Last night, I attended the 21st birthday dinner of someone whom I had met only once before, but who is good friends of friends. The dinner took place at “Madres,” the Pasadena restaurant owned by Jennifer Lopez. For those who are unfamiliar, Jennifer Lopez is a pop singer, an actress and, as of 2003, a restauranteur. She also was once 1/2 of a romantic partnership popularly known as “Bennifer.” In the “urban dictionary,” the definition of “bennifer” (n.) is: “An attractive couple that have money, fame and beauty yet are still universally hated by everyone.” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bennifer
Just before we were set to order dinner, the birthday girl (seated next to her boyfriend, who I had just met for the first time), asks me, from across the table: “Dino, what would you do in this situation. You ask your boyfriend to come over and spend some time with you but he says he’s too tired and is just going to stay home. The next day, say it’s your birthday, and you’re at dinner. He leans over and whispers in your ear, ‘I’m sooo tired. My friends called me up and I went out with them last night.’ Now, what would you do in this situation?”
I half-flippantly answered, “Oh, that’s easy,” shrugging my shoulders. “Just find someone new.” She sat back in her chair and replied with gusto, “Thank you!” Now, I guess that I was unclear that she was seriously referring to 1) herself and 2) her boyfriend and that 3) this private conversation had just taken place between the two of them just moments before at the other end of the dinner table. As I remember, the people at my end of the table then quietly engaged in a few topics of conversation that might make Jen-Jen’s toes curl, and we were unaware that the birthday girl was soon nowhere to be found. After 10 minutes, her girlfriends went to check on her in the ladies room, but she wasn’t there. The boyfriend, awkwardly sitting alone at the far end of the table, then walked outside. A few minutes later, our waitress came flapping around asking if she should hold off putting the order in, announcing, “The young lady and her boyfriend are having some words outside the restaurant…and I know what that’s like…I’ve been there…oh boy, have I been there!”
The birthday girl returns to the table, clearly distressed, followed by the hung-dog boyfriend, who, we later found out, she had asked to leave. She hands his jacket to him and off he goes. Ok. The sense of guilt began to rise within me, as you can imagine, as I deduced that the only reason this girl now knows that the mascara she applied earlier was in fact NOT waterproof (and was now smeared under her eyes, as if a crow had jumped upon an open ink-blotter and ran across her face a few times) was because of me.
I said, “Ummm, did that just all happen because of what I had said?” (then to myself, “please say ‘no,’ please say, ‘no,’…)
“Oh no,” she replied, removing some blotchy mascara streaks onto one of Jen-Jen’s linen napkins. “I’m glad you said what you did. It’s exactly what I needed to hear.”
Whew! That was a close one….Even if she was just being polite, I felt a whole lot better.
After that (and a power-series of mojitos), dinner was fine and very fun, especially as I aggressively resisted doing or saying anything that might sever that special bond between any more couples at our table, all the way through the desert course. However, just after we walked out of the restaurant, the last thing I expected to hear coming from the sidewalk, was the repeated chant of:
“J LO IS A FUR WHORE!”
“J LO IS A FUR WHORE!”
Four PETA protesters marched up and down the sidewalk in front of Madres, holding pictures of fuzzy wuzzy little animals with their skins ripped off in various stages of forced removal.
“J LO IS A FUR WHORE!”
“J LO IS A FUR WHORE!”
To break up the monotony of this chant, they mixed it up with:
“HOW MANY ANIMALS DID YOU KILL TODAY, JENNIFER?”
(I tried to do a quick tabulation, but I quickly lost count not knowing what she had eaten for breakfast nor how skilled of a driver was La Lopez. I mean, wouldn’t road kill count amongst that figure?)
As the birthday party said their goodbyes, it sounded something like this:
“Well, thanks for J LO IS…it was really A FUR WHORE…to see you!”
The moment felt like an outtake from Lawrence Kasdan’s film “Grand Canyon,” but under Fellini’s direction. As smoking is illegal nearly everywhere, there were a gathering of smokers standing amongst the people waiting for their cars under an oversized, billowing white fabric tent thing. A warm wind rustled the palm trees and the fabric of this tent, while the birthday party guests kissed goodbye. “J LO IS A FUR WHORE!” continued at the end of the driveway, which only begged the question, “what OTHER kind of whore might she be, if a whore at all?” The smokers focused on smoking, while a couple of bored Pasadena policemen stood near the PETA protestors, maybe in case anyone even thought about spraying blood on anyone else. The valet parkers continued to bring up the cars while the anti-fur protesters lazily shuffled back and forth. “J LO IS A FUR WHORE! J LO IS A FUR WHORE!” And although I WILL be calling my next punk band, “FUR WHORE,” (and by publishing this, it’s totally mine and don’t even think about using it), I thought about the irony of protesting Furry Jen-Jen’s love of mink with the fact that most of the menu at Madre’s is meat.
Irregardlessly, I highly recommend the empanadas de chinchilla and the braised silver fox salad.
(served on a bed of organic field greens and a drizzle of chipotle sauce)
