The Good Automaton

7/14/06

Yesterday I brought you some dramatic anecdotes from my days as a server at Fat Harry’s Country Club.* What inspired this whole thing was Hanni going through my room in a frenzy of irritated cleaning, wherein we came across an old training manual for the club. In reading this hilarious tome, I noticed several interesting points that I’d like to share with you, dear readers.

Despite the fact that this document was supposedly updated in 1995, a good portion of it reads as if taken from How to Be Subservient, circa 1956. That, and it seems whoever wrote this instruction book thought themselves a much more clever scribbler than they actually were. My theory is that it was commissioned by the management to a waiter who was majoring in Creative Writing. Alright, let’s light this candle…

The Fine Art of Member Relations
This section is supposed to be a general guideline as to how to speak and interact with the club members, because there are probably some of you out there who operate under the delusion that this will be one human speaking to another. Tsk, tsk, you fool. This will be one person (the member) conversing with a trained monkey (you).

 Except for a courteous greeting such as “Good morning or good evening, Mr. or Mrs. ____” never attempt to converse with a member unless the member speaks to you first.

Servers should be seen and not heard, in other words. Members are busy people contemplating things you couldn’t possibly understand, and trying to dumb-down their conversation for you causes them physical pain. I’ll not bother to point out that the author here has actually put “good morning OR good evening,” in quotes, thereby implying that you would actually say it verbatim.

 Never mention a member’s last visit to the Club unless he or she brings it up first.

I’m guessing this is meant to protect those members who have lost their fucking minds and decided that bringing a mistress to the club while the little woman is out of town would be a really smashing idea.

 While you are busy serving a party, take the time to periodically glance around your station being alert for those members that may require your attention. Simply nod in recognition to the member’s signal. In this way the member can relax knowing that you will be there in a moment.

Uh-huh. Right. Some of the members would take the nod as what is illustrated above, but the ones who actually take the initiative to flag you down from across a crowded room don’t want a nod. No, for these whistling, finger-snapping hog-fuckers you better high-tail it their way if you so much as make eye contact, regardless of the fact that you’re carrying seven dirty plates, a coffee pot, ashtrays and a leg afire from the buffet sterno. A nod? A nod?! Good God; who knows what a nod could mean? They’re like dogs; whenever you’re out of sight they think you’re gone forever.

 Should you need a member’s attention, and they are engaged in conversation, do not approach them until you are acknowledged. Position yourself out of earshot, in full view of the member and wait for his or her signal before approaching.

Okay this is just ri-goddamn-diculous. This never happened. I mean, none of these things ever happened, but this one really didn’t happen. Sweet fancy Jesus we’re busy working here, we don’t have time to hover about “out of earshot” (down the hall in the bathroom?) and wait for Johnny Gabs-a-lot to glance up from his drunken ranting about how successful the Club has been at keeping out those pesky Jews.

I should point out here that the members at FHCC aren’t exactly the crème de la crème of high society. For the most part it’s upper middle-class folks who like to appear more important than they are. They drink well liquor, haggle over the bill, and prefer Cashew Chicken or Country Fried Steak to lobster and caviar. Sure, there were some very wealthy folk; one cat was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $23 million, but he was a retired 40-something man with gin-blossoms who spent 16 hours a day playing golf, cards and just generally trying to empty the world of Absolut vodka.

At this point in the manual the author spends 2 pages drawing out this lengthy example of how to treat a member by comparing food service with the way you would host a house guest. Keeping with the theme of the 1950s, he paints a portrait of your boss coming over to your house, meeting your muzzled children and pearl-wearing wife (stay in the goddamn kitchen!) eating “your wife’s dinner creation…at the peak of serving perfection”, and then retiring “to the comfortable chair for coffee, brandy and a cigar”.
What are we, on the Titanic? Maybe I’m young and naïve, but does this kind of shit still happen on the planet? Do people still invite their pig of a boss home to watch his family play-act as if they’re happy and show off their impressive domesticity? Seriously, I’m asking…
Finally, in a shocking turn-around of hypocrisy in the “Teamwork” section, this shows up:

 Listen up!! From time to time you will hear members make comment about everything from the food service to the condition of the golf courses. This information has great value to the management. Remarks made to you, or within your hearing should be reported to your room supervisor immediately. A guest’s praise, as well as his or her criticism, should be passed along.

