Cupertino - At the House of Falafel

Schwarma! Thank you god!

Driving around with my dog I stopped in at House of Falafel for a schwarma wrap. I love the toasty lavash thing.

I was sitting outside with my buddy and chomping when I noticed something scribbled on my wrap wrapper.  I was pretty hungry when I got the wrap and accidentally chewed some of the wrapper, but here’s what was left.

“just under the top front where it tickles but feels really good. Not too hard and go slow. Try to (piece of garlic) them a good time and if the need to (pepper sauce and I think - is that oregano?) until the cows come home, or she tells you to get lost."

Then on the other side:

“Original sin is one of the best marketing concepts a religion can have. The problem isn’t you, it’s your parents and (hummus) they way god sees it you are (is that lipstick? Oh, yuck)

I love Meditrranian Cuisine!

“ (teeth marks) the people who interpret the humanly written bible say we are born of sin (our parents doing the hamster hoe-down) so we are already dirty when we are born. I saw both of my children being born and I can tell you it is a very dirty business. I don't know how people get born again but I hope they have a lot of baby wipes handy."

So much for a yummy snack.

Oh crap

I am really, really sorry I did something wrong. I was eating at Donato in Redwood City and saw the Incredibly Reverend One walk by on the other side of the street. I finished my dinner (highly recommend the green beans with guanciale) but couldn't catch him.

I saw him enter the Pacific Euro Hotel and I followed him in. I didn't want to yell out his name in a nice place (and he would never give me his cell phone number or tell me where he was staying - or even why he lived from hotel to hotel) so I kept pace behind him.

He took out his card key and opened the door and he dropped some papers as he entered. He went in to pick them up not realizing he had dropped several pages outside the door. I gathered them and was about to knock when I glanced at the first page and realized it was a story - written by him!

I read all of it and was stunned. Is this what he did for a living? Did he write stories?

It took me forever to type it up (wanted to get every character right). Here it is.

I was sitting on the floor across from his room when it opened and he ran by me. He glanced back, saw me with the papers in my hand. It was obvious to him that I had read it. He was angry and grabbed the papers from my hand, went into his room and closed the door so hard that the wood it was made out of cried for it's mommy.

After 2.74 minutes he opened the door, looked at me sitting there and gave me the look. Today the look said 'crap.'

At the Monterey Fish House

There I was sitting in the bar of the Monterey Fish House having a piece of sole before my concert. The place was crowded with the usual Friday night crowd and some people in for the Pebble Beach golf tournament. I sat at the bar. Somehow, for some reason, there was the Incredibly Reverend One. He was wearing his usual fantastically tailored pinstripe blue suit with expensive looking shoes. As always he was neat as a pin. But something was wrong.

(I have to interject here, damn, writing a gospel I know I should put everything in but there are some things that just don’t seem right.)

“Where’s Freud?” he asked me.

“No idea. I didn’t even know you were here.” His eyes were red like he’d been crying. “Are you ok?”

“Sure.” He was slammed. Drunk, Starting to lean.

Are tuna genitals kosher if they smell like humans?

I glanced behind me and saw Bob Freud, drunk and slightly teetering, leaning over to smell the hair of a young lady. She hadn’t noticed yet. Bob sniffed her hair and his eyes rolled back like he was trying to remember it forever. He teetered too far and hit his chin on her shoulder.

The lady shrieked a pretty good shriek - A Bride of Frankenstein shriek. I can’t blame her. Freud’s eyes were rolling.

“I musk have had too much to drink” he told her loud enough to call the orcas in from the bay. “I am really sorry I leaned into you. I am just not all right and I kind of leaned. Like the time I was at the Polytechnic University of Mexico attending a lecture about fish. Tunas are amazing.”

He was still being loud and some people were trying to ignore him. “I found out a lot about them. I saw one lecture where the guy explained the the genitals of certain female South Atlantic tunas smell like human beings.”

Bob walked back to his seat next to The Incredibly Reverend One. He turned to me and said, “even if there is no god life is not worth living if you are not thankful. I am thankful. I am thankful I am not Bob Human Being Freud.”

About Bob Freud

Yes I know this is supposed to be a gospel and I am only supposed to report what I see, but Bob is starting to freak me out. He's a good friend of the Incredibly Reverend Salvatore Fladabosco but they seem to be total opposites. The Incredibly Reverend One dresses like an Armani model. He must spend a fortune on clothes and have a great tailor. Bob Freud looks like a businessman who has been homeless for three or four days.

The IRO acts in a reserved manner, like he is starring in a 1930's romantic comedy. He is classy and tasteful. He speaks carefully and slowly. Freud talks like he has been holding his idea for an hour and finally he blurts it out. It's moving when he is talking about religion or politics but it can be embarrassing when he is trying on socks or asking a waiter where the men's room is.

I ran into them once while eating an apricot scone at Mission Coffee* in Santa Clara. I was sitting at a bar stool when they walked by and typical of the IRO when he is with Freud, he pretended not to see me. Freud had a briefcase.

