Category: Food

Soup For You

By the time the trio finally made it to the front of the line at the soup place, Jonny felt like he’d made some headway with Elaine. But Boris’ perpetually ravenous belly was focused on only one thing: lunch. The middle eastern proprietor starred down the pug with an intimidating glare that would have overwhelmed anyone else, but Boris’ only master was his stomach. “We’ll have three large mulligatawnies and make it snappy!” The man was unmoved. “Who brought this animal in here? Dogs are not allowed on the premises. Whoever it belongs to, take your mangy creature and get out! No soup for…”

Before he could finish his catchphrase, Boris leapt over the sneeze guard and delivered a kung fu kick to the insolent server’s jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor. While he laid there in a daze, Boris put him in the dreaded Ninja Death Grip so that if the pug increased the pressure of his paw even a fraction of an inch, the soupmaker would be meeting his maker that day.  “I said we’ll have three large mulligatawnies, and it will be your pleasure to give them to us on the house.”

Jonny threw his arms around Elaine protectively because he’d witnessed this scene enough to know that if the Soup Nazi was foolish enough to resist, there would be blood spouting at least six feet in all directions. The sultry beauty returned the grasp with the firmness of a woman whose blood was about to boil over with passion. She looked at Jonny with a red-hot intensity, and he replied with the smug grin of a man who knew that he was about to spend the afternoon between tangled sheets.

Happy birthday to Julia Louis-Dreyfus!

Based on a True Story

The Jonny Pals sat hunched around the roundtable at the Van Nuys Denny’s like defendants waiting on a verdict, steam from bad coffee curling up into their famous faces. They were all icons in their own right; the celebrated detectives Jonny & Boris, the legendary junior ranger Bro Joe, the storied political agitator Lisa Glass; even Jonny’s girlfriend Linda had a singing career that won her a small following. But they were about to confront REAL celebrity. Midnight came in on the cheap neon buzz of the door, and with it staggered Hack Werker—whiskey-heavy, eyes bright as switchblades—one hand on the counter, the other gripping a pen that had ruined better men than bullets ever did.

Introductions were exchanged with the care you’d use passing a live grenade. Werker slid into the booth and fished a steno pad from his jacket, the paper already hungry. He said he’d followed their exploits for years, that he admired the cut of their sins, but his pencil hovered like a vulture waiting for someone to stop breathing. Penny Pal clutched her tiny, bejeweled clutch purse as if it might shield her. “You won’t put any of this in a book, will you?” she asked. Werker’s grin answered first—thin, knowing—before his voice did, and everyone at the table felt their secrets shift uncomfortably in their pockets.

He waved the waitress over and ordered drinks like a man setting a trap with velvet gloves. “I only write what people give me,” he said, casual as a confession, “and I never improve on the truth.” Glasses arrived, ice clinked like nervous teeth, and the menus suddenly read like alibis that wouldn’t hold up in court. They all knew then that the night wouldn’t end with pancakes—it would end with pages, and once something hit the page, it stayed dead forever. The Jonny Pals lifted their glasses anyway, because in this town refusing a drink was just another way of telling on yourself.