waiting for my pata

damn, I hate filipino restaurants. in searching for a place to eat my dinner, I found a coupon for a crispy pata, a deep fried piece of hamhock, and quickly made my way to this filipino restaurant in san lorenzo. now, pinoy establishments are not known for their service, hospitality, and sad to say, their food. but I had gotten the same thing a few months ago, and it was damn tasty. after cleaning the garage and backyard all day, I needed something damn tasty.

so I walk in to the sound of a blaring middle-aged filipina singing show tunes and some old manong pounding away at the keyboards. if stereotypes were to persist, their should have been a dog soup at each table, rice on each plate, and the sound of popcorn-like staccato from the mouths of each pinoy. so I order my food, and expect to wait, at them most, 15 minutes. how hard was it to cut up a piece of pig thigh, prep it, and fry it? judging by how long I actually waited, about as hard as the US pulling out of Iraq, or maybe as hard as a prepubescent boy pulling out of his girlfriend when having sex for the first time.

35 minutes of pure hell - karaoke blaring, fat ladies in jogging suits dancing, some fat 20-yeard old fob trying to give me the googly eyes while I mustered every ounce of strength to avoid vomiting on the floor, and my favorite tv shows (the office and 30 rock) up on the big screen with no sound. I felt like a fat kid eyeing a slice of cake through the looking glass, but being completely broke, couldn't do shit.

when I finally got home, I opened a nice cold guinny, watched the last part of the office, and munched away on my pig leg

what's in a name?

over the years, I've been called many things (among them, dickhead and asshole by the wifey). Here are a few of my aliases and the etymology behind them:

francois - my lesbian buddy from seneca used to call me that in her fake french accent. her name was gina, but I liked to pronounce it "ginah" as in vagina, a la 40-year old virgin.

frankie - my good buddy from the shoreline loved calling me that, maybe after frankie and johnny; he was a bear of a man with a good soul

franchise - modeled after the basketball player, stevie "the franchise" francis, this became my handle when I used to post on friendster forums and it stuck

franchizzle, chizzle, cheezy, french fries, frenchie, da franchise, franchise player, et al. - all derived from "the franchise"

frank n' beans - an allusion to a man's genitals and made popular by "there's something about mary"

fran - a shortened version of francis

franny - a feminine version of francis, that I adopted during college

franny the tranny - a convenient moniker alluding to my propensity to be gay as a motherfuck

st. francis - of assisi, especially considering my love for animals and po' folk(although the story goes that st. francis actually didn't like animals so much; he was just seen by someone praying out loud in the grotto and he/she thought he was talking to the animals; he actually went on record later saying that he didn't muck like animals)

call me whatever the fuck you want, just don't call me frank; frank the tank maybe, but not frank