My Teeth Are In My Hat (2)

[Friday, which generally comes before Saturday, may be found HERE. There is nothing in this current part that explains about the title. If you absolutely have to know, go to the previous day. It won't be worth it, but what in life is?]


SATURDAY

After eating our breakfast again (once more, you have to have read Part One to find out why we're eating our breakfast AGAIN, but it probably isn't worth backtracking. Boy, I have delusions of inadequacy...), we went swimming in the hotel pool. We were joined in the aquatic fun by sister-in-law Victoria, brother-in-law Joe, niece Ava (or Avaroo, if you prefer), and grandnephew Darian (he of the gap-toothed smile in PART ONE, and in this case it's worth it to go there and look.)

As everyone splashed around in the pool and hot tub, I stood off to the side. I was reticent to put on a swimsuit because I have gained about twenty pounds this year. Everyone told me what a party pooper I was, though, so I went back to our room and donned my swimming togs. And I'm glad they got on my case because I enjoyed myself, even if I did look a bit like a hairy Pillsbury doughboy in my Tommy Bahamas.

Once the swimming was done, we went to Friendly's and got ice cream because burning off a couple hundred calories should always be rewarded with sugar and butterfat.

Now I get to tell you a little bit about Darian. He is the most physically fit child on earth. His favorite foods are vegetables. He once opined, when asked why he wasn't eating at some family gathering, "Why would I eat if I'm not hungry?" This made us question if he was actually from our gene pool. And, when we said we were going to Friendly's for ice cream, he pouted. He said he wanted real food, not ice cream.

WTF? He's seven. What seven-year-old pouts when he's told the family is going for ice cream? I'd blame it on his schooling, but Ava goes to the same school and she hasn't shown any such tendencies toward insanity. We finally talked him into having ice cream by saying we were going to order this thing called a "Crowd Pleaser" which comes with twelve scoops of ice cream and six different toppings, and we each would get to choose two flavors and one topping.

(As an aside - like this whole piece isn't an aside, but I digress - I'll tell you that our Crowd Pleaser came with about four fewer cherries, didn't quite jump over the top of the bowl like the one above, and we swear they didn't include about three of the flavors we asked for. We didn't really figure this out until we were mostly done scarfing it down, though, so we had no way to prove it if we had wanted to complain. If you go to Friendly's in Plymouth, I suggest you count your scoops before you start eating. I'm just saying.)

Darian had ordered gummi bears as his topping. And the boy who didn't want any ice cream ate about half of the Crowd Pleaser all by his lonesome. One of the reasons for this is because none of the adults much cared for gummi bears and one thing our Crowd Pleaser was not lacking was gummi bears. Every frigging spoonful had six or seven gummi bears in it. Bleh.

With the ice cream gone, Victoria and Joe took the kids home while MY WIFE and I returned to our room for naps. You vacation your way, we'll vacation ours. Swimming, ice cream, naps - yes, we are 50-something kindergarteners. Actually, we knew we had a good night of partying in front of us, so we wanted to build up our energy.

Victoria and Joe returned at 4:30 and we went to the New Tokyo restaurant. We sat around the hibachi grill and ate great food while Chef Sing entertained us with good humor and tremendous culinary skill.

"I am not a crooked Japanese chef!"

Here, he builds an onion volcano.



And here he does mostly straight-ahead cooking while explaining his nice philosophy.



The food was great, the entertainment a load of fun, the drinks were good, the price was reasonable considering what we got (and extremely reasonable considering Victoria and Joe were treating) and I have placed it on the list as one of my favorite meals ever.

We then drove into Plymouth to see James Montgomery.

James kicked ass, as did his band. It was a great concert, rocking hard all evening. Best of all, it was a benefit for Project Reach in Plymouth, a wonderful organization.

Tony V opened the show. Great comedian who does a load of benefit concerts and God bless him for giving of his time as often as he does. Next up was Emily Hodges, a singer/guitarist/songwriter.

Emily, with David Hull (bass w/Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, others) and James Montgomery

Emily is 13, with the voice of a 30-year-old. She did a fine original number and then a cover of Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride & Joy". Next, David Hull took the stage to do a couple of rockers, which led into James coming out and taking over. And from that point onward, the sweat flowed freely. There was a space in front of the stage for dancing, and it filled up quickly.

Here's a bit of James and the band (taken from the slamming dance floor, so excuse the video quality.)



As most of you know, I don't dance. I am to dancing as Colonel Sanders is to PETA. People have suffered grievous injuries via attempting to dance with me. No joke. My Grandma was a dancing teacher. She tried to teach me how to dance once. I stepped on her feet three times in 45 seconds and she told me in no uncertain terms to sit down. So, it was very surprising that, while I was standing near the front of the stage and tapping my foot (I do have timing; I'm a musician.), a woman came up to me and said, "I hate to see you dancing alone. Come on; dance with me."

She was a decent looker, and had I not been happily married with MY WIFE sitting about twenty feet from where this woman was asking me to dance, I might have accepted the offer despite the possibility of my breaking her ankles. However, I was and am happily married. I told the woman this. She wasn't fazed. She grabbed my hand and started dancing. Being a gentleman and not wanting to totally diss a lady, I tried a half-hearted step or two, realized I hadn't improved in my terpsichorean charms since the last time I tried to dance some ten years back, and stopped before I crippled her. Did that deter her? No. Despite my being married and a terrible dancer, she moved in front of me and started dancing in a way that was grinding her ass into my crotch.

OK, I was flattered, but I was also MARRIED. The song stopped, I thanked her for the non-dance, and returned to my seat next to MY WIFE (who, I have to say, looked nothing other than bemused.) I looked at the dance floor and there was the woman trying to get my brother-in-law to dance with her. Apparently she specialized in men who were already spoken for. Same deal, as he tried to ignore the come on, but she started grinding him, too. He did his best to move out of the way, considering the dance floor was crowded.

(By the end of the night, she had found someone not quite as reticent as me or my bro-in-law. MY WIFE spotted her in a corner of the auditorium making kissy face with some other guy.)

I don't care if she was drunk, horny, and was going all the way with someone no matter how many guys she had to try before she found one to accept, I was flattered. You take your sexual compliments where you can get them when you're my age.

(I could tell you two other strange women tried to dance with me, but you probably wouldn't believe it. True story, though, and I highly recommend a James Montgomery concert if you're looking to hook up. By the time the third one started dancing with me, MY WIFE had had enough. She got up and joined me on the dance floor, making sure all the other women knew she was in charge of the awesomeness that is me, even if I do keep my teeth in my hat sometimes.)

And that pretty much wraps up Saturday. I still haven't told you why the kid (PART ONE, damn it) is wearing a number. Guess you'll have to come back tomorrow, huh?

Sorry.

Soon, with less of me getting hit on by strange women.