What if David Foster Wallace wrote for Groupon?
David Foster Wallace for ¡Siesta Infinita!
Predictably and irrevocably lost to the speed and complexity of contemporary lifestyles led by Individuals whose attention spans are most accurately measured at the atomic level is a sense of community, a conjoint gathering not just of ideas – currently distributed via internet as freely as unsolicited menus jammed savagely through the mail slot – but of smells, tastes, germs, sideways glances, loose hairs found on lapels, and crumpled phone numbers hastily scrawled on square napkins during early morning hours. While any number of restaurants can offer this Individual the opportunity to socialize over half-price mint tea Fresca-tinis to complement Puntillitas served on dollhouse plates with grape leaves that have been waved in front of a starving child, none can provide the complete social dining experience without the antiquated inconveniences of people and food.
Opened just two months ago by Luis Leon(1), Chelsea’s ¡Siesta Infinita! is at present the only establishment in all of the country and New York City to offer the modern American a chance to participate in the world’s first virtual meal, a collective hallucination(2) that combines crippling modern technological solitude, stunning breakthroughs in neuroscience, and the zenith of event dining to create the next great epicurean leap forward.
In the service of dragging oneself back, even if only for an evening, into that distant era where food and air were intentionally shared with friends and not smartphones, ¡Siesta Infinita! offers a dining experience sure to surpass any social activity into which the modern American might have accidentally wandered, an event designed to reaffirm the basic necessity of human contact(3) without actually requiring any, while enabling guests to maintain the svelte physical mien of those cheery but implacable exponents of the Empty Plate school.
Through today’s Groupon, a mere $1088 will get you a reserved table for our cocktail hour beginning promptly at 8:00 pm. Doors will be hermetically sealed at precisely 8:01 pm and no refunds granted. Where discrepancies in portable timekeeping devices fed conflicting data from telecommunications satellites in geosynchronous orbit occur, we implore you to consult the United States Naval Observatory Master Clock, which has been named so for good reason.
Once seated in any of the four vacant seats at your private table, you will marvel as rippling prolix panels of soundproofed Valencian silk unfurl from the ceiling like emergency oxygen masks on a doomed passenger flight, providing each attendee with his or her own plush, private setting. Should you wish to stop thumbing at your digital pocket leash for a spell, guests are permitted to whisper quietly to themselves but urged to confine conversation to last night’s episode of Popular Broadcast Television Program punctuated occasionally by acrimonious self-directed gossip slighting any individuals with whom said guest happens to be affiliated in some inconsequential way. Drinks are ordered via a mobile device of your choosing – we recommend being equipped with the most expensive and/or newest model as the quality, cost, and scarcity of your portable communication device will without doubt determine not only the accuracy of your drink order but also the speed with which it is delivered – and will be surreptitiously slid through a small slit at the base of the dividing fabric by a mute, white-gloved eunuch conditioned with the latest in Behavioral Modification and Pacification technology.
Cocktail hour concludes at precisely 9:01 pm, at which point the eunuchs will be permitted to remove, always with shame in their eyes, the empty glasses from your table. There will be no eye contact. Those who are not fond of eunuchs or white gloves need not fear, as you will have already applied your Standard Issue Temporal Dissociative Ocular Wayfarer Nanogoggles(4), the technological centerpiece, if you will, to the evening’s meal. After a brief calibration requiring the virtually painless insertion of neurotransmitters into the base of the skull to provide access to the Facial, Glossopharyngeal, and Vagus Nerves – these three enclosed, cable-like bundles of peripheral axons, all located in the mouth, are responsible for any and all gustatory input derived from the tongue and, along with the olfactory epithelium of the nasal passages, produce what is commonly known as “taste” – the meal, such as it is, will commence in earnest.
Although ensconced in your private dining chamber, through the power of the S.I.T.D.O.W.N., you will suddenly be surrounded by three brilliant, unassailably attractive guests whose wit and charm are rivaled only by their deep and abiding interest in whatever it is you have to say. Without so much as raising fork to mouth, you and your companions will enjoy a thirteen-course meal showcasing the very finest in Spanish fare. Our Chef de Cuisine, Dr. Victor Vaan der Waal, will closely monitor the neuro-feedback of each Individual, prompting or restricting the firing of neurons wherever and whenever necessary to ensure that each meal becomes a symphony of sensory input. More savant neurological disc jockey than chef, Dr. Vaan der Waal will biochemically adjust your brain’s ability to recognize sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and umami with the quickened flair and precision of a concert pianist, leaving you and your virtual guests satisfied and, most importantly, free of worry over calories ingested. Upon the meal’s conclusion at precisely 10:31 pm, guests will be escorted one-at-a-time into waiting windowless vans with padded interiors for previously arranged transportation to the medical or psychological facility of their choosing.
It would be our pleasure to host your dinner party at ¡Siesta Infinita!, where nobody eats, but everyone leaves full™.
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1. Last year, Mr. Leon was laid off from his side panel installation gig on the groaning assembly line of SFU, Inc., the northeast’s largest group of domestic coffin manufacturers; a mini-conglomerate, really, cobbled together in August of 1997 as the American manufacturing industry(a), coffins and all, began its protracted relocation to Mexico, India, China,Vietnam, and [third-world locale to be named later. And soon].
a. An archaic religion espousing physical productivity, modest-but-fair wage scaling, and sustained employment long ago abandoned for a business model proven more effective at syphoning capital from all segments of society not included in the top one-half of one per-cent.
2. A mutually agreed-upon delusion, not unlike representative democracy or money. For further reference, see “love.”
3. A practice generally frowned upon in today’s social media-based economy wherein all are attempting, at all times, to sell everyone else on something, most frequently one’s own self-brand, without having to ever actually lock eyes.
4. Property of Koch Industries, Inc. Patent pending.
