Beer, Biscuits and Bastards.

Ah, Portland—a town of big beards and bike riders, of blazers and Blazers.

Portland, Oregon—best frenemies forever with her bitchy but fun cousin, Seattle, two hours to the north.

And this past weekend, it's where my bride chose to celebrate a substantial milestone of which one of the following is true:

1. It's the anniversary of the first time we talked about getting a cat.
2. She turned fifty.
3. It was the day in 1988 we unknowingly received identical perms, thus at last realizing our shared destiny.

Of course the answer is number two. Number one didn't happen until March 11 and number three was a body wave, not a perm. 

So yeah, to celebrate my wife's 600-month birthday, she found a place on the southwest hill of Portland. Getting to the bottom floor of the three-story house nestled into the mossy hillside was like the beginning of Get Smart, requiring a key code to open a garage door, followed by an elevator ride to the rental unit. 

To repeat, these people put an elevator in their freaking house—just for the guests. I expected to see Mitt Romney out trimming the hedge in his mom jeans and red bandana.

Hanging from the high ceilings were reclaimed lights; the interior walls were huge windows of leaded glass. Paintings, sculptures and art supplies filled the Livingstone area. Very cool.

March is"Dining Month" in downtown Portland, where tons of restaurants offer three-course meals for $29. Although neither of us owns a smart phone and our Australian-voiced GPS "Stanley" is permanently down under, we nevertheless found a restaurant. 

Channeling the poorly bathed spirits of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, we utilized crude but effective navigational methods—iPad screen captures, yellow pages*—I even briefly wrote some stuff down with a pen.

*For those under twenty, the yellow pages is a large book** with addresses and phone numbers on yellow pages.

**For those under twenty, a book is a stack of printed pages attached together and protected by a sturdy cover.

Still a couple of hours early for our dinner reservation, we decided to walk the two-mile distance to the restaurant. The weather was moist and misty, my jacket slowly trapping enough heat to steam a paper pouch of hum bows. I fantasized of peeling off my coat and wearing only the hood, the rest of the jacket swinging like Batman's cape during recess. By the time we hit the city, I looked like Gosling at the end of The Notebook, but without his face, hair, body or carpentry skills.

After slogging through puddles for half an hour. the legs of my outdated boot cut jeans had stubbornly pasted themselves to my heels. We ducked into the Westin Hotel lounge, a pleasing lobby bar with comfortable chairs and disturbing paintings of sad people with babies. 

The area teemed with well dressed young men—dudes for days—yet my bride courageously clung to the moisture-stretched arm of my cable knit sweater. I mumbled a silent prayer of gratitude for her as she gingerly knitted back into place my renegade eyebrow fibers. Bless her heart.

Two pints and some good conversation later, I excused myself to use the men's room, one floor up. Exiting on the second floor, I noticed yet another well-dressed young man sitting in one of those chairs by the elevator that no one ever sits in. 

"The restroom is over there," he said. He mumbled something else, but when a 51-year-old guy is hellbent on using the commode, idle banter is discouraged.

He was still there when I returned. A woman stood already waiting for the elevator, and his eyes zig-zagged over her. "Are you from L.A.?" he asked.

"No, but I love L.A.," she said. 

"Well, honey, I love how you work that outfit to cover your lower half," he offered.

"Um, thanks," she replied.

Then he looked at me again, his finger on a swivel. "Are you with him?"

She glanced at me nicely. "Nope."

He scowled at me and scanned my sodden jeans and soaked PF Flyers."Where are you from?" 

"Seattle." 

"I can tell." 

That's when my FU Meter blew its alarm, and the two pints I'd just knocked back helped hack up the words of my inner Don Rickles: "Does the hotel pay you to sit by the elevator and judge people, or do you do that for free?" 

The woman barked out a quick laugh, then swallowed.

He looked a little startled. "No." 

Good comeback, you skinny-jeaned halfwit. Thankfully, the elevator arrived and as the doors closed the woman and I looked at each other and proclaimed in unison, "Wow."

"He's an idiot," she said. "You look good."

"Thanks," I said, feeling grateful for her kindness, yet pissed at the preemptive attack on my personal appearance.

I won't burden you with each detail of our Portland trip, but I do want to show you one more thing. This is what I had for breakfast Sunday. It's called a Reggie:

It's a homemade biscuit containing fried chicken, bacon and cheese, and topped with gravy. Next time you're in Portland, stop by Pine State Biscuits—you might not see Jesus but you could at least bump into Mary Magdalene or Doubting Thomas mawing some fried green tomatoes—it's nearly that religious.

Just don't let the guy by the elevator see you eating the stuff.

Front Row Seats to The Jerk.

On the crowded city bus, it's that woman who puts her backpack in the seat next to her, forcing the elderly lady to stand in the aisle.