Seemingly aware of how violently this is at odds with the “out of earshot” thing and the idea of discretion above all else, the author tacks this onto the end of the page:

“IN NO WAY DOES THIS GIVE YOU A LICENSE TO EAVESDROP!!”

You can tell he really means it, what with the capitals and dual exclamation points and all.



*The name has been changed to protect my white ass.

Adventures in Clubbing

7/13/06

I used to work as a waiter at a country club. For purposes of not being sued, We’ll call it Fat Harry’s Country Club; FHCC for short. Vocationally-speaking, the years from 16-21 were some of the most frustrating and horrifying of my life. Anyone in food service has a sort of love/hate relationship with the job. If you’ve ever seen the movie Waiting, that’s pretty much dead-on-balls accurate. The job invariably sucks because you’re essentially an indentured servant to people who, by and large, view you as a retarded child who should be grateful for the privilege of fetching them extra bleu cheese dressing. It’s shit work. But, there are some fringe benefits:

Your coworkers are great, for the most part, and even the few that are world-class shits are great because then the rest of you get to bitch and make fun of them behind their back. Never in any job I’ve had have I seen the kind of actual friendship that spawns like that between people in food service. We worked together and hung out together and generally got fucked up with each other. You got free food. Even the places that charge you for your meals allow for ample opportunities for grazing. I, being gross as I am, would slap my greasy palms together with glee whenever a plate came back with an untouched triangle of Club Sandwich, or a big pile of French fries; even an unmolested dill pickle spear was a cause for delight. I wasn’t the only one; that kind of thing wasn’t terribly unusual.

Another delight was just straight-out theft. I’m not proud of it--oh who am I kidding, I am kinda proud--but most of us sort of viewed thievery as owed to us based on the fact that our jobs sucked out loud. It ranged in seriousness from silverware and glasses to candy bars to pouring ourselves drinks when the manager wasn’t around to sometimes just taking an entire bottle of booze right out of the liquor cabinet. It sort of went like this: “I’ve worked ten hours today dealing with the most ass-humans on the planet for shit pay; I think I’ve earned a free 20 oz vodka and lemonade.”

But there was a dark side. A running mantra between the waitstaff was “This job would be great if it weren’t for the fucking members.” Don’t get me wrong; most of them were alright and some were downright delightful, but the few that were awful were really awful. I remember on more than one occasion fanaticizing about sending a cocktail tray sailing across the room directly into the face of that old bitch who made me microwave her coffee every goddamn time until it was the temperature of molten lava.

The Golf Ladies were bad, and yes, they definitely deserve to be a group with capital letters. These vile, demonic succubae would saunter into the restaurant after playing out on the links, smelling not unlike feverish buffalo, and demand service not unlike the Queen of England might expect. They would come in hoards of fifteen or twenty and sit sipping their iced tea or coffee and maybe two of them would order a sandwich while the rest demanded bowls full of free snack mix. I had another fantasy at these moments where I brought them a deceased rodent instead and said, “Oh you wanted snack-ums? I’m sorry, I thought you said a dead rat in a basket.” All told they would monopolize forty minutes of your time and spend a collective $20. I peed in their coffee once.

The General Manager was another moral-crushing aspect of the job. I suppose there must be good food service managers out there, but I have yet to encounter one. The GM for “FHCC” was a short, rotund little despot with a Napoleon complex and rather savage addiction to booze and coke. In this psycho’s view, I was single-handedly responsible for the disobedience of his entire waitstaff, and he let me know this at every lunatic opportunity. He used to have these bizarre analogies for things that would pepper his drunken tirades. If you got caught eating an unauthorized roll, say, he might unleash “You know what? If you want a gallon of milk I’ll give you a gallon of milk, but this behind-the-back shit has got to stop!” I was always tempted to ask for a gallon of milk. Another favorite: “I’m that big, fat umpire behind the plate that’s gonna call you out!” I was probably a good target, though, as I would chronically come in clad in a uniform that looked as if it had been worn in an eating contest, and had the attitude of a disgruntled intern.

