This is my new neighborhood bar. I’ve become friendly with the owner, who is Romanian, which reminds me of this story. One year I had to go from Aspen to Bucharest, all in less than 24 hours. The Neo-Futurists–I’m a member–had gotten an invitation to appear at a theater festival. So I get on a plane and I fly into Chicago, spend the night, get on another plane, fly to Paris, get on another plane, and fly to Bucharest. We get on a bus that’s going to drive us through the Transylvanian Alps to this small Romanian town. Snow begins to fall, and soon we’re not moving at all. We stop at this cafe to warm up, and there’s five or six Romanian guys at the bar, and they get us into conversation, and one guy turns to me and says in very broken English, “I’m going to fuck you,” but what he meant was “I’m going to fuck with you.” He was just trying out his English. All of my friends fall out at this point, and it ended up being this very nice meeting with these crazy drunk Romanian guys. I was going to tell this story to the owner here–I don’t know his name–but he never seems to want to talk about Romania. I’m dying to fuck him–OK, fuck with him.
–David Kodeski, television producer