Wherein the plot thickens, indeed…
The Chang half of the Chin & Chang partnership jumps out of the back somewhere and rushes toward our table…
He dismisses the distraught Ukrainian waiter from the scene with semi-painful chops to the back of his neck.
“You no more here…” Chang seethes. I see steam rise from under his collar.
So I say: “How’s that, Chang? We’re here now.”
Chang raises his voice: “We no want you in here, no more, bad guests, you go now!”
So I say: “We’re not going anywhere, Chang. We ordered a bunch of food, which, by the way, is taking a really long time to get here. So, first of all, what do you have to say to that – huh, Chang? And second of all, once it finally GETS here – whenever THAT’S going to be – we fully intend to EAT IT, CHANG!!!”
Chang is now at the level of Chinese rage in a foreign tongue: “You fucky goof-o-barr, you fucky fleak! You disturubu good guests. You botharu orda. You go! You fucky fucky go NOW!!!”
So Commix Girl says: “Mr. Chang, I strongly recommend that you please leave us alone and let us enjoy the atmosphere and dining experience we came here for. Surveying all of your other guests, Mr. Chang, it appears that we’re no worse than they are, nor are they better than us… And, by the way, how DARE you call us names?!?”
Heads turn, heads turn, heads turn. The place goes so silent, a pin drops.
I’m flabbergasted.
She continues: “Therefore, if you have no existential desire for anything – and I mean ANYTHING – to happen to this wonderful establishment of yours, or to you, for that matter, please, just go ahead and TRY to get us out of here, if, that is, YOU HAVE THE NERVE! If not, however, then, as I’ve just requested, please allow us to eat our food in peace. We’re paying for it, just like anyone else – with the small difference now that I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE TIP!!!, although that perhaps is not the most important issue at this moment under these circumstances – and so, nevertheless, we expect to have a dining experience fairly similar to everyone else here and therefore we also expect to be treated no differently by you, Mr. Chang, than you treat them. Now, Mr. Chang, is there ANYTHING that isn’t clear about what I just said, OR do you want me to say it IN SOME OTHER WAY?! Well, Mr. Chang… I’m waiting…”
Just then, we both feel a portent of transformation about to take place in Chin & Chang’s before we see or hear it. We instinctively look across the joint and at a very long table – for the moment empty… and then… as if by magic, it begins to fill up… with characters… as if out of… well… as if out of Hollywood, I guess…
Chang uses the moment to put a brave face on – and save it, too.
“You pay okay.” Chang says. “Twice! One time, fo food. Two time, fo big fat FUCKY BITCH MOUT!!!”
Chang turns demonstratively on a heel, holds his flat ass contemptuously in our faces for just a second, then marches toward the suddenly descended mob of hotshot creative types.
The arrivals are a clamorous company of show-offs, a gang of weight-throwers, elbowers, sunglass-wearing, cigar-chomping bubblegum chewers, and a band of chest-puffing loudmouths in shiny suits with paunches too inflated to button them, wearing their egos like armbands around their sleeves. They haven’t even sat down and they’re already making demands – snapping their fingers, making shooing hand gestures high in the air, and whistling through their teeth.
Like a puppy dog, Chang is all beside them.
And then Commix Girl says:
“Say, Litman…”
“What’s that?”
“Take a look at them.”
“That’s what I’ve BEEN doing.”
“No, Litman, I mean, take a GOOD look.”
I look, I wait, a moment passes, and then I begin to see what she sees – or think I do, anyway. But no – I now really do see…
“That’s… that’s David Lynch,” she says. “Isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” I confirm, as it simply couldn’t be any other way, for… well… for there he was, as they say.
From a chair at the end of the long table, David Lynch is pointing at people and directing them into their seats – where HE wants them to sit! But this is not the David Lynch of the 2000 Charlie Rose interview – even-keeled, thoughtful, soft-spoken, forthright yet modest and reserved.
No – this David Lynch is truculent and cantankerous. He barks orders. His voice is nasty, sadistic, grating.
And then something very wrong appears to happen.
The arm pointing from his frame, first at one head around the table and then at another, looks foreshortened – shockingly so. The hand trying to stretch out from under the sleeve is small, even tiny, the forefinger on it not the lithe and elegant one of an artist, but short and – may God forgive the banal stereotype – stubby.
It gets worse.
For now we see that David Lynch is not sitting up straight in his chair but is KNEELING IN IT! There’s something he doesn’t like about the table arrangement, even after barking all those orders, and he swings his legs out over the side, the way a child does to get down, posterior in the air. He braces his arms against the seat and slides down the chair’s back leg.
“David Lynch is a dwarf?!?”
“No – it CAN’T be!”
“But… but… HE IS! Look at him, look at him!”
And that’s exactly what we do…
David Lynch bangs and bangs his little fists on the table until he is certain that everything’s his way. Apparently satisfied – although the fist-banging didn’t seem to change anything – he pans the restaurant interior with a willful glare. He sees something, it grabs his attention, he points a finger and begins to make a rush for it.
“Hey! What’s that, what’s that?!?”
