Dinner with friends

So I went to dinner Friday with my best friend and her husband.

(Her husband decided he wanted a fake name for his first Ericacentric blog appearance. We'll call him Ricardo Gia. You'll learn why later. We'll call the best friend Vicjams.)

Anyway, do you ever have those long dinner chats with friends where you bounce around from one mostly ridiculous subject to another? This was one of those nights.

Vicjams, Ricardo, and I ordered our drinks at a local establishment that shall not be named and delved into what would become one the most random (and there have been a lot of random conversations in our nearly two-decades long friendship) conversations we've ever had.

It started with Harry Potter, naturally. Vicjams has been caught up in Harry Potter recently as she rewatched all the movies before catching the latest one in the theater.

Vicjams: "It's pretty bad, actually. I used the word "snogging" in a sentence earlier this week."
Ricardo Gia: "I feel like I'm living in f-in' Hogwarts. She called me a Muggle the other day. I don't even know what that means."
Vicjams: "Yeah. It's like Harry Potter world at our house."
E: "You know there's an actual Harry Potter World now, right? At Universal Studios. You can get a wand and drink butterbeer. OMG, that's what we can do for your 30th birthday!"

Vicjams was really excited about that idea. Ricardo Gia, however, told us he'd pay for us to go and he'd stay home. He then begged to change the subject to something else, anything else. He suggested fantasy football. Vicjams and I moved on to Twilight and how it wasn't as good as Harry Potter.

Next, we talked about a movie they were watching recently that involved Richard Gere and a very authentic Irish accent.

Vicjams: "I don't think it's him doing the voice. The accent is really good. Almost too good."
Ricardo Gia: "Is Richard Gere Irish?"
E: "It's time for a Google challenge!"

The resulting search informed us that Richard Gere was born in Philadelphia, has a dad and a kid named Homer, and uses the alias of Ricardo Gia. Oh, and that he got a gymnastics scholarship to college. Um, yeah.

From there conversation took a quick detour from movies to discuss how much Ricardo Gia - as in Vicjams' husband, not to be confused with the real Richard Gere - looks like the baby from that printer commercial with the "I've got a brand new pair of roller skates" song. It's true, they could be twins. I took a picture.

We touched on various topics for the next few minutes including that Vicjams hates food with flavor, how I had to get a new iPhone because mine fell out of my back pocket into the toilet, Harry Potter again, what the homilies at our respective Christmas Eve masses were like, the reason that all those dead birds are dying is because Chuck Norris is playing Angry Birds, whether jokes about Hitler and 9/11 are still inappropriate, and Harry Potter again.

Somehow, we got to the fact that Vicjams and Ricardo Gia had recently rewatched The Hangover. That led to various quotes of our favorite lines from the movie like "His name is Carlos." and "I didn't know they gave away rings in the Holocaust."

It also led to Vicjams quoting Mike Tyson's singing of "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins.

Vicjams: (singing)"I can feel it coming in the air tonight..."
E: "Wait, what do they say there? Oh Lord?"
Vicjams: "I thought it was Hold on or Oh long or something." 
Ricardo Gia: "I don't know what it is, but it's not any of the things you just said." (Editor's note: It is, in fact, Oh Lord.)
Vicjams: "Hey, E, what do they say in that song Take Me Home Tonight"
Vicjams and E: (singing) "I don't want to let you go 'til I see the light!"
Ricardo Gia: You two know we're in public, right?

So we stopped singing and went back to Harry Potter. We decided Ricardo Gia was kinda like Professor Slughorn.

Ricardo Gia just played on his iPhone until it was time to leave.

Maybe the next movie we all watch should be Dinner For Schmucks.