More Fancy Food, Great Friends, Then! A Dark (K)Night

A couple nights ago, my favorite food critic took a friend and me out to a fancy dinner. And, oh, what a great time we had. We gorged on goat and scallops and sweetbreads and more! (At least now my impending-gout will have been worth it.)

"How 'bout we three grab a quick cocktail after this?" Food Critic asks.

"Of course!" New Friend and I decide, effortlessly.

We travel uptown a bit and are happy and chatty in the cab.

"Oh, how lucky we are," we think, naively.

We arrive: an over-priced, swanky lounge -- just the thing to top off an excessive dinner.

We walk through those beautiful doors -- they may have parted for us, inexplicably -- and into the gilded first room. We peek in. Crowded, but, oh well, nothing will ruin this night.

We head in further, ready for some sweet, sweet bartender to mix us a sweet, sweet drink, when: OH NO, duck, Grice! Who is tha...is it...nooooo...y? yea? And is he wi.....? No!

Yes! That's when it became a Dark (K)Night, and it reminded me of the restaurant scene in "The Dark Knight."



Where were you gods?!! I work hard on this karma.

Oooohhhh, I exaggerate. Kind of. At least my table got to laugh a lot and my story gets more and more sensational each time I relate it, obviously.

As for The Dark Knight, in brief, I was disappointed. As I've written before, I was part of a group of fools who waited in a line around the block at 2 a.m. on opening night. My expectations, needless to say, were extremely high; and as with most things fated to high expectations it was likely to disappoint (For things that have been fated to high expectations, see: above situation, the causes of broken heart, people, humanity etc.! Ha.).

A couple of main criticisms: it was confusing. My Old Friend came out of the movie talking about how it changed his life, but he hadn't even picked up on what exactly happened to Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, when and why. I was shocked, but the more I talked about it with people, I found many had been confused too.

Oh, and we certainly needed more face-time and reasons to care for the fate of Gyllenhaal in the first place! I didn't really care about that woman, a few more scenes would've upped my endearment level.

But it was already much too long. When poor Heath Ledger wasn't mesmerizing us on-screen (obviously, he's brilliant in the film), I found myself wandering around in my brain and wondering after the price of tea in China.

Finally, I wanted to throw my popcorn at the screen when I found that the way we're going to find out whether good or evil wins out is by making us watch a contrived situation (!) about convicts versus "good people" battling it out on the bay ... I wanted to blow both boats up. I was so angry! Not only have we seen a million scenes like that a million times, it was just ... oh, I've worked myself up.

But, I will leave us with one of the best scenes, the interrogation scene.