Report on Operation Wine & Tapas
Nothing at all interesting happened last night, so this report is likely gonna suck. Here goes anyway.
There were five of us, two men and three women. I was one of the men (barely) and you may continue to refer to me as Mike, but I will rename the others to protect their identities. One of them reads this blog, I think.
Let's call the women Harvey, Kyle, and Satan. The man we'll call Tina. We met at Satan's downtown apartment, which was extraordinary. A true loft. I had already felt like I was a character in a tv show, but this apartment really drove it home.
"Do Joey and Chandler live across the hall?" I asked her.
We had drinks. Tina wasn't there yet because he was still at work. We were waiting for him, drinking. Satan gave me a black and tan, a mixture of porter and pilsner, saying, "I assumed you'd like something like this."
She was right.
The most interesting thing that happened at the tv show apartment was the discovery of Satan's fascination with gore. In the the course of the conversation, she let it all out—how all she does on the internet is look at murders and suicides and corpses and rotting flesh. She seemed surprised when no one else shared her interest.
"Really? You guys wouldn't click on a link that says MAN GETS BEHEADED IN SLO-MO?"
"Um, no," we told her.
Satan is extremely pretty, and her look is quite dark. Black clothes, black hair, pale skin, striking make-up. Although in her late 20s, I could tell she was a goth girl at some point in her life. This obsession with gore seemed a no-brainer to me.
Once Tina arrived from his waiter job at the trendy restaurant across the trendy street, we finished our drinks and headed out to the trendy wine bar for some trendy tapas. In the preface to this report, viewable here, I had stated that the trendy wine bar was downtown, but I was mistaken. It was clear across town, on the west side where they keep all the rich people.
It was called Uncork'd. Seriously.
Inside, it was just like Central Perk from Friends—open, bright, and colorful. There was a small stage that should've held Phoebe singing "Smelly Cat", but it held instead a silent fake plant. We sat down anywhere because the place was empty.
Our waitress was incongruous. She was not dressed up at all. Uncork'd is a very nice, very upscale place, but our waitress was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. She looked like she was out running errands or something. It was not in keeping with the vibe of the place.
"Rachel off tonight?" I asked her.
"Huh?" she said.
"Nothing."
The food was outstanding. Truly amazing, and worth the high prices they were charging, which is hard for me to admit. Everything was pesto and bread and olive oil and vinegar and brie and artichoky cheese. I ate the living shit out of it. All the dishes were garnished with leek leaves and I became a curiosity to Harvey, Kyle, Satan, and Tina by eating them all up, too.
"You can eat those?" they asked, watching me nibbling away at them, rabbit-like.
"Hells, yeah," I said. "They're the bomb. Try one."
"No, thanks. That's garnish."
Snobs.
"More for me."
Instead of having wine like everyone else, I stuck with beer and drank a few Newcastle Brown Ales. My palate had adjusted to the bitterness of man's best friend back at the apartment and wine would only taste weird to me now.
Provided on the table, for our entertainment apparently, was a little notebook labelled "Wine Tasting Notes". It was filled with comments, reviews, demands for lower prices, and numerous requests for ranch dressing. Unsurprisingly, the ranch requests often contained spelling errors.
"I CANT BELEVE YOU GUYS DON'T HAVE ANY RANCH. GET SOME!"
"NO RANCH DRESING BLOWS!"
"THIS PLACE NEEDS A JUKBOX WITH SOME TOBY KEITH ON IT AND RANCH!"
"I'LL PUT A BOOT IN YOU'RE ASS IF YOU GUYS DONT GET SOM RANCH DRESSING!"
There were no wine tasting notes at all in the wine tasting notebook. It was, however, quite amusing and I read it aloud, to much laughter. I even contributed, filling up an entire page raving about the leeks.
I made it home around midnight, buzzed and stuffed to the brim. I skipped the rye whiskey and went straight to bed, dozing off to my Season Two DVD of Friends.
