Temescal werewolf abatement -we need an app for that.

There is something about Temescal restaurants. I'll figure it out one day, but they attract the pisser offers. You know they diners who don't seem to realize they are 1-2 feet from other diners who may not share their points of view, and for that matter, don't want hear them. -Like people on phones on airplanes.

So it was last night as I found myself sitting one table away from a drunk guy who uttered the following sentences to an elderly walker assisted woman who had just sat to his left: "What you going to eat dearie? I was enjoying my meal till that bitch wife of mine decided to leave."

The wife had left in a huff a few minutes before, shoving her Mac & Cheese side dish in her husband's direction, "Here, I've had enough of this." Now, I had assumed that the "this" she mentioned was the over creamed, slightly burnt, mac & cheese or maybe lousy service, not that the "this" was her 30's something onion rind husband. --He had a discarded roughness with no flavor to his demeanor. I didn't catch the line he threw out which drove his wife away, but I did catch the one after the "B" line to the elderly lady. "The food her ain't bad if don't mind eating with Niggers and Faggots."

This drew the attention of the African American woman and her dining partner to my right. They had a more a look of shock than anything else. I tried to reassure them, as they had sat down right before the "B" line. "His wife just walked out on him a few minutes ago. He's a little drunk." This calmed the accused lesbian couple down. But, of course, Onion Boy couldn't stop. He was one of those wine werewolves. You know the kind, a few drinks and the evil hairy side comes to view. He continued giving menu and dining partner advice to the elderly lady in his scavenger sniff manner. --Predators always pick on the weakest.

The elderly lady's predicament was the most difficult to tolerate. She was accompanied in by a companion, who after seating her and going over menu items, had left to go shopping. She'd been alone for ten minutes next to the nibbling tattooed werewolf. He had pulled the menu from the walker woman and was pointing menu items that didn't exist. "Order the mussels. I like them. Faggots are all about mussels." Like any werewolf, this one didn't make a lot of sense when he was drunk.
By this time, diners two tables on either side of Onion Boy, had grown silent. I'm not sure what they were thinking, but going through my mind was the following: "I am a Berkeley pacifist. I will not get up from my Kobe Beef brisket and wild mushroom bread pudding to remove that guy's head from his body. ...I'm a pacifist... I will not..." followed by some real soul searching about whether I really want to be kicked out of a restaurant on a Friday night and possibly get arrested for werewolf abatement.

Onion boy did eventually pay his bill and stumble off to beat up his wife for something, but this is hardly the first time something like this has happened in a Temescal restaurant. In their tight boutique settings I get sat next to a lot of people who forget they are two feet away. I listened to two guys talk about how they go out to dinner each night an spend at least $75 bucks right after Jerry Brown had muscled his way to the front of the waiting for table line. Then there was the night after the first IPhone launch when four rich guys with twenty something trophy wives went on about their IPhones for an hour while I studied their wives. Like the airplane phone calls, I sometimes wish I could just shut off the phones. I'm considering a writing an application from my cell phone that will drop calls on any phone nearby that is bothering me. It would sell millions. Now if I could just figure out how to make an application that would instantly gag the Onion boy's of the world.