It's not clear to me whether the mayor, the Chief of Police, and/or the head of the drug unit were lying when they said Clark wasn't an informant.  They may not have known that Clark was providing information to some police officers.  But, if they were going to go out there and deny it so emphatically, they should have made sure.  When Danny Jones started giving his statement yesterday, at first it sounded like he was trying to parse his words:

Desmond Clark was not, was never a sanctioned, paid, continuous, . . .

At this point I was thinking Jones was choosing his words carefully so he could deny Clark was an informant.

. . . any kind of informant for the Charleston Police Department or any law enforcement agency that I am aware of in this area.

Then when he added "any kind of informant," I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  Guess I was being naive.

True, Clark was apparently not a paid informant.

Paid informants are credible enough to be used in court cases, wear a wire or buy drugs for police. But there are others who give useful information to police who are not paid. They can give police good information, but they wouldn't be used in a court case, often because of their long criminal histories.

But he was providing information to the police, and they cut him breaks because of it.  And it looks to me like what caused this situation was that trying to fight gun and drug crime was a higher priority for the police than pursuing abusers.

If you want to read something really depressing, scan through the Gazette's compilation of Desmond Clark's criminal record.  You read incident after incident of Clark abusing Na'lisha Gravely---punching her in the face, punching her in the face again, kicking her in the ribs, hitting her in the head with a handgun, choking her and slamming her to the ground, threatening to kill her, dragging her by the hair and shoving her into a car against her will, choking her, forcing her into a car again, firing a gun into the air, grabbing her by the neck, forcing her to the ground, stabbing her in the arm, punching her in the stomach, and finally, shooting her multiple times and killing her.

And in reading through all of that, you see that he was in jail a little bit here and there, but he always ended up being released on bail, until he was finally sentenced to probation.  Several of the charges against him (not all of them involving Gravely) were dismissed because either the police officer didn't show up to testify or because of delay in issuing an indictment.

What's depressing is that you know in reading what happened to Gravely how it was likely to end.  Reading through Clark's record is like watching a horror movie---it's just violence after violence and you know what's coming at the end of it.  And you know that all of the abuse listed in Clark's criminal record was only a part of what she went through.  She was surely punched, kicked, choked, and who knows what else far more than is reflected in Clark's rap sheet.  And it fucking pisses me off and makes me feel sick.

And Danny Jones should fucking be ashamed of himself for implying that Desmond Clark could have been locked up if only Na'lisha Gravely hadn't been a "reluctant witness."  And whoever wrote this Gazette editorial yesterday should pull his or her head out of his or her ass as well:

The teenage mother evidently was part of the problem, because she had failed to prosecute Desmond Clark, 22, after previous attacks. In fact, she was riding quietly in his vehicle just before the murder and said nothing to a Dunbar officer who stopped them.

One of the magistrates who spoke to the Gazette stated the obvious, sad reality of Gravely's situation:

One of the two magistrates who say police asked for leniency on Clark considered what might have been going through Gravely's mind if she knew Clark was working with police.

"She's probably thinking, 'Hey, you know, if he's working for the police, what happens?' ... If he ever said to her, 'Look I work for police. You file what you want to. I'll be out of jail.' What could she do?" the magistrate asked.

Exactly.  She probably felt helpless.  She's not going to testify against him knowing that the police are cutting him breaks, because if she does, she'll just get beaten and abused even worse.  She was not "part of the problem," and it's pretty fucking insensitive to say that she was.  The Gazette editorial even asked that age-old question:

[W]hy did she keep returning to her barbaric boyfriend?

That question is always asked as if things are just that simple.  Your boyfriend or husband beats you up?  Just leave.  Apparently these two were not even living with each other (it's unclear whether that was ever the case).  You have to be pretty clueless to think that Gravely could have simply broken up with Clark and ended the violence.  How can anyone read the things that he did to her and still think it was as simple as Gravely not "returning to her barbaric boyfriend?"

What would you---Danny Jones and Gazette editorialist---have suggested that Gravely do?  The most dangerous time for a woman who is being abused is when she tries to leave. Men like Clark don't let the objects of their obsession and violence just walk away.  Men like Clark are manipulative and controlling.