A train of hangers-on scurries with mincing steps to keep up with David Lynch as he makes it to a long arrangement of end-to-end tables loaded with food. He grabs a table edge with his fingers and pulls himself up to see, his eyes and nose peeping just above the horizon. A battalion of waiters stands behind ready to jump at his every whim and demand.
“Wooooowww…” David Lynch says.
“It’s a smorgasbord of Chinese food, sir,” one of Lynch’s lackeys chortles gaily down into David Lynch’s ear, “just like you ordered.”
“What do you mean?! This is stupid! Whoever heard of a smorgasbord in a Chinese restaurant?!”
“Yes sir!”
“Get it out of here!”
“Yes sir!”
The waiters begin clearing the food from the tables.
“Get me my coffee – the bag, the grinder, the maker, the whole shebang!”
“Yes sir, yes sir!”
David Lynch gets up on a chair and begins shoving part of the smorgasbord off to one side all by himself. Food spills and tumbles from plates and trays into other plates and trays, and onto the floor – a truly shameful and reprehensible waste!
David Lynch teeter-totters on his toes on the seat of a chair, bent over his coffee-making on the ruins of the smorgasbord, grinding his coffee beans by hand like some demon.
“Hey, HEY! How am I supposed to brew this?! Where’s the outlet?! Where am I supposed to plug in this cord?!”
“We’re bringing you an extension now, sir!”
David Lynch is impatient. He directs people about with new orders. Now a crew appears and begins to assemble a portable stage, even though Chin & Chang’s already has a raised platform for karaoke.
David Lynch orders the stage erected over the platform.
“Test the curtains!” he demands.
One of the crew pulls a rope up and down. The curtains are a deep blood red. They go back and forth – first they open, then they close. The curtains appear to be in good working order.
“Open them!” David Lynch shouts.
He gets into the stage and someone hands him a piano synthesizer with a stand.
But now, a modest man with a tremendous shock of thick white hair emerges, as if out of the shadows, and steps unassumingly forth and stands to the side of the stage. Was he part of that whole Hollywood troupe, that Lynch mob that had just waltzed in here? If he was, Commix Girl and I hadn’t seen him. The man wears an understated artistic jacket and a shirt buttoned at the collar with no tie. He folds his hands in front of him. He is about to speak – and once again, Commix Girl and I are shocked.
For THIS is David Lynch! The REAL David Lynch! Or is it?
As the dwarf obnoxiously bangs the synthesizer around inside the stage, we focus intensely on the man who has just come out… hoping… praying…
It is all there, we think to ourselves – the calm self-assurance, the profound creative intelligence cloaked in gentleness and good will…
He looks exactly like the visionary of the 2000 Charlie Rose interview Commix Girl and I have watched over and over on YouTube. A little older, of course, but still…
The man begins to speak. Hell, it’s even the same voice:
“Ladies and gentlemen… There are many things I love, or have come to love, in this life…”
The dwarf bangs the synthesizer violently inside the stage: “Testing, testing, one, two, three… testing…” – his so-called voice a miserable grating rasp.
The man standing calmly by the stage continues:
“Well, making movies, for one, as you know…” He gives a little laugh.
“Testing, testing…” viciously rasps the dwarf.
“And then I have my art – painting, designing furniture… But more recently, I’ve tried to bring the lifelong joy I feel in drinking coffee to a wider audience, and through my website, which is paid, have tried to get them to take the wonderful journey of discovery into the fantastic world of coffee’s incredible taste with me…”
The man waits. The dwarf is silent – perhaps maliciously. The man continues:
“And of course, I have taken up musical composition, performance, and singing…”
The dwarf is silent…
“So tonight, here before you all, I’d like to perform a song I wrote not so long ago. It’s called –”
A sudden blast of synthesized piano from the stage cuts the man off. Standing on a chair and bent over a microphone, the dwarf begins to scream out a song in a strong voice that is nevertheless surprisingly melodic and demonstrates a fine-tuned ear and good pitch, although whether natural or trained it is hard to say, this being, after all, a dwarf.
Oh, fire, walk with me,
Oh, yeah, fire, o-ooohh…,
Walk with me, walk with me,
To-o-o thaaaaat brii-iidge…
It’s dark,
At the end of the bridge
There’s only one light… above…
The man scrambles into the stage and grabs a spare microphone, but in his panic drops it. The dwarf sings and sings as the man fumbles for the microphone on the floor. He finally snatches it up and brings it to his lips.
Can you see it, see it there – ye-ee-eah…
So dim, a little yellow, a little gray
Oh, fi-i-i-re, look, yeah, look up ahead…
It becomes immediately clear to us the man is merely lip syncing the words as the dwarf sings:
You gotta be careful driving
Toward that light, if you see it (and do you see it, baby?)
‘Cause the road – it’s sleek, baby
Yeah, oooh, sleek with mist and rain
Like the disappearing pictures of my dreams
The ones of yesterday…
From my disappearing mind
My mind is fading, baby
With that fire
But it’s okay
If you just wa-a-alk, like fire, wi-i-ith meeeee…
“Why is all this necessary,” Commix Girl asks.
Oooohh, fire, walk with me walk with me walk with meeeee…
Oh, yeah, oh yeeeeaaahh…
Filed by Nobody’s Author, March 3, 2016