Sunday I hosted noder ushdfgakjasgh and his utterly lovely, charming
girlfriend at my restaurant. This is a milestone for me; I've not ever had a
noder visit there before.
Prior to their arrival, I ran around handing out crisp $20 bills to the staff to ensure that they called me "sir" or "Paul" instead of the usual "whaddaya
want, dickhead?!"
The moment of their arrival arrived. I'd imagined ushdfgakjasgh to be perhaps
a grad student, in his late 20s. Well, was I in for a surprise. He and his
girlfriend couldn't have been more than 13 years old. Really, though, these
doe-eyed recent high school graduates made me feel every second of my 50 years
on this earth. "Ush" as I'll call him from now on, is a man of spare words, most
of them "okay." I do believe I overwhelmed them a bit with my loquacious first
greeting.
In the spirit of nodermeets, I did a bad thing and offered these two
younglings the Devil's drink. They both discovered Asahi (from Japan) and
thoroughly enjoyed it.
Young Ush is a very, very smart person. His interests are myriad; playing and
listening to avant garde music in obscure genres, art, and minimalist style.
And anarchy. If one reads his homenode, one will discover that
his other interest, reiterated several times, is "crushing E2." In my head; I
combined the "anarchist" thing together with "crushing E2" and became frightened
that he may have secreted some sort of little surprise on his person.
They ordered dinner and watched politely as I dominated the conversation,
occasionally sipping on a Pepsi, which saturated my bushy white mustache, and
then fell onto my white polo shirt. I do believe I did that with dumpling
dipping sauce, too.
After a delightful conversation about styles of music Ush revealed that he
plays quite a few instruments and screams. Yes, screams; not sings. That nixed the
idea I had for him to sit in with me and the evening's entertainment to do a
song. The thought crossed my mind of the already sparse crowd that night getting
up and running for their lives as Ush accompanied himself on the piano howling
an ode to sex with Beelzebub in Death Metal fashion.
In all truth, however, given the musical tastes of Ush and his lovely friend,
I must commend them for enduring most of a three-hour show of jazz standards,
performed by cabaret singer Joel Garcia and pianist Jonathan Chatfield.
(Although during my performance of "Route 66" I could hear moans from their
corner of the room that sounded something like "my ears; my ears; oh, my God; my
ears!") The most precious of quotes from Ush was "all I hear is him (the
vocalist) starting with one song and switching to another." This was
particularly evident in Joel's take on "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." I explained
that in the '30s and '40s all songs had an introduction; but one rarely
hears them anymore - the artists go right for the melody. Well, at my place
we've taken great pains to get musical scores which include the
introductions; and Joel sang and Jonathan played them all with aplomb.
The evening ended all too soon. I wished both young people well on the
occasion of their rapidly-approaching first years at College. They bade farewell
in kind.
The infrared camera equipped with a parabolic
microphone in my parking lot picked up the following conversation:
Ush: "What a crazy old fuck. I thought he'd never stop talking!"
Ush's g/f: "The food was good, though."
Ush: "Is that the kind of music all old people listen to? No
wonder they're all Republicans."
Ush's g/f: "No. I think it's just him and a few of his friends. There
weren't many people in there."
In unison: "Whoa, the whole back wall of the place is white!"
Ush's g/f: "Go into the trunk and get the Krylon and let's tag it!"
I was thinking about shooting 'em, but I don't like to shit where I eat.