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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Coffee Shop

Last night Johnny, Laura and I were all home at the same time because I found out my student's improv show is next weekend. This almost never happens so to celebrate we walked to Java Jo's . That morning I had stopped there for breakfast (as usual on days when I teach) and to pick up a bagged lunch to bring to school with me. I noticed that the soup of the day was "Italian Wedding," and knew without the slightest hesitation that I would probably be back for dinner. So I was. This day has been brought to you by Java Jo.

As we sat at the table and talked it became clear that the large Latino man sitting nearby was not just talking on his cell phone. He was free styling in a low monotone. The free styling went on for about twenty minutes at a time, would be punctuated by something along the lines of, "please make them play that, homey, don't make me beg," and would begin again.

At first some of it was actually kind of good. Nothing like the stuff we used to "kick," at McClellan house parties, but hey, not everyone can be us, right?* The longer this went on the more colorful the language became and the less creative the content. Also, the volume increased and the flow got less cohesive. So we kept overhearing things such as, "Eff this, eff that, eff my effing gat. I'm not effing kidding." And "eff eff eff my n***** , pull that effing trigger." And "I'm hungry. Where's the food at? Do you have enough food to feed me? Do you have enough food to feed my crew? You don't have enough food to feed my team. You don't have enough food to feed this country. You don't have food to feed this town**. This town is going up."

Jen the Coffee House Girl had to go tell him to quiet down twice and eventually escorted him out. When he began walking I saw that he was drunk. I wondered if anyone was actually on the other end of his phone. Because sometimes in the past I too have pretended to be on my phone for various reasons. Just never that long.


* I am so sorry.
**At which point Laura and I made eye contact and I said, "a town is smaller than the country, he should have switched those," and Laura replied "you should go tell him that."

3 comments:

Zombonibraaaains said...

I did think it was nice that he substituted "eff" in so much of his flow. Makes me wish we'd had enough food to feed his crew :-/

Misch said...

:P I need to keep this blog PG for my students.

Do you think his crew would like to come to dinner this week?

Zombonibraaaains said...

Only if we have enough food to feed the planet. Or better yet, the neighborhood.

My verification word is minglar.