My Dinner With Michelle...Obama.

So Ken started out this Valentines week writing about breakups and I got super excited to join the fray! Is there anything better then remembering when you were totally right and justified and able to conjure the exact magnificent phrase at the exact magnificent moment?! Well, there's nothing better, but that's because it doesn't happen and when it does, it's because it's fake.

For example:

Once when I was breaking up with this girl, her name was...let's say Michelle Obama, she was all, "You never take me places anymore!"  and I was all, "Really?!"  I mean, we were sitting in the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day when she hit me up.

"What more can I do?!  Here we are having a lovely night and you are complaining?"

"I didn't ask you to bring me here!  Am I some cliché ingenue in some Tom Hanks movie?!  I'm MICHELLE OBAMA, take me somewhere interesting."

She had me there.  It's true, I was on autopilot.  I had been ever since Christmas when she took me to meet her grandmother.  It was fine, she was nice, but I knew it was over. But it was the Holidays and I'm not one to make a fuss.  The truth is, I had forgotten it was Valentine's Day, and all the nice places were booked...or so I assumed, I didn't really have time to check, I just called New York and when there was a table available, I had to take it.  So what if it was sorta hokey? I was trying, which is more then I can say for Michelle.

"Is this why you wore sweats?" I asked.

"What?"

"Is this why you wore sweats...on our Valentine's date?  Are you just done with this?"

"These aren't sweats. I got them from Anthropologie."

This is what she was wearing:

"Those-are-sweats." I stated slowly and with punctuated pauses between each word. "You wear whatever shoes you want, you showed up tonight ready for a light sprint out of here, and now I know why...I don't take you places."

"I don't want to do this here."

"Are you kidding?!  I don't want to do this here?  I don't want to do this until after St. Patrick's Day."

"Of course you don't.  It's all about keeping the peace with you isn't it.  Well, I can see right through you...I saw how you were with my Grandmother!"

"What are you talking about?!!!"

"You were all weird and distant."

"Pull yourself together, Michelle, I was causal and aloof. I didn't want to seem like some nutcase who's all up in your Grandma's business."

"Are you joking right now?  Is that what you're telling me, that you didn't want my 90 year old Grandmother to think you were into her?!"

"I didn't!"

"I'm leaving. Would you hand me my coat."

"No!  You don't get to drop your bombs and walk out!  Oh, No, you get to sit there coatless while I tell you a thing or two!"

"Keep the coat."  Then she shoves her chair out and it sorta bangs into the man sitting behind her. "Oh, excuse me."  She says, but to him and not me.

"Oh yeah," I jump in, "Please don't let her chair tap interrupt your lovely dinner of listening to us scream at each other at the top of our lungs!"

I could tell the guy was embarrassed to be dragged in, but what did I care?

"You are a real jerk sometimes, Patrick, you know that...a real jerk."  Her face was flush with her own embarrassment.

"You know what, Michelle Obama...I don't think this is working out."

"Are you kidding me?"  Her forehead tilled to one side.

"No, I mean it.  I'm not going to drag this on any longer.  We're done."

"You got that right, buddy."  She came straight at me and I lifted my arms up to protect my face, but she only grabbed her coat and walked out.  She didn't look back, and she didn't pay the bill.  When you are dating Michelle Obama, then you get used to a certain lifestyle and there she was, walking out the door.  

The guy whose chair she hit started this slow clap and soon the whole restaurant was clapping. All I could do was fumble through my pockets pretending to search for a wallet I knew was on my dresser.

In the end I walked out moments after she did, only to meet her waiting for the elevator.  It was the longest 102 floors of my life.

  

Michelle Obama's Not My Momma!

A few weeks ago, my mom casually tossed out that she thought she should get bangs.

"My hair just needs a bit of something; I think that something is bangs."

I should have, at that moment, pushed her face onto a cutting board, whipped out a cleaver and with one solid chop, gave the woman bangs.  It would have alleviated today's phone call...

