All's Swell That Ends Swollen

this weekend was FAMILY-FRIENDLY, son. almost as wholesome as a mother-daughter pageant (no wait, did i say wholesome? i meant soulless)...almost as peaceful as a father-son picnic (no wait, did i say peaceful? i meant cutthroat)...no, but really it was none of these things. it was just straight-up nice, yo.

1. For Pita's Sakes! You Hummus-t Be Mistaken. I Am Over 12, Err...I mean 21!

cut to friday. i took my sister out to dinner at a lebanese restaurant. due to a bit of a wait, we got drinks in a crowded lobby area where there was a multitude of babies spazzing and their yuppie parents staying undeniably calm via drinking. welcome to friday night in the suburbs.

the bartender humiliated me completely by asking for my ID. just kidding. i always get carded. because i look 13, and the braces don't help my case. unless my case is that i'm pleading that i'm a minor, in which case i would win everything. the sad part is my ID photo, as is the situation with many people's, makes me look like a delinquent. a juvenile delinquent, no less.


do people ever really look this happy when getting carded? i wonder if anyone has ever cried.
photo courtesy of Flickr and cnystrom

we finally sat down...and needless to say, we got served. by about 50 different waiters. how do you know how to tip your server if you have 50 of them? i took the average of the worst and the best ones, with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.4 impromptu smiles.

post-(traumatic-stress)-dinner, we painted the town zed (the new red) with our zzzzzz's but not before i sent out a good number of these, the new mandatory way of expressing how you feel about someone. anyone. including a dust bunny under your sofa.

2. NEW JERSEY: THE [secret] GARDEN STATE...cuz i ain't seen no gardenz, shooooo.

i dragged my sister on the 3 hour sojourn to new jour-sey for a comedy gig. i decidedly decided that my sister is definitively family because while i took the wheel to that abundantly industrial place, she handfed me a bagel eggwich in small pieces, in the process, coating her hands in the egg-and-processed-cheesy smell of, well, egg and processed cheese. the only familial step above that would be chewing the food for me and then depositing it in my gullet for me (as evidence, i cite the case of baby bird v. nature).


diced worm in a saliva gravy againnnnn?
photo courtesy of Flickr and fabrisalvetti

sister and i learned en route that when you are driving on major highways and you both turn to look at weird-looking people driving, they can see you looking at them, and choose the peak creep factor time to then slowly turn and gaze back at you with their highly sensitive laser beam all-knowing eyes. luckily we were already in our biohazard suits by that point and did not sustain any lasting toxic interpersonal trauma from the incident.

once arriving in new jersey after only one incident in which we were going due south instead of due north, we ate at yet another middle eastern establishment (so the weekend could have a theme for our memoirs…i jest). our waiter was kind enough to drip some of his hair grease into my sandwich for extra flavor, and the alluring bellydancer in the room managed to make every father figure in the room feel awkward in front of his wifey and kids, which was almost as fun as watching the dancing itself. once she was done, a jersey girl entered the room for a saturday night dinner with her folksies sporting the latest fashion, a t-shirt as a dress. i guess she had second shift for making all the daddies in the room get gawkward.

then comedy show. hoorah! the first time my sister’s seen me perform since…the first time eons ago. all went smooth enough that i didn’t sail home on a sea of tears.

3. Day of Rest(lessness)

since i am mostly talking about the weekend in terms of meals, i ain’t going to stop now. homestretch, baby! sunday dinner was eventful in that my parents came back from the wedding they attended in ohio and demanded a family dinner. carryout was in order and i went crazy and decided to order a thanksgiving size asian vegetarian meal including a fancy new orange faux-chicken entrée entitled something like Orange Heaven that i would never have considered on any other day of the week. but on sunday, i get restless and sometimes i mishear my inner voice and think by restless, i mean reckless. anyway, the Orange Heaven was much closer to an Orange Hell as it was basically tofu chew-toys in orange juice soup but no one wanted to complain until i had admitted that i had possibly made one of the worst meal choices ever known. after which, i broke out into hives, which i showed off to my sister as my latest talent.


family dinner is still fun when you’re all disappointed, but not at each other
photo courtesy of Flickr and MattNewton

the (week)end