It was almost as if the man had some manner of dual-personality disorder because in the same shift he could go off on a 20-minute diatribe about the fact that I left a quarter-inch of daylight in the salt shaker on table C-4 and then turn around and elbow me to impart “Hey, that new girl has some big tits, huh?” as if frightening sexual predation would somehow endear me to him. What a whack-job.

I did get some sense of satisfaction when, while several of us were setting up an outside party to celebrate the end of a big golf tournament, the GM who’d been out drinking vodka and cranberry all day long on the course, came barreling up in a golf cart like a devilish apparition and slammed headlong into the buffet line, sending salads and appetizers skittering in all directions across the pavement.

I can understand a sad little man wishing for his terminally apathetic waitstaff to just do their goddamn jobs, but you can’t put out the intensity of a nuclear reactor when college kids don’t seem to give a shit about a temporary job with slave wages. Also, his wife used to grab my ass on a regular basis.

He eventually fired me, though I should have been sacked long before he did, if only for the one time that I took 5 gallons of margaritas home after an outdoor party. In a nice bit of Universal karma, he was fired by the Board of Directors a year later for being a drunk and all around prick-ass douche-bag.

All in all I’m glad I worked there. Some of my best memories of my early adulthood came out of those times. I just wouldn’t be anxious to repeat them.

Get Out of My Dreams and Into My Car

7/11/06

My 5-year rebellion against “The Man” has come to an end, ladies and gentlemen. You see, yesterday morning for the first time in half a decade, I legally operated a motor vehicle. That’s right, dear readers, your truly finally went and procured a valid driver’s license (it’s shiny and everything!) from the state of Missouri.

For anyone who wishes to improve their driving skills, ‘least as far as obeying the law goes, I highly recommend driving around for 5 years with a revoked license. I am now the safest goddamn driver in the city, though that’s kind of like playing chess against a cadaver; even if you suck it’s still a pretty easy win. Why did I drive around for so long sans legal right to do so, you ask? Put quite simply, I’m lazy.

About 5 years ago I got a DWI because, full of margaritas and moxy, I decided to go for cigarettes at 4 a.m. and, on the way back, was playing a game called “England, America” which consisted solely of me weaving back and forth across the right and left lanes and chanting out the name of the appropriate country.

Lost control. Hit a tree. At 40 mph. Before passing out I remember looking through the windshield and noticing that the hood had taken on a new and interesting tent-like shape. At the hospital I showed a BAC of 0.23%, which is 3 times the legal limit and enough to put you non-alcoholics out there into a minor coma.

I took all the required classes and whatnot, but I just never bothered to go back and get my license, which had long expired, requiring me to re-take both the written and the driving test. All of that seemed about as appealing to me as humping a garbage bag full of used syringes, so I just ignored the problem. For 5 years, much to the horror and amusement of my friends and coworkers. It just didn’t seem like a big deal to me; the risk was low. I figured if I didn’t break any traffic laws or do anything silly like allowing another lunatic driver to hit me, what was the point of going through all that stress and time and effort to procure a small card with a bad picture of me on it that says it’s okay to harvest my organs should I be in a messy accident?

Idiotic logic? Perhaps. But I’ve never really operated on the same plane of rationale as the bulk of humanity. I had, for about a year now, been making half-hearted attempts toward getting my license back, but it really got serious when my girlfriend explained to me, at great length, just how unpleasant it is when one has to get their romance from one’s right hand. I saw her very subtle point immediately.

Naturally it wasn’t as simple as merely taking a day off work to go up to the DMV and take the test; no, no. First I had to go to a judge and get him to send a letter to Jefferson City saying I could reacquire my license. That part actually worked as planned; they got it easy-peasy and didn’t even try to claim that it hadn’t been sent or that perhaps I didn’t exist. Maybe this would be easier than I thought!

