Come for the Zelňačka, Stay for the Sycophancy

This afternoon I called Mike at work. "I'm at the Co-op," I said. "Do you need sandwich bread?"
"Schwarzenegger's eating lunch at Little Prague!" he answered, sounding as though he would never need sandwich bread again. "Right this minute!"

Ah, Little Prague. I ate at our local Czech restaurant the night I first came to Davis to find us an apartment. I enjoyed my cheese-stuffed cheese with titular zucchini, but my corner of the outdoor seating seemed to be infested with these cute green insects no bigger or heavier than snowflakes. Toward the end of the meal I was offering the bugs cash bribes if they would just leave me alone. I complained (which should tell you something about my distress as I'm chronically intimidated by waiters), but to no avail. I ate there twice more, always at the urging of the in-laws, and we were always served dishes that would have been appropriate for sumo wrestlers had they been served raw, but which were further breaded and covered in cream sauce and sauerkraut. A review in Sacramento Magazine, which is actually less rinky-dink than it sounds, said "If you like potato pancakes, you might give Little Prague’s rendition a try. Slightly gummy, heavy and dense, with an assertive kick of black pepper...If you can wade through a plate of these pancakes, you’ll be prepared for just about anything the weather (or life) throws at you."

I was wondering what the governor was doing in our quiet little hamlet; is this one of those visits that presages cuts to the UC budget? Mike's theory is that he simply got a craving for Czech food, and actually the governor may be the one person for whom such a notion does not require too taut a stretch of the imagination. After all, a former heart patient who circumvents the ban on smoking in government buildings by building a special cigar tent at state expense can probably put away a few bread dumplings in sour cream.

As I was driving home (boo yeah) from the Co-op I passed the newspaper office which, coincidentally, is located across the street from Little Prague. Sure enough, there was my life partner out on the sidewalk with a handful of his hardboiled journalist colleagues, craning their necks and trying to look casual. I pulled over to offer Mike a ride home, and while he went inside to fetch his jacket I chatted with F, who was sporting a Czech Republic soccer sweatshirt for the occasion. A little crowd was forming as students with cameraphones and delivery men pausing in their quest to provide potable water stopped to gawk. I stayed in the car because I hadn't washed my hair yet and therefore didn't want to end up in the paper. "He's in there, Arnold," I overheard someone say. "Yep, the governator," someone else replied, "Did you come to see how short he is?"

Schwarzenegger was ready to go at the same time as Mike, so we all watched as the motorcade materialized from the restaurant parking lot and the governer himself emerged from the front entrance, surrounded by guys in lousy suits who we surmised were state police. The governor waved and smiled cordially to the throng as he walked to his big tinted Ford truck; he wasn't noticeably short, but his head is much bigger than it looks in the movies. The newshounds across the street at this point started snapping pictures for the afternoon addition and shouting "We love you governor!" Mike sighed. "My newspaper really is small time," he said despondently. But just then the governor's truck hung a left and it took him within a foot of us, with his window still open as he smiled and waved, and that cheered us up considerably.

Then we got home and read about the walkouts and lockdowns in the LA public schools, and we were forced to conclude that it was weird that the governor was lunching in Davis. Oh well, let them eat pancake.