I’m just glad the bartender didn’t ask me to kill my family

I eat the same food every day; coffee for breakfast, whey shake with banana for lunch, chicken burrito from Spyke’s – a diner just down the street from my house – for dinner. It’s not part of a diet plan or some new-age attempt to balance my amino acids or electrolytes. I’m not trying to gain or lose weight.

I eat the same food every day because it’s easy and requires no thinking on my part.

As a single guy, dining out is about as cheap as eating in. Best of all, someone else has to do the dishes.

At Spyke’s, the waitresses don’t bring me a menu because I know what’s on there as well as they do. Plus, like I said before, I always order the same thing.

I think this is pretty typical single guy behavior.

This past weekend, however, I was forced to alter my routine. I took a little holiday to Traverse City and for two days dined at restaurants other than my regular haunt.

In the two days I was in TC, I hit a Mexican place, a breakfast joint, and a pub featuring the worst live music I’ve ever heard.

My last stop, however, was the most memorable; an establishment called Stephen’s Place. It looked fairly casual from the outside, but when I entered I was bowled over by the opulence within. One glance told me I was seriously underdressed. Incredibly, the maitre d’ didn’t seem to mind, even though his suit probably cost more than my last three cars. I asked for a seat at the bar.

Artfully-lit sophistication surrounded me. The bartender took my order. What I wanted was a Bud Lite draft, but I was already feeling rough and uncouth in my jeans and T-shirt. I ordered a Cosmopolitan. A chimp looks classy drinking a Cosmo.

As my eyes adjusted to the light I realized the place was not crowded. I was, in fact, the only customer. A very talented piano player (“Doc” Woodward, a Detroit area legend from back in my glory days) was coaxing a Sinatra tune from a grand piano that glimmered black as ebony under the stage lights. He was doing his best to entertain a crowd that wasn’t there; the mark of a true professional.

The bartender brought my Cosmo. I drank some and it was excellent. It did not make me look elegant. A chimp might have, but not me.

The bartender placed a small bar menu beside me, just in case. The appetizers looked wonderful, but there were no prices listed; never a good sign. Like a yacht, if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.

I sipped a bit more cranberry-flavored alcohol. The maitre d’ hovered nearby, as did the bartender. Alert to my every need. Rarely have I garnered so much undeserved attention. My slightest gesture was being carefully monitored on the off chance I should need something.

I thought about the lone twenty dollar bill nestled in my wallet and wondered if it would be enough to cover the drink, plus tip.

Visions of Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” passed through my mind, particularly the scene in which he’s sitting in the empty, elegant bar of the Overlook Hotel and the ghost bartender suddenly materializes. The bartender here looked substantial enough, but so did the bartender at the Overlook, just before he convinced Jack Nicholson to go after his family with an ax.

It was time to leave. I paid my tab, the twenty just covering it. Back home, I could have had a couple beers, a burrito and a basket of freshly-made chips for the same money. And at Spyke’s, there is no hovering maitre d’.

Vacation’s over. It’s good to know what’s for dinner tonight.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

It’s not good taste, it’s what tastes good

“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.” So wrote German playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Goethe had a point. To a child, every taste is a new, exhilarating experience, made more so by the fact that kids actually taste better than adults do (depending on how they’re cooked). Kidding. What I mean is, kids have the ability – due to their greater number of taste buds – to taste things adults simply cannot.

As we age, our taste receptors diminish, until at last we’re left with the ability to detect only the strongest flavors; sweet, sour, bitter. The degree to which this occurs differs with each individual, but take my word for it, if you’re over 40, things don’t taste as wonderful to you as they once did.

In my case, this “detastification” (a scientific term I just made up) has rendered my food all but flavorless. I see proof of this every day, as evinced by my dining choices.

When I was a kid, a hot dog with ketchup virtually exploded on my palate, producing a cornucopia of flavors and sending me into paroxysms of gastronomical ecstasy. These days I add onions, jalapenos, brown mustard and horseradish to my dogs, just so I can taste ‘em.

In fact, I add onions, jalapenos, brown mustard and horseradish to just about everything I eat. (I’m keeping the people who manufacture Listerine in business.)

But it’s not just this excessive use of condiments that’s telling me my taste buds are on their last legs. It’s also those foods – previously considered repulsive – that suddenly taste good to me.

Liver. There was time I couldn’t be in the same room with a liver, not one that was cooking, anyway. Now … well, pass the pate, baby! Add some onions and jalapenos to it, you’ve got a meal!

Then there are sardines; those little fishies packed together in a tin, soaking in a gelatinous goo reminiscent of something you might find leaking from your Volvo’s loose head gasket. Sardines are disgusting. I know this, and not just because The Lovely Mrs. Taylor tells me they are. I mean, let’s be real – sardines are bait, man, not food!

Yet every so often, I’ll sit down in front of the television with a box of Saltines and eat a whole can of them, sometimes sharing with the cat, who at these times miraculously discovers he can tolerate my presence after all.

In recent months I’ve also eaten pickled eggs, like you find floating in big jars in the sort of West side taverns that still serve boilermakers. I’ve eaten pickled herring, smoked herring, tripe (which is made from a cow’s – gack! – stomach), and deep-fried pigskin.

Any of these things would have sent my ten-year-old self screaming from the dining room in horror. Yet now, they all taste darn good.

And it’s only getting worse. Last week at the grocery, I caught myself seriously considering a jar full of pickled pig’s feet. I’ve seen what pigs walk in and it ain’t good. But those feet looked pretty tasty.

Where will it end? I get older every day and the taste buds keep dying. Will I one day be walking along a beach and suddenly decide to snack on the decomposing carcass of a grounded mackerel? Will I catch myself slowing down when passing week-old road kill along county route 91?

Can cannibalism be far behind?

I think I’d better settle down and treat myself to a pint of “Chubby Hubby” or “Moose Tracks.” Ice cream doesn’t taste as good as it used to, but it’s not bad. Especially if you add onions and jalapenos.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or road kill recipes, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.