The night my wife told Rhett Miller about our first date

Last night after work my wife and I headed to the mid-city part of town; the Old 97's were playing a show at the El Rey Theater, and we had tickets for the show. We got there well before the doors even opened so after we parked we went across the street to the Five Guys Burgers for dinner. After we ordered she went to the restroom on the way and from across the dining area she started gesturing toward the corner. It wasn't   an open table, but the band's front man Rhett Miller and a friend eating there. No one else in the place seemed to recognize him, but such is the thing about the band's popularity is such that only fans would spot them off-stage.

I used to see Rhett perform solo acoustic shows with some regularity years ago when he lived in L.A., and talked to him on occasion afterward. He's almost ridiculously friendly, and happy to talk with fans. Still, I wasn't going to bother him while he was eating, and I figured my wife would be too nervous sitting near him. (She can get a little... how to put it?... awkward around celebrities she likes.) However, when she emerged from the ladies' room she motioned for us to sit at the open table right next to where Rhett was sitting.

Before we even got our food, she simply could not control herself and politely interrupted Rhett, because she had to tell him the story of the role he played in how we are married today.

Paul Ryan's musical limitations

Last night I happened to hear part of Paul Ryan's speech at the RNC on the radio. Toward the end he made a little joke about the music that Mitt Romney preferred was the sort he tended to hear in elevators, and then he distinguished his tastes by noting his iPod "starts with AC/DC and ends with Zeppelin."

And my brain, being the way it is, thought, His collection doesn't have any artists alphabetically after L?

Replacement official spelling

Tonight on SportsCenter there were some highlights of a pre-season NFL game where the officials calling the game were replacements, being that the regular refs are out due to a dispute with the league. After that they cut to analyst Merril Hoge to comment on how those replacement refs likely would do when the regular season begins in a week.

However, I was distracted by the lower portion of the screen, which appeared to have been typed by a replacement graphics person:

The Aloha spirit from a can

Before our trip to Kaua'i last week my wife went through the best guidebook about the island (known colloquially as the "blue book") and highlighted and bookmarked a number of places and restaurants she thought looked interesting. On our first morning on the island we went to breakfast at a place called the Kountry Kitchen—a little diner in the town of Kapa'a (on the east shore). Although the island isn't that big,  two lane roads, 25 MPH speed limits, construction, and morning "rush hour" made it take 40 minutes to get to the town where it was, Kapa'a. The wait at the restaurant was over half an hour (in part because of its popularity and in part because there were only about 15 booths in the entire dining area).

While we are far from natives, this was our third Hawaiian trip, so we were experienced. Of course, to the eye of the locals we certainly appear to be pure Haoles (and I suppose, technically, we are). Although I am not the most adventurous eater there are moments when I adopt a when-in-Rome attitude, and when I ordered my simple breakfast of eggs and hashed browns, for the accompanying pork product I chose an option popular on the islands that I never see on the menu back home: Spam.

Stereo-typing

The sad reality is, in the eyes of others, every minute of every day we are all, on some level, representing some perceived group based on the way we look or the thing we're doing or some other means of being observed.

All of the time we are undoubtedly fucking it up for others with whom we share some ostensible quality, without even realizing.