god's a cosmic paperboy.

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dateline: oZ lair

28 september 1996 7:12 p.m.

Good Idea: Wearing a dress, smiling a lot and letting other people do most of the talking. Bad Idea: Ordering a beer and getting buzzed in front of your boyfriend's mom. I survived dinner with Derek's folks, and it wasn't bad at all. We went to Stuart Anderson's at Ward Center. Derek, Dennis, mom, dad and grandma... and everyone ordered the prime rib. It's spooky. No one in that family looks at all like the "Dees" (Derek and his brother, collectively). His dad was the ham -- reminded me of Fred Flinstone. Mom seemed to be embarrased by him a lot, especially when he laughed. Loud, and sometimes it would turn into long bouts of coughing that seemed to make everyone uncomfortable. She, on the other hand, was totally proper, like some Chinese Miss Manners. Talked a lot, but didn't say much. She didn't bore into me with anything tougher than "What kind of music do you like?" Grandma didn't say much of anything. Everyone, for the most part, left Derek and I to talk to eachother. I picked up a little card on the table that listed all the beers they served, and there it was: Guinness Extra Stout. "Oooh!" I said, "Guinness!" Derek's mom perked up. "Would you like one?" Uh oh, a pop ettiquette quiz. What to do. Does she expect me to say no? Should I accept? Decline? Which is more polite? Well, it is beer. "Sure!" Then I was carded. By a card. Seriously, our waiter was a blonde Jay Leno. "I can't help it, you look so young!" he said, then happily doing the math when I showed him my license so that he could tell the world I'm 22. Derek's dad ate it all up. I think his mom was actually relieved -- I think she thought I was younger too. I can imagine her worrying that Derek was some sort of pedophile (he's 27). I only had one Guiness, but it was a tall glass. Strong stuff... the best. I didn't get stupid or anything, but I started feeling funky pretty quickly. I took the whole meal to finish it, though -- that took restraint. It was fun to watch the Dees ragging on each other all night. Dennis was actually going out of his way to make Derek look bad, all in fun of course. He kept calling to have my water refilled and saying, "Well, someone has to be a gentleman." Dad rejoiced in telling tales of the two beating eachother up when they were kids, and of them bathing together when they were even younger. I didn't get the feeling that they were looking to issue a stamp of approval at all. In fact, quite the opposite, which -- ironically -- also bothers me. I guess to them I was just a girl friend, and they were polite enough to not bother me too much. And here I was all ready to show 'em I'm a catch. Finally I get to watch "Crayon Shinchan"! I love this cartoon. Seriously low budget, totally wacky, and once in a while deliciously tasteless. Shinchan makes Bart Simpson look like Beaver Cleaver -- he loses his pants and moons someone at least twice an episode (as I type, he's taking a leak out the car window). Most importantly, this show makes me glad I'm not a mother. Yet, while the kid's a total nightmare, the mom's got the right idea -- when the brat gets too out of hand, she cracks him on the head. It's too bad I don't understand Japanese. The subtitles are funny, but I still get the feeling the gags would be even funnier if I was a native speaker. Did you know McDonald's, in Japanese, is "Makudonarudo" (that's right, ma-ku-do-na-ru-do -- twice the syllables)? Even stranger, it was just translated in the subtitles as "McRonalds." I was afraid they didn't show "Crayon Shinchan" here anymore. I used to watch it at my mom's where she's got NJN -- a Japanese network that you've got to pay to watch in Hawai`i -- and I missed a lot of the shows they had when I moved out. Fortunately, two of the best ones -- "Crayon Shinchan" and "Soko Ga Shiritai" (which I had to watch in Japanese class in high school a few decades ago) -- now come on KIKU, a local Japanese language station. It's scary the things I do when I get bored. For example, I get kicks watching awful Korean sitcoms that only come on other obscure cable channels at about three in the morning. The acting is just too rancid for words, the music sounds like the director just steps on an electric guitar at key plot points... too much fun! It gets better. Sometimes these shows get to you only after two translations: Korean, dubbed into Japanese, and then subtitled in English. They're great for parties. If you're watching with friends, you can each adopt a character in the show and loudly read off the subtititles with even more melodrama than the players on the screen -- do-it-yourself re-re-dubbing. (For best results, add cheap beer.) Once I watched an hour-long conclusion to a miniseries (at least I think that's what it was, given all the flashbacks), which -- after a series of events that only David Lynch would be able to untangle -- ended with the main couple in the story walking along a grey-sand beach. They discussed death, someone named Ropo who had apparently disappeared after missing his own wedding, Ropo's ex-fiancee who got a job as a dancer, and what the future held for both. As they neared the shakily-held camera, they began to get wistful about some rich history they both shared together. They stopped to survey the grey ocean, and the woman leaned her head on the guy's shoulder. She smiled, laughed in a meaningful way (I know it was meaningful, because the bad synthesizer music suddenly started playing), then turned to her boss-slash-lover and said: "Do you remember when we flung the curry?" They giggled, and started walking away. Fade to black. I was deeply moved. I'm totally vegging tonight, watching too much TV while trying to whittle down my e-mail inbox. I just watched a new series called "Early Edition," where a guy gets his newspaper a day early and has to try and stop bad things from happening while betting on horse races to make a convenient explanation for his character being unemployed. I actually liked it. Kind of like an inverted "Quantum Leap" in which the events are limited to a single day. It's going to be a good futon-potato weekend. MTV is showing HBO's "Real Sex" series (I presume heavily edited) end to end. Tomorow, "The Tick" and a "Third Rock" where George Takei (how's that for synchronicity) is guesting. I know, I know, I really oughtta get out more. In fact, I'll promise myself right now to go to the beach tomorrow. And if Derek can get out of some workshop, we're going to see "Basquiat" tomorrow night.