Maternal Visit: Day 1

[muckefuck]

Remember that old SNL skit that cut between various first dates as a slide whistle told you what one participant's revelations were doing to the other's estimation? I had a moment like that on the train this evening as I told one of my granola co-workers about my evening.
"Last night I went out for martinis in Wicker Park... (slide whistle goes up)
...with my Mom." (and comes back down!)
Will my tattered shrebs of Gay Urban Hipster credibility ever survive?

It was something of a bust, since the very person we had gone there to see had the night off. But, hey, fantastic $4 martinis, a live fireplace, and the place wasn't even that crowded (which, however, doesn't mean the service wasn't slow; we weren't pretty enough to merit the good waitroning). You'd never recognise it as the reincarnation of the Busy Bee, though. We sat against the wall that used to host the Pope's portrait, but the pictures on the wall now (ugly abstract washes) were for sale. Still, I'm already looking forward to going back there with bunj to try the food.

He, btw, could use some buoying up for reasons I can't even explain without going into a Cartman voice. Also, pressure might encourage him to make good on his promise to write up his opinions about Small Towns on Film. Not to steal his thunder, but let me say briefly that all the wacky, quirky, comic small-town characters from the small town we were exiled to for SIX YEARS must've migrated to picturesque little towns on either coast where their droll antics could be lovingly chronicled by Hollywood filmakers and LA tv producers. That left us with all the burnt-out alcoholics, white trash child abusers, dull upright Dissenters, and dove-hunting farmers' sons for company.

To tie this all together, Mom told me last night how she had to go to neighbouring Moscow Mills to get her taxes done (WTF?) and visited the old house, which has been extensively remodeled. I was scandalised to find that the ginkgo tree in the backyard had been cut down, because the old woman who sold us the place made us promise to leave it standing. Dad, I'm sure, never mentioned this to the new buyers, who seem to have turned the entire backyard into a grandiose two-car garage. Ick.

Comments

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Oh Gosh I miss the Busy Bee! Friends used to live around the corner and every time I visited we'd stop there for a meal.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I miss it, too. I know I could get my ass up to Jackowo and go to the Red Apple for piles of pirogi sometimes, but it just seems so goddamn nowhere.

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

I'm three miles from Greenpoint, the Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn. There's a bus but it goes through some of the bleakest industrial real estate we have in New York, and makes a thoroughly unappetizing approach.