Che macello! (What a mess!)

My ears are still ringing, and I don't even hear that well.

Tonight, my daughter and I headed out to a popular Italian restaurant in our neighborhood. It's one of those places where you can always get a nice hand-tossed pizza or a tasty plate of piping hot ziti. It's a predictable little cafe, nothing fancy, just good food prepared well. And it's also popular with families. Sometimes, TOO popular.

A few minutes after we were seated this evening, I noticed that two or three children were playing around the video games in a back room of the restaurant, adjacent to the restrooms. Ordinarily, this would not have attracted my attention, but tonight, the natives seemed particularly restless. Within minutes, several of these munchkins were jockeying for position at the video games and attacking with ferocity a large candy dispenser, which was loaded with colorful, perfect-for-choking sized balls of gum. Mind you, the parents were sitting not twenty feet away, enjoying their beer and wine while the children ignored their food and ran around the restaurant. I'm guessing that they must have been on their second or third drinks by this time.

As the situation escalated, several of us in the immediate area became nervous when a group of the kids barricaded a couple of the others in the ladies' room. The trapped victims began to kick the bathroom door, and after a few minutes, a waiter walked over to the kids and asked them to stop. By this time, a sense of general pandemonium had ensued, except around another table, where a lady sat with her two boys, both of whom were extremely well-behaved in the midst of it all.

There were a few moments of relative quiet, and then it began in earnest. Two of the crazy kids (there were six in total) had come from a far table at the other end of the restaurant, but four were from the table next to ours. They all began to shove each other, and at one point, a girl of about seven years of age from the next table kicked a little boy, who had fallen to the ground, in the back. By this time, our fellow diners were visibly perturbed. Two of us said something to the waiter, who again approached the kids and reprimanded them.

Finally, after all this, the totally oblivious "mother" at the table next to ours, home of the four hellions, said to the waiter, and I quote, "Oh...are they causing trouble back there?" It was all we could do not to burst out laughing. These couples had been sitting there the entire time, while their ill-mannered children not only spoiled all our dinners, but in effect, put themselves in danger of being seriously injured. To see parents so unaware of the situation at hand was downright sad.

I can only imagine what the home dinner table must be like for these children: a veritable running track surrounding the table, bruises and other injuries sustained while trying to down a slice of cold pizza, and parents literally living outside it all. And I say I can only imagine, because our own children were always interested in the food when we went to a restaurant...they would never dream of disturbing the other diners, because they knew that such behavior would at the very least nix the next "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" or "Barney" episode.

I know it's a novel concept, but children will behave given just the slightest bit of guidance.

And, as Forrest Gump was so fond of saying, "That's all I have to say about that."

Straight Flush

We recently embarked on a medium-scale bathroom remodeling project in our house, precipitated (good choice of words, as you'll see) by an air conditioning leak in our attic. It's a long story, but we'll just leave it at that. Anyway, we took this as an opportunity to update our powder room and upstairs bathroom, and I can honestly say...well, I hope I can say...that we are almost finished. We let the pros do the tile work, and we took on most all the plumbing tasks ourselves.

What has struck me in this endeavor is the seemingly endless array of new bathroom fixtures of all types. We opted for a granite countertop/undermount sink with travertine marble in the upstairs bath, and a vessel sink/waterfall faucet combination with travertine floor in the powder room. I never thought that technology could have made such inroads in what up until a few years ago was a truly functional area of the house, but it certainly has, and I believe it's for the better.

In the process, I have also learned a lot about plumbing. I now know and can spot at fifty yards a P-trap, a flexible supply line (steel is best), or even a compression fitting. Before, I was always scared of plumbing -- a mistake in a plumbing job can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, and electricity, by comparison, seems so simple. I mean, if you put in a two-way switch where a three-way switch is supposed to go, you'll know immediately that you've made a mistake, since the switch will sizzle like water in hot oil as soon as you turn it on. That's what I like about electricity -- the all-or-nothing factor. Never mind that you can shock yourself into the next century.

Plumbing, on the other hand, is a bit more insidious. We all must at some point have experienced that "drip, drip, drip" in the night, lying awake and wondering which part of the house will collapse, leaving us like stranded rafters in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. But I have learned that plumbing, like anything else for which exorbitant service fees are charged, is a process which takes patience and a certain level of courage. The courage part is very important here. My new friend Willie at Lowe's gave me some great advice at one point, and that helped get me over the hump. Willie told me, "It's gonna work...I promise!", and I believed him. Turns out he actually was right. But again, it took a little intestinal fortitude.