"SHE STOLE MY BANGS! I can NOT believe it,  SHE STOLE...MY BANGS! I WAS GOING TO GET BANGS! I can't have no Democrat Bangs! Now everyone's dying over her Bangs and THOSE ARE MY BANGS! Now what am I going to do, that woman and her Stop-Feeding-Fat-Kids bangs, she looks ridiculous.  Oh, there they are in a close up, WE SEE THEM, WE GOT IT! THE FRONT PART IS NOW SHORTER THAN THE REST! Oh here we go, the President LOVES her bangs, I am sure, I am SURE he does. I thought he hated 'bangs'!  Get it? Gun Control?! Well now what?! What am I supposed to do with this mess!  I hate my hair, it's all long and parted to one side, I was growing it out so I could cut BANGS and now I'll just look like one of her minions, scalping themselves in adoration...you know, her arms have gotten fat, have you seen them? Did you notice?  I mean, the first inauguration  her arms were amazing, I'll give her that, but this go 'round, wheew, it was like a flying squirrel trying to get your attention. THAT'S why she got bangs, 'Look at my head, not my arms!' She probably walked into the Oval Office with a sleeveless shirt and Joe Biden was like, Woah, she's gonna need some bangs.' Well, I don't care. Everyone knows I was gonna get my bangs and that was way before all this "O-bang-a" garbage went down. My friend Georgia told me they would frame my face...NOW LOOK AT MY FACE! FRAMELESS! Who knows what I've got going on up there?! All this time I've been walking around smiling at people and they were thinking, "What was that?! Was that a face? Was that a painting?  Either way, that thing needs a frame!" I HATE THE DEMOCRATS! They are so selfish. Thoughtless.  You don't see Ann Romney stealing my bangs, NO! She swoops! Like any dignified woman in the public eye should. SWOOP MICHELLE, SWOOP! It's like that little girl from 'The New Girl' is running the country  It's fine for a dumb TV show but you are the Queen of America, SWOOP! I tell ya what, I am not gonna do it.  I can't. Not now. It's all too much.  What would they say at Church? Connie's gone commie, that's what they'd say. They'd all think I'd lost it. I'd be exiled. But my face would have a frame...maybe it's worth it, I mean, I can't let her win, those two have won enough, if you ask me.  Now they win the BANG race? NO ONE'S RACING YOU!  Oh would you look at that, they are showing her from the back, they are talking about her bangs and showing me the back of her head. COME ON C-N-N!  I gonna have to change over to Fox News, see what they have to say about her bangs, that'll cut her down to size...HA, CUT HER RIGHT DOWN...good heavens they are taking a poll.  FOX NEWS IS TAKING A BANG POLL!  Do I like the First Ladies new bangs? NO-I-DO-NOT!  AND IF I WASN'T ON THE PHONE WITH YOU, sweetie,  I WOULD CALL AND LET THEM KNOW!  

PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER FOX NEWS! 

I'm going back to CNN, the least I can hope for is reasonably unbiased coverage of her bangs.  Oh, now the president is talking... Of course, of course she did, I should have gone yesterday, I had the appointment, I should have gone to the appointment but the roads were covered with ice, I wasn't gonna kill myself to get OH MY GOSH I'M GONNA KILL MYSELF, SHE'S BACK! She is photo bombing the inauguration! Either that or the camera man is getting sick of this hippy propaganda the President is schlepping and cropping her into the frame. What do you need bangs for, honey, you got CNN framing your face for you!

That's it, I can't take it any more. Good thing I Tivo'd 'Days of Our Lives'...Holy crap Sami's got bangs."

Now, I wasn't recording or anything, and I would hate to paint my mother in any other light other then a beautiful, gracious, forgiving, bangless light, but I'm pretty sure that's how it went down...word for word...no matter what she says in the comments.  

*How long did it take me to find a picture of the President kissing his wife's bangs? Two seconds.