Animosity As Big As Your Head

I ate and drank way too much on New Year's Eve. From five-thirty in the afternoon until four in the morning, I consumed the following:

-One snifter of Old Pogue Bourbon
-Caesar salad
-Half a bottle of red wine
-22-oz. bone-in ribeye steak, cooked medium rare
-Mashed potatoes
-Homemade peach ice cream
-Three large bourbons and coke
-Rock Hill Farms small batch bourbon on the rocks
-Shot of Cabo Wabo anejo tequila
-More bourbon and coke

After all of that adult refreshment, the only thing that would save my life was a LaBamba burrito. Labamba's is always a popular place on the weekends, so you can imagine the crowd on New Year's Eve. I didn't think much about the two people who walked into the restaurant ahead of my friend Alisha and me; until they started some shit with some people waiting to order.

These two clean-cut youngish guys were standing with an older man who looked like Edgar Winter. One of the young guys was pointing, because that's what people occasionally do when they talk. Sadly, this was a foreign concept to the drunk douche in front of us.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU POINTING AT, MOTHERFUCKER?" this wannabe asshole, sporting a punk rockish twist on the My Name is Earl haircut, screamed.

Mistake. Old man Winter went NUTS.

"HE'S NOT POINTING AT SHIT, ASSHOLE. YOU'D BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

This loud witless banter went on for a while. My favorite part was when one of the preppie guys said to the denim-jacket-wearing troll who wanted to fight, "Hey, believe me, you don't want this. I'm trying to be a mediator here." I think the old man had killed before, and this kid, probably his nephew, didn't want to witness the slaughter of two drunks at a LaBamba's on the first early morning of 2007.

I think the punk-ass fucks saw the craziness in the old man's eyes, because they totally backed down. "Hey, we're just here for burritos, dude."

The entire time, while customers were screaming obscenities and threatening one another, the LaBamba staff acted like nothing was happening. These are a group of efficient, non-English speaking burrito makin' motherfuckers. The LaBamba's in Louisville is open for 11am till 5am, and I'm pretty sure it's one shift; the openers are the closers.

Well, we placed our orders and everything was going well until I heard "YOU'D BETTER GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! GET THE FUCK OUT!!!"

Those guys had managed, on their way out the door, burritos in hand, to piss off an entirely different group of people. It was a New Year's miracle! A guy wearing a Skyline Chili uniform chased them out into the parking lot. They ran away like drunken Frenchmen.

Next year I'm going someplace nice and quiet, like Times Square.