Gut Instinct: The Birdie Chirps, euro;Cheap, Cheapeuro;
If I were elected presidenthighly unlikely, given my checkered past of pilfering my mothers purse change and guzzling strangers abandoned beersI would make my birthday a national holiday. Lets call it Josh Day. On Josh Day Id urge, no, demand my citizenry to follow me to my preferred celebration spot, Coney Island. Wed unfurl blankets, sunscreen ourselves snow-white, devour Zapps Jalapeño potato chips and drink icy cans of Coors Light until I drunkenly, hilariously nuke some negligible nation like Luxembourg.
Sadly, I cant derail the Obama Express (is America less likely to vote for a drunkard Jew than a black man?), so Josh Day will never receive national acclaim.
But every days a Josh Day, a friend points out. You always pick the bars and restaurants we go to. Thats because Im always right. Except when I suggest imbibing the viscous liquor Zwack. Or eating embryonic ducks. Or sampling the Navy Yard Cocktail Lounges $3 cocktails and similarly affordable friction dances. Still, my smartest movebesides removing my navel piercing at 19is celebrating my summertime birthday at Coney Island. After 29 years of birthday fetes, from Chuck E. Cheeses animatronic high jinks to college keggers, my beach formula has proven the swellestand cheapest. All I require are endless 99-cent Coors Light silos to unleash my battle cry, Its my birthday, bitches! as the Cyclone zooms me to heights that dizzy me like a nights ninth beer.
My partys low-cost component is emblematic of my cheap-bastardness, which dictates I obtain pleasure from the absolute bottom. Take a recent weekend in geriatric wonderlandSarasota, Floridawhere a friend was getting hitched. Did the duos love make my heart swell like a Ballpark frank? Certainly. However, my happiest moment was dining at Tasty Home Cookin, a greasy spoon with a countdown timer to Christmas 2008. The strip-mall outpost served three griddle-cooked burgers for $1.86. They were as wonderful as post-coital bliss, and far tastier, which makes me wonder what Ive been doing wrong.
Conversely, inciting my drunken-stepfather ire is simple: Invite me to your birthday dinner. If the events BYOB, like at Prospect Heights jerk-shrimp paradise The Islands, then Im placated. Otherwise, I avoid birthday get-togethers like I did my high school neighbor Heather. This stocky, apelike ladyher hair scraggly as a heavy metal headbangersPeeping Tommed me every morning. Then shed inform me of my underwears color while we waited for the bus.
Blue, shed say, the words slithering from her pink, fur-lined lips, with stars. Lots. And lots. Stars. I shiver equally when I recall that moment, as well as a recent birthday fete at Korean long-timer Woo Chon. Its on a Midtown block so desolate that one can urinate on the sidewalk like a flea-bitten mutt. The blocks homeless élan didnt impact menu prices: Twenty-five bucks for barbecue! I cried, flipping through the disintegrating menu. Five bucks for watery Hite beer!
Hahahahahahaha! my dozen dinner companions laughed, which translates to, Were ordering enough food to sate a battalion of bulimic cheerleaders.
I white-knuckled my wallet as eight bottles of bracing soju were ordered, followed by a dozen beers. Seafood pancakes, mushroom dumplings and tubular spicy noodles came next, followed by raw steak and sea creatures for barbecuing.
I think we need another order of shrimp, said a bald eater, smoke wafting around him. Who wants shrimp? I shook my head as emphatically as Roger Clemens denying any steroid wrongdoing.
More shrimp it is!
Mentally tabulating the bill removed the pleasure from my charred, lettuce-wrapped bulgogi. For the first time in a great long while, alcohol provided zero solace. Upon the nights gluttonous, plate-licking endsweet strips of raw beef served as dessertthe bill thudded onto the table like a cartoon anvil.
It sat dead-fish still until a diner cloaked in an ill-fitting suit grabbed it and performed mental math: Fifty-six dollars each, he proclaimed.
My heart wept as I envisioned all the dollar dumplings Id never eat. Diners whipped out billfolds. Happy Birthday was sung with gusto. I tossed in my sad-sack Mastercard. When the receipt arrived, begging my John Hancock, I noticed an aberration: I was charged $57, not $56.
Surely theres been a mistake, I said, masking my fury with a grin.
No mistake.
Huh?
We charged you an extra buck to round out the tip.
Huh, I replied, making a mental note to steal the suited mans drink when he least expected it.