Hanni and I went to the downtown DMV (the only one where they do the actual test) and took the written portion no problem. They only had 4 computers which were all ocupado so I couldn’t perform my own version of that scene in License to Drive, and had to satisfy myself with a paper version. Passed. Got an 84%. I totally rocked the shit outta that test.

I had arrived at the office at about 1:30 p.m. I finished the written at 1:45. By 3:00 they had still not gotten to me for the driving part of the test. I began to think that the day after the 4th of July is not the optimum for government business. Hanni had gone to get something to eat and by 3:30 I had to piss something awful. There’s something humbling about being an adult and realizing you are too afraid to get up and urinate because they might call your name while you’re away. At 4:15 I finally had my morale crushed beneath the weight of the cogs in The Machine and the officers informed me that they wouldn’t be getting to me today. They were very nice and apologetic, though, and to be frank I’m never entirely displeased whenever I get a reprieve from doing something I desperately do not wish to do, even if it’ll just be more of a hassle later. Sweet, sweet procrastination.

Yesterday Hanni and I show up at the DMV bright and early just as they open. Things went swimmingly from there on out; I was the first to test and scored a dynamite 94%, missing only which way to turn my wheels when parking uphill (right) and using too many “pull-ups” in the parallel parking portion. Then I discovered the actual license department no longer existed.

While the testing operation was still humming along, across the hall of the DMV the office portion had moved to new digs, leaving behind only holes and exposed wires like after The Grinch ransacked Whoville. Sadly, the office where I had to go to get my physical license was closed for the day.

But all was not lost! There is another office on Fremont, on the South side of town. I reconnoitered with Hanni around 8:50 a.m., she having attended an appointment downtown while I kicked the shit out of the driver’s test, and we headed for Fremont. Happily, that office is a mere 2 miles from my home and work, and we got there just in time to avoid the rush that was sent over from the downtown office. While Hanni ate the top off a muffin (Top of the Muffin to YOU!) and took a power-nap in the car I procured my hot little license in a short 20 minutes.

I must say I had a great deal of luck here and it could have been much worse. Whenever I entered the Fremont office there were 3 people ahead of me, and when I left there were 30 people waiting. Still, it would have been nice to get all of this done in one day, as I have used up 3 days of vacation time in the scatter-shot completion of this malarkey.

It’s nice to drive without having to worry about going to jail should you be pulled over. Now I just need a car that doesn’t look like a sight-gag from an 80’s movie.

Movie Make Ryan Sad

7/6/06

There’s something sort of sad and desperate about people using their blogs to pretend anyone cares what they thought of a movie, but since we’re all essentially pretending to be columnists, I guess I can forgive it. Especially since I’m about to do it. Normally I would let it slide, but the following film got pretty good critical reviews and I rarely disagree terribly with the largest share of critics. In this case they can kiss my entire ass.

Okay…so Superman Returns. Okay… I suppose I should preface this by saying that I have never thought Superman was a very interesting character. He just strikes me as too perfect. Not only is he all goody-goody all the time, but he’s nigh-invincible to everything save Kryptonite, which appears to rain down on earth in metric tons every year. That being said, if you are a die-hard Superman fan, you’ll like this movie. I’m not, but I do like superhero, sci-fi and fantasy movies, and I would have like the film had it been, oh, you know, good.

Oh, and yeah…there are spoilers ahead.

I guess my first question, is “why?” Not “why was this made?” I get that; it’s a guaranteed cash-cow even if it’s just 2 hours of Superman taking a Cleveland Steamer on Lois Lane, and there have been some really interesting advancements in special effects since the last Superman movies, but I guess my question is, “why not make a new movie?” This 2 ½ hour behemoth is pretty much the same old thing as the old movies, only with better visual effects, and I dunno if you noticed this or not, but those films aren’t very good.


Brandon Routh’s performance feels like he’s playing Christopher Reeve playing Superman/Clark Kent. I guess that’s touching and nostalgic, but it’s not very interesting and it borders on creepy. I thought Kate Bosworth was adequate as Lois Lane (at least as much as Margot Kidder) but she didn’t blow me away, and, as with Kidder, I found it hard to see what Superman finds so endearing about a thick-headed, sort of self-absorbed reporter fooled by slicked-back hair and a pair of glasses. Speaking of which, I can forgive the whole nobody can tell they’re the same guy! thing, despite the fact that both Superman and Clark return to Metropolis on the same goddamn day after an absence of precisely the same 5-year span. You just have to let that go; it’s part of the Superman story. But don’t do the “how tall would you say Clark is?” bit only to have them dismiss it. It’s cheesy and it points out how fundamentally dumb this disguise is.

