I get off the plane, grab my bags, made a phone call to Randy and went and waited on the curb. After about 5 minutes he rolls up in his crisp ’99 Cadillac with some of the wettest tires I’ve seen and a custom plaid sunroof shade that just screams originality. Seeing him pull up in his Cadillac is a good sight and reminds me that dreams do come true. I’ve heard Randy talk about a getting his own Cadillac ever since I’ve known him (about 4 years when we literally ‘ran into’ each other while working at Maggiano’s.)
After getting some initial greetings out of the way, we hop in the car and begin our mini-adventure. Randy explains to me how the 2 main highways in ATL run like the seams of a baseball and meet in the middle. Interesting I think, but where are we going to eat? Randy had 2 places mapped out for us, choice 1: a sushi joint, choice 2: a New Orleans style grill. I am not sure how to politely say that I am not about to eat any sushi that needs to get imported into ATL while I’ve got fresh Seattle Sound sushi at home, but I get my vote out there and we head toward Front Page News (supposedly a great NO grill.)
Randy takes this time to catch me up in his life. This guy is a really solid human being, really involved in his church, strong values, a great personality, and probably the best Colonel Sanders looking broom on his chin out of any of my other friends. Things are going well for him.
I catch him up on my life: travelling super hero, selfless devoter of time to my local orphanage, modeling contracts…. I also think this is a good opportunity to share some of my new knowledge that I had acquired from my new book (230 Things you Thought you Knew But Actually Didn’t.) Turns out Randy didn’t know who was America’s first president or who invented the telephone. You probably don’t either though so let me tell you: Peyton Randolph and Antonio Meucci respectively. Open a book.
We get close to where we are trying to get for dinner and start looking for parking. We see a sign for “complimentary valet” and pull in. Turns out though that the restaurant we wanted to go wasn’t park of the parking HMO and it was $15. After Randy talked with the attendant for a minute to get the scoop on some cheaper alternatives we ended up handing the keys over. I was just about to say something about his sign being false advertising, but then he said that Randy had really deep eyes and I technically could not call him out anymore.
On our way to the restaurant some promoters outside of a new Latin club told us about some drink specials they were running that night and when we asked them where the Front Page News was, the washed out boxer looking promoter pointed us up the street and said, “don’t eat the food.” Randy brought up a really good point that that is probably not the best way to make friends with your neighbors if you were a new club in the area. By the time we sit down it is about 10:10 PM and all they are serving is their Late Night Menu (chicken fingers, jalapeno poppers, etc.) We decide to bail and get a hot tip on a place called Vortex that serves late.
The food at Vortex turns out to be really good. I guess they have won a bunch of awards for their burgers and Randy and I try 2 of their finest. I get a Raging Cajun burger (pepper jack, spicy sauce) and Randy gets an Elvis Burger with a bison patty (peanut butter, bananas, bacon, tomato.) He jokes with the waitress that he thought bison were extinct, she lets out a laugh and says, “nah, they grow them just for us.” Our waitress was a definite character and there were definitely awkward moments in my mind when I wasn’t sure if she was enjoying talking to us or just waiting to jet. Randy broke out his best Michael Jackson food poisoning joke involving a five year old wiener and that seemed to help things. After she left the table I told him my new favorite pickup line, “Do you have any raisins?
On the way back to the car Randy ended up recognizing a local rapper and belted out some lyrics with him. When we got back to the car, a different valet came up to us and handed over the keys, Randy started talking with him and ended up going back and forth with some freestyle. Randy also was asked by 2 girls if his name was Scott Johnson, I told them that his name was Scott Tompson. I guess he looked like a guy named Scott that they worked with and they decided they had to have a picture of him.
Rolling down the street Randy brings up trying my pickup line on ATL girls. Randy was up first and he pulled up next to 2 girls walking down the street, “Hey do you have any raisins? Wanna date?” I think her reply was something like, “No, no raisins, but I do have a middle finger for you.”
The pair that he finds for me to talk to is much friendlier and with my perfect delivery, they quickly find themselves laughing. “How do you do it?” Randy asks.
On our way back to Randy’s we get a little lost in the seams of ATL highway system and find ourselves needing to take a toll. Randy decides to give the raisins one more try and belts the following out over 3 lanes of traffic, “You have any raisins?
It turns out that Randy had just moved into a new house with 2 new roommates. His room had a standard number of corners, 4, but he chose to make a floor-bed for me in the one that had previously been occupied by a ferret. I guess he was excited to test whether he had done a good job of masking all the rodent urine or not. After a good night’s sleep, Randy decides we have time for one last Southern experience before dropping me off at the airport. To the Waffle House!
We roll up to the Waffle House in the Cadillac, stroll into the building and are told to seat ourselves at the jam saturated booth of our choice. Our server comes to greet us and is very pleasant. Her name is Ashley and she is friendly enough to agree to answer some trivia questions. Ashley gets one point for guessing that George Washington was not America’s first president, but she immediately loses that point when her guess for most dangerous animal to man is dinosaur. Most dangerous animal to man.
A ride to the airport later and after a couple of chest bumps I was leaving Atlanta and on my way to Honduras. I know it’s hard to believe that we were able to find so many memories in a time span of less than 12 hours, but hey that’s what you’re going to get when you two playmakers together…. life experiences.
