Wrestlers -- I'm always going out with wrestlers. "I've got to broaden my horizons," I thought to myself as I was trying to come up with somewhere to go for dinner. After deciding a more intellectually-stimulating outing was in order, Amie called a friend of ours, world-renowned literary critic and author Steven Moore, PhD.

I was up for some shrimp so we headed for Landry's Seafood House. As we stood outside under the pulsing glow of the most garish neon marquee I had seen since my last trip to Vegas, I remember thinking, "If the food is half as good as this thing is bright, we are in for a hell of a meal." Once inside we were seated almost immediately and ordered drinks. Our drinks came quickly, and although my mocha came from one of those instant machines, it was pretty good. As we looked over our menus, idle chitchat floated around the table. There were shrimp of all kinds available; there was fried shrimp, pepper shrimp, grilled shrimp, stuffed shrimp, etc. Kinda made me feel a little Forrest Gump-ish.

I surfaced from my menu to see what I might contribute to the conversation going on at the table. Amie and Steve were talking about Ephesis. Sounded like a Jethro Tull song to me, but just as I was going to interject an Ian Anderson story from my DJ days, one of them said something about Ephesis being a place in Turkey. From somewhere in my mind a voice said, "Quiet down Forrest, the grown ups are talking." Just a little internal humor. I know I can communicate on this level. After all, I'm a writer (well, kinda), and I've got some schooling under my belt (mostly reform school).

Luckily the waitress broke up the conversation by asking for our orders before I had a chance to embarrass myself. I was still suffering from intellect envy and almost ordered the oysters Rockefeller and shrimp enbrochette just to sound intelligent, but decided to order something a little more my speed-- fried shrimp on a bed o' steak fries.

I decided to head over to the bar where maybe someone was drunk enough to think I knew what I was talking about. I stood around a few minutes listening to what was going on, but before I could find someone to talk to, our dinner arrived. I headed back over to the table hoping the food might make for some simpler conversation.

As I sat down all I could see were some really weirdly shaped shrimp staring up at me. I've seen a lot in my life-- I've even seen a polar bear ride a bicycle-- but these shrimp were butterflied to the point that they looked like they had little legs! Creepy little wiggly deep fried legs! As I was marveling at the strange shapes before me, I could hear Amie and Steve commenting on the presentation, something about texture and color lending a certain ... blah blah blah. I picked up one of my shrimp by the tail and twirled it a little before I popped it in my mouth. It tasted good in spite of its weird shape. Somehow my shrimp twirling had sparked another conversation. Amie was recounting a tale of her travels in Egypt and seeing the Mawlawi dance, "spinning round and round with the innocence of children," I think she said.

"I saw a guy at the county fair once that could swallow his hand," I thought to myself as I looked around at the painted murals and wall lanterns that surrounded us. Steve was sharing some story about some guy named Gaddis or something. As I faded back into my own little world, "stupid is as stupid does" echoed in my head. "What the hell does that mean anyway?"

I sat finishing off my steak fries trying to be sociable while the voice in my head wore on "life is like a box of chocolates," etc. Dessert came; mousses and tortes were ordered but in keeping with the evening's theme I decided to employ a line from one of my favorite movies (Natural Born Killers): "I'll give a piece of that key lime pie a day in court," I said in my best Mickey Knox voice. My final flailing attempt at wit was lost amidst comments like, "All this election confusion was at least partially due to, yada yada," and, "Oh, I beg to differ, blah blah blah."

After dinner, as we were walking out to the parking lot, I said matter-of-factly, "I ain't been much o' nowhere and I ain't done much o' nothin' ... maybe I'll just go a-shrimpin', 'cause there's a lot o' stuff that you can do with shrimp. You can make shrimp gumbo, barbecue shrimp, fried shrimp, shrimp sammich..." and trailed off into one last thought: "Wrestlers ... I gotta go out with more wrestlers." B

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