From Phi Kaps to Grits with Black Truffles

Today is one of those Sundays with not enough hours to handle all the thoughts bopping around in The Great Plotnik's bean. Although yesterday, Saturday, started poorly, with the worst of all possible Saturday Morning Plotzketball encounters -- it's sunny, but not enough guys show up to play because of the THREAT of rain -- the next five hours were highlighted by a Fraternity Reunion.

Plot had been dreading this afternoon all week, because he was determined to attend -- why? Shut up. Because, that's why -- and he knew the afternoon at the COUNTRY CLUB in freaking PINOLE would be filled with people who used to look like handsome, young, vibrant world-fixers, but now look like this: and this:


But the second he pulled into the parking lot he knew he had been lying to himself, doing the old Testosterone Tango: I don't care, I don't need these guys, I'm not interested, I'm only going to gather material for Plotnik, Never Liked 'em, It don't matter to me, Uhhn uhhn. Because as soon as he saw Jimmy Dal Porto and Bruce Felton and Dave Van Atta and Ken Atterman and David Shapiro and Jim Kennedy and David Stephens and Eddie Musante and Steve Calegari and Steve Prevost and Kenny McKeon, he started to smile and didn't stop smiling until many hours, beers and barbecues later.

He wrote a story about coming to the reunion, and he read it to the brothers and they laughed in all the right places. They particularly loved the parts about them.

Plotnik bonded with his old buddy Kenny McKeon, the poet who went to Vietnam, like they'd been in the next room for all these years and then just opened up the same door and walked back in. Kenny sent Plotnik a poem this morning and he still sounds like Dylan Thomas. Plotnik sent him the lyric to So Long, Foghead.

He felt the same away about Kenny Atterman, like they were long lost brothers. In fact, he liked Kenny Atterman a lot more yesterday than he remembers liking him in 1964, when they were roommates for six months. Kenny must have really changed a lot.

Or...is it possible...that The Great Plotnik's observations at nineteen years old might not have been completely pedal to the metal? That his perception was, shall we say, altered? Or...and this is far more ominous...that Plotnik may have grown up in the meantime?

Ha ha, Bruce Roberts's hair went and got grey, unlike Plotnik, whose hair is still a Royal Hue of black/gray/white/steel wool/disappearing/pitiful.

After the reunion, things just kept getting better. On Plot's cell phone was a text message with an invite to dinner at Chef Pickle's in Napa.

Of course, this meant Plotnik would have to fight the traffic going home from Pinole to San Francisco, pick up The Great Ducknik, then drive all the way back through the same traffic to Napa, but hey! This is dinner at Chef Pickle's!

How does artesanial grits shaved with black truffles smuggled in from France (dog's name who dug up the truffles: Venus. I kid you not), lamb chops, lamb loin and lamb sausage, asparagus, salad, golden beets in a vinaigrette and rhubarb/strawberry yumstuff inside cookies and more whipped cream sound to you? Plus many bottles of wine, some actually made by a guest at the dinner table who has the world's coolest puppy?

Old friends, new friends. Friends are our butter, our cream, the way we plow our way through these unfathomable days in which we live. Well, guess what: the old days were unfathomable too. Maybe we shouldn't take ourselves or our problems quite so seriously. Friends will pull us through. Friends, poems, songs, butter and cream.