must be: 72% scott avett, 11% devendra banhart, 9% paul newman, 7% nadal, 1% ellen degeneres...

...and, you know, dashes of tim o'brien, t.i., robert f. kennedy, tim gunn, rick bragg, bob weir, and john stewart.

listen, yesterday, my mother accused me of enjoying waitressing. as in, she cut me off mid restaurant-tale (she's been listening to these best/worst customer stories since i entered the tenth grade) and said, "you like it."

me: no i don't. you know i need the extra cash.

her: no. you don't. you have two other perfectly respectable jobs. you do it because you like it.

i felt like someone had caught me wearing only a feather boa and dancing to the jonas brothers.

but, truth is, i do "like it," i suppose. if made to choose, i'd obviously lock myself and my brilliant students up in our classroom...but people amaze me. i never know who i'm going to meet. this might mean some idiot who calls me sugar and asks me repeatedly about nursin' school. more likely than not, though, my customers are warm and smart. in fact, the statistics are staggering: so many less cads than you'd imagine.

point is (jesus. i did it again. the whole preface-is-longer-than-story thing), lately, i've been waiting on the best couples ever. we're talking 80 year-old's named ellen and paul who drink mojitos ("so this is that drink our kids been telling us about") and kiss at the table, young couples who give each other fist-daps a la the obamas. i had a guy last night in a white suit try to swivel his wine glass that held a taste of cotes du rhone. somehow--probably nerves--it went everywhere: on his face, his coat. and the girl he was with just leaned over and took his hand, laughing.

but the best, THE BEST, was the blind date from match.com.

i swear to god. bruce and terry. she (terry) was twenty minutes late, which, bruce and I initially took as a bad sign. (listen, you tell your waitress anything when you're nervous and already half plowed.)

but then she showed. and they had a THREE HOUR DINNER. and on the way out, he put his arm around her. later, much later, when i was taking off my apron and walking out to the car, i saw them standing in the parking lot still. talking.

what i'm saying is: we give men a hard time. if you've even glanced at memememespace, you've seen that annoying pie chart where the girl has plugged a photo of herself (i.e. bleeding heart/ego) into some site and they've delegated her aesthetic scoring: 73% jessica alba, 2% gwyneth paltrow, 18% sigourney weaver, 7% raven simone.

must cook, we say. must work, must love nature, must have strong calf muscles, must tolerate project runway, must love hannah as well, must enjoy all of the same books we do, must love his mother, must not love his mother too much, must pay for us, must not order for us, must drive a truck but not one of those big scary ones, must enjoy any blues musician signed by fat possum records, must like small chests and big booties...

but we understand y'all do it too: must look like/cook like giada, must love to surf, must be a good girl, must also have a touch of jenna jameson, must speak 6 languages...

and we can do it, too, because at the end of the day karma's going to kick all our asses. hannah's going to end up with a republican who enjoys portraiture and traveling as far as the rolling hills of kentucky. my guy's bound to be a personal trainer who thinks poetry's for sissies but enjoys building instruments from wood he's imported himself. and that's the beauty of it.

p.s. no more boy stuff. after this, only posts about things that matter. like pineapple express and how the U.S. fared in badminton.