Overheard at Table 4: Liver and Cheese

Daughter, "Mom doesn't understand how tough it is to date."


Dad, "Yes, she does."


Son, "Hardly!  She probably only ever dated you!"


Dad, "And what's that supposed to mean, son?"


Son, "Well, come on, Dad, Mom's just not ... well, like THAT!"


Dad, "Hey kid, your mom was a steamin' hottie when I met her, and she's gotten hotter every day I've known her."


Daughter, "Ew Dad!  Gross!"


Dad, "Steamin'!"


Daughter, "Dad!  Really!"


Dad, "You kids never knew it, but your mom had a lot of guys trying to go out with her, but I always say I won her over with Liver and Cheese."


Son, "What the hell is 'Liver and Cheese'?"


Dad, "So glad you asked that, son!"


Daughter, "Why did you do that?"


Son, "Walked into that one."


Dad, "Whenever I knew some guy had designs on your mom, I would always find a way to meet up with the guy when she wasn't around, and I would say to them, 'Hey man!  Liver and Cheese!' and they would say, 'What?' and I would say:


LIVER ALONE!
CHEESE MINE!"


...


...


Son, "I'm now wondering why she ever married you."


Daughter, "Really, Dad.  It's a frikkin' miracle that we're even here!"

Overheard at Table 2: Gen-Ex-Centric - Micky D's

MR says to Niall Carter, "It was the early 90's, I think, and I was at a McDonalds.  I was ordering like a Quarter Pounder with cheese and I wanted them to hold the onions.   I'd had a friend who'd worked at a McDonalds and they said that if you order it with a change, that's when they make it fresh.  Otherwise you get just what's been sitting on the warming tray for two hours,

"and the kid looks at me at says, 'Uh, I don't think I can do that,' and I asked 'Why not?' and he says, 'I don't have the picture for that," and I said, 'What do you mean?' and he motioned me to look around at the cash register.  I leaned over and looked at it and yeah, all it was was columns and rows of pictures:  Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, Fries, the different drinks.

"It was then I realized, 'We're hosed.  This next generation is not going to be able to read, or think, or do anything that doesn't conform to one button of one cartoon picture that gives them an easy choice."

Niall Carter says, "Fast forward to now.   My wife is all the time complaining that while she's texting, her phone keeps putting up icons.   She was trying to tell her brother that's it was really warm yesterday, misspelled 'warm' sent him a picture of a green WORM."

MR says, "Exactly!"

ZTAC Living Room - Camper Van Beethoven

They can call it Wolfgang's Vault.
But it's also the Living Room of the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café.
Because they are the same.
ZTAC is anywhere acoustic music is performed.

Overread at Booth 3: The Places Where We Wish to Die

The Places Where We Wish to Die



We think of all the places we want to die:
In Paris, while dancing down the Champs-Elysees in the rain,
Or frozen into a permanent fixture on the side of Mount Everest,
                where other climbers will nod their respect as they
                 pass our Zen formation on their way to the peak.

 Perhaps we wish to die being gored while running with the bulls
                in Pamplona, after a night’s drinking and unleashing our inner                    
                Ernest Hemingways,

or perhaps we wish to die in the arms of our lover, or beloved, or loved one,
the one we have loved for decades, or met just recently, or just

                someone.

 And that’s it, then, isn’t it?

 Because the place that we do not wish to die,
is some grey room in some grey bed with some grey pillow for our one grey head:
the curtains drawn and the door shut and nobody around us to
note our passing, until someone knocks on the door the next day,

to find us, already gone,

               only to push one button, to call for nameless others to wrap us
                and remove us, and make ready our grey room

for another grey head:

                someone else

 who will never be trampled in Pamplona,
nor frozen on Everest,

                 nor dance down the Champs-Elysees

                                 in the rain.






MR
2019-0130

Overread at Table 2: These Are Days in Eden

SC 256 T8 - 10,000 Maniacs “Eden”

These are the days in which we are unmade,
like a bed with rumpled sheets and no maid to clean them:
not here; not in this feral mist
that swirls outside this dank motel room
filled with cigarette stains and diesel fumes,

and the curtains are like shrouds and the cobwebs
fill the corners of broken windows and we long for

the break of daylight in winter,
the call of gulls at seasides,
the dark purple rain across the spiny ridge of mountains
that brings that smell of new Spring.

MR

2019-0128

Overheard at Booth 1: A Couple After Church

Wife: I wish you could understand more Spanish.

Husband: I do understand Spanish.

Wife: Well, you never seem to understand anything that Rocio is saying to you when she's talking to you.  You seem like you are not hearing a word she's saying.

Husband: It's probably because I'm too busy basking in the pheromone cloud of her sublime sultriness.

Wife: You are so lucky we just got out of church or I would stab your eyes out right here with this plastic fork.

Overread at Booth 2: Crystalline

Crystalline

                You are like the waters of the North Sea,

                                always cold and ever changing.
                Some will say that the ocean turns
                                different colours
                                                depending on the angle of
                                                the sun.

                But you, my dear, are constant,

                                bright, shining, reflecting
                                sparks of light from
                                each undulating wave.

                Your curves are cold yet mysterious.

       

                You are like the North Sea,

                               ever present –

                                                eternally changing.

MR

2018-0420