After going to the Vomitorium (see below), Inder and I went to The Olive Tree, quite possibly my favorite restaurant even tho the service is awful. The restaurant sits on top of a happening comedy club where a lot of famous comedians perform. After their set they come upstairs to the restaurant and sit at the bar and talk or whatever it is comedians do. Usually whenever we go we see a familiar face, Dave Chappelle, Daryl Hammond, Colin Quinn and the miserable Tough Crowd comedians.
The bathroom for the restaurant is poorly situated downstairs so you have to walk in front of the stage to get to the potty. Since comedians are always desperate for fodder, its a nerve-racking walk since you never know when you might get zinged.
So Inder and I sat down at our table and I had to go downstairs to use the restroom. I walk down and theres some comic on stage doing some poor observational humor. I walk out of the bathroom across the stage when I hear “hey buddy.” I make the mistake of looking at the comic on stage when he looks me dead in the eye and says “did you and Harold make it to White Castle ok?” The audience erupts into laughter and I walk upstairs not quite sure what just happened, but pretty sure I was just the victim of racist humor by an African-American comedian. I sit at the table and tell Inder what happened and we both agree it was pretty fucked up. Next thing I know there is a hand in my face and a voice saying “hey sorry about that down there.” I look up and sure enough its the man who zinged me, looking to apologize. I don’t shake his hand and mutter something. “come on, youre not gonna shake my hand?” so I reluctantly shake as Inder invites him to sit down hoping he’ll buy us some drinks. He starts talking about how he had to do the joke since it was what the audience wanted to hear and how he wouldn’t have said the joke if the movie had never came out. I wasn’t sure but I think he was trying to apologize while still justifying the joke. “Yeah, if you have no integrity its easy to do jokes like that,” I tell him as he looks as Inder and smiles, realizing I’m chiding him. He tells us how he’s the MC for the night and how its hard to keep the audience laughing, still trying to justify telling a rascist joke to a fellow man of color. He continues to talk telling us some bullshit about his life and I’m just not interested. He eventually gets up and leaves the table. A few minutes later I see Dave Attell outside and say to Inder it would be great to get to see Dave Attell’s stand-up. Inder gets up and walks over to the comedian that zinged me (his name was Ardie) and asks him for some tickets to the show so we can watch Dave Attell. He says he can’t but he gives Inder his phone number and says any other time we want, he’ll get us tickets. Inder comes back to the table and we realize there’s no way this guy is gonna make up for hitting me with a directly rascist comment. Then it dawns on us. We order more food and drinks, and once we finish eating I walk up to the waitress on the way out. “Hey did Ardie talk to you?” I ask her. “No,” she replies. “Oh, well our dinner’s going to be on him, he said he’ll get it,” I tell her. “you sure?” she asks me. “Yeah, for sure” I tell her. “ok, bye!” and Inder and I leave the restaurant. That oughta learn ‘em.