Be The Noodle

One night last week I found myself alone in a crowded, trendy "gastropub" near my office scoping out a seat at the bar within view of a big-ass television on which to watch Game 6 whilst imbibing a red ale from a microbrew that you've probably never heard of and scarfing down bold reinventions of classic American comfort food resulting in a bill big enough to feed a family of 12 at a place that served classic American comfort food, minus the bold reinvention, which I think means cilantro. Or sea salt.

That's not what happens most nights. Most nights I go home to my family and boldy reinvent whatever I do or don't feel like boldly reinventing on my own damn time. And that's the way I've come to like it, by Jimminy!! But I had an evening to kill before a softball game, so there I was. I found a seat, eventually, and watched the game and ate the sea salted delicacies and drank the Very Earnest Beer. I was sitting right next to a couple of Japanese dudes wearing waiter uniforms from what I presumed to be a Japanese dining establishment having a conversation in Japanese and drinking Bud Light and eating turkey burgers, I shit you not. About halfway through the game the first guy got up to go smoke a cigarette (as I gathered after the fact by the the smell on his clothes when he came back) and the other dude very drunkenly decided to engage me in conversation. The conversation consisted of him holding his iPhone up to my face and showing me pictures of food while loudly saying, respectively:"Japanese Noodle! Japanese Noodle!", "Japanese Steak! Japanese Steak!", and finally "Japanese Cake! Japanese Cake!"

It went on from there. A few beers in I was playing international fucking pictionary with the guy and his friend trying to tell him, Hey, I stayed in Roppongi once for three days! In good time we parted in good company, left with no fucking idea what the other party said throughout most of the conversation. Later, I thought, wait....did that guy show me all those pictures of food because I'm so fat? Because I kind of think he did. I'm Godzilla to that dude. He was taking the piss, as the British say.

But everybody plays the fool, like the man says, so fuck it. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. You can choose to stay home all the time or to not stay home all the time. You can choose to just connect, like the other man says, or you can just turn it off.

Later that night I ejected myself from the softball game in the 9th inning for telling a guy to go fuck himself after coming dangerously close to a fistfight for the third time in the last few months and then got mad at my wife for not showering me with sympathy when I got home and before I fell asleep I thought: Japanese Noodle, motherfucker! Accept the noodle. Or at least the picture of the noodle. Slurp it up. No...Be the noodle. Be the fucking noodle.

So I'm going with it. I'm a Tom Noodle! I'm a Tom Noodle!

Stay tuned to see how that works out. As if you don't already know.