Tuesday, January 08, 2008

my dinner with andre

in the epic film Waiting For Guffman, Christopher Guest showed off his My Dinner With Andre action figures along side his Remains of the Day lunch box. the former instilled wild curiosity in the heart of the young, impressionable mind of one timothy william bedi.

that curiosity grew into a very mild desire to see My Dinner With Andre, the film of two men (one down-to-earth and the other with head extravagantly in the clouds) simply having dinner and discussing everything from theatre to the nature of reality. i suppose the seemingly bland premise made me want to watch it, 110 minutes of conversation. you see at 15, i could not imagine that an entire movie could be devoted to something which seemed so trivial and, well, boring. thus it was sophisticated and i should watch it. 10 years later it sounds much more exciting for reasons other than pseudo sophistication.

to date, i've seen roughly 7-odd minutes of it, somewhere right smack dab in the middle. it was interesting. i wanted an andre. i wanted to be able to sit and talk with somebody and be completely riveted. and over the years, i've been blessed with many andre's. tonight, i was able to spend a little time with two of them. one of them has a great deal of worth to say, but seems to think i get tired of hearing it. with the other, i had dinner.

my andre for the evening was a close college friend of mine. we've had countless long conversations, most of which occurred over food. tonight we dined on Las Palmas. i need both of those things: good conversation and good mexican food. if i don't get them regularly, i grow uneasy (i prefer to be easy like sunday morning).

we talked about the church, about worship, about woman, about what we were doing with our lives and the deliciousness of a number 4, with chicken. all of these things i'll keep thinking about over the next couple of days. i'll weigh and measure our thoughts and statements. i'll digest them much like my pork chimichaunga. that's what i love about having andre's, about good conversations, they stay with you for a while and become a part of who you are.

i suppose that is what is different about myself now from the 15 year old version. i don't care if people find me sophisticated or intelligent or even completely stupid and asinine. i want to learn, to understand as much as i can simply to learn and to understand things rather than being thought __________. thank God for Andre's.

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quote of the evening, made by my friend during the aforementioned 'women' section of our dialogue:

"i find myself increasingly attracted to the nubian goddess that works in underwriting. mona...... she looks like donna summer, 1974 donna summer."

donna summer, queen of disco/possible co-worker of a guy i know