Saturday, July 31, 2010

Doe And Dane Do Burgers, Salt

Non-celebrity unicouples Dena and Joe McDonald and Darren and Jane Freidinger were spotted cavorting about Normal's hot spots Friday night, with children mysteriously absent.

Attempting to avoid paparazzi, the Freidingers arrived separately at McDonaldland Ranch. He entered sporting his trademark Caterpillar corporate work combination and resurfaced in plain white T-shirt and shorts of unknown designer. She wore the stylish flip-flops and classy His Ranch top typifying "The Jane" look popularized by her fans.

Doe and Dane were whisked to the cozy Jesse's Grille, famous for its lack of patrons, apparently seeking a quiet adults-only dining experience. With prices worthy of its Mariott hotel restaurant status, the establishment named for local legend Jesse Fell has successfully laid low beneath the B-N celebrity scene. To protect its "nobody eats here" culture and 1-to-1 waiter-to-customer ratio, some sources suggest that it goes so far as to plant its own dowdy reviews on the Web, such as:

"Not very good: Its a corporate hotel restaurant with no heart.

The decor is innovative and adventurous, in a totally bland and corporate kind of way. It reminds me of what they say about carpet patterns in casinos. This is the kind of place that your old and out-of-touch aunt will think is 'neat' or 'far out' or 'funky', but those comments will be drowned out by the yawns of everybody else. They have astroturf patches of grass as some kind of zen-inspired decoration. The joint has no character, just a mishmash of contemporary ugliness that a committee at Marriott was apparently able to reach consensus on."

Dena delighted in lime green quesadillas, with Joe and Jane engaging the Mariott burger, and Darren trying a dish involving the word "skirt" that was reminiscent of steak.

Controversy erupted in the parking garage as a minivan driven by two women blocked their exit at the gate. After a heated exchange in which Joe frisked the driver for a hidden camera and she claimed to "speak little English," a tender humanitarian moment followed when he helped her discover that her garage ticket was unreadable by the pay station machine, and called maintenance to solve their problem.

Duameda's children then escorted their spouses to a hopping Starplex Cinema, where they were engulfed by unaware fans in the ticket lines, and unhounded in the restrooms.

Claiming seats in the furthest upper corner of the theater, they were seen riveted to the edge of their seats by Brangelina's latter half's performance in the action thriller "Salt." The high-profile tiff between Jolie and J-Mac flared up again upon her blatantly ad libbed line "I hate math" in the early scenes.

After clown-carring it home in the trusty red Saturn, roars of delight were heard from within the condo, with some earwitnesses reporting disjointed phrases of pirate lingo. Shortly thereafter Dane breezed into the summer evening air for the trip home, smelling faintly of fresh-baked strawberry shortcake.

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