Dear Saturday Night Live: Isn't it time for "Nicolas Cage: Sommelier"? I'd watch that every night. How exactly one has an altercation with a 5-year-old remains unclear, even if the kid, Kal-el, is named after the origin-character in _Superman.Ģ. "You LOVE ME!" he shouted to the restaurant staff, who surely at one point did. His hand went through a panel in the door, shattering the glass. Cage was at the doorway, trying to get past the manager dude, grabbing onto the walls, his arms extended out as if he were desperate to catch an existential football. The room sighed, slowly went back to digesting. Nearby you could hear the carnival howls of Mardi Gras. A manager type stood in the driveway outside and tried to gently scoot him off, the way you might shoo a raccoon you're not sure is feral. He was soon escorted out of the restaurant by a couple armfuls of hospitality. "You're a contender." He turned to the blonde. The two ladies, alas, had manly company at the table. The room seemed to sway like an uncertain boat. He spotted them in the corner, and moved toward them like a drugged Sasquatch. He's a foot away from my andouille sausage. He moved, stumbled, came closer to our tables. He stood at the entrance of the room, clutching the hostess stand for balance, and glared out at the diners. Sweet relief! That's when His Shadow appeared. Our appetizers arrived like an elite rescue operation, and we dug into dishes of nouveau Louisiana. Bye-bye, crazy man who now has my digits. The couple Cage had befriended soon left, backing out the door and waving. Two cute women from the dining room went to scope out the commotion. But we were seated within wine-spitting distance of the bar and could still see Cage literally bouncing off the walls, spilling vino down his sleeve, as if he were performing Leaving Las Vegas: The Musical for some perverse dinner theater. My guests, Karen and Marie, arrived, and we were taken gingerly past this scene to our table. "Now, come on!" he shouted at the waiter, waving the bottles away and pounding the bar again. "Okayokayokay how much?" I was trying not to listen (not really), but the answer Botod my face into full-on sticker shock: $3,500 for the Mouton, $6,000 for the, er, pricey one.²Įven this was too profligate for the mad spender who, before his financial meltdown, owned fifteen houses (two of which were in New Orleans and recently foreclosed), twenty-two cars, a Gulfstream jet, an island in the Bahamas, and apparently a Liberace lifetime of finger-jewelry. Cage leaned into the bottles, sniffed their labels. Now a nervous waiter appeared, cradling rare wines, and presented Cage with two sick picks, an '82 Mouton Rothschild and a '59 Château Latour-an alcoholic Sophie's Choice if there ever was one. I took a seat at the bar, and when I looked over again, I saw Cage, unmasked. The man sounded an awful lot like Milton from Drive Angry 3D. There were four stools, three of them occupied: by a fortyish couple and a man in a Mardi Gras mask who was buying them flamboyant beverages. I arrived early for my dinner at Stella! (an excellent restaurant whose only crime against taste is that exclamation point), so I decided to wait for my friends at the fine bar. I was down there for Mardi Gras Cage was probably down there to buy human skulls. But maybe when Sir Nicolas reads this, he'll feel a sense of remorse akin to a moral hangover and agree to do an exclusive GQ iPad video in which he apologizes to me and the roomful of New Orleans diners whose gourmet meals he drunkenly interrupted.
![sticker on drive angry movie sticker on drive angry movie](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.385523686.2076/st,small,507x507-pad,600x600,f8f8f8.u4.jpg)
There really is no connection here between the iPad and Cage except that both are looking thinner these days.
![sticker on drive angry movie sticker on drive angry movie](https://c.tenor.com/s-fntvWdkXcAAAAC/drive-crazy-angers.gif)
To celebrate _GQ'_s relaunch of our new, advanced, superfancy iPad app-guaranteed to solve your mobile reading needs, dazzle you with new levels of visual geegaw-itude, and crush human loneliness once and for all-I thought I'd tell you a story about my recently being assaulted by Nicolas Cage.