I had a nice dinner with sooz in which we arrived very early like retirees and ate a reasonable amount of tasty food. It took me forever to find the place because it was in a hellish HB strip mall the size of a town, but I enjoyed my pasta carbonara.
After BSing with Bob for a bit, I went for an aimless drive. I do this a lot on weekend nights if I’m not reading or staring into space. As usual I ended up on Newport Coast Drive because it’s a nice pretty zoom up a hill. I needed a couple things and I went to the fancy people grocery store at the top of the grade.
This is a “Pavilions” supermarket, and it’s huge. Suburban supermarkets are big, but this one is gigantic. Two-story ceiling, too many square feet. They have all the normal stuff plus all the fancy stuff, with little islands of excess containing quick meals and luxuries strewn about. I’m only there late in the evening when it’s almost empty, and I am captivated by its perfect emptiness and luxury. It reminds me of the TRAINS OF THE FUTURE I rode in Paris as a kid, which went from nowhere to nowhere at high speed, silently, and only rose from the depths to bask under gigantic perfect skyscrapers.
I got a bottle of vodka, some pumpernickel bread, and some cold cuts.
The cold cuts were good Italian-style stuff: capicolla and real mortadella. They also had pancetta in the same rack, next to the smoked turkey and the pastrami and salami etc. Pancetta is different from the others. It’s bacon, and not ham, though it looks more like ham. Unlike everything else in that fridge box, it has to be cooked. Admittedly the package says it has to be cooked, but it’s not in huge type.
I wonder how many wealthy customers only know that “pancetta” means fancy and not that it’s cured but raw pork? Oops.
At the checkout, the workers were discussing a bad car wreck that had occurred earlier. Some high school kids had wiped out in front of the fire station next door and chopped their car in half. Discussion was had about the problems of children and horsepower. There had been another recent case where a kid had died on his 16th birthday because dad gave him a very fast sports car, and more recently an 18 year old girl had checked out after the Porsche she was piloting struck a fixed object at 100 mph.
Someone needs to talk to Dad. While he’s choking down his raw pork sandwich, Junior is out there being burned beyond recognition because Dad thinks it’s an awesome idea to buy Junior $75,000 worth of death. Who can blame the kids? They’re teenagers dying of their parents’ affluenza.
I’ll stick with the fully cooked carbonara, the salad and iced tea, and the Japanese-made sports coupé. Moderation, he died old.
Be My Blog 
points for tragedie and affluenza.
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What, no borscht? 😀
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The phrasing of your memories of Paris is beautiful.
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I don’t know Paris is so small you can walk anywhere. My memories of Paris are the roasted chestnuts, crepes from a street vendor, couscous on the left bank and a glass of wine in one of the many sidewalk cafes. And of course the Louvre which a mere mortal can not do justice to in a mere lifetime.
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“There had been another recent case where a kid had died on his 16th birthday because dad gave him a very fast sports car, and more recently an 18 year old girl had checked out after the Porsche she was piloting struck a fixed object at 100 mph.”
The nice thing about this problem is that it tends to solve itself!
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I disagree. Sixteen year old kids are barely able to navigate the world on a skateboard. They die for their parents’ idiocy.
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Well to begin with I have no sympathy for the rich, be they kids or be they adults, none what-so-ever!
So fine let us raise the driver’s licence age to 18 or 21. It would also help with polution and energy issues.
When my kids came to me and said that they wanted to get a driver’s license, I said fine you have my permission to get a job so that you can earn enough money to buy a car so that you can take you driver’s test. And that is what they did!
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I do understand your point, and I agree about the drivers license.
I just can’t extend my distaste for the local wealthy to their children, no matter how much I can’t stand the adults.
A 16 year old kid given a chainsaw or a gun or a 400 horsepower car is just a victim.
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I understand your position as well. But I would look at the problem of being more the values that the parent gave the kid, not that the kid had a chain saw, a gun or an automobile.
When I was 16 I wasn’t given a chainsaw but I am not sure back then, in 1952, chainsaws existed. when I was nine I was given a gun, but I had been taught even before that to respect guns. By the time I was sixteen I had multiple guns.
I also drove when I was 16 but I lived on a farm and every Saturday I had to drive to the acreage where we raised our hay and load the truck with hay bring and bring it home. And of course to unload it.
Anyhow a kid growing up on a farm learns a lot things like responsibility much sooner than kids growing up in town.
But it is still the responsibility of the parents to teach that responsibility. I hope I did a good job, and when I see the way that my kids, six in total, are bringing up their kids I feel like I did a fairly good job.
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that was a lovely dinner..
also you can tell i spent a large portion of my adolescence in OC.. the day i got my plastic license in the mail, i got a speeding over 100 mph ticket
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Good thing you didn’t have a 2008 M5 or a Porsche Turbo, or you would have been going 150 and cut the car/yourself in half!
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There’s a new-ish law here that anyone caught doing more than 50 km/h over the speed limit (so, 30 mph over) is an automatic loss of license and loss of vehicle for seven days, and a fine of up to $10K.
I think the third person caught under this rule was a 17-year-old girl who explained she was driving her parents’ car. The cops’ reaction was, “Well, I guess you’ll have fun explaining to your mom where her car went for a week then.”
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I love your description of the supermarket. Also, affluenza is my new favorite made up word.
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