On The Road With Gnomad, Day 4
Scribing at 7:50 p.m. on 2004-07-31
Ok .. so .. um .. how exactly is one supposed to feel when they find out not only is their little family unit a walking stereotype; but when you walk into a place that is supposed to totally offend every wee sensibility you have, it feels just like walking into your ma's basement? Or your grandma's basement? How weird is that?
We'll talk about that later, though.
Right now, I gotta tell ya about the coolest part of this trip so far, shy of the baseball game with the tickets JUST LEFT OF HOME PLATE.
So, remember when I told ya about meeting the woman who was the International Liaison for the Association of Professional Piercers? Well, we headed out to her shop this afternoon; and it was just about the coolest place I've ever seen. Their website is Twisted Sol and as cool as this website is (and it IS) it doesn't come close to touching the real thing. They've got a display case full of various antique tribal tattooing and piercing equipment; collections of ancient cultural jewelry; and the best artwork I've seen in their brag books I think I've ever seen. It was totally amazing. Alicia Cardenas is the woman I met; turned out she was co-owner of the shop. We got there and she had just taken off to run some errands, so we went next door to kill some time. Came back and as we were just about to give up and take off for the library (have to feed the Diva's geek urges, yanno) Alicia came pulling up in the parking lot. And she even looked relatively pleased to see us. Heh.
We walked down to the corner store and picked up a couple of bottles of water; and then went back to the shop. The guy at the counter told us she had headed downstairs, and to just go on down. Turns out he sent us smack into her private office, but she was nowhere near looking too pissed off about it.
We hung out and talked to her for a while, me about piercing stuff, and the Diva about Health Dept stuff. So we both had a good time hanging out with her. If any of ya'll find yourself in Denver, and need some ink or wanna get poked, check out Twisted Sol. You won't regret it.
Left there and went out to the Denver Public Library. I have to admit, it's a helluva place. The Diva plunked me down with a stack of tattooing books at a table on the second floor, and went off to go geek freak all over the place. We were there for a couple of hours, and I got to look over some pretty cool books that I'll try to root out at the local library when we get back home.
By the time we were done there, we were both way ready to eat. I finally won the battle about going to the previously mentioned stereotype-ridden immigrant italian dinners restaurant; after swearing an oath that I would not start a fight with anyone or get arrested. I smiled real big. I told her we'd have fun. She made that little whimpery noise. Sheesh. Some people have no faith!
So yeah. We went there. I was waiting for it to be that weird 'white people's italian' food, like at Olive Garden or Chef Boyardee, or Ragu.
I was way ready for that. What I was NOT ready for was that it didn't suck. It wasn't white people's italian food. The meatballs tasted like my ma's meatballs. Seriously. Imagine my surprise, I thought she was dead! But no .. she's off in a tacky restaurant in Colorado, making meatballs. Piped in Dean Martin/Mario Lanza/Rosemary Clooney italian ballads. Pictures of nuns and little italian immigrant kids at ellis island, and Sophia Loren, and Gina Lollabrigida. It was horrible, and marvelous, and funny and sad. But damn. The food was GREAT.
The most distressing thing? I knew all the songs they were piping over the sound system, because either my ma or my aunt used to either sing them or play them loud all over the house when I was growing up.
Sheesh.
I dunno what the hell the world is coming to.
Here's me, the original walking Italian stereotype. Kinda.
Or my family is, one of the two.
Maybe both.
*weeping, biting a knuckle*
*gnashing of teeth*
Shit.
