But it is done. And now it is time to finally vaccuum my room, where the white carpet has turned black from an accumulation of dog hair that I have ignored for eight weeks. It is time to think about where the hell I am going to stay in a few days when I arrive in...Frankfurt?? It is time to think about how foolish it was to leave a week to pack my shit and buy a car and move to Chicago and find an apartment. It is time to shave my beard.
My parents, who have kindly thrown food at me for the last two months, finally got to take their daughter to dinner tonight. We walked down Castro Street in Mountain View. Castro Street, when I was younger, was most notable for its Weinerschnitzel franchise. In 2008 it is happening hotspot for all the mid-Peninsula 28 year-olds who work at Google, Intel, or Yahoo. There's lots and lots of new restaurants. My parents and I walked up and down the street trying to decide where to eat. My dad offered a running commentary of stereotypes and offensive things about different ethnicities as we passed by the restaurants. We passed by Shiva's, an Indian place, and my dad said, "Ooo, Indian!" and faced the plate glass and nodded/wagged/tilted his head from side to side. We passed a mediterranean restaurant, and my dad pronounced, "A mediterranean's favorite thing to do is eat dog shit." We passed by a Benihana-style Mongolia BBQ restaurant where one chef manned a giant grill with a yardlong sharpened wooden stick. "Why does that man use a wooden stick?" I asked. "Because he doesn't want to get burned," my dad replied, "They're cooking him!" We then passed by East West Bookstore and dad said, "I want to eat here!" and pointed at the earth-toned linen daishikis on display in the window. Then he said, "But honestly, every time I walk past this store my rectum feels looser. Going inside is like having your rectum release. It's so peaceful. Sometimes I'll just buy a CD and go home and go to the bathroom. So relaxing." We settled on a brand new Korean BBQ/tofu stew place that my parents selected because it was brand new. "We'd better eat here lots more in the new few weeks, before their furnishings get old and dirty," my parents declared. When we sat down, there was crap all over the table and the waiter came with a spray bottle of Windex to clean it up. When the waiter sprayed the table my dad literally leapt out of his chair, knocked it backward, and retreated to the front door with his hand covering his mouth and nose. After the waiter was done, my dad returned and instructed me and my mom to wipe the table again with a stack of paper towels he produced from his chest pocket. Then my dad went to inspect the plastic food samples at the front of restaurant. He returned and declared that he understood the difference between bi bim bap and gol sok bi bim bap (a stone pot and an egg), except he kept pronouncing it "pee pee pa" and "golo pee pee pa." He seemed to really like the sound of what he was saying, because he looked at the menu and said, "Vegetable pee pee pa, tofu pee pee pa, seafood pee pee pa, chicken pee pee pa, beef pee pee pa, pork pee pee pa." When he got to seafood pee pee pa, he paused and said, "Oh. That's wooooonderful" with a German accent. He and my mom speculated about what the equivalent of pee pee pa was in Chinese, and decided that there was no equivalent phrase. Then my dad seized the pen with which I was transcribing his words and attempted to write "bulgogi" in Korean, since he believes he can write Korean, but he gave up after drawing a circle and three lines on my napkin. When the waitress took our order, my mom said, "Don't too salty!" which the waitress did not understand, after which my dad said, "Not too much salt, please. Kidney problems!" Then I drew a long oval with three smaller ovals in a line to illustrate to my mom what galbi was. I ordered a bottle of millet wine. My parents loved it and immediately suggested that I buy another bottle and bring it to Stephanie. "Stephanie would love this!" my dad said. "But you can't bring more than three ounces of liquid in your carry on," my mother said. Then my dad argued that millet wine was a solid. They debated this for a while. My dad picked up the bottle and scrutinized the Korean words, then announced to the table that he was extremely confident the first word meant "Super." He called the waiter over to the table and asked him what the word meant, and the waiter said, "A shell from a mussel." We ate in near complete silence because all of us were busy gnawing tendons from the galbi. My dad insisted that this was the best restaurant he'd ever been to and my mom said this was the first time in her life my dad had ever appreciated her restaurant choice. My dad and I got tipsy on very little millet wine, and my mom drove us home while we chatted about how not accelerating at all at stoplights produces the best gas mileage in the Corolla but brings the wrath of other drivers.
I really enjoy hanging out with my parents! Maybe my transcription of dinner doesn't capture how weird they really are. They're really weird! Or does everyone think their parents are weird?
Okay, whatever! I am leaving on a jet plane in a few short hours. I'll be going from place A to place B by plane, train, and bus in the next three weeks. Maybe I'll see you? Maybe I'll die? If I die, I love you and I devise my condo to the University of Southern California (known as UCLA), my XYZ stock to David and Victoria as joint tenants with the right of survivorship, and will momentarily come back from the dead to give a valid inter vivos transfer of my 1932 Phaeton automobile (a quasi-community property acquisition) to Ohner, my dear friend, in fee simple, forever and ever amen. If I die, I'll haunt all of you so you won't have to worry about not seeing me again. If I don't die, I'll resume blogging again when there is a live case or controversy warranting my jurisprudence. If I fall off a cliff and am not heard from in a while, remember that absence without tidings for two years is a common law death and all the above about dying (love, devises, and haunting) will hold true. If I am merely maimed, come and visit me. Otherwise, ta for now!
1 comment:
Oh my god, you are awesome. And your family is perhaps weirder than most, though most families are weird. I totally relate though.
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