My Mom, my Grandmother, and I went to lunch at Sweetwater Tavern recently. Sweetwater is this fabulous restaurant that has pretty good filet mignon and absolutely unbelievable root beer. Honestly, it’s the best root beer I have ever tasted in my life. It’s so good it’s downright sinful. Well. Sweetwater Tavern is also known for brewing their own beer, and thus they have a bar inside the restaurant. It’s by no means your typical bar – no dark corners, no kinky bartenders, and typically no lonely bar-hoppers. This is, after all, upscale suburbia. On occasion, whilst waiting for other people to meet me at the restaurant, I’ve visited the bar to get a root beer because I simply can’t wait. Once I’m inside a Sweetwater my mind immediately goes into Root Beer Overdrive. Thus, a perfectly innocent visit to the bar is in order.
Leave it to me to be the Mormon who visits the bar once and gets remembered. I even have a “usual.”
Turns out, on this most recent visit, my Mother was the one waiting for my Grandmother and I to show up. She sat down on the bar and the bartender – Dave – came up to her and asked, “You’ve been in here before, haven’t you?” My Mom was impressed by his memory, since it had been at least two months since she was last there, and again, she’s only been to the bar once. With me.
That’s when Dave said, “And you have a daughter, don’t you? She likes root beer, right?” Yet again, Mom was impressed. When she returned with the affirmative, Dave rushed right off to prepare a root beer for me, since I’d be showing up soon. Unfortunately for Dave, Sweetwater had run out of root beer. His efforts were thwarted and my Root Beer Overdrive was left unfulfilled. Sad, isn’t it? I would have loved to finish off this story with a lovely anecdote about Dave winking as he hands me my root beer, and us smiling across the bar at each other. Of course, it would have been even funnier if he asked me out. Then I could have said I got picked up at a bar. (In case you don’t know, not many Mormon women can say that.) Ah well, at least it was extremely nice to be remembered like that. Or, do you think I should be frightened? Two months is a long time, after all. He even remembered I had curly hair. Okay, maybe I am a bit scared. Nah, Dave's all cute in that Corn-Fed-All-American-Boy sort of way, he couldn't be scary.
It’s been a few days since I last blogged. I’ve been busy. Holidays and all. My Grandmother’s in town so I’ve been roaming around a lot, playing and driving people around. I went out to Middleburg and got a few cute stores interested in buying merchandise for a television series I’ve dreamt up. That’s quite a feat, if I do say so myself. These people are staunch “Old Money” types, and yet they were begging to see catalogues of the items I had to sell. They were itching to sell what I had to offer. Much to my dismay, however, Producing Dean doesn’t like the idea for the show. Honestly, I think he just doesn’t get it. Not that it’s his all fault – I certainly didn’t explain it all that well, since I’ve had a killer strain of headaches for about two weeks straight now. Apart from that, I hate to say it, but… I don’t think he really gets where I’m going with it. To put it bluntly, the idea I had is ridiculous, when viewed solely on the surface. Isn’t children’s television *supposed* to be mostly ridiculous? I mean, look at the Nielsen ratings for this past week – ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ and ‘The Fairly Odd Parents’ are dominating the top ten cable programs. They’re occupying seven out of the ten spots, with totals of 10,975,000 and 15,350,000 viewers, respectively. And yet, those are two of the weirdest most off-the-deep-end shows for children on television. They’re so ridiculously successful because they’re, well, ridiculous. It’s baffling to me that PBS, Discovery, et al have yet to grasp this concept. Is there anything more prevalent in the twelve-year-old vernacular than the likes of Spongebob and Monty Python? But it’s not just the insane factor, it’s the underlying intelligence. Ah ha! Most people laugh when I say that, but hear me out. Just how many Shakespeare jokes are hidden through out Monty Python? Just how many cultural allusions are to be found in Spongebob? What about the classic ‘Animaniacs’ and all of the innuendo that made the show entertaining for adults? Why has the educational television industry completely ignored this factor? Do they really think ‘Dragontales’ is entertaining? No wonder their numbers have gone down and children think educational television is boring. You’ve got to mask that educational stuff with a bunch of silliness, a la Animaniacs. That show was great! I learned so much about music, culture, history, political figures, and junk food ingredients from that show. I didn’t realize it fully at the time because I was laughing too hard. THAT’S what educational television needs, don’t you think?
Don’t get me wrong, I love Dean, I think he’s great, he’s good at his job. Maybe I’m just not explaining it fully, but something’s just not clicking. So I’m going to spend the rest of the week preparing the concept more fully, backing it up with statistics and further examples of insanity that sells, and creating samples of the merchandising the those folks in Middleburg got all excited about. I mean, what adult wouldn’t buy hand-painted silk accessories (i.e. scarves, neckties, etc) if it was both pretty, unique, and benefited poor kids in wheelchairs? It’s stylish and it’s charitable, what could be better? Hehe.
I think maybe I also just haven’t had enough sleep, as you can tell by the fact that yet again I’m blogging past three in the morning. Alas, even my eating schedule is screwed up because this has been going on so long. Things just don’t work quite right when you’re eating PB&J with a side of sour cream and onion chips at one o’clock in the morning. Maybe *that’s* my problem…
Oh, and you know what else is cool? An old email friend of mine, Pete – lead vocalist from the band Motorway - has even agreed to brainstorm over and help me try to come up with a potential theme song for the show! Isn’t he fabulous? Go download their music and if you’re in the New Orleans area, go see them perform. They’re yummy!
My final thought for the evening is this: I think my wardrobe needs some adjustment in order to accommodate my new favorite thing. What’s that, you ask? Four-inch-heel black boots. I pulled out an old pair of boots that I wore maybe twice a year or so ago, just because I was in the mood for them. I wanted to go to church wearing something different, not the same old sensible 40’s style black shoes. It was time for some quirk to match a cute new handbag I bought in Middleburg (hand-made vinyl bag that looks like a watering can – way too funny.) So, I wrapped myself in a purple sarong, put on a sensible white Harve Bernard button-down shirt, carried my watering can purse, and slipped on the perfect pair of black high-heeled boots. It was great! So refreshing, to invigorating. I’ve decided I’ll wear them more often. My next outing will be with these boots and my blue jeans. I’m also hoping to have a new silk shirt made by next week, so the next time I see Dean I can show him just how great silk clothing is. That I way I can have a visual aid to help convince him that it wouldn’t matter what show the clothes were connected to, as long as it’s stylish and silk people will buy it. Why? Because silk is fabulous, and fabulous people want silk. It’s a good thing I just got all that silk in California earlier this month – it was so cheap! And I got some perfect patterns, too. There’s a black, white, and gray one that would be just stunning with a hand-painted blue, purple, and white scarf. Mmm. That’s yummy too.
Okay, I think I’d better sleep now. Happy Thanksgiving everybody! (Well, everybody in the States, anyway…)
