it was simply very crowded. I noted that none of the booths had three people in them, and concluded that seating us in one originally had been a slight of some sort but I wasn’t sure what it meant. Something racist, I’m sure. I folded the napkin the waitress had carefully embedded between my thighs and to kill time, went to the ladies’ room.

Hong Hua is laid out like Mickey Mouse’s head. We were in the main room, Mickey’s face, and the bathroom was off one ear. As I passed, I glanced in and saw that everyone in that room was Asian. What, they keep the round-eyes out front? I thought. What’s this about? A waiter carrying a huge tray with circular custardy jello-ish desserts maneuvered around me with a scowl. “Pardon me,” I murmured, “you racist!”

The appetizers had arrived by the time I returned, and I was depressed to note that the “pepper salt” on the fried tofu was neither peppery not salty, nor even in attendance as far as I could detect. There was a bed of pre-minced garlic, the type that comes in a jar, beneath the tofu along with a few pieces of jalepeno, and, failing all else, a small silver pitcher of plum sauce. My stepfather really enjoyed this appetizer, telling us several times that "this sauce is really delicious!"

I don’t even want to talk much about the entrees. My mother ordered some kind of shrimp/chicken in a “bird’s nest,” which turned out not to be the Chinese bird’s nest one normally sees on menus, that is, a real bird’s nest, an exotic delicacy. Instead, it was egg noodles deep-fried into a taco-salad bowl shape. My extra-spicy Szechuan Chicken was passable but I had to ask for a side of chili sauce as the dish itself was about as spicy as half-and-half. My stepfather loved what he ordered, which was some kind of beef with large slices of ginger. And when I say “large,” I mean like the size of a Dorito. He agreed to accept my leftovers to take home in the cheery bag pictured above as I knew I would never finish them.

On the way home, we were assailed by at least 25 motorcyclists racing down 696 at terrifying speeds. Of thematic interest: All bikes were rice-burners.

The best part of the whole evening was this fortune. I love typos!