I walked into a local neighborhood retro comfort food diner, supposedly it was Monty's Blue Plate, however it looked more like a convenience store. I think I was with inlaws, but it was odd because there were kids that were inbetween the ages of my two nieces, and they didn't look like them either except for light hair. We sat down at a table that didn't look anything like Monty's tables...the chairs were big and wide, butcher block style, maybe like something out of Avo's in Fort Collins, but this definitely wasn't Avo's. If anything it had the ambience of a TGIMcFunster's. One of my nieces wanted me to sit on her lap. I thought that odd, but I did it anyway, but I was afraid I was going to crush her because she looked only about 6 or so. She was wearing thick dark hornrimmed glasses. The other niece, who was about the same age, was talking about (a famous celebrity who just died) and my MIL and SIL were all too eager to participate in the conversation. I was just dying of embarrassment to be around these TV celebrity gossip tabloid lovers, and despite the look of the TGIMcFunsters, this was STILL the east side of Madison where people don't discuss such things. I'd never be able to set foot in Monty's again (not that I have recently IRL, but that's a moot point). However, as a sign of the times, even Monty's politically-correct, eco-minded, socialist-prone overeducated eastside patrons shall witness the decadent decline and fall of their utopic high-minded civilization, and succumb to the new presiding moronic culture of imbecilic leaders and a corporate dumb-down of food. I got up and went to the cash register, this place looking more and more like a convenience store. There were signs advertising Pop Tarts and some kind of Toaster Waffle. I asked the teenage guy working at the counter why they were selling that food? He said he's the new manager and that they had made changes in their menu and they were now selling these convenience foods. I asked him why, since one can walk down the road and go into the Stop and Go and get that, whereas people come here for better food. I then mentioned some sort of salmon dish that I once had there (but only in Dreamland as I can't recall eating salmon at Monty's IRL) and how can they serve such trash after having cooked such fine food in the past? I started getting really angry at this guy because he was such an idiot and knew nothing about food yet was running this restaurant, but completely bastardizing it. Then I remember shouting at the bottom of my lungs (i.e., in a very DEEP voice) "Thumbs Down, Caesar!" Was I mocking this twerp's dictatorship of his restaurant business, he giving his thumbs down to all good and wholesome cuisines, or was I giving *him* MY thumbs down? I don't know, but I think this is a pretty good analogy to our country and the pea-brained little Ceasar we have running, or should I say, ruining it.

Labels: Dreams