This is a guy who tracked her down at her grandmother's house and dragged her out to his car and forced her into it, firing a warning shot.  In another incident, he forced her into his car, shot at her, then drove around for hours until she managed to escape the vehicle.  During a traffic stop, do you think she's going to lean over and say, "Excuse me officer, could you help me?"  She wouldn't be paranoid to think that Clark might just drive off if she did that.  Based on Clark's history of always getting released, why would she think that asking a police officer for help would make her any safer?

And do you think she knew at the time of that traffic stop that Clark might kill her later that day?  I'm guessing that given the amount and severity of the violence she faced, probably every day felt like a day that he might kill her.

I hate the term "domestic battery" or "domestic assault" or even "domestic violence."  Why do we distinguish between a man punching his girlfriend in the face in her house and a man punching some guy in the face out on the street?  Why are there two separate crimes---battery and domestic battery?  They both carry the exact same sentence in West Virginia's criminal code, as do assault and domestic assault.

Domestic violence is not just a personal problem.  It's not just an isolated problem or a family problem. Someone else could easily have ended up injured or dead on Saturday as Clark was chasing after Gravely.  Luckily, that didn't happen, but this guy was obviously a danger not just to Gravely, but to the whole community.

Remember what can happen when police think an incident is "just a domestic dispute." I'm not trying to be sensational by suggesting that the West Side Taco Bell could have turned into a Virginia Tech situation.  I'm suggesting that police and the public need to understand that men who commit violence against their wives and girlfriends are also threats to society at large.  And in this situation, I feel like police didn't prioritize all of those domestic incidents because they were more concerned with catching the really bad guys---the guys with the guns and drugs.  Nevermind the fact that their informant was one of those guys too.

Update:  Desmond Clark's mother was arrested today for battery against Na'lisha Gravely that occurred on the same date and at the same location of Clark's domestic battery charge in May of this year.  Jesus.

Therefore, it is unclear whether magistrates arraigning Clark in May [for domestic battery against Gravely] would have known that he was a convicted felon on probation because they couldn't access his circuit court records via computer.

There's no mention in this article of the possibility that he was an informant, so I'm inclined to think that Mayor Jones' press conference yesterday convinced reporters that their unnamed sources were wrong.

It's appalling to me that this guy wasn't in prison. He is a convicted felon who has committed a few different gun crimes and who has a four- to five-year history of abusing his girlfriend, including shooting her (the bullet grazed her leg), yet the most he was ever sentenced to was two years of probation. And now she's dead.

Most people in Charleston have probably seen this surveillance video from a Taco Bell on the West Side. It shows a woman running into the restaurant and jumping over the counter, followed several seconds later by a man running in and jumping over the counter. You then see all of the people in the restaurant scatter, presumably after hearing Clark fire six shots at his girlfriend, who was hiding in a closet.

Unsurprisingly, Clark has a history of domestic violence charges against his now-deceased girlfriend, Nilisha Gravely. They reportedly had been together for five years, and she accused him of domestic battery in September 2004, which means the abuse must have started not long after they began their relationship, when she was 16 and he was 18.

The guy's got so many domestic violence charges I'm going to list them in bullet form (sorry for the unfortunate pun):

• In February 2005, he broke her nose.*
• In October 2005, he kicked her, dragged her by the hair, and forced her into a car.
• In January 2007, he choked her and pulled her out of her car. He was charged with domestic battery and released on bond.
• Later that month, he tracked her down at her grandmother's house, forced her into his car, and fired a shot into the air. He was charged with two counts of wanton endangerment and two counts of burglary. He was put on home confinement, then he cut off his ankle bracelet.
• In April 2007, he stabbed her with a kitchen knife in her apartment. She left the apartment covered in blood, stumbled up the street, and flagged down the police, but Clark "eluded" them.
• In May 2007, he grabbed her and pushed her into a car. He shot at her, grazing her leg. He drove around for several hours, saying that he'd shoot at police if they tried to apprehend him. She managed to escape. And so did he.
• In June 2007, Clark was arrested and charged with unlawful malicious wounding (a felony) and violating a home confinement order (a misdemeanor). He was released on bond in July 2007 and was apparently put on home confinement again. In October 2007, Clark was removed from home confinement so that he could start a job as a security guard.
• In December 2007, it was Clark who got shot. Police say that forty minutes later, two of Clark's "associates" shot and killed a man on the East End in retaliation.

