"Exploding Fish Meets the Thousandaires"
King Feddy stiffed me for lunch today, deciding it was more important to "know what my company is working on" and go to Apple's World Wide Developer Conference. An interesting choice considering, say, that he quit and then rejoined said company in a mere matter of days this year. (Not to mention his inherent prima donna disdain of management -- odd how he never works for anyone or anything that he truly likes and yet hits it big. Maybe that's my problem -- I've never become rich because I've always kind of liked my jobs? And more strangely, the ones I was least enamored with were the ones that paid off the most ... Hmm ...)
With the King out of the picture, I get the chance to eat my favorite food, namely fish; but I need to round-up a colleague. With the exception of breakfast, I consider eating to be a communal event -- you always should eat with someone, and it's pretty "wrong" if you don't.
I've been trying to get hold of Zz for a couple of weeks now and was both pleased and surprised to get him on the phone at 11:00. The good news is he can eat; the bad is I'll have to wait 'til 14:00.
No problem, I talk to various pals and drop back into a heavy stupor -- easy since I haven't yet left my bed for the day. My alarm waking me up to make the date.
When I pick up Z, he asks if Bo3b can come along. "Of course." I rarely consider Bo3b to be a possibility for lunch. Unless the event-of-the-moment is something he's already planned for personal reasons, it's always been difficult to get him to go beyond his normal stomping grounds -- and, as with nearly everything in everyone's life, as he gets older this trait is getting more pronounced.
The good thing about this lunch threesome is we've all known each other for more than 20 years. We think and act more like brothers than we do as friends, which means the conversation could run any gamut from the hilarious, to gut-wrenching insulting, to the dreadfully insightful.
The boys enter the continual car and we tussle possibilities. No one really has a preference, but Z suggests our old stand-by, the Fish Market. I'm fine with that, but would rather go to Cook's Seafood since Menlo Park is typically a bit of a haul for me, but within reasonable shot from the parking space here at Danger.
Cook's can be pressingly busy on the lunch hour, but by 14:00, the business pace is a saunter. Bo3b gets obsessed with the closed-dwon Arby's next door ("Why does it say 'Cook's' in front of it?" "I don't know." "Look! It says 'Cook's!'" "I know. Jesus." [Hint: It's being turned into, that's right, another Cook's restaurant.]), we shake him loose from the concept and go in.
I order local halibut and chips. Z and 3 both get cod and chips.
The conversation turns and wheels quickly, as it always does between us, but the vast majority of what we're talking about is money. Money in the form of rising gas prices, money in the form of Apple announcing a new iPhone, money in the form of Microsoft buying Danger.
What Bo3b is to the physical world, Z is to the intellect. It's extremely tough, if not impossible, to get him to converse over-and-above anything he hasn't been thinking about recently or has a true interest in ... what with Microsoft's buy-out (including the lucrative knock-on offers) and the Apple announcements, the agenda for lunch discussion is all but pre-set.
There are momentary meanderings. My favorite of the day was a person (I won't say whom) claiming the primary value of women was a form of entertainment. This is a chumming statement at a table filled not only with middle-aged bachelors, but a collective group of people who all have some particular misgivings with the opposite sex. (That's not to say we haven't been swine ourselves -- we have -- but that's not the point of the conversation right this second, is it?) We all agreed with the statement with gusto, then moved along to other topics of pressing importance -- movies or something.
On the way back from the restaurant, Z says (as he does nearly every fricken time we talk) that he and I should get together sometime.
But here's the problem. I call him, he doesn't answer. I suggest things, he doesn't respond. If you're not well within his sphere of influence (and as near as I can tell, that sphere is about arm's length) you're out. I've called him on it before, several times, in fact, and he always looks at me with a bland form of incredulity -- like I've just listened to some Yes song that he's never heard. It's not that I'm mad or bitter about it, because I'm not. I'm just not a fan of acting like things are diamonds when they're spades.
Oh, yeah, and the meal ...
The fish was flaky and tasty. Just the mildest amount of saltiness. Nice thick portions.
The chips here can be highly variable (usually erring in the form of being over-cooked), but this time they're really (to use a British expression) "nice." A good, soft, tooth without being mushy. Dully illuminating on the pallet. Yum.
Zz bit into a piece of his and it shot boiling liquid of some type (I think it was water, but I prefer to use the term "fish juice") side-to-side and up his nose. That, right there, is worth my US$11 admission. But hey, with good food and good company, how can anything be wrong?
(Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a picture when the food first came out -- this is from about three quarters of the way through ... and much to Bo3b's dismay I'm sure, shot way too close.)
No comments:
Post a Comment