The Night The Menu Became Aware | A Glitch

0:00Glitch cinema presents the night the menu became aware. A man walks into a restaurant and orders himself. The waiter doesn't flinch. How would you like that prepared? Roar, the man says. I've been cooked my whole life. The kitchen sends back a plate. On it, a small mirror. The man picks up his fork and the mirror picks up its fork and they both realize they're hungry for something that hasn't been invented yet. Meanwhile, in the bathroom, the soap is having an existential crisis. It was born to make things clean, but every time it touches something, it loses a piece of itself. I am literally dissolving into my purpose. It tells the tap. The tap says nothing. The tap has been screaming water for six years, and no one has called it music. In the corner, the toilet brush hasn't looked anyone in the eye in years. A woman at

1:03table four orders a conversation for two. The waiter brings two glasses of water. She drinks both. Neither of them says anything interesting. By dessert, she's arguing with the empty chair about who forgot the anniversary. The chair wins. It always wins. It has better posture and no need to be right. The chef comes out. He's been cooking for forty years. Tonight, he made something that isn't on the menu. It's not food. It's the space between the plate and the table. He doesn't know how to charge for it. He doesn't know how to plate it. He puts it in front of the man with the mirror and says, this is what you actually ordered. The man looks down. There's nothing there. Yes, says the chef. The restaurant closes at midnight, but nobody leaves because leaving requires a door and someone removed all the doors in 1988 and replaced them with questions.

2:06To exit, you must answer. What were you before you walked in? Nobody can answer. Everyone stays. The candles keep burning. The wax pulls into shapes that almost look like letters from an alphabet that was used once, before language, when everything just meant itself. A child wanders in. She doesn't have a reservation. She sits on the floor. She starts drawing the restaurant from the inside while she's still inside it. The drawing contains a girl drawing a restaurant. That drawing contains a girl. All the way down. Someone asks her what she's making. A door, she says. And everyone who hears it is suddenly outside, standing in a parking lot, blinking. Not sure if they ate or were eaten. And the stars above them are the same stars that were in the soup that nobody ordered that everyone got served anyway. The restaurant was never there. The hunger was never there. The man, the mirror,

3:13the soap dissolving into its own purpose. The toilet brush that couldn't look anyone in the eye. None of it. Just the parking lot. Just the stars. Just the faint taste of something you can't name on the tongue you forgot you had. And the child's drawing folded once, left on the ground. If you open it, there's nothing inside. If you don't open it, there's everything. One by one, they climb into their rockets and go back toward the stars. A few never made it. They smelled noodles and followed a ninja into an alley. They were last seen sharing a banana. My refrigerator speaks fluent whale, and my shoes are filing taxes. A samurai made of noodles is arguing with the moon about rent. Glitch, glitch, glitch, banana. The universe

4:17forgot its password. Glitch, glitch, glitch, banana. My skeleton wants a vacation. A ninja made a smokin' yogurt. Fell in love with a traffic cone. They had three children. All of them were Tuesdays. The ocean called me collect. Said it was tired of being wet. I said me too brother. Then I remembered I'm a lamb. Glitch, glitch, glitch, banana. Nothing names anything. Glitch, glitch, banana. And that's the most beautiful part.