In January 2008, Clark pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling, battery, and domestic battery as part of a plea deal that dismissed charges of breaking and entering, entering without breaking, brandishing, and two counts of domestic battery. He was sentenced to two years of probation.

The standard for sentencing a person to probation is that the person is "not likely again to commit crime and that the public good does not require that he be fined or imprisoned." I think we can all agree that the idea that Clark was "not likely again to commit crime" does not pass the laugh test.

While on probation in May of this year, Clark was arrested and charged with domestic battery for punching Gravely in the stomach. She filed a domestic violence petition against him and was granted a protective order on May 28th, which prohibited Clark from having contact with her for three months. On July 5th, he killed her.

In addition to abusing his girlfriend, Clark was also accused of battery against a corrections officer and he had other gun and drug charges that were dismissed because police failed to show up to testify. That was apparently an ongoing problem when it came to charges against Clark---the police wouldn't show up to testify against him. According to "sources," it was because he was a confidential informant.

The head of the Metro Drug Unit emphatically denies that Clark was an informant for the drug unit and says that because of his criminal history they would not have used him as an informant if he had asked. But the chief detective for the police department, who also denies using Clark as an informant, says that he wouldn't know whether anyone else was using him as one.

The Chief of Police said: "When I called all three investigation divisions, they all said the same thing: 'He was a target for us.'" If that's true, then why the hell didn't they lock up their "target" after one of his numerous arrests/convictions? Just this past December he was involved at some level in a man's murder, then in January he gets probation?

Mayor Danny Jones called a press conference earlier today to respond to the Gazette article. He held up the paper with the big, front page headline that reads "Was Clark an informant?" and said no, he was not. He also basically blamed Gravely for being a "reluctant witness."

The mayor explained the reason for repeated lack of convictions and short jail stints for Clark was the result of "reluctant witnesses."

"Obviously one (witness) in particular, and that's the saddest part of all," Jones said about Nalisha Gravely. "We did everything we could and police did everything they could to lock him up."

Classy. I don't think they did everything they could, considering the fact that police officers didn't show up to testify.

So for now, I guess it remains a mystery. The mayor and the police seem pretty emphatic, but then again, I wouldn't expect them to reveal Clark's status as an informant if he was one. What I'd really like to know is who those unnamed sources are.

Either way---whether he was an informant or not---the legal system seriously screwed up by not locking this guy up. I know that domestic violence cases can be difficult for prosecutors, since victims are often afraid to testify against their abusers. (Afraid, not reluctant.) But when the police don't even show up to testify, then I'm not buying the claim that they did everything they could. And now a woman is dead because of it, and a two-year-old boy is going to grow up without his mother.

* Please forgive me for dispensing with the "allegedly's."

I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys.

The Gazette reports that Conroy sent the letter, addressed to the Gazette, to George Washington High School senior Makenzie Hatfield, who emailed him about the controversy surrounding his books. Here's what he had to say about the violence his books.

They contain scenes of violence, but I was the son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot who killed hundreds of men in Korea, beat my mother and his seven kids whenever he felt like it, and fought in three wars. My youngest brother, Tom, committed suicide by jumping off a fourteen-story building; my French teacher ended her life with a pistol; my aunt was brutally raped in Atlanta; eight of my classmates at The Citadel were killed in Vietnam; and my best friend was killed in a car wreck in Mississippi last summer. Violence has always been a part of my world. I write about it in my books and make no apology to anyone. In “Beach Music,” I wrote about the Holocaust and lack the literary powers to make that historical event anything other than grotesque.

(Read the whole thing. It's entertaining, if a bit over-the-top.)

The school board has suspended the books temporarily, while a "committee of professionals and Nitro-area residents" review the books and determine whether they are suitable for high school seniors. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I bet when they finally finish reading the books (it's been over a month -- slow readers, I guess), they'll conclude that they aren't inappropriate. I would think that once they read the books in their entirety and see the controversial scenes in context, they will have a better understanding of the value in students reading them. Like I said, maybe I'm overly optimistic.

Not all of the complaining parents want the books banned outright. Some want alternative books to be provided, disclaimers to be given (the teachers have said they already do this), and a book rating system to be implemented. I guess it's the teachers who are supposed to spend extra time creating a whole rating system and rating all of the books they assign -- without additional pay, of course.

