J & R STEAK HOUSE AND NEW YEARS 1-1-02
A nice family dinner on the island with JEN'S family. Park Slope, Brooklyn is made-up of Brownstones. Very rarely is there a driveway. But many people living there are ultra-rich and have second houses elsewhere and own cars. Therefore parking is almost impossible. We amazingly found on-street parking a few days ago only a block away, so that's where the car stayed.
Well, when we got to the car, we stopped stupefied in our tracks. We forgot to allot time for digging the car out of the snow. We were completely plowed in. I went back to the apartment and borrowed the shovel from the little room under the front stairs (it's the Landlord's shovel, they live above us and are extremly nice people). After 45 minutes of digging the little car pulled out of the spot where it was buried.
The ride to the J & R STEAKHOUSE was a bitch, but we sped, and got there in a solid-though-completely-illegal record time, an hour but they were just happy we got there at all. The story behind the tradition of the family going to this restaurant every year goes as follows; when Jen's Grandfather was alive he would spring for the entire meal, and the restaurant was also then under previous ownership and under another name. It was more high scale joint then. But now, according to Jen, it's kind of gone the way of the redneck.
I am guessing you can determine if a steakhouse isn't quite the posh 5 star dining experience if there is a "Big 76er Challenge" (if you can eat the 76 oz cut of steak in one hour by yourself, then you get it for free, if you can't you have to pay $49.95 and get a Polaroid of your mug next to the giant artery clogger pasted to the wall of shame forever) Well in not breaking with tradition we arrived 45 minutes late, and still nobody had even ordered their food. This is when I was beginning to think about time, and Jen kept saying (I'm not going to rush my family). I can't complain about the food. The steak was the best I've had in some months. And that's saying a lot, considering I judge a restaurant by how well they prepare a steak, but a romantic setting this is not. Infants crying, children running around everywhere. Jen and I judged J & R's to be about one step above a Ground Round (because it didn't have balloons and popcorn.)
Jen and I drove back to her father's house in our car with her cousin Kathy in the back. Kathy is 6'3 and really sweet, but Jen likes teasing her by talking about sex around her for some reason, I'm guessing for her own amusement). When we got back to Jen's Dad's house Jen was kinda outraged that her shelves and bed were completely dismantled and packed away somewhere. She hasn't even been gone a week (Having moved in with me) and any trace of evidence that she once lived there was erased.
We logged on the the internet only to find that the last train that could have made it to Brooklyn before the ball dropped had already left. So we were stuck. Plans kaput. The party her dad threw, though makeshift was fun. We played a game of pictionary in which 2 of the elder people playing being almost deaf made for a hilarious time. The guys versus the girls game turned out in our favor, the second game was couples teams. Jen and I were the Black dye and were ahead until the ball started to come down and the game ended by unanimous forfeit.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo