The Embarrassing Moment

Oh hello. Good? That's great! I myself am feeling somewhat mixed. Please let me explain. I won't bore you with too much expository information, but there are two incidents (one of them doesn't even count as that) I feel compelled to describe to you, and some background is necessary. Right at the moment, I'm sliding down the long barrel of a four-day weekend, because my wife is in Wisconsin on family business, and I, quite honestly needed the rest. Today is my first full one of the four, and my plans had been to be dropped off by my wife, on her way to the airport, at a spot where I could get breakfast, shop, etc., ending up, finally at a point where I was walking out of a movie theater, having just seen Warcraft, and starting the long walk home that would be broken up by dinner at a Japanese restaurant that was very near where my wife and I have lived for over a decade but had never been inside, despite the fact that Japanese cuisine is a favorite of ours.

So cut to me catching a much earlier show of Warcraft than I'd initially planned, because I was tired, I'm a pedestrian, and I just couldn't kill that much time (I picked up Hail, Caesar! on Blu-ray, though!). The first preview before Warcraft was for Central Intelligence, the Dwayne Johnson/Kevin Hart vehicle, which begins with a fat man dancing in the shower. In the row in front of me was a guy who was very clearly digging it, and laughing, and nodding along with all the jokes I hated. I looked at him in the light coming from the movie screen and thought "What kind of person thinks these jokes are funny?" Then, very quickly, I thought to, and about, myself: "You're a real asshole, you know that?"

Thus epiphanized, I settled in to watch Warcraft, which is a big unsuccessful goofball of a movie that I don't quite regret paying to see but will forget ever having seen in about seventy-six hours. (Although I should mention that if the film sticks in my mind longer than that, it will be because a guy on the opposite end of the row I was in was, I'm pretty sure, cranking one out to the orcs or whatever. I'm not kidding, though I'm not positive I'm right. Anyway, I moved.) And I walk home, with the intention of bypassing the Japanese restaurant entirely, because listen, I am tired, guys, and they don't start serving dinner until 5:00, and with this shift in film showtimes (I was originally going to see Warcraft at 3:00, and...well, never mind) it just wouldn't pan out for me, long as fuck though the walk home was, and is. Finally I get home, and I'm dicking around like a total dick, when I think "I should walk back to that Japanese place." Japanese food is my favorite, I get excited every time I'm planning a visit or heading to a Japanese restaurant, I love the food, I love the atmosphere, I love the variety, I love every single thing there is to love about a good Japanese restaurant, whether it be modest or high-end. Plus it's gonna be hot as literal shit the next two days, and I don't plan on leaving the house, even if some magic asshole is like "Come join me in my billionaire fire balloon!" I'd be like "No thanks, pal," because our air conditioning is working pretty well at the moment.

So I walked back to the restaurant, and I ordered a lot of food. I spent way too much money today in general, and I should probably just roll over and go to sleep and not even post this. But I spent what I spent, and I loved my meal. In the midst of which, and here we reach our point, at the sushi bar I began talking to a woman two seats down from me. I can't remember why this conversation began, exactly, but she's Caucasian and American, while her (I'm assuming) husband is a native of Japan. Among the things discussed were which is the best Japanese restaurant in our general region, and the husband, who I have no reason to believe did not know his business, said the best such restaurant was the very place in which we were currently sitting.

That's great! He kept having to get up, so I talked mostly to his wife. She was very nice, and she'd clearly been to Japan many times. Since Japanese culture is a subject of some fascination for me, I both asked her questions and, and this is the whole point, wished to prove that, look, I know a little bit about Japan, okay? How, I can imagine you asking, did I prove this lack of ignorance? Interesting story: I said "I saw this movie once by Yasujiro Ozu called A Hen in the Wind which is about a married woman who feels like she has to prostitute herself because..."

And so on. Pretty quickly after the above, I was moved to add "I'm sorry, I just..." and she said "No that's okay" and then her husband came back and wrote down other Japanese restaurants my wife and I should try, even though the one which currently housed us could not, in his estimation, be beat in the region. They left, my dessert came, I paid my check. The dessert was delicious.

Don't ever try to impress anyone. If you're me, at least. The End.