School board member Bill Raglin is in favor of these remedies and says:

“I don’t object to anything Conroy says,” Raglin said. “I just want to give the parents who don’t want to be bothered with him the right to not be bothered with him.”

They already have that right. The parents are entirely free not to be bothered with Pat Conroy and his books. I'm sorry, but I thought it was the students who are in class reading these books, discussing them, writing papers about them, and taking pop quizzes about them. I thought it was the students who are in an AP English class, preparing for college, where they'll all be next year. Oh, bother.

Today's serendipitously appropriate Cat and Girl comic

Okay, that's not really what she said. However, that would indeed be the end result of one local parent's ludicrous notion that a school's zero-tolerance policy for violence should not just apply to actual people in the real world, but should be extended to characters in the novels high school students read in English class. Her particular objection is to Pat Conroy's novel Beach Music. At a school board meeting last night, the parent who objects to the novel did what all parents who object to books do -- she read selected passages of the book, which contained descriptions of child rape, suicide, and killing.

This woman's brilliant logic is:

Zero tolerance for violence should mean just that. When the school condones it, that’s telling the kids a lot.

Why she thinks the school is condoning child rape, suicide, or killing by allowing high school students to read books that contain those subjects is beyond me. I haven't read any Pat Conroy novels, but I do know that many of his books deal with child abuse -- physical, sexual, emotional -- and family violence and that they're based on his own childhood growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father. I'm going to take a wild guess that Pat Conroy doesn't condone child rape or think that suicide is a neat idea. I'm going to take another wild guess that Beach Music does the exact opposite of condoning those things by telling a story that illustrates how harmful and painful those things are.

I do have to laugh at what the end result of her proposed policy would be -- no Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, or really any Shakespeare (at least not the tragedies). Let's see, what else would be out? To Kill a Mockingbird (yikes! it has "kill" right there in the title!), The Grapes of Wrath, Catch-22, Things Fall Apart. Hell, probably most (if not all) of the novels that people generally consider to be the best of all time would have to be banned.

And why stop with English class? Shouldn't this zero-tolerance policy apply to the books students read in all of their classes? I guess schools will have to start teaching history without mentioning any wars, the founding of the United States, slavery, the Holocaust. Better not tell them about the deaths of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy -- wouldn't want to condone assassination.

How far should we extend this logic? Do the characters in novels have to comply with ALL of the school's policies? Can they smoke? Chew gum? Talk on their cell phones? Do they have to meet the dress code?

The extent to which some parents want to limit their children's education is sad to me.

I had the joyous experience of walking out to my car this morning and finding a big yellow boot attached to the front wheel. Luckily, my boyfriend's car was available, so I was able to run downtown immediately and pay the fines. When I got back home, these dudes were removing the boot:

Thanks, guys!

So beware, they're not just targeting the big offenders. Getting the boot removed will run you an extra fifty bucks (and a headache), so I'd recommend you pay off those tickets, even if it's only a handful. Or else hide your car in the bushes or something.*

(FYI: They apparently sent me a notice about the unpaid tickets to my old address, which, being my old address, I never received. So, you know, watch out for that too.)

* Disclaimer: Does not constitute legal advice.

Investigators are labeling it "suspicious," saying that an accelerant may have been used. I swear it wasn't me. My money's on this guy:

So I was walking up Capitol Street today after leaving work, and I noticed a man sitting on the bench in front of the library. He caught my attention because he had no shoe or sock on his right foot. He was wearing dress pants and a button down shirt and had a sock and a dress shoe on his left foot, but the other shoe and sock were sitting on the ground in front of him. Why did he have a bare foot? I looked at him more closely, and saw that he was clipping his toenails. Yep. Sitting on a bench on a public sidewalk in front of the library, clipping his toenails. What the fuck?

Anyway, I've been thinking about it all evening and now I've had a couple glasses of wine and I wrote a little song about it that I'd like to share with you. Please sing along with me, to the tune of the Spiderman theme song. (I prefer the Ramones version.)

Um, yeah. Aren't you sad I don't blog more often?

