On The Highway to Happiness

Correcting one cultural lapse only reveals additional ones.

I went to the Byrd Theatre for "Sullivan's Travels," a 1941 film, because it's #61 on the American Film Institute's top 100 films of all time, has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and because I'd never seen a Veronica Lake film.

Apparently that's all it takes to lure me out on a thunder-storming Wednesday evening.

What I didn't know was that it was about a director who wants to abandon directing comedies and make a serious film (a la Frank Capra) about the Depression and call it "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Incidentally, that's another film I've never seen.

I can't help but wonder if Coen brothers fans know this tidbit.

Before the movie, though, I situated myself at the bar at Nota Bene for Stobi Rose (Macedonian), the only cauliflower I know of that makes fans out of haters (mostly men) and wood oven pizza (margarita) while rain poured down on Main Street and vintage soul - including rarities like "Up the Ladder to the Roof" - played.

Conversation centered around "A Quiet Passion," the movie about Emily Dickinson I'd recently seen because I finally had access to someone else who'd seen it and needed to discuss it as much as I did.

And speaking of Dickinson, hers was one of the quotes - "My friends are my estate" - on the menu at Eleven Months, the new pop-up in Carytown which plans to revamp concepts once a year.

To keep track of that limited time, there's a digital clock on the wall counting how long they've been open (28 days, 9 hours and change while I was there), but the bartender explained that once they got to 5 1/2 months, the clock would begin counting down to closing day.

Got that?

Presently, the theme is "best friends forever" and the menu is full of quotes about friendship, but as soon as that begins to feel tired, the plan is to replace it with another theme.

The catch is that no iteration can last longer than 11 months, which I have to assume is the average attention span of their intended diners. Don't worry, kids, that's plenty of time to post video to Snapchat before moving on to the next new thing.

Not me. My eccentricities are my estate.