Smith shows up with curious silences among a few things of no significance to say
So what is this? The fifth, sixth, seventh time this fucking bagel joint’s being written about, by me or anyone else from The Checkout?
New York Bagel. Yeah, that’s right, here it is, and here I am inside it – again. Is it my fault? Was it my choice I’ve ended up here and am writing this stinking review?
Somehow this joint’s gotten bigger – significantly. Why can’t things stay the same? Why do they have to always change?
It used to be this thin aisle I had to turn myself sideways to walk into, ducking my head, with seating so tight it didn’t fit me. Now it’s suddenly grown to small restaurant size with a lot more room and comfortable couches for seating behind red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. How did they do that?
The menu’s changed. It looks like a lower selection of bagels and fillings, but prices have been raised by 10, 20 hryvnias. Something like that. I don’t know; I’m not about to do an economic price-item ratio change analysis. Maybe it’s because of the devalued currency, which really can’t be called inflation, but just setting the price back to what it used to be in comparative terms by raising them. I’m no Adam Smith or John Maynard Keynes so I really don’t give a fuck.
They’ve got roast beef for the bagels. I don’t think they had that before, but maybe The Hunched Cornish just didn’t notice. They also seem to have a wider selection of other entrees – egg breakfasts, omelettes, various pasta dishes, and so on. Or maybe it’s not a wider selection, but just a changed one, with some old things taken out and some new ones added, or the same dishes as before made in a different way. Looks like you can have a decent lunch here at a reasonable price without resorting to bagels.
I don’t think they’ll make you steaks here, but they might make you a burger – it’s that kind of a place. I could be wrong about all this, so you’d better come here and check it out yourself, read the fucking menu, unless you’re too cheap, but let me put it this way: You’d probably spend more at McDonald’s and end up coming out hungrier going the fast-food poison way than when you walked it – cheap ass. Anyway, do what you want, it’s your money, what the fuck do I care.
That’s my general opinion about this place and that’s about it for this food review.
The wide TV screen up on the wall shows stirring panoramas of New York City – the Greatest City in the World. I like that. Maybe that answers why I come here.
And maybe I like it because it lets me be fair and not anti-Semitic to the Jews, with their synagogue right across the street [a synagogue is a Jewish temple of worship – Ed. note]. Because the Jews, let me remind you, think they own New York City just because they show it on a big plasma screen. They may own this bagel place, but they sure as hell don’t own New York.
And maybe because a steamy red-lipped torch-singing chanteuse that looks like a Gauguin painting is about to step out, one curve at a time, and…
“Come on, The Hunched Cornish. You know no chanteuse is about to come out. Shit, what’s made you so damn testy today? Going on and on – ne-ne, ne-ne, ne-ne, ne-ne… What the hell’s with you?”
“Oh, Smith [John Smith – Ed. note]. How did you manage that?”
“Manage what?”
“Not being there, and then suddenly appearing just as I was getting to the most sexually charged part of the narrative?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you, now?”
Smith chooses not to respond. He’ll do that sometimes. So I say:
“Any other unwelcome comments before I wrap this lousy review up, Smith?”
“That’s not the synagogue across the street, but the back of the opera house. The synagogue is right next door to the original New York Bagel in another part of town – the one you’re so confused about, wondering how it could have changed into this one. But there was no change. This is a new place.”
“Opera? So what you’re saying, Smith, is that this bigger place is the same place as the tiny one right next door to the synagogue [a synagogue is a Jewish temple of worship – Ed. note] in another part of town, but it’s a different, ah, er, a new, ah, ah…”
“Yeah, that’s right – a new, a new – ah, I don’t know what to call it – branch, division, um, location, um… a new New York Bagel, in short.”
“You don’t say? And is this the only other one, or…”
“I don’t know.”
“But at the very least, they’re expanding for sure.”
“Sure looks that way.”
“The Jews.”
We both keep quiet for a long while, but then I finally say:
“I don’t like the opera here, Smith. I don’t know how many times I can see ‘The Barber of Seville’. They never put on ‘La Boheme’, never make any attempt at the Cav/Pag tandem, never make the slightest go at Mozart – something as universal as ‘Figaro’, never mind ‘Don Giovanni’. Am I wrong, Smith? Do they give performances of ‘Figaro’? I mean, it would be hard not to, but I’ve never seen it on the bill. Smith, have I missed something? Okay, maybe they’ve done ‘Figaro’, though I’ve never seen it, but they’ve definitely never played ‘Don Giovanni’. Never. Oh, I’m sure of that, Smith. I keep a special lookout for ‘Don Giovanni’, but I’ve never seen it. What do you think of that, Smith? Smith? Smith!”
My not infrequent dining companion, John Smith, remains silent, continuing in the way he started. I couldn’t tell you why. He does that sometimes.
I’m not in a particularly bad mood, and I am glad to see Smith there, so I ask him:
“How’s that book?” That seems to reanimate him.
“Book?”
“Yeah, you know – ‘The Pilgrim’s Process’.”
“That’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ – prooogreeess – not process. It’s beyond you.”
“Yeah, sure it is. The Pilgrim’s Process… Processo Pellegrino by Giovanni Boniface Buniano – ha, ha… ahar…”
On Smith’s part – silence. Yeah, this is something he’s capable of, though what motivates such a willful act of passive resistance, which by any other name is outright defiance, plain and simple, remains a mystery to me.
So I say:
Continued in next frame
The Hunched Cornish, May 9, 2014