How Can I Hurt When Holding You?
Congratulations to Mr. Joseph Ronald Halbert for correctly naming "Bold as Love" by Jimi Hendrix as the Friday Song of the Day.
I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Joey and numerous others this weekend at Homecoming.
Photo documentation will be coming at some point in the next few days, but it is mainly photos of the parade, which will be likely be meaningless viewing for readers that have never experienced the fascinating sub-culture that is Abilene Christian University. For the sake of others, I'll also try to cobble together additional photos from that gift to mankind that we like to call Facebook.
I realize that when you usually visit Running Down a Dream, you arrive here expecting commentary on law school, baseball, Liverpool F.C., politics, the pain involved in following the Texas Rangers, among other things. Usually I don't offer tangential musings on inane topics but that's all changing. Well, at least for tonight. The subject of tonight's rant? The overly large dinner gathering at a single table.
Let me set the stage: last night, about 18 of us went out to dinner at Abuelo's (a fine Mexican food establishment in Abilene). The cast of characters was a composition of the Ninjas (about 8 of us) and approximately 10 ladies (wives, girlfriends, etc.). Instead of expediting the seating process and splitting up for separate tables, we decided to take the conglomerate route and sit at a table that would make the corporate boardroom of GE jealous.
As usual, the single ladies sat at one end, then the couples sat in the middle demilitarized zone, and finally the single gentlemen occupied the south end of the table. I don't want this to look as if we were segregating ourselves, that was simply the way it worked out in the shuffle. My question is this:
- Is it better to just ask for a few separate tables or to just bite the bullet and go with the long table?
- In the interest of the group dynamic, do you play along with the myth that we're all going to sit at one table because we want to foster the idea that we'll actually talk at a table that requires a megaphone or do you just decide to sit at a table with the people that you actually wanted to talk to in the first place?
- If you're sitting in a portion of the table that falls on the fault line between conversations, should you just turn your chair in one direction due to the risk of looking like a spectator at a tennis match as you follow the dueling conversations?
In other, hopefully more interesting news, Liverpool won the 206th Merseyside Derby with city rivals Everton FC by the score of 2-1 courtesy of two scores from the penalty spot by Dirk Kuyt.
The Reds return to action on Wednesday as they travel to Istanbul to face Turkish side Besiktas JK in their 3rd match in UEFA Champions League Group A.
Labels: Liverpool FC, UEFA Champions League
posted by Justin @ 10/21/2007 09:49:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The endless table is the communism of the dinner party world. Sitting at one only perpetuates the lie that all conversations are equal. I say we split up the tables and let the conversation competition begin. The table with the greatest number of audible outbursts doesn't have to pay gratuity.
Luke "Free Market" Reeves
In my experience, most restaurants are social bogs. First, there is no warm welcome at the door, simply a name and number in the party. As a guest, you are then ushered to endure the pangs of hunger with other strangers as you awkwardly hover in extremities of the restaurant. It is at this point that an impersonal device rings, jiggles, or lightens so that you can be herded into a slot to await more waiting. At this point, as you mentioned with a large group, that with much difficulty the waiter/ress wrangles up 13 waters and 5 real drinks. More time wasted in protocol. (etc. ordering food). In the name of protocol, someone order fajitas so the person who ordered a bean burrito must wait until all 17 orders are ready, or sufficiently warmed under heat lamps before an army of waiters appear then disappear to respective partitioned corners of the fake eatery.
My objection is with the typical restaurant experience anywhere, and not with numbe. Impersonal. Soaked in butter. Obtrusively loud environment. Rushed. Protocol. These are my complaints with restaurants. So, to responded to your bullets. When you go to a restaurant, ease the pain of the experience, count your losses, and enjoy the small company of table of four, strangers or friends, choose your lot.
My conjecture from my mere 23 years of dining is that a better way to dine can be found in few places out of a home and often within a home. No time will match the small intimate restaurant in Paris, shared with 20 other patrons, and a place itself frequented by the maire du Paris; or the time I shared a Thanksgiving meal with my Chinese bosses (for the first time), my American, Quebecois, French, and Australian co-workers; or the many meals in the Bean with cheap burgers and the Piano Man; or the meal on the day of my engagement... These meals that are worth remembering and worth forging. Again, meals in homes or meals in exceptional restaurants are the way to go with the type joyous company you described.
-Patty "archaic" Vincent
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