Why I hate chain seafood restaurants, or "Tiny Oysters, Once Frozen, Make me Sad..."

Despite the fact that we grew up in a coastal southern city and access to some of the best fresh seafood restaurants in the world, my younger sister loves to eat at the chains. She lives in Hilton Head, which also has some wonderful seafood, but will elect to drive to Savannah and eat at Red Lobster. In Charleston, she swears the crab legs at the Noisy Oyster or Crab Shack are better than the ones we can get at dining establishments on the water. I used to resist, but now - with the 18-month-old nephew who requires a high chair and as many packages of Saltines as it takes to leave a cracker dust pile you have to step over - I no longer voice my disapproval when she picks a restaurant.

And that is how I ended up at one of the chains on Rivers Avenue this weekend, gazing at a platter of "fresh" oysters, none bigger than a nickel. But did I complain? No. I piled them six at a time on a cracker with hot sauce and ate two cracker's worth for a mere $8.99. My mother didn't fare quite as well, after ordering "shrimp & grits" and getting a lumpy mass in a bowl that looked like it was topped off with brown gravy from a jar. I tasted it because she made me and the best thing I could say was "gelatinous." I think it was payback for mom teaching the nephew to drink out of a straw, resulting in him going into freakout mode anytime anyone has a drink with a straw in it and won't share. Freakout mode comes complete with whining so high-pitched I thought he was communicating with the tank lobsters, followed by sobbing into his arms folded on the table (which made everyone in the restaurant immediately freeze and offer him a sip from THEIR straws). I think grandma deserves a bad lunch for that one.

Katie gets the same thing every time: snow crab legs. With butter. She cracks them first, depositing the crab meat INTO THE BUTTER BOWL, then eating the whole mess when she's done. I've learned not to comment, first because she's my sister and it makes her happy, and second, because she's vindictive and I would be likely have an empty crab claw or leg secreted in the lining of my shoulder bag, only to be found when the smell got so bad I had to locate the source by tearing the bag apart. Not that it's happened, I'm just sayin'.

In case you're planning on venturing forth, a few words of advice:
Fish isn't supposed to smell like fish. If it does, don't eat it.
Friday night is "Redneck Date Night" at Red Lobster. Unless you're a redneck on a date, it's best to avoid the Land of The Lobsterita in the Take Home Glass.
Don't get into it with the waitress about whether or not the restaurant uses local seafood. They don't and she doesn't care. If you care, you shouldn't be eating there.
Never enter the bathroom. Trust me, you don't want to go in there. Ask for a moist towelette for your hands and hold it until you get home.
And ordering raw oysters in a month without an "R"? Shuck at your own risk.

I hope you didn't come here just to hear me bitch...

Because Garrison Keillor thinks I should suck it up, and he says it better than I could:

"The biggest whiners are the writers who get prizes and fellowships for writing stuff that's painful to read, and so they accumulate long résumés and few readers and wind up teaching in universities where they inflict their gloomy pretensions on the young. Writers who write for a living don't complain about the difficulty of it. It does nothing for the reader to know you went through 14 drafts of a book, so why mention it?" (you have to watch a free ad on Salon.com if you're not a premium member, but it's worth it...)

Keillor didn't mention the unpublished writers who spend more time bitching than actually submitting their work to editors and agents, but I guess that goes without saying. Honestly, writing isn't that hard. Revision is. Working with editors is. Getting rejected is. Being persistent is. Motivating yourself is. But the writing? Piece of cake.

In another life, I was Queen of the Trailer Park...

Nothing against trailers as a low-cost housing alternative, but being raised middle-class and in military housing meant that I never had the opportunity to get my White Trash Girl on. But I know she's in here somewhere.

Case in point: Sitting on the couch last night in cut-off denim shorts (they're from high school and I only wear them because they fit and never out of the house), eating Saltines out of a box (the wheat kind), hair in a scrunchy (I only have them to put my hair up to wash my face), watching VH-1 reruns of Hogan Knows Best, I caught myself thinking, "wrestling kicks ass, y'all" followed immediately by, "dang, a PBR would taste good right about now." If I still drank, I might have finished off a cold 40 and passed out on the couch with a lit cigarette in my hand. In another life, my third husband might be referred to as "Tater Salad," I'd drive a Chevelle SS Malibu with no side windows and a broken taillight, and my best dishes would still have K-Mart price stickers on the back.

Just call me Queen Lerlene of the Airstream on the right.

I will drive past your house and if the lights are all down I'll see who's around...

My friend MK (AKA Morgen at 105.5) interviewed Deborah Harry and Chris Stein (I may have mentioned being her "plus one" at the upcoming concert in June and probably going backstage and probably meeting Blondie and probably being Deborah Harry's new best friend...).

Debbie Harry has been my idol since I was humming "The Tide is High" and chopping the hair off of all my Barbies into bleachy bobs so they would look more like her. When I was listening to MK interview Deb (that's what I'll call her when we're best friends) and Chris Stein, I couldn't concentrate on what they were talking about because I kept screaming (in my head), "DEBBIE HARRY JUST SAID MY FRIEND'S NAME...MK JUST MADE DEBBIE HARRY LAUGH...SHE MAKES ME LAUGH...DEBBIE HARRY AND I ARE THE SAME."

So I'm a little star struck. But now I can go back and listen to the interview as many times as I want to, because DEBBIE HARRY HERSELF (or someone who does her bidding) posted it on the OFFICIAL BLONDIE WEB SITE (right now it's the fourth one down called "The Bridge Interview." Yeah, that's my friend MK talking to Deb and Chris Stein.

And if that isn't enough excitement for one day, the new remix "Rapture Riders" (Blondie's "RAPture" mixed with The Doors' "Riders on the Storm") was one of the songs on Alias last week.

I know it sounds like I'll show up for the concert platinum blonde with ripped fishnets and a No Exit concert t-shirt, but I'm actually way cooler than that. What I said to MK when she called to tell me about the concert tickets and going backstage to meet My New Best Friend Deb: "Do NOT, under any circumstances, let me SPEAK to her."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here..."

I don't talk a lot here about diabetes because it's really not a huge issue in my life, except when I have a "drink your juice, Shelby" moment like I did this morning. Which is why all I'm good for today are a few Steel Magnolia references, lots of forgetting what I was going to say, and maybe some sleeping. Pink is still my signature color, Jackson still sounds like good people to me, and I saw Drum Eatenton at the Piggly Wiggly this morning and smiled at the son of a bitch before I could help myself.

Truvy: "Well, these thighs haven't gone out of the house without Lycra on them since I was 14."
Clairee: "You were brought up right."

Yes, you were.