A little Mai, A little Thai

We go to Thai Select all the time, it seems, since 2008 when after seeing an Off-Broadway Show at 37 Arts (The Beebo Chronicles - what an amazing play!), we stopped there for dinner, to have a little mai, a little thai, just as a character in the play describes his drink of choice.

So after briefly attempting to find another restaurant, Ida and I headed to Thai Select, were we started with drinks. I can't remember the name of mine - it had jamaican rum, pineapple juice, and many many other wonderful things. They served it in this beautiful deep glass.

For my main entree, I didn't deviate much from my Thai mainstay, having the Crystal Pad Thai which is sauteed bean vermicelli with crushed peanuts, eggs and scallion.

The noodles gave the plate a slightly different flavor, but Pad Thai is Pad Thai y'all.

After the movie we walked down to Chelsea to catch a showing of "The Tillman Story", a documentary of sorts about Pat Tillman, the NFL football player who gave up his lucrative NFL career to join the military, and died thanks to so-called "friendly fire." The family used this medium to share their story, and it is indeed a heartbreaking one. Any death arriving from this ridiculous unnecesary war is heartbreaking one, but judging by the details that after much investigation the family was able to uncover, I can understand why they did this.

The thing is sad all around. Here was this guy who judged that the best he could do for his country was join the military. This man loved his wife - his wife had actually been his one and only girlfriend, since they were High School sweethearts. This man joined the military with his younger brother. This man gave up a lucrative career. This man thought he was going to be sent to Afghanistan but was sent, instead, to Iraq. This man was murdered by other member's of his country's Military. And then that same organization tried to paint his death as a heroic feat first, later as an unavoidable mistake, and then when his family didn't just accept this, managed to jump through all of that family's legal recourses to point the finger at others, and then go on with life.

Namely not a very happy thing to watch, to be quite sure. I wondered why the middle brother that joined Pat in the military did not really appear in the documentary. I wondered how many other deaths were out there, like Pat's. I wondered how many young men and women are going through life now, trying to get over traumas (physical or mental) that came from this completely unnecesary invasion. It's sad, it's just sad. Makes you wanna drink a little Mai, a little Thai.