The general plot of the movie isn’t bad; Lex Luthor does evil shit, Superman tries to stop him while flirting with Lois. But the execution is so jumbled and poor and fraught with “huh?” moments and reality plot holes it made the story seem exponentially shittier than it was.

With any fantasy film you have to accept that there’s going to be stuff that happens which is hard to swallow. I don’t have a problem with this, as long as it all flows in the reality of that world. But Superman’s reality is all over the place. You know what? I’ll just make a list.

• Nobody but Lois Lane cares about the huge blackout which crippled the Eastern seaboard not once but twice? Hmm…way to go Homeland Security.

• Superman is supposed to be bright, but he can’t figure out that it was Kryptonite stolen from the museum by Luthor?

• Krypton was located 50 light years from earth. Even traveling at the speed of light, Kryptonite wouldn’t be around our neck of the woods yet. (Assuming Superman is less than 50, and his ship got here very quickly.) Even if the rocks were traveling at half the speed of light, and that Superman didn’t age in a slow trip to earth, I doubt Jor-El (Superman’s dad) would have looked at 1906 earth and thought, “Yeah…that seems like a good planet to send my kid.” The wonky physics of the matter makes my chest hurt.

• Somehow Luthor figures out that by combining the Kryptonite with the crystals stolen from the Fortress of Solitude it will create a continent meshed with Kryptonite, despite the fact that he ran only one test with the crystal, stating “I don’t know” what’s going to happen only days before. Neat trick.

• The mythology stuff was rather heavy-handed. You have Prometheus, Atlas and a savage amount of Christ-imagery, what with the whole “father becomes the son” stuff.

• I can pretty much accept this one, since it almost kills him, but Superman lifts a continent infested with Kryptonite, despite the fact that standing on it rendered him weak and mortal. This one is merely difficult to believe as opposed to leaving one shaking their head in dismay, but it’s a tight squeeze.


Now we come to a particularly sticky part of the story. Superman has apparently fathered a child with Lois. I’m sorry, but you’re never going to sell me on Superman being able to impregnate a human. Even ignoring the alien/human DNA issue, he has super-sperm for Christ’s sake. His ejaculation, an uncontrollable muscle reflex, would blow her apart at the torso. Even leaving that alone, each one of his sperm would be “super,” and they would all be trying to tunnel into an egg. Even if the first one didn’t obliterate the poor thing all the rest of them would either puncture it as well or just plow straight through Lois’s body. I have thought way, way too much about this, and even I can’t come up with a scenario where it might work outside of a laboratory.

Like I said, if you really like Superman you’ll like the movie. If you’re not a fan or don’t have any child-like kinship with the character save your money; it’s a hard pill to swallow. Kevin Spacey is his usual brilliant self, with an interesting take on Luthor and I liked Parker Posey’s performance, despite her somewhat 2-dimentional character. Bryan Singer’s direction is always good and visually it’s pretty stunning. If it weren’t for the fact that the story sucked out loud, it would be a great movie, even with the merely adequate performances of the other actors. But for my money, give me X-men any day. Even the mildly disappointing X-3 was better than this schlock.

Blown on the 4th of July

7/1/06

I love the 4th of July. As quoted from The Simpsons, I like to celebrate the birth of our nation by blowing up a small part of it. In the spirit of that, I bring you video of some amusing abuse of legal explosives from You Tube. Enjoy.



This first one is a wheel of 16,000 firecrackers. Friggin awesome.






Everybody knows that in a firework fight you at least wear sunglasses to protect your vision. I mean, c'mon, we're not crazy.





Either this is the biggest firecracker I've ever seen, or this dude is one of The Borrowers.






This is why you never fall asleep around your friends.