Day 19: How did we get here?

The holidays are coming and that changes little for the Olive Garden. They do offer to cater your holiday mess but we can’t use our passes on the actual holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas so that feels like a lie.

Also who eats Italianish food on holidays?

Today’s art is a traditional OG piece:

This is a study from the wall piece behind our table. The rest of the photograph was nothing exciting: just more people at more tables pretending to talk and eat.

What’s odd though is this woman in sunglasses in the center of the photo. Nobody else in the frame (several dozen) has sunglasses, and the lighting suggests they’re either indoors or in Purgatory.

So why the sunglasses? Maybe she’s a celebrity and wants to avoid the attention of commoners. This theory does quickly when we notice the buzz-headed child in the immediate foreground. No celebrity sits next to a kid with an oversized shirt from a fun run or whatever. If he’s her kid he’s going to be dressed differently as the son of a celebutante. As much as they don’t want attention, famous people can’t help dressing like rich, trend-addicted idiots.

The other option is she’s blind or has light sensitivity or something medical. That’s just depressing though and Olive Garden doesn’t want you to feel bad about your macular degeneration or whatever when you’re wolfing down wheat products. Maybe they’re trying to make some kind of ability-positive statement by putting her at the center of the work. Except this restaurant is about as progressive as a 19th-Century Sicilian fishing village.

The last option is she doesn’t even know she has them on. She just kind of wears the glasses now without noticing it. And she also doesn’t notice she’s in a portrait. And somehow this confusion is contagious and has spread to the photographer and editor as well, because instead of correcting the image and removing the glasses or at least recenterjng it on someone less out-of-place, they just said, well, it’s Friday at 4 and we’re going to beat traffic so here’s the finished galley print.

I think we all know why she’s there: same reason we’re here, too.

We have no freaking clue.


Item 1: linguini, spinach and artichoke sauce (last day!!!! I will miss this weird but good stuff), and crispy chicken (I think it comes out quicker than the regular grilled stuff that all the moms are ordering because who is gonna order this cut up chicken sandwich thing but me?)

Item 2: linguini, meat sauce, veggie topping


Breadsticks: 2 (second was double salted– not bad but actually yeah kinda)

Weight: 164

Compliments on James’s hair: 2 verbal, infinite silent praises

One comment on “Day 19: How did we get here?

  1. Chrispicakes says:

    Maybe she was embarrassed about the red mark glasses leave on your nose after you take them off.

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