BATH— How’s this for inane:  twenty one hundred hours, Deadline Eve, inspiration distant, connection to world at large vague, right foot ankle deep in pilfered Little Playmate Igloo cooler full of scalding water, confidence in Mayo Clinic website remedy for ingrown toenail waning.  Then this, bed, and another three hours starting at a skein of yarn, nine hours of 14-year-old sass, 20 minutes of Daily Show joy.  And what you’re doing is so very different, I’m sure.

Cut to Kon Asian Bistro.

First break in stir craziness in a good long while and it’s nice to be around adults my age who don’t wear shorts to work.  A first for me: I’m over dressed, but— good news— somehow, I’m still the asshole for it.  Doesn’t matter; I’m turbo stoked to see someone throw vittles around on a grill then eat ‘em.    A few burned maitais and it’s Go Time.

Enter Hibachi Guy.

He doesn’t speak, might not speak English at all, but he makes a lot of excited noises.  He’s got the same schtick as the rest of the guys at the other grills: bang these things together, flip this dealie, put this oil on the grill, light it on fire, use bizarre hardhat-wearing figurine to piss fire out then piss on me.  I make sure to act delighted that I’ve been peed on.  Another first.

Now, I’d watched his compatriot earlier and the next step in the act is to spin an egg on the grill, then flip it up into his toque, spin another then into the breast pocket, HO-EY!

It’s our turn now and the egg spins, AH-HEY! into the toque.  And now spin the second, the pitch to the pocket and— like every basketball I’ve ever thrown— no dice, THWACK on the grill.  Yoke’s broken and everything.  Can’t even go over easy on this one.  All upbeat conversation around the grill stops.  Hibachi Guy missed the egg.

It’s a house of cards; he promptly loses his shit and drops his hash-brown flipper (yes, I know that that thing really is, you can’t fool me).

But this is actually when I respect him the most.  He is totally pissed off.  All the HEY and AH-HOY shuck-and-jive has totally dried up.  He goes through his flipper cleaning process, grim, and I’ve seen this sort of ritual before.  Usually, it involves wrapping a piece of paper around the blade of your tant? so you can get a good reverse grip before digging it into your intestinal tract to begin its arduous triangle-shaped journey around the center of your being.

And do you know why?  Because he’s a Pro. And then he starts cooking.  Eyes down, pissed. It’s shot.  Was there something he was supposed to do with Hat Egg?  Who cares, mix it with the other egg, it’s all going into the same place (fried rice) anyway, right?

He could have played-off missing the pocket.  I would have played it off.  Were I in his place, I would have had pre-packaged schtick— contingency schtick— just for this sort of event.   But he didn’t.  I expect to screw up and so I build in backups to pretty much everything I do every day.   He didn’t plan for what to do if he botched the pocket egg because the concept of missing the pocket hadn’t even entered into his mind.  All he had to fall back on was simply cooking the meal with his head down, pride shot all to hell.

And was the meal good?  It was flippin’ great.  This is the other side of it.  I was certain that a hibachi was no place for a scallop for that long and I’ll be damned if they weren’t perfect.  I’m pretty sure the yuppies across the grill from my party were sort of let down, though.  Their meal might not have been as delicious as mine—it was way more bitter.  Why?  Because they didn’t understand difference between Expertise and Professionalism.  They didn’t.   The difference?  Consistently or, when the situation goes tits up, being able to keep the important part of the situation intact, being able to make a heap of missed egg into ridiculously tasty heap pork fried rice.

Miss the egg, wash your flipper, make the scallops.

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