Une Petite Mer

I would like to propose a moratorium on those faux vintage posters that advertise liquor (candy, travel, whatever). They’re ubiquitous at a certain type of home / restaurant, the kind whose purveyor strives for kitchy-chic, but really just seems too unmotivated to find genuinely interesting art to put on the walls. Granted, there’s a lot of truly awful stuff out there (I prefer the sanitized ads over some of the drek I’ve seen at local bars), but these are so common and so boring that it gives me pause about the establishment in question:

boring art = boring menu?

So I wondered at the new tapas-esque place in town. Luckily, the food was far more interesting than the walls. My salad with pomegranate vinaigrette and mint was quite good, though I am not a huge parsley fan and in the salad it kind of interfered (what do you mean parsley doesn’t really taste like anything? It does too!). The zucchini latka with a sunny-side-up egg was really delicious, and the rice pudding, which also contained mint, was yummy.

I like the tapas ethos; I don’t eat that much and I enjoy variety, so smaller portions of more kinds of food suits me nicely.

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The warm weather combined with a little cold (or a little duress – you chose) has catalyzed my truancy. To hell with Hump Day, I’ll skip it altogether.

This morning I finally renewed my driver’s license. It actually didn’t occur to me that my license had expired until a bartender rather rudely pointed it out. I’m not sure why he should fucking care, it’s clearly me (I look just as young on my license as I do in real life – imagine!), but that’s not the point, I guess. The new picture format on these things dictates that one’s face take up the entire allotted green rectangle designated for the photo. The effect is quite shocking.

I told the guy who administered my road signs and letter reading tests that I had been out of town, which was partially why my license had expired (a feeble excuse, I know). When prompted, I told him that I had been in New York. He looked at me wistfully and said, “I’ve never been there. Did you go to Tavern on the Green? My sister went there and saw that redhead celebrity that stars in Grey Anatomy.” This prompted an exposition of his views on the television show Lost.

“I dunno,” he drawled, “I am lost and I’ve been watching since the first episode.”

After I proved that I was not blind, and only missed one sign type (a yellow isosceles triangle means “Do Not Pass,” by the way), and paid thirty-two dollars for an eight year renewal, he asked, “so were you in New York for Valentine’s Day? I bet you were. I bet you were re-enacting that scene from Sleepless in Seattle.”

Never has the DMV been so awkwardly charming.

As for the picture, interested parties will just have to see it in person.