Oy. I went out to dinner last night among the pretentious people.In all fairness, only two of the people were actually pretentious, as was their ridiculous home. The others were pretty much just suck-ups to the sickeningly wealthy people. Ooh, I sound catty. And I am.
I'll avoid every conceivable detail, but we had to be at this house at six to "meet" to go to dinner, but of course there were hors d'oevres out -- the Hubs had been sure there wouldn't be, so I didn't bring a hostess gift, although I got one because I figured -- but they are not pretentious in this way. This wouldn't have bothered them. The hors d'oevres were pretty much just cut-up veggies. (The last time we were there, she served some things in Tupperware.) It's the house that is absurdly over the top, and the husband in this couple who doesn't stop talking about himself for two seconds. We get it. You're really rich. Thanks.
What else. It was freezing cold there on the lake, so we took the "short" route out to their circular, paved, sloping driveway to get to our cars. We went upstairs, past the piano balcony -- the size of half my house, nothing on it but a baby grand piano -- and through their laundry room and into their garage. Their upper garage. Yes, they have a two-story garage and it is, literally, no exaggeration, bigger than my whole house. The upper garage only held four of their cars, and the only ones I noticed where the stretch limo and the pickup. Looking back from our car, I could see that the lower garage was also open, and their were about four cars in there, too. Two people live in this house. I wonder who drives the stretch limo to work?
The restaurant, down and around a dark, windy road, was at the very edge of Lake Hopatcong (the biggest lake in New Jersey, I believe, 56 miles of shorefront, according to Mr. Rich and Knows Everything), in which there were ice floes floating. I was a) so cold that I had a panic attack, as I did in the cold on Thanksgiving, and b) terrified that I was going to get blown into the lake, because we had to walk about two feet from its unguarded edge on our way into the restaurant.
Where our hosts had conveniently called ahead and made special arrangements for the chef to prepare a special dish for the two vegetarians.
Hey. I'm not a vegetarian.
So they placed before us -- the Hubs and me -- huge plates of grilled vegetables. Boy, was he pissed off. They had good pasta on the menu, and he'd been looking forward to that. But, nooooooo. So we had to basically just eat it. I was already feeling not very well -- I had been nauseous off and on all day -- so I just went with the flow and ate it, as much as I wanted, anyway.
What can I say? It was not an evening I'd care to repeat, even though the people -- sans Mr. Rich Guy -- are basically nice. It's the two wives who are work-friends of the Hubs anyway. Mr. Rich Guy said, Oh, we must come back in the summer! We'll come over to the restaurant in his boat! Oh, yeah. Sign me up for that one.
I said to the Hubs in the car, as soon as we made our escape and got slightly lost on the dark windy roads, which also scared the living crap out of me, that we must make a pre-emptive strike and invite them to dinner in a restaurant near us at the beginning of the summer. No way I want to go out there again, even in the summer. There was no way for us even to offer to pay for our own dinner -- these folks eat there all the time, the waiter asked after their grandchildren by name -- and we never will be able to reciprocate unless we invite them out here. The Hubs was further annoyed because he and these two women see each other for dinner a few times a year and this was his turn to take them out and here it turned into this couples thing and Mr. Rich Guy playing big host and lord of the manor in the restaurant.
Enough of that shit.
R and I saw Brokeback Mountain today. It really was a remarkable movie. There wasn't a single element in it that wasn't perfectly done. Ang Lee is an absolutely brilliant director. And Heath Ledger's performance was acting in its perfect form.
I'm actually still cold. Winters are getting harder and harder to take. No wonder people move south when they're old. Not that I want to, or plan to, or ever expect to. But I'm starting to understand the desire to.