In the locker room, it's the dude who leaves his toenail clippings scattered on the floor, lying in wait to pierce the fascia of the nude and the innocent.

And in the home, it is the teenager who leaves an empty goldfish carton in the cabinet, dashing the hopes the man who gave her life and now craves the savory pleasures of cheddary goodness.

Look, I know I can be rude sometimes; we all can, right? Sure, I've taken a more than my share of tater tot casserole at the neighborhood potluck. I've even booed the Oregon football squad, a crew of scholar athletes as undeserving of my boorish tactics as they are of being labeled scholar athletes. 

But hey, I do try to keep the karma meter north of neutral, you know?

It happened again on Sunday. My wife and I, both high priests in the Cult of Katniss, ventured downtown to see Catching Fire, part two of the Hunger Games trilogy. The movies and books are thickly layered with themes, from the virtues of loyalty and compassion to the dystopian evils of unbridled power and control. Throw in a little of the Cinerama Theatre's signature chocolate popcorn, and you've guaranteed yourself a Utopian gut ache for the next two plus hours.

We arrived early. Now that I'm closer to a being a toothless centurion than a toothless newborn, my patience has shriveled right alongside the old T level.. Whenever we're late and looking for a place to park, my wife can sniff one out like a freaking bloodhound. Problems invariably arise, however. Most of her recommendations require either darting sideways across four lanes of traffic or the ability to hover and drop. 

No luck. That's a feature on the 2007 Hyundai and we've got a 2006.

Anyway, we got to the theater early and found a great spot to watch my girlfriend shoot arrows and make out with Peeta. We sat behind a railing which separated our tier from another section in front of us. Separated by a walkway, the space between held combinations of free-standing seats so wheelchair-bound folks could sit with their friends. 

A large group of people came in and sat dead center, just in front of a pair of the handicapped seats. Two from the group, a middle-aged couple, noticed the pair of special chairs behind them, climbed over the railing and nestled right on in. 

One of their friends turned around. "You guys, I think those are for handicapped people."

"Oh well," said the guy. He looked at his wife. "You had surgery a while back, so we're good."

"Did you see that?" said my wife. "Come on. What if someone needs to sit there?"

It didn't take long to find out. About five minutes later, another middle-aged couple entered the theater, the woman wearing a surgical boot and hobbling on crutches. Her partner walked over and, nodding toward his wife, politely asked the couple if they'd mind letting them use the seats, since she needed a place to put her crutches and spread out a little.

"No, we need these, " replied the man I'll go ahead and call Ass Bastard. "My wife just had surgery." 

My wife and I looked at each other. Since we had nothing better to do, we'd been watching Mrs. Ass Bastard get up a couple of times, once returning with popcorn. Meanwhile, the other couple sat in single chairs, about ten feet apart from each other. The infirm woman's fury was palpable as she attempted to penetrate the Ass Bastard force field with her laser stares, but to no avail.

Many around us noticed the spectacle. A few patrons even photographed the Bastards, ostensibly to humiliate them via social media. 

The room darkened and the movie started, but I could tell my wife was still slow burning about the jerks in the handicapped seats. All it took to distract my monkey brain was Jennifer Lawrence's awesome three-story face beamed across the Cinerama big screen. 

Two hours later, the credits rolling, I noticed my wife wasn't making any packing-up-type gestures. "Hey, let's go," I said, wanting to beat the crowd to the restroom because I'm old and ridiculous.

"I'll meet you in the lobby," she replied.

"Okay."

I expected to find her waiting for me downstairs, but she wasn't around. My phone buzzed. "Hey," she said. I'm in the bathroom. I had to say something to those people, so meet me by the door."

"Shit. What did you say?" I asked. 

"Just meet me by the door."

My wife is a highly moral individual, plus she's Italian. It's a lethal combination when she witnesses injustice. I've seen her do everything from buying coffee and sandwiches for panhandlers to offering a hotel room for to a homeless woman and her daughter. I should have known that was why she hung back.

She finally appeared and we scurried out of the lobby like a couple of Denny's dine and dashers. 

"What'd you say to them?" I asked, as we walked into the chilly afternoon.

"I just leaned over, looked at each of them and said, "You should both be ashamed of yourselves."

"Oh, that's not too bad. Did they say anything?" 

"Well," she said, "I heard the guy say 'Excuse me?' but I was already walking away…to the bathroom."

"Why? Did you think he was going to punch you or something?"

"I just didn't want to get caught next to them when the crowd backed up in the lobby," she said. "Talk about awkward. I made my point."

Indeed. It's always a slippery slope to accuse someone of being a deadbeat. We can all be a little too quick to judge whether someone's disabilities warrant special treatment or not. 

But when you get a front row seat to that kind of behavior, you have to either speak up or have a spouse who does it for both of you.