Is it just me, or does all of downtown Charleston smell like dead fish today? It's really gross, and I think it might be coming from the river. (It's definitely not ginkgos this time.) Of course, the secretary in my office looked at me like I was crazy when I asked her about it, so maybe it is just me. Then again, she's a smoker, so it's possible her olfactory nerves are shot to hell.

[The diagram above is absolutely integral to my telling of this funny little story. Click for a larger version.]

For lunch today, I walked a few blocks to a sub shop to get a Philly cheesesteak. (The Philly cheesesteak is not absolutely integral to this story, but it was pretty tasty.) As I exited the sub shop, I saw the scene depicted in the diagram above. The woman in the green car had her car in reverse and was attempting to park, but the woman in the car behind her refused to back up. It's completely unclear why she was doing this. The traffic light was red and (as is clearly depicted in the diagram) there was a Vast Empty Space behind her. There was a line of traffic to her right, but all she had to do was back up one car length and let the woman in the green car park. There was a fair amount of horn honking on the part of both parties, which is what attracted the crowd of Bemused Spectators.

One man in the crowd remarked of the woman in the red car: "I guess some people just have more time on their hands."*

Another man replied: "Or they're just bigger assholes." This caused the Bemused Spectators to laugh.

Finally, the light turned green and the line of cars in the right lane drove off. The Asshole got over in the right lane and drove away, causing the Bemused Spectators to clap and cheer while the woman in the green car was finally able to park.

People are strange.

* The undeniable truth of this statement is illustrated quite nicely by this blog post and its accompanying diagram, which was painstakingly rendered in MS Paint.

Two local bloggers, Rick Lee and Bob Coffield, have photos.

(via Oncee)

ca·rouse (kə-rouz')
intr.v., -roused, -rous·ing, -rous·es.

1. To engage in boisterous, drunken merrymaking.
2. To drink excessively.

Head's up for any drunk drivers out there (for shame!) - the Charleston Police Department is setting up a checkpoint on Kanawha Boulevard from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. on this lovely St. Patrick's Day to crack down on "mass carousing." But will they be pinching people who aren't wearing green? I didn't wear any green today, but I figure I get a pass since I kind of resemble a leprechaun in some respects.

"I'm the one who's been fucking everything up for the past five years. I don't know why George keeps getting all the credit."

When Bush's brain is out attending GOP fundraisers, why do they still let his brainless body conduct Cabinet meetings?

* Just kidding, guys.

We had an entertaining conversation, during which my d.c. wondered aloud if a person could drink one of these laced coffee beverages in the morning, before work. Bill said, "I believe that would be a CLM." We gave quizzical looks and he said, "Career Limiting Move." We discovered that all three of us fair-skinned Anglo-Saxons have Cherokee not too far back in our bloodlines, so we pondered that for a bit. Then, after sucking down his second B-52, Bill was on his way. We told him "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Birthday," because he was a Christmas baby. We finished our drinks then walked outside, where we hardly noticed the freezing temperature due to the delicious mixture of alcohol coursing through our veins.

Ah, the B-52 - bringing strangers together and keeping them warm over the holidays. I strongly suggest that you ask your friendly bartender for one.

Why, oh why, did you have to play that song in your establishment this morning? Don't you realize that it is one of those unfortunate songs that is both supremely terrible and impossible to get out of one's head? And I try, oh my god do I try, BUT IT JUST WON'T STOP! I had just begun to forget that Four Non Blondes had ever existed. How can I be expected to concentrate today with this racket in my head? I believe that I am entitled to a return of my twenty-five cent tip.

Sincerely annoyed,

RR

My attorney has advised me to just leave it at that, but I do have very important news that I can share. I found out what that stink is in front of the library and why I couldn't locate the source. Like I said before, to me it smells like rotting garbage, but there's no garbage littering the front of the library, nor does the smell seem to be coming from any garbage cans. But what is in front of the library are big ginkgo trees, and they are the smelly culprits, as someone informed me yesterday evening. That's right, it's the ginkgos.

You might say: "But I've been around ginkgo trees, and they don't smell." Well, that's because the smell comes from the fruit that grows only on the female trees.

The smell's description ranges from "rancid butter" to "vomit". This foul smell has limited ginkgo's popularity while also causing city governments to actually remove the tree and ban the female from being planted. Male ginkgoes do not produce a fruit and are selected as the main cultivars used to transplant in urban communities.

