I Hate Your Birthday Dinners

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You know what my favorite thing in the whole world is? Getting together with a bunch of friends, maybe six or seven or eight of them, and then getting their spouses together too, and then going out and hitting the town and grabbing dinner at the newest, trendiest, most exciting one-syllable restaurant in town. I fucking live to sit in a seat built for a Guatemalan dwarf and drink “house” wine that’s actually vinegar and piss. These situations make me smile and clap and say, "It is a great time to be alive."
I mean, what's more fun than only being able to speak to the people within six inches of your mouth because the designer of the restaurant decided to make the acoustics similar to the fucking Sydney Opera house? And who fucking doesn't love the sound of pots and pans banging for two hours at a time and the feeling of blood seeping from my ruptured ear-drums because my seat is a foot away from the open kitchen?

You know what else is great - when some asshole at the table orders lobster and crab claw appetizers and filet mignon and a bottle of wine and a digestif and an assortment of dessert samplers and then suggests the bill be split evenly. That guy is the best! He's so cultured and so charming. I bet he also cheats on his wife and berates minorities while in the confines of his own home. At no point during his performance do I want to twist a broken wine glass into his eye.

Oh, and who doesn't love eating 3oz of steak and five string beans? What, you don't think this is filling? You don't enjoy the fact that the meat was flown in from Brazil and the cow was slaughtered with a 7,000 year old samurai sword? Well, you should, because all of this makes the food more filling! And I never want to take my plate and throw it through the window out of protest and then weep on the dirty tiled floor of the bathroom after I shell over $100 for half a chicken breast and spoonful of corn.

But you say that you really do enjoy going out to dinner? Well that's just fucking great. There are times when I do too. Most of these times it's at a wonderful place called, "Chipotle." But if it's not just me and the wife going out to dinner, I prefer to keep it to six people at the absolute max. Unless everyone at the table is best friends with one another, and you all can have equally stimulating conversations without wanting to stick bamboo shoots under your fingernails, then there is no need to go out with a larger group and not be able to talk to anyone you like. Nothing sucks harder than being stuck with strangers at the far end of a table. I'd rather eat at Long John Silver's with a band of Islamic extremists than sit at the very end of a long table and have no one to bullshit with, while watching as the group of people at the other end shit their pants with laughter. But I'm the guy who always gets stuck next to the new guy who nobody knows, and he always hates sports, and he isn't a drinker, and loves Christian Rock or some other shit like that. Just thinking about it gives me hives on my eyeballs.

And I know I’m not alone here, I know there are many, many more people out there who fucking hate these dinners. How about birthday dinners with 75 people? What the fuck is that about? Why is your cleaning lady sitting across from me eating an endive salad? If people still feel the need to have parties in honor of their birthday, then they should have it at a bar, so people can come and go as they please. They should have it at a bar so I can buy the birthday boy/girl shots until they piss and puke a little bit, and then laugh at them as they fall asleep on a park bench. That’s the way it should be. You have birthday dinners with 900 people when you’re the President of the United States, not the manager of a bank.

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