"Hi Bob!" I called out cheerily. Bob turned to me and blurted so fast I could hardly understand him, "Of all the coffee joints, in all the towns, in the world, she has to walk into mine" and laughed like it was hilarious. Some movie quote or something.

"Uh, yes, Bob," I said and took a step back. I didn't hear what the IRO ordered but it was probably his usual, a quadruple espresso over ice. Unsweetened.

My conversation with Bob ended there. There was a young lady at a table near by, undoubtedly a Santa Clara U student. She held up a traingular shaped scone (blueberry, thank god) and licked the frosting in a straight line right across the top. Bob bent over forwards and holding his briefcase in front of his, uh, nether regions he ran back to the bathroom.

I finished my scone in silence as the IRO inhaled the espresso in one gulp. I think he swallowed some ice too but he was so tasteful he hardly made a face. So much class!


* One of the worst parts of writing a gospel is that I really have to tell the truth. I don't want people to find out about those scones. When you eat one god screams at you that they rock rock rock!!!

The Most Important Pizza Ad of All Time

I was waiting for my order (falafel, pita chips and a banana milkshake) when a teenager who was passing out ads for a pizza place (hallelujah!)  handed me one. It had some scribbling on the back.

Now there are times when I think the Incredibly Reverend One is testing me or making fun of me but it's so hard to tell. Since I decided to follow him (and he is still trying to keep me from following him) he has taught me so much and said so much worth remembering.

Here's what the pizza flyer said on the back:

"If there was one true religion we wouldn't learn about it from ancient scripture. We wouldn't learn about it from elders or reality shows or tortillas that resemble dead virgins. Or bastards who kill their children because they stray, or to blow up bus stops. We would have no need for preachers with overdone hair and expensive suits, or new translations of texts, or morons who hold up signs at football games.

"The mains goal of reality (can't read the rest of this line, tomato smudge..) and if you don't (smear) for the rest of your days on earth (looks like pizza dribble) and your ass is going to be (smeared and probably unprintable anyway).

If there was one true religion it would scream at us. It would fill our vision night and day. The mountains would testify it clearly to us, as would blue jays, hydrocarbons and corn smut. Even blogs."

Probably the most important pizza flyer of all time, and it would be more so if I could have read the thing.

Meeting Bob

I bumped into the IRO at Santana Row today. He told me he was shopping for bow ties. I believe him.

He introduced me to a friend of his name Robert Freud. “You mean as in Sigfried?’ I asked. “Let's just say they are related in certain ways” he replied.

Bob chimed in "I have heard family rumor that he's an ancestor, but I am nothing just like him.”

“What?”

“I said I am nothing like him.”

The IRO is a snappy dresser and takes great care of his clothes but Mr. Freud looked like he had gone to bed fully dressed and not changed when he got up. For a few days. Wearing cheap clothes.

“What is that brown stuff on your pants?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. “My own invention. It’s a mistletoe belt buckle.” Now I was sure. Apparently it stayed on his belt at least into the ides of January.

I asked the IRO if we could have lunch together. He took one look at Bob and shook his head no. I didn’t ask why. I didn’t want to know.

“Can I ask you a question about religion?” I asked him as we walked past fancily dressed ladies carrying dogs the size of a soupspoon.

He didn’t answer, he just gave me The Look. I asked anyway.

“Supposed you were to find that  your house burned down. Does that mean that god is mad at you? Maybe you did something in a past life the POed him off or maybe if you are cool about it you will be rewarded in a later life, right?”

The Look again.

“Listen dimbulb (one of the nicest things he has called me) why do you ask me such stupid questions. You know we can’t know such things.”

“But don’t we need an explanation of why there are miracles and tragedies?”

He took a big sigh. “I am going to give you an answer then you are going to go on your way so Mr. Freud and I can finish shopping.  I tried to buy a bowtie at a strip mall but there was a school across the street and a bunch of girl scouts were painting the flagpole.”

‘”So?”

“So Mr. Freud here fainted. But here is you answer: I do not care. I do not know. All I know is that Reality is God’s True Religion.™”

And he went into Brooks Brothers. I know he’ll find a bow tie there and I know he’ll consider it a miracle.

In Salinas

II ran into the Incredibly Reverend One at the Salinas BBQ. had a great pulled pork sandwich and while I was chomping I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Did you wash both your hands?” I heard the IRO ask. “Of course I did, of course” I told him but he just smirked.

“More human suffering has been avoided by the washing of hands than the kneeling in supplication” he told me. I got up to wash my hands but his hands on my shoulders pushed me back down in my chair. I thought I could smell alcohol on his breath but was afraid to ask him about it.

So quietly that I could barely hear him he asked me “what would you do if you fell into a freezing lake and were pulled out by the balls?”

I stammered that I didn’t know.

He was still whispering in my ear but now he was so loud the other 8 patrons could hear him. “I’d say ‘thank you Mr. Ball, thank you Mrs. Ball” and he ran out laughing.

The Incredibly Reverend One works in mysterious ways.