When I got home from work yesterday I felt… not bad, not sick, but a little weird. Head felt a bit funny. Let’s say that systems were not operating at 100%. So I had an easy night planned. Sit around, watch some TV, get to bed. Nothing serious.
Early in the evening I’m fixing my dinner between catching up on DVR’d episodes of Bones when my father says, “hey, do you want to play Quizo tonight?”
Now Wednesday was normally the night of the Moron Quizo at Nick’s Roast Beef. We haven’t played there in a while and even though the Quizo is super-easy we usually have a good time. I start thinking, okay, I’ll only have a little bit of food now and eat at the bar… I’ll call Nick and Reg and Sabs, get the old team together… I can DVR Glee, and the Phillies game will be on at the bar… yeah, this sounds like a decent idea.
However, in what would later be revealed as a moment of great cosmic providence, instead of just agreeing, for some inexplicable reason I say, “where?”
My father says, “I don’t know the name of the place, it’s at 3rd and Chestnut.”
I think, what the fuck?
I say, “what the fuck?”
I don’t know anything about a Quizo at 3rd and Chestnut, and the thought of heading downtown with a headache is strike one against me going.
“The bar is owned by a Girard graduate,” my father says. “Fisher told me about it.” My father and Fisher both teach at Girard College.
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “You want me to go to a bar downtown, the name of which you don’t know, with you and FISHER, to play Quizo?”
“I’ll call Mister Fisher and see what I can learn about this Quizo.” While he dials the phone I realize that going to a bar with Fisher means we will likely be there until the middle of the night – strike two.
After he hangs up my dad says, “okay, the name of the bar is National Mechanics.”
When I hear that I flash back ten-plus years to a play I wrote in college. The play itself was remarkably wretched – I found the last remaining copy of it a couple months back and oh, god, it was so bad – but it had a running gag in it that the characters hung out in a bar called Cadillac Ranch that, instead of posters or sports memorabilia, hung used auto parts on the wall.
Give me a break, I was 20 years old and drunk.
Anyway, I remember this bit I wrote about a bar with the automotive décor and I think, surely someone hasn’t actually DONE this horrible thing.
I say to my father, “let me see what I can find out.”
I go upstairs and Google this place and learn that thankfully the bar is NOT what I had originally feared, that it’s just in some kind of historic building in Olde City called the National Mechanic’s building. I also learned as I perused the bar’s website that whoever wrote the site’s copy should be shot. “The space is alive, bursting with vibrancy and dynamism[…]” Whoever wrote that sentence, FUCKING KILL YOURSELF. Put the English language down before you hurt someone with it.
While trudging through the horrifying swamp of overwrought mediocrity that was the promo copy, I come across the information on the Quizo and read two words that hit me like a brick between the eyeballs:
Irish John.
Strike. Fucking. THREE.
I say, loudly enough to be heard downstairs, “oh HELL no!”
“What?” my father shouts.
“There is no fucking WAY I am going to an Irish John Quizo,” I shout back. This is the guy who did the Quizo at the Dark Horse before I did. His game is neither very good nor particularly pleasant.
“So you’re not going?”
“No,” I say. “I am fucking well not going.” Compared to an evening with my father and Fisher at an Irish John Quizo, sitting at home watching TV is a veritable orgasm.
So I stay home to watch TV and try to get rid of my nagging headache. The last few episodes of Bones on my DVR: watched. Special features on the DCAU Public Enemies: watched. Glee: watched. Life is good.
After Glee I turn on the Phillies game. They’re up 10-3. The Braves are losing. The Phillies are about to clinch their third straight pennant. Pretty damn sweet! I start hunting around my desk for my shoes – when the game is over I’m going to want to head down to Cottman and Frankford and see what’s going on. I start to mutter to myself: “god dammit, where are my fucking shoes… here somewhere… so much crap in this room… what the FUCK?” The last comes as I learn my shoes ended up being behind the toolbox under my desk, raising any number of questions, not the least of which is the recurring theme of “why do I still have this toolbox?”
I finally get my shoes on while Brad Lidge is warming up. A text message comes in: “Can Lidge blow a seven run lead?” I respond: “God let’s hope not.” I would legitimately feel bad for the guy. Charlie’s giving him a chance to get the out that will win the division, if he melts down there…
First pitch, ground ball to Ryan Howard, steps on the bag… clinch!
I actually jump up from my desk chair and put my arms up in the air and shout “woohoo!” like Homer. NL East Champions! Another baseball October! I grab my camera off my desk – I was going to use my phone to upload pics to Facebook, but I needed the camera for video – and as I cross the threshold from my bedroom to the hallway, perhaps 90 seconds after the Phillies have won the NL East, my phone rings. It’s my father.
I answer the phone. “Hello?”
“John,” my father says.
“Dad!” I shout.
He has called to celebrate the Phillies win, of course. He will say something like “I have pennant fever!” as he does after every single Phillies win. (Conversely, he will without fail say “I have lost pennant fever” after every single Phillies loss.) He will say something about the performance of players with one of the idiotic nicknames he and I use when talking about individual Phillies, something like “how about that play by Dangerous?” or “we call him Dobbsy!” or “clearly there will be No Questions Asked.” Possibly even “it’s a good thing Stumpy will be back for the playoffs” or “the Phillies are really going to miss Bleh in the postseason.” Maybe, just maybe, a sarcastic “Phillies suck!” like he would normally shout when they are losing. It will be another great all-American father-son baseball moment.
This is what my father says:
“On the Simpsons, who played the two bikers who abducted Marge?”
The Phillies won their third straight NL East less than two minutes ago and my father is calling me to cheat at Quizo.
I say, “are you fucking KIDDING ME? You call me NOW with shit?”
Now this is the point where a normal father would say, realizing that he is ruining an all-American father-son baseball moment, “sorry, you’re right, how about them Phils?”
MY father says, “John, we really need the answer.”
Now this is the point where a normal person would say, crushed by his father’s insensitivity to the all-American father-son baseball moment he is ruining, “how can you ask that at a time like this?”
-I- say, “John Goodman and Henry Winkler.”
JLK
That's Something You Don't See Every Day, Chauncey 