Almost Tastes Like The Real Thing

I was waiting on this mother and daughter, they were Japanese, the Mom paid with crispy fifties I remember and barely spoke any English. So her daughter, about my age, ordered for them.

She said:

"I'll have a Diet Cock and she'll have a legular Cock."

About twenty minutes later the daughter waved me over and motioned towards her Mom and said:

"Could she have some more Cock please?"

I had to walk away.

Overheard At The Restaurant

"So you take a plastic flamingo, saw off its legs and fill it with beer."

I dropped off their drinks and kept moving. A few minutes later, still curious, I had to ask. What do you then do with this legless flamingo?

Well, the guy in the group explained, it's called a Flabongo, it's a beer bong made out of a plastic flamingo.

Fascinating.

Junko.

There are few things in life that tickle me more than the unintentional botching of the English language by someone who is not a native speaker. Take for instance, my dear friend Junko, who is from Japan. Though she is completely fluent in English and has lived here for ten years, she, too, sometimes has a tough time. The L's and the R's are, of course, a problem. We used to know a girl named Hillary that caused Junko all sorts of problems. Sometimes, just for fun, we make Junko say "Jerry's Famous Deli's Jelly Beans." She's a good sport about it.

One night, while working at the restaurant, Junko was waiting on an Italian man, his English much worse than hers. He sat down and ordered a "Chivas" (...Regal, the Scotch-Whiskey). Junko said ok, great, and went into the back to put in the order. Twenty-five minutes later a "seabass" arrived on the man's table.

Brilliant Questions I Was Recently Asked At The Restaurant:

"Now this wine, the cabernet sauvignon, it's caffeine free, right?" by a well-dressed woman who looked like she should know better.

"Could you ask the kitchen if I could have a female chicken please?" by a body-builder type man with a bandanna on his head.

And my favorite, by a really drunk, fairly overweight woman while slurring her words, "Do you have like a muffin basket or something?"
(It is a sushi restaurant, and it was 10 p.m.)

Just Another L.A. Day

At the cafe table across from me a group of older, gray-haired ladies sit down and one of them says, "Hi, you're back! We've missed you!" to their Mexican waiter who says he just returned from thirty days in Oaxaca. "Oh I love Oaxaca, it's so beautiful there! Did you hear that Deb," she says to her friend who is finishing something on her phone, "He's from Oaxaca!"

At the table next to me, a director, or producer, is talking to a young girl, early twenties, maybe younger -- wearing one of those headbands over her bangs, which I used to like a few years ago but not so much anymore -- about a film he is making that he wants her to be in. He brings up theater and she says she hasn't done any in L.A. but back in Ottawa there was something called the Fringe Festival and she was in that once.

It is sunny and still, cloudless, but hazy at the edges. There are no waves and no wind. The palm trees are limp and sort of crispy looking. Early this morning it was cold enough for a scarf -- and a coat -- but once the sun came all the way up I had to take off all outer layers and put on my sunglasses so the white magazine pages I was reading wouldn't blind me.

Across the boardwalk, a man plays guitar on a bench. He is old and black and wearing sunglasses and I think for a second he sort of looks blind, and then I think, now Lilibet just because he is black and wearing sunglasses and playing music does not mean he's blind.

Very fit and very tan joggers run past, many with dogs, one lady with three on one of those three pronged leashes.

A woman in a long tattered coat, and no shoes, stomps past screaming an animal-like "Rarrrrrrr!" and then screams, toward an imaginary enemy, "I'm gonna find you and kill you! Who leaves a baby! A baby! Rarrrrrrr!" We all look up and shake our heads and a man at another table says, "Welcome to Venice!" and we all give a sort of half-laugh.

I finish my coffee and my New Yorker article about Levi Johnston winning some porn award for his forthcoming appearance in Playgirl and ask for the bill from the Oaxacan waiter. When it arrives I am excited to see it's only $3.51 since I made it in before 9 am, when everything on the menu is fifty percent off. I have to get home to get my laundry out of the dryer before one of my neighbors takes it out and puts it on top of the counter so they can put their laundry in, which always completely creeps me out, the thought of someone else handling my underwear. Fortunately/unfortunately when I get to the laundry room I realize the dryer cycle never started because one of the quarters I inserted was actually from the Republica De Costa Rica and I wonder why in the hell I have a coin from the Repulica De Costa Rica but I don't have time to think about that because I have to get back to my computer to write, then run, then shower, then go on an audition for a Newcastle commercial at 1, for the role of "Female Newcastle Patron" who, according to the casting breakdown, is supposed to be:

"Attractive. Cute. Sophisticated. Confident, individualistic, laid-back and interesting. She's the type of person you'd like to hang out with, interesting/unique enough that you're drawn to her, but at the same time approachable. Tats okay. Urban sophistication as well. MUST BE 25 OR OLDER."

This all before cocktail waitressing at 5.

Just another day as the ultimate L.A. hyphenate: writer/actress/waitress/sometimes fitness model/sometimes box girl/ and hopefully soon-to-be grad student.

As a guy in a recent writing class said, "Are you like Jamaican or something? Cause you got alotta jobs."

No I am not Jamaican, but yes I do got alotta jobs, yes indeed I do.

I Was Workin' as a Waitress at a Cocktail Bar..

Overheard on the same night...

"Well what in the world were you doing poking holes in beers and chugging them with 18 year-olds?" from a 30-something woman to a 30-something man.

And:

"You see, when I was in AA..." from a man to his date, while drinking a Kettle One martini, up, with two olives.

Can I Interest You In Another Stuffed Mushroom Cap Perhaps?

I may be smiling on the outside but on the inside I am seriously considering strangling myself with this stupid red tie and/or poisoning the next cocktail of the girl who insisted I get in this picture. There is nothing -- nothing -- more depressing than catering. Watching everyone else get drunk and have a good time while you peddle pigs-in-a-blanket and get asked where the bathroom is.