On Saturday night I partook in a virtual orgy of meat.
A friend of mine wanted to meet for dinner, so I grabbed Alan and headed down to my friend TJ's apartment downtown. Right when we got downtown the temperature in my car shot up and steam started hissing out of my hood. I parked and cracked it open and took a peek. There was a pinhole in my radiator and it was squirting out a steady stream of coolant onto my engine. Great.
Actually, on retrospect, I was quite lucky. The car overheated right at the parking lot downtown, and not while in the middle of standstill traffic on I-4 (which there was) so later that night I was about to pick up some goop to patch it up and it seems to be holding steady so far, although I need to find a proper fix next time I get paid. Be thankful for small blessings.
I thought we were going to some steakhouse around town, but we ended up heading out to a place way down on I-drive. (Hence the sitting in traffic) We ended up at a place named 'Texas de brazil' and it was quite the experience.
This was my first time at eating 'Brazian' type dining. To begin with I could not quite place the decoration of the place. It was a kind of a cross between 'world market' and a medieval dungeon. The place was completely packed, and since it was on I-drive it was a mix of people in fancy evening wear and sunburned tourist. You first start out your meal by going to a salad-buffet type thingy in the middle of the restaurant. It is filled with all sorts of salads and side dishes and exotic little beats and cheeses and so on. TO be honest I did not know what a lot of the stuff was. I piled a number of odd-looking things on to my plate. Most of it was tasty. One or two things made me want to spit it back into a napkin like a four year old. That's experimenting for you.
At your table you are given a little round paper token. Once side is red and the other side if green. When you are ready for some meat, you flip the token to the green side and the meat dudes come. Now, let me talk a moment about the meat dudes. There are no meat women there, just meat dudes. They walk around the place wither their backs ramrod straight and carry a big sword-like skewer with cooked meat on it. The way they carry themselves I had the oddest notion that they should be walking around shirtless with a little bow tie. That's a meat dude for you. Any ways, they come to your table and show your their meat, if you want some they saw off a couple of slices and you daintily pry it off with a little pair of tongs supplied. There was every kind of meat under the sun, pork beef, sausages, lamb, you name it. Each meat dude carried a different kind of meat. (For some reason it reminded me of a Myspace quiz: WHAT MEAT DUDE ARE YOU: You are PORK, light and greasy everyone savors you although you are forbidden to some.) At one point there was a virtual swarm of meat dudes around the table, I could not even eat I was too busy prying off pieces of meat. After a half an hour my belt was straining and I was groaning under the meat load. That type of blatant meat orgy has to be some sort of sin.
Although the food was beyond excellent, I really did not like the atmosphere of the place. To begin with, it was so noisy I could hardly hear anything being spoken at the table. Also, there was a constant flurry of people around our table. Meat dudes and waitresses and other patrons. The tables are too close together and when people walk by they have to squeeze between chairs and tables with literally inches to spare. It's a bit discerning to have a dude with a sword like skewer squeeze by right over your head. I suppose it was a trade off for the excellent food.
Afterwards we headed on over to TJ's apartment for a little bit. He has a cute little apartment that is right in the middle of downtown. It's pretty neat, you walk right out the door and literally within a few feet there is bars and restaurants and Lake Eola park. We hung out in his apartment for a little bit and I played with a living mop-end that TJ swore to me was a dog.
We decided to go for some drinks so we went outside and wandered down the road. First we stopped in some total yuppie place. I do not even know the name of it. It was nice because you could sit outside and enjoy your drinks, but they were pumping out some god-awful music. I cannot even place it; it was like techno-pop meets elevator music.
TJ's wife got tired and headed on home. We decided to go somewhere else and I decided I wanted to go to Mako's simply because I had never been there before. I wanted to see the girlies on swings.
Being stuffed with meat, I did not feel like walking so we hailed down one of the pedicab dudes. Now, both TJ and I are large guys, we could just about squeeze our asses into the little pedicab seat. Alan, not having any other choice, had to perch indignantly on our knees. Normally these pedicab guys zoom on down the street. I laughed as ours gave a mighty heave and groaned as he moved our bulk down the street. I got to give the guy credit though, although he went slow and huffed and puffed, he managed to get us there.
Makos... Good lord. I think I got herpes simply walking in the door of that place. I can't even use the word meat market to describe the place. It was more like a soft-core strip bar. While earlier in the evening I had been swarmed by meat dudes, I was now swarmed by shot girls, some of them who looked to have started puberty just a few months ago. I declined any shots from the shot girls, one reason because those things hardly have any booze in it, and another because I saw they were putting their finger over the top of the shot glass and shaking it up before they gave it to you. I did not want to know where that finger had been earlier that night.
So we hung around for a while, had a few drinks and I gawked at the swing girl. The swing is a big wooden board attached by a couple of chains that look strong enough to hold Kong. Through out the night some scantily clad girlies dances and gyrates while the swing moves back and fourth. If anything it was unique. Despite all the booze I drank I hard had a buzz. I think all that meat was soaking it up.
After that we stumbled on back to my car. I bid TJ good night and headed on home. Luckily my car did not seem to overheat on the way.
Sunday I slept till noon and then filled up another truckload of tile form my bathroom. It's getting there, slow but sure.
2026 Update
Dialing the machine to June 2006: radiators, all-you-can-eat meat on swords, and girls on swings—Ed's night has it all.
June 2006 and you're plugging a radiator hole with goop and eating until your belt screams. What a time. That world is a museum now, Ed. The pinhole radiator would be diagnosed by a sensor and a service-center computer; the goop fix is a relic of men who kept tools in the trunk. Texas de Brazil's paper token and parade of sword-carrying meat dudes have been partially replaced by QR codes and table-side tablets that ask for a tip before the food arrives. You didn't photograph any of it, because your phone was a phone, and 'sharing' meant telling your buddies in person. The MySpace quiz that compared you to pork is now an algorithm quietly building a consumer profile while you stare at a screen. The pedicab driver who lugged three large men down I-Drive would today be an app with surge pricing and a 'rate your driver' button. Say what you like about the swing girls, at least when you walked in you didn't have to accept a cookie banner.
“2006 Ed, after watching the shot girl shake your drink with her finger, what exactly possessed you to hang around long enough to watch the girls on the swings instead of calling it a night?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you gotta understand the whole night was already a train wreck, so what's one more car on the pile? I mean, the car overheated, I ate like a condemned man, and then I paid a pedicab dude to haul my fat ass to a soft-core circus. By the time I got to Makos, my brain had kinda given up making sensible choices. The finger thing bothered me, sure, but I wasn't drinking those shots anyway, I was drinking beer. And the swings... look, I was stuffed full of meat and curious. You ever see a girl swing on a big wooden board suspended from the ceiling while a bunch of sunburned tourists holler? It's like a train wreck, you can't look away. Plus I figured if I left right then, TJ would've called me a quitter. So I stayed, gawked, and regretted it later. That's the whole story. My decisions ain't always smart, but they're always mine.
