Circus Lion Meat (Cigar Smoke 2-11-10)

Well, the little woman and I decided to go out for an evening of dinner and entertainment the other night. (By the way, I use the term “little woman” not because I am a sexist pig, but because Marge is indeed a little woman. She’s only four inches tall and I hold her in my hand.)

Anyway, before we left for the entertainment venue, I thought I would try out my new navigation app that I bought for my iPhone. I set everything up, I put in the address, I punched the buttons, and it seemed to be ready to go. I did a little app jig in the living room. Then we get in the car and, as I was driving, Marge was in charge of holding the iPhone, which was tough for her because the iPhone was also four inches tall. And as we were driving I kept asking her what the directions were. The app was supposed to talk to us in its little app voice. And guide us to our destination. But there was no response. Nothing. Just the silent treatment.

And I was getting all whacked out of shape and cursing and screaming and Marge was encouraging me with a “just drive, dumb ass” every once in a while. I had to just say to hell with the supposedly talking app and find the place myself. I don’t know how, but we got there and we got our table and I looked at the iPhone and I noticed that I had forgotten to turn the sound on. The app was talking to me after all, but I had not let it express itself fully. Marge wants to know if there is an app for being a dumb ass.

So we order dinner and we get two appetizers. Marge gets some commie French thing and I get the quesadillas with the guacamole dip that will jet propel me back home even without a car. Then we get two really great salads with killer crusty rolls and life looks livable again. And then our entrees arrive.

I had ordered a tri-tip with some special Roquefort sauce and that sucker was sitting on the plate like it had been there since it had been grazing in the pasture. And it was looking back at me. And it was not happy. I couldn’t quite tell, but I think it was giving me the finger.

I said to Marge, “Have you ever seen roast beef with semi-liquid white fluid on it before?” “Only when I worked at Huntington Hospital that one year,” she replied.

I kept looking at the tri-tip out of the corner of my eye, because I didn’t want to make direct eye contact with it and piss it off even more. But because I was hungry and because I will eat almost anything, I decided to take a bite. Holy Hoofed Dead Animal, that was not my best decision. It did not taste good. It did not taste healthy. It did not taste edible. It not only made my skin crawl, it made my tongue crawl. And I don’t blame my tongue — I was trying to crawl someplace myself.

Then I looked over at Marge and she was trying to crawl away from her dinner, too. I said, “Come back here. What did you order?” And she said, “I ordered the stuffed trout.” I said, “What was it stuffed with?” She said, “Rotting intestines and wolf feces.” I said, “Hmm?

Pretty creative.”

I ask you. I implore you. What are the odds that two people can order two completely different dinners, one dinner from the earth and one dinner from the lake, and have both dinners be so bad that we wouldn’t even try to trade them to each other? It was unbelievable. Both dinners looked gross and tasted worse. I wouldn’t have fed this stuff to enemy soldiers.

But all was not lost. Most of it was. But not all of it. We did find one shining blessing in the entertainment. While we were consuming an extra order of the killer crusty rolls and downing a few alcoholic beverages to give hope to our mortally wounded taste buds, some actor on the stage yells out, “I am going to jump down my own butthole and hang myself!”

I am not making that up. The actor guy said, “I am going to jump down my own butthole and hang myself!” Marge and I laughed so hard we spit up booze-drenched bits of crusty rolls, which made us laugh even harder.

And then, as we were leaving the theater, the hostess asked us how we liked our dinners, and I said, “If I ever eat here again I am going to jump down my own butthole and hang myself!”

Then we ran to the car like eloping teenagers and started driving home. After a while, I asked Marge to check my email. She flipped on my iPhone and it started yapping out directions. At the next street, turn left. In a half a mile, exit here. Yap, yap, yap.. And I grabbed the phone and yelled at it, “If you don’t stop your little app yapping, I am going to jump down my own butthole and hang myself!”