Invasion of the Tarantellas

It's quarterly reporting time here, but someone else is in the file so I need to pass a little time before I can finish my work. It's a slow news day so here I am, blabbing away.

After Saturday night's excellent classical guitar concert, Eli and I were ravenous. It's a universal maxim that packing induces ice cream cravings. So we ended up, along with all the teenagers, at Zephyr. I remember the first time I went to Zephyr, back in 1990 or '91. I went with a couple of college friends who were Chicago natives for a midnight shake, a rare first year voyage out of Hyde Park (except the treks to the Fine Arts Theatre or Medusa, the latter of blessed memory). This was long before Ravenswood was the gentrified yuppie paradise -- or hell hole, depending on one's point of view -- that is today and I think I might have been the only non-Spanish speaker there. Zephyr still looks basically the same, with the cloud shaped mirrors, and if I squint a bit I can get really nostalgic.

While finishing our ice cream (and, yes, I finished my malt for what might be the first time ever, whipped cream and all) we overheard a conversation at one of the few tables occupied by people old enough to legally drink. A middle aged woman with a page boy haircut and a very loud voice was regaling her companions about having just seen Sin City. She proclaimed, "I just love that Quentin Tarantella! I've seen all of his movies." And continued to monologue about this Tarantella guy for long enough to prompt Eli to exclaim mid- fried mushroom, "We're leaving."

My question is, were her friends just so used to tuning her out that they didn't even hear her inanity?