Apparently the geniuses in Charleston's city government didn't know this fun fact about female ginkgos when they decided to grace the front of the public library with them.

Another fun fact about ginkgos is that people eat the nut that's inside the stinky flesh of the fruit.

The tree originated in China and Japan. It has a nut with a smooth and thin shell. Within the shell is a single green kernel that has a sweetish flavor. When roasted the kernels are highly prized by the Chinese.

This reminds me of another stinky fruit, durian, which I encountered while walking the streets of Yogyakarta. Supposedly it tastes good, but I never tried it because it literally smells like shit. Now I'm kind of kicking myself for not buying some from a street vendor, though, because I just read that it tastes like "a combination of banana, caramel, and vanilla, with a slight onion tang." I'm not sure about the onion tang, but banana, caramel, and vanilla? Yes, please. I guess I was less adventuresome then, although I did eat cobra. Of course, it didn't stink. I guess I'm only as adventuresome as my olfactory system allows me to be.

Every time I walk through that stench, I'm reminded of an early Seinfeld episode in which Elaine wonders out loud whether it's possible to die from a really bad smell. If it is possible, this stink is a prime contender for a smell that could kill.

I drove past the state capitol yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see that the dome is now completely uncovered. I don't live right next door anymore, so this photo of the partially uncovered dome from the Gazette will have to suffice. So what happened with that whole protest against abstinence-only education? I'm not sure, but it looks like maybe the state legislators are now supporting the withdrawal method (and I ain't talkin' about Iraq).

So as not to risk dooceage, I won't be writing about my job. However, I think it's pretty safe to write about my office. What's noteworthy is that I actually have my own office for the first time. Woohoo! In the past, I've been packed in like a sardine with the other lowly law clerks or I've shared an office with another person - usually someone who talks nonstop - so, finally having my own space is great.

The best feature of my new office is the view. My two windows look out onto the Kanawha River, so all day long I watch the coal barges slowly making their way up and down the river, carefully navigating under the bridge. (I mean, I glance up to look at them occasionally while diligently working, of course.) I've concluded that being a coal barge operator would be pure torture for me. At first thought it might seem great - you'd spend your days serenely traveling on the river, passing by all sorts of interesting things. However, coal barges move at a snail's pace, which would drive me absolutely bonkers. It'd be like taking a cross country road trip, but in a school zone the entire way. (And you know how much I love school zones, right?) I'm impatient. Luckily, I changed my mind at the last minute and chose law school over that coal barge operator program. Phew.

Of course, sometimes there are more exciting things than coal barges to watch out my office window, such as hotel fires.

So now that I've finally got a quiet office all to myself, I have to ask: How do they expect me to get any work done under these conditions?

When I walked in, the first thing I noticed is that the place was too bright. Definitely not mood lighting. We were seated at a table right next to the bussing station, so despite the fact that there was no music playing in the restaurant, my dining companion and I were treated to the soulful buzzing of the Beverage-Air 2000. The place was far from full, so now that I think about it, we should have just asked for a different table.

It took me a good five minutes to figure out how to read the menu. As mentioned in the news articles about the opening of the restaurant, the menu is written in English, French, and Spanish, which, according to the owners (who lived in France for thirty-five years) is authentically French. I don’t really care whether that’s true or not. All I know is that it made the menu difficult to read.

We ordered a bottle of Chateau de la Chaize. After the waiter figured out which wine we were trying to order (he wasn’t familiar with the wine list), we got to drinking and exchanging bons mots. Our French jokes were lame, and so was the wine.

We had oysters as an appetizer, which were decent, though I didn’t really like them with the shallot vinegar that came with them. I ordered salmon tartare, which was also decent. He ordered veal. I took a couple bites of it, and it was tough. Isn't the point of veal that it's supposed to be tender? If I'm going to endure the guilt of eating a young animal that has been locked in a small cage, I at least want it to be tender, damn it!

The worst part of the meal was dessert. We ordered the berry flan, and it tasted like rubber or wax or something. It wasn't cold, which was kind of gross. It was really dense and rubbery and we didn't finish it, and it wasn't because we were too full.

The highlight of the meal, which also came at the end, was the authentic drunk French lady who was admiring the artwork on the wall near our table. That ruled.