This week, I’m sharing first looks at Mamoun’s Falafel and Chom Chom Vietnamese Kitchen. Both are cheap and somewhat exotic...
Very little is as predictable in gay life as the sudden reappearance of a bitter ex- boyfriend at just the wrong moment. Robert, who referred to his former lovers as “a dynasty of dicks,” knew this. So, he wasn’t surprised when one of Lee’s exes, Gene, showed up a few nights earlier and spoiled their evening out.
But Robert couldn’t shake his discomfort. Gene claimed that Lee had disappeared in the middle of the night while he slept, after a year of living together in Florida. Sitting alone, Robert looked around Woodfire Grill, wondering if his boyfriend would show up now, after inviting him to meet there.
The restaurant building, Robert noted, has changed little in two decades, still featuring the formerly fashionable feel of a chalet.
Choosing to dine at a new restaurant is always an iffy proposition. That’s especially true when the restaurant has replaced a favorite. Robert looked around the patio dining room at the new Eclectic Bistro Bar, then took his seat with other members of the Atlanta Food Porn Supper Club.
“The last restaurant here, Tierra, was one of the best in the city,” he said. “We’ll see how this goes. It’s certainly inexpensive.”
The Supper Club, now in its third month, was attracting about 25 diners. It had not yet met Robert’s half-serious original purpose to find a husband before he turned 50 next year.
If you haven’t read “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk” yet, you are cheating yourself of an important moral guide for these troublesome times. Also, you’ll miss the opportunity to laugh so hard that you snort. How often can you get a two-for-one deal like this?
“Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk” is the most recent book by gay humorist David Sedaris, who brings his sardonic wit and intellectual humor to Atlanta Symphony Hall on Oct. 27.
“Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk” is a collection of 17 fables, little stories featuring animal characters illustrating some moral lesson, set in contemporary urban America. You’re free to interpret them as taking place in New York City, but Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, or Miami would work just as well.
Love is in the air at the 25th Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBT film festival, Oct. 4-11 at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema. I don’t know when I’ve seen so much romance in a queer festival.
There’s young love, old love, lesbian love, gay love, baby love, kinky love, married love, platonic love, coercive love, transformative love... Oh, there’s politics too, but that’s mostly confined to the documentary section, or woven in with the love stories.
All films (with exceptions noted) screen at Midtown Art Cinema (931 Monroe Drive, Atlanta GA 30308).
In gay director Jamie Travis’ raunchy new comedy “For a Good Time, Call…” two women who loathe each other initially grow to bond over, of all things, a phone sex operation.
Lauren Powell (Lauren Anne Miller) and Katie Steele (Ari Graynor) have an unpleasant first meeting in college but years later, thanks to their mutual gay best friend Jesse (Justin Long), decide to room together out of financial necessity in New York. Prim Lauren finds out that Katie is a phone sex operator and, with her own professional life in limbo, decides to give it a go herself. In the film the women grow to fall in love with each other, but only as friends.
Graynor, Miller (who co-wrote the film), Travis and co-writer Katie Anne Naylon were in Atlanta recently promoting the flick, which made waves at Sundance earlier this year.