Fish Fried

Last night, we went out with the gaybors for an all-you-can-eat fish fry dinner.  The wife LOVES a good fish fry and thus I indulged her with going to a local bar for dinner.  Usually, there is not much I can do in a bar, unless I want to eat fried appetizers or a plate of ice burg lettuce, but this place as a good menu, so I obliged her need for a fish fry.  It IS Lent, after all.

Funny that the wife wants to observe Lent when she is not a practicing Catholic. Ah well, once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

The place was pretty packed.  Combine St. Patrick Day festivities with Lent and you have a pretty busy Friday night Fish Fry.  Incredibly to me, they have a black bean burger on the menu, so I was a pretty happy camper.  We are eating dinner, talking serious topics with the gaybors, minding our own bee's wax....when we notice this lady at the next table is staring at one of the people at our table.   Openly, obviously, rudely staring.  It was getting kind of weird, when the lady finally blurts out, "Has anyone ever told you you look JUST LIKE Jodie Foster?"

Um, I don't think the lady eating dinner with us looks anything like Jodie Foster, but to each her own.  We stare at Jodie, stare at the lady, stare at Jodie.  Nope, doesn't look like Jodie Foster, but our Jodie says, "Other people have told me that."

Huh.

This must be the invitation the lady needed because she now turns around, faces our table and starts talking about various random subjects of which make little sense but are very entertaining (kinda like reading this blog, I'm afraid--although, I'm not drunk when writing it, so I really have no excuse).  It is obvious this woman has had one too many beers, not only evidenced by her slurred speech, hilarious comments and embarrassment by those eating dinner with her but also by the fact that the bar has given her a plastic cup while the rest of her party is drinking out of fancy glass beer mugs.  When one of the gaybors points this out to her, she acknowledges her "drinking receptacle" was not the same as the people in her party.  Drinking receptacle!  This woman is going to be fun.

She saunters over to our table and states: "I'm not drinking one of those FANCY beers in a FANCY mug, like you.  I'm drinking Miller Light in my plastic drinking receptacle."


The wife keeps shoveling fish fry and the lady keeps talking.  First, she talks about how much she hates when people wear "those ashes" on their foreheads all day.  "What the hell is it with these people keep those ashes on their foreheads all day? God-d*mn ashes.  Like I want to stare at their ashes all day.  Why do they keep those ashes on all day? I just want to wipe them off. I hate those god-d*mn ashes." 

For no reason, the woman stops talking about ashes and moves on to how she is in the process of "making four dreadlocks."   She shows us one of the dreadlocks (of which I cannot see but take her word for it) and slurs about about how she loves the dreads and is working hard to "make" them. When Jodie asks how one makes dread locks, the wife casually states, "you don't wash your head to make dreadlocks." This completely insults and infuriates the woman: "I WASH MY GOD D*MAN HAIR!"  Pissed off, the lady rants at length about how she is growing these four dreadlocks but certainly washes her hair.  "I wash my hair every day.  I have really clean hair!" The wife wisely chooses to focus on the fish and not the lady's ire about dirty hair.


At this point, the gaybor is quite intrigued and decide to purposefully engage her.  "Hey, what's your name?" drunk girl asks Idea Grrrl.  (Drunk Girl has met her match but doesn't yet know it.)  Idea Grrrl answers, "Calliope."  Inebriated or not, Drunk girl doesn't fall for it: "That's not your name! What is your NAME? What do you DO?"


Idea girl replies, "Susan.  I'm a sandwich artist at Beef-a-roo."  (For the record, her name is not even close to Susan and she certainly does not work at Beef-a-roo.)  Drunk Girl doesn't fall for that, either: "You don't make sandwiches at Beef-a-roo."  Idea Grrrl asks Drunk Girl about her name and profession.  Drunk Girl answers, "Liz." She then whispers, "I'm a nurse."  When asked where she is a nurse, Liz gives us a very serious look and says, "at an undisclosed location."


Drunk but still has a filter, which in this case is probably a very good thing.

Her husband looks mortified but does nothing to stop this nonsense.  I figure he has no control over the situation so he focuses on his "fancy beer" and ignores his wife as much as possible.  We assure the other woman in their dinner party that all is well and that we are enjoying this--no worries.  At least she cared enough to inquire if she should drag Liz away from our table.

As the dinner goes on, so does Liz.  She is very intrigued by Idea Grrrl and so the banter continues.  When Idea Grrrl  says she is going to go flirt with Liz's husband, Liz rolls her eyes and says, "go ahead.  He won't know what to do.  Show him a boob or something."  Further conversation (and I do use that term loosely) included a discussion about her long eyelashes ("they are REAL!) how she is "benign," if I am Grrrl's lover (that's pretty funny for more than one reason--most notably that I am old enough to be Idea Grrrl's mother) and how she wants to do a shot with Idea Grrrrl.

It is at this point I thought it time to leave.  When people start to do shots, I run and take cover.  Besides, the wife has eaten all she can eat and I still have this stupid cough, which makes me exhausted. I no longer have enough energy to follow the drunken stupor of a conversation.


When we left, Idea Grrrrl and Liz were lined up at the bar, waiting for the bartender to pour the shots.  Liz was trying to dig her I.D. out of her wallet, as the bartender had carded her (Liz was very much over the drinking age--I think it was a stall tactic by the bartender) and Idea Grrrrl was looking very amused.  We didn't wish her good luck growing her dread locks or in wiping ashes off of people's foreheads; we just kept moving.

...Sure gave a whole new meaning to Fish Fry--more like fish fried. 
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