Critique Before Pancakes
Bernadette walking down 1st Ave. just above Houston began foot-tapping her niece, Sofia, and me on the other side, in the ass, with an alternating back kick while still moving forward, and in doing so resembled a member of the ministry of funny walks. Bernadette earlier in a lapse of cognitive prowess had asked the cashier at the movie house how old one had be to qualify for a child's ticket. Sofia, a few years shy of being old enough to vote, suffered this patiently. After the third kick in the ass Sofia asked Bernadette--"and how old are you?" Bill Macy walked a few strides ahead, easily pretending he did not know us.
We had seen Persepolis, an animated recent history of Iran over the last 35 years as seen through the eyes of a child progressing towards adulthood.
A central theme in the movie is pride in one's heritage, under adverse conditions.
This morning, after picking up a paper on Clinton I walked a couple of blocks west to a diner on Houston and just as I approached the restaurant, coming from the opposite direction were three mean ass looking, wife-beater wearing, Puerto-Rican restaurant critics. They all looked to be in foul spirit but the middle critic was the most vocal about it. "Don't ever eat here," he said to his buddies while motioning to the door handle I was ten seconds away from grabbing. I am not one to ignore the opinions of others so I paused and waited for more, but hoping they would quickly pass so I would not seem to be a direct threat to this man's contention that the restaurant was unworthy. I did not want him up in my face saying, "you calling me a liar?" and me thinking, hopefully not out loud, "certainly not my good man; puffed up, aggressive, a foul-mouthed belligerent asshole, perhaps, but liar? No, really, I haven't a shred of evidence to support the idea of you as single-parent prevaricator, a lying bastard, if you will."
The apoplectic critic spewed on as I looked for an imaginary something in my coat pocket, then feeling a likely prop, extracted my cell phone and checked for messages which were unlikely to exist nor in any case could I see, as my glasses were hanging around my neck.
I waited for his specific critique of this restaurant, although I already knew the place to be not really all that good. In the end he surprised me by saying, "it's...it's full of fucking white people." Lucky for me I was born with a chameleon-like speckled complexion, but still I hesitated to enter the restaurant, right in front of these guys now, because to be casually inspected I certainly do appear to be white. In the end though I manned up and entered, pretty much a straight up white guy, my dominant Arab blood hidden for better or worse behind a very successful assimilation into the world of white middle class America.
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