From this week’s review of Beth’s Cafe:”‘Order up in this motherfucker!’That’s the call that comes back from the overloaded, overworked, overstressed short-order cook working the slit trench of a line at Beth’s Cafe during Saturday night bar rush. There is no kind bell, no white-jacketed expeditor enjoying a sweatless split-shift, no quiet, breathy, ‘Service, please…’There is just one man in a T-shirt, its bottom ringed with grease like cheap laurels, and jeans seasoned up shiny and black, working the wheel completely alone–just hanging it out there on the edge of something, working to weird rhythms and music playing in his head alone. He is buried in checks, in egg orders and bacon sides and cakes stacked up and stretching ’til morning. He spins like a top–reaching and grabbing and turning and flipping and folding–and seems to have been gifted, maybe just for this moment, with more arms than the standard complement. A Shiva of toast and hotcakes. A midnight apparition that speaks deeply to anyone who has ever stood a shift on the hot side of any kitchen. But when he calls out for a pickup of the plates stacked precariously on what passes for his rail, on the countertop, on what I think is a bend on one of the ventilation ducts that suck all that grill char and smoke and sweet, waffle-scented air up and out into the Green Lake night, he says it almost sweetly, singing it out in a high, clear and mocking voice like music: ‘O’duh upinthis mutha-fuckaaahhh…'”Last week, I wrote about watching the hammer of the church rush come down at the Silver Fork. This week, it’s the crushing, line-out-the-door, last-call hit as bars all over the city disgorge their moths into the night and Beth’s, like a flame, draws them in. Last week was all sweetness and light. This week is dark impulses, 12-egg omelets and lap dances for the handicapped. Last week, Jesus was watching over us. This week, we’re under the sway of someone else entirely. I’m not saying the devil lives at Beth’s, but after last call on a Saturday night? I’m guessing it’s one of the places he keeps an eye on.And you, too, can check out the action when the review hits the stands tomorrow. It might not be pretty and it might not be nice. But I, for one, am powerfully comforted knowing that there’s a place like Beth’s around for those nights when I find myself badly in need of grease, noise and strange company long after the sun goes down.