Tuesday, January 13, 2009

That's Borat.

The most amazing dull white guy is hanging out at the same coffee shop as me right now. He is loud, painfully obnoxious, and sporting heavy Minnesota long vowels while unabashedly berating foreign accents.

He seems to be the heating guy, here to fix something. He is sitting at the coffee bar and speaking incredibly loudly to the Middle Eastern barista. Apparently he is trying to bond with the barista by making offensive jokes about other cultures. "Have you heard the French accent?! God, it's awful! Oui, oui, missssssyerrrrrr, how arrgghhh you? I can't even understand them!" He also keeps glancing over at me while leaning on the counter, as if he wants me to hear him. I think he wants to impress me.

(He is succeeding, with flying colors, although it is not to his advantage!)

This is a direct quote:
"I am by no means a master of English dialects, but the French ones, just hilarious." What does that even mean?! French is an English dialect? What?

"So what's your name anyway?" he asked the barista, just a moment ago.

The soft-spoken man who served me my coffee responded, "My name is Ahmed. But you can call me Ed. It's easier."

"Achhhhmed?" the heating guy said.

"No, Ahmed. With an H, not a cough," the barista said. "Can you say Hawaii?"

"Hawaii."

"Yes, like that. Ahmed, with an H like in Hawaii."

"Acchghghghmed."

"Just call me Ed."

I thought the conversation was over after that, but the heating guy decided to continue putting down the French. "I mean, it's not even just their accents," he said, "It's their whole behavior!" Then he spun into an elaborate imitation of some caricature of a make-believe "French" person.

Waving his arms around, he said, "Oh! Do you like mah cghghroissants? Oui oui, I like-a the wine! It is-a verah naaace!"

The barista (bless his heart) said disaffectedly, "I think you are doing a German accent."

"Oh is that German?" the heating guy said, laughing. But he continued right on:
"Oui, oui, then theeees eees-a the Frencha. Uh-huh, misssyerrrrr!"

The barista said, quietly, "That's Borat."

Finally the guy stopped attempting to impersonate foreign accents and took it a little closer to home. He started impersonating foreign instruments.

"I mean, we have the guitar and everything, but, God, you know the Indians? They have this sitar, right? And it sounds like this: dingggg, dinggggg."

He keeps looking at me! Do you think he knows I am blogging about him? I think he is still trying to impress me, with his worldly knowledge of French accents and sitars.

You have to give this guy props for being so bold. It's like he is trying to bond with his local coffee shop barista by acknowledging that neither one of them is French. It's so messed up. He is clearly berating people whose acquired language is English to someone whose acquired language is English. You really have to admire the blatant ignorance of someone like that.

Oh! What do you know! A second barista has arrived for his shift. He is also not caucasian. The heating guy cannot seem to understand how two non-white people in a row are working at the coffee shop, because he just asked this question:

"So, are you guys like cousins or something?"

2 comments:

sgg said...

that's thoroughly depressing.

Sarah E. Hoffman said...

That was a very good description! I felt like I was there - people are pretty insane sometimes!