So verily I say unto you, if you are the adventurous type, fix your own toilet next time. Replace that drain. Upgrade those nasty old faucets. But just remember, should the situation run amok (and it very well may), a good plumber is just a phone call and several hundred dollars away. We did have to call a plumber for a couple of the early tasks, and both times, he zipped right in, joked with us the whole time, and made prompt repairs. You know, Robert was a really fun guy. Oh, and he also told us that his condo in San Diego is almost paid off. That pretty much says it all.

Ciao!

Once in Bollywood...

It has now been five months, and my fascination with Bollywood (India's version of Hollywood) continues unabated. Just this evening, I came across the video for one of my favorite songs, "Loot Jayenge", from the movie "Aksar". I double-dog dare you to sit still...

Sing Along with Buffy!

Those of you who have known me for a while may recall my years of obsession with the TV program "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Perhaps obsession is too mild a word. At the suggestion of my older daughter, I somewhat passively tuned in one night in early 1997 to catch the first season episode entitled "I, Robot... You, Jane". Life would never be the same! I was intrigued by the cast (of course), the witty dialogue, the bargain basement special effects, and of course, the soap opera that was to become the seven-season plot.

So I found it quite interesting the other day when, wondering what had ever become of our heroine Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), I came across a current picture of her, decked out in Chanel, on the InStyle magazine website. The very next day, in one of those rare coincidences, I received a call from my friend Tanya who told me about an upcoming event to be held the following evening, a Buffy Sing-Along. Voila! What could be a better way to spend a Saturday night in the ATL?

This past Saturday, my younger daughter, a friend of hers, and I headed out a special showing of "Once More, with Feeling: The Buffy Musical" at Atlanta's Plaza Theatre. "Once More" was a special episode aired during the sixth season of BtVS (for those of us hardcore show fans) in which a typical demon-comes-to-town story is set to rollicking show tunes -- our version was complete with a bouncing ball and subtitles. On the way into the theatre, we were handed kits of goodies, including soap bubbles, a finger puppet, fake vampire teeth, and crackers, all to be used in a sort of Rocky Horror audience participation adventure.


And participate we did! When Spike appeared, we yelled "Hotness!" Whenever Buffy's younger sister Dawn tried to get a word in edgewise, we would all say in unison, "Shut up, Dawn!" And when Tara levitated above her bed in a trance-like state of euphoria, we pulled the string on our crackers, filling the theatre air with the smell of exploded caps. It was divine.

Now, we're just waiting for the return. Next time, I'll take along more of my middle-aged friends and probably a few more youth. We all have one thing in common -- love for Her Royal Highness, the Buffness. And let it be known that this presentation is making its way across the U.S.A. -- before you know it, it'll be in your town as well. Click here for the website, with this season's complete schedule.

Grrr...arrgh! (Inside joke for you BtVS fans...)

Rico =:)

Light in August?

Many years ago on a warm summer night, famed Southern novelist William Faulkner was sitting on the porch with his wife Estelle when she commented on how light in the South during the month of August seemed to exhibit a most peculiar quality. Faulkner liked this idea and soon renamed the novel he was writing from its working title of Dark House to Light in August. Perhaps you have that book on your shelves now.

Certainly, here in the South we have had light in August this year. Light, and heat...extreme heat. I have lived in Atlanta for most of 25 years, and I have yet to see a summer with such protracted high temperatures. We were driving a car without air conditioning for a few days during the hottest of the weeks, and it was practically unbearable.

Yet I recall as a child in Memphis that we did not have A/C everywhere. In fact, our schools were not air conditioned. We had these tall chrome-plated fans that pushed the hot air around our high-ceilinged classrooms, while dark green shades would be pulled down during the day to reduce the sun's glare and heat. At the same time, school officials deemed it distasteful to allow young men to wear shorts at school (girls could, but they had to be "culottes"). Still, I don't recall being particularly hot during the day, which says something about how we've acclimated to climate control over the years.

Air conditioning is often credited with spurring at least part of the growth in the Sun Belt in recent years. Indeed, if you have to work over a weekend in a modern office building without A/C, you will soon see how these buildings could never have been built in this part of the country without it...the air becomes stale in short order. Of course, we could open windows in the "old days", and that helped to some degree. Nowadays, if you live south of the Mason-Dixon line, it is hard to imagine living without "air" during the summer months.

But the temperatures appear to be abating -- today's forecast calls for a high of only 98, and that's not bad. One day last week when I headed home from work, the car thermometer registered 111. Yes, it's definitely cooling off.