The Sounds of Ice Cream

On Friday, June 29th 2007, Gina, Rafael, Ally (spelling to be confirmed) and I decided to go see Die Hard 4. I have pretty much decided not to go to the movies on opening weekends anymore , because the discourteous crowds are intolerable. However, Die Hard was playing in a premier theater (over 21, reserved seating), so I thought that would be worth the risk. When I asked Rafael if he wanted to go, he expressed the same hesitancy that I did, but also decided to risk it.
We started the evening by going to Tony Romas. Rafael got there first and called to report that it was closed, as in, out of business. That was a bad way to start the night. I’m a big fan of Tony Romas, though I fully understand why they may have closed. The service was slow and generally terrible, but gosh darn it, I love the food. What was supposed to be a night of celebration started off with a period of mourning.

This quickly passed and we relocated to Longhorn. The experience there wasn’t much better than Tony Romas, and the food isn’t as good. We ended up tipping a little under 15%. I wonder if all the wait staff transferred from Tony’s.

After eating dinner, we had a lot of time to kill before the movie, so we went to Cold Stone ice cream to pack on a few more pounds. While we waited in line, the staff occasionally broke into song. Contrary to its intent, the cheery melodies produced suicidal thoughts. Rafael was trying to identify what prompted the evil singing, and I explained to him it was their tipping policy. You tip; they sing. We both agreed that this was a good motivation to not tip, which introduced a quandary. We like to tip, but don’t want to be punished for it.

We sat down and ate our ice creams. At one point, the entire staff disappeared into the backroom. Rafael hypothesized that they were going to a rehearsal session. I wondered if they had a karaoke machine back there. I overheard them talking about baby pictures earlier and thought, more realistically, that they were all going “ooh” and “ahh” over some digitals.
When at last we were ready to leave, I produced two dollars for the tip jar. Rafael gasped in horror. I told him not to worry; we would do it smart. At this point a new line had formed. Rafael escorted the ladies outside while I worked my way up to the counter. He stretched out, as if on a start line, holding the door open for me. A few people came in as I held the 2 dollars over the tip jar. When at last the path was clear, I dropped the two dollars and ran as fast as I could out the door. Rafael waited until I cleared the door, then followed suit, and we escaped to the parking lot. We were all pretty happy with ourselves, especially me, since I’m so self-centered. I deemed the joke successful… at least, for a few seconds.

In a tragic twist of fate, we learned that we had sadly underestimated the determination of the staff of Cold Stone pizza. Any doubts that we had about their commitment to the company were quickly erased. One of the guys came running out after us, singing at the top of his lungs. And he didn’t do it just enough for us to hear it and get the point; he followed us and sang the whole song. There was no escape. He knew what we did and why we did it, and he wasn’t going to let it pass. He should be employee of the month.

We didn’t flee as we should have. I had great alternating urges to “run” and/or “kill him for food”, but millions of years of evolution allowed my modern mind to overpower those primal instincts. We had made a funny. He called us on it. We would have to take our licks and listen to the whole thing.

That was hard to recover from. I assumed the fetal position and cried for 17 minutes. Then we got up and went to CVS hoping to kill some time there. They were closing. That’s ok, though, since I don’t think we would’ve found much to do there.
Somewhere along the way we ended up at Circuit City. I think it was between eating at Longhorn and eating at Cold Stone, but I’m not sure. Regardless , we went to Circuit City to kill some time for one reason or another. Rafael and I were ecstatic to find that Guitar Hero 2 for the XBOX 360 was set up. We rocked out to SWEET CHILD OF MINE. His buttons weren’t working right, and my bar (not sure what you call it) wasn’t working right. That’s quality advertising.

At last, we made it to the movie. Fortunately, it worked out ok. The crowd was reasonable. I didn’t care for the movie, but that’s another blog for another day.