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pplebee’s had been America’s Neighborhood Grill since before there even was an America; before the Earth and Sun had connected; before that one really shitty post-prom where you tried to spike the punch but then just threw up in the bathroom: the bathroom of an Applebee’s we’re both far too familiar with. Things have changed, though, and never more so than in the past year. War-hungry superpower TGI Friday’s, with their endless gluttony of appetizers, have increased their brutality over Bennigan’s, Fudrucker’s, and whatever the fuck a Famous Dave’s is. The hands of fate have been forced, and Applebee’s itself has been forever altered. It was easy to be fooled, to think that this was a safe and affordable family restaurant, or that your mosaic claim to the local Bee’s - a framed, blurry picture of you acquiring ‘nothing but net’ from back when you had a spine -- was still plastered to the wall above a family of four viciously ingesting Sangria and pub pretzels. The Winnepagh Junior College Women’s Basketball Team has won six regional titles since you last put on that jersey in ‘92, and yet you were so sure that it was your picture that remained. It was not the Applebee’s that fooled you, Joann. It was your own hubris. Inevitably, like so many others, you fall in the Applebee’s, crying out in everlasting pain as your sad, bloated body meets the ground. I know what you’re thinking. It’s what so many before you have thought. But you will NEVER be able to sue the Applebee’s. It is said that you will never dismantle the master’s house using the master’s steak knives, and it is true. You will never sue the Applebee’s. It specifically says so on the new logo, you notice, as the host steps around you to let the last of the stragglers inside the restaurant. It is nearly 12 AM -- they are aware this restaurant
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closes at 1, are they not? They...are not. Have these dudes heard of maybe opening Google? Damn. It is unfortunate but true, that you shall never taste the sweet, semi-sweet, temperate marinara sauce. You shall remain on this floor until the last chorus of “Mr. Brightside” teeters out, and all you have is a silence known only to the incurably tired and whoever has to open tomorrow. The wood polish chokes the air around you, so much so that you seek relief in the overabundant oils of the notat-all efficient, complementary crayons. If you pronounce it like crans, the host will correct you. If you pronounce it like crowns, everyone will correct you. Did you ever dream that this is where your body would learn its limits? The dining room of an Applebee’s, 50 minutes until close, a crumpled, breathing corpse covered in the free chips you received to make up for a spill caused by the very son you spat out into this world? Your sticky, icky children and their sticky, icky hands touch your face. They touch your face, they touch your table, they touch other people’s tables. They touch your face some more, which at this point feels kind of generous on their part, I guess. The bartender glowers, and shoves more ice into your drink. Your kids touch that too. Your kids fucking suck, Joann. The Wonton Tacos are lodged in your gullet, weighing you down like an anchor made of...well, you’re not really sure what a wonton is. Neither are we. But your children insisted. They INSISTED that you participate in half-off apps, and you conceded with not an ounce of knowledge among you that they are in fact simply a tax on the poor, little more than a waste of a meal which you must wallow in until you are nothing more than a husk of calories
By Jesse Saunders and Corona crawling across the tiled floor of section five. “Yum, yum, yum!” the waiters whisper as they whizz past your ear, transporting their sizzling open wood bar grill. There is no wood in the kitchen. There is no wood in the body of this Applebee’s, not since the accident. The wood polish covers every surface, but There. Is. No. Wood. Do you remember the accident, Joann? The judge ruled in your favor. It was your first week on grill, you argued, and he believed you, but we all know you had spent some time as a cook at a Dave and Buster’s, post-grad. His decision was final, though: you would be able to dine free forever - financial immortality - and on top of it promised your choice of any family-friendly restaurant to dine in/ chill at eternally. You could be spending your waking days eating at the Rich Man’s Applebee’s: the Chili’s across the street. You could be throwing back Cheddar Bay biscuits on a nightly basis at the upper-middle class equivalent of a Joe’s Crab Shack: the Red Lobster by the mall. Cheesecake Factory was never really on the table, but you get it. Regardless, you had options. So many options. Instead, you sit here on your sickly grey throne in front of the host stand, night after night, riding a power trip twenty-five years in the making. There are millions of hosts stands, Joann, with millions of pimplefaced squires leading thrice-divorced sheep to the slaughter known as the Two-forTwenty: a moderately priced hell from which no normal man can escape. There are millions of host stands, but only this one has survived the fire you unleash both unwillingly and unrelentingly, and only this one has been able to exact its revenge. It starts as an idea, Joann. And then that idea gets franchised. And then you die.