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.

No, YOU’RE on Notice!

6/30/06

A grave injustice has this day been done, ladies and gentlemen. Your intrepid man about town yours truly has been accosted. Oh not by physical means, never think it. Who would be foolhardy enough to try and lay hands upon my imposing 5’5”, slightly pale physique? No, dear readers, this was an injustice visited upon me in written form.

I came out of work today to find the following slapped under the windshield wiper of my vehicle:

What the devil is going on here? Leaving the sort of sad, dollar-store nature of leaving a pre-printed rant that wasn’t even funny when it was invented forty years ago, the accusation was wholly unwarranted! Any of you who know me are aware that I am a very conscientious and considerate driver, even when it comes to parking. After reading this libel I even got out of my vehicle and inspected my placement in the space. Perhaps I made some error when I pulled into work this morning, I posited. Perhaps I was driving to work with my eyes closed and therefore missed the giant yellow lines painted on the sidewalk. Perhaps I parked on top of a human being. Who knew what could have happened?

Nothing of the sort. As per usual, I was well within the lines on either side, offering hundreds of gallons of open space for someone pulling in alongside. Now I was confused. What the devil was going on here? I can only come up with a few explanations, and I’m not really satisfied with any of them.

1. Whoever left the note was insane. Having just escaped from a minimum security booby hatch, they stole someone’s wallet, bought a shitty stocking-stuffer gift from Spencer’s Gifts, and just went hog wild papering the cars of innocent human beings.

2. While at work, someone hotwired my car, parked it like an asshole, got “ticketed”, then moved the car back. I must say this is the least likely scenario.

3. Someone who works in my office and knows me is fucking with me. Possessing no actual original thought or talent, they merely took the curiously inapplicable action of complaining about my parking in the most passive-aggressive, ass way possible. This one is the most likely, in my mind.

4. The person really believed I had parked in an unacceptable manner. Maybe they were on LSD, I dunno.

It’s fairly obvious from the bubbly, looping handwriting that a woman was responsible for this heinous act; either that or the most effeminate male on the planet. Perhaps Carson from Queer Eye ticketed my car. This doesn’t go a long way toward narrowing down the suspects, but at least if worse comes to worse I can spare the males from a desperate, blanket-revenge on all the females in the office.

Oh, and don’t think it didn’t escape my attention that she wrote “Crappy” under the model of car. Nice. Not only is some loony broad giving out erroneous fake tickets, but she’s insulting the aesthetics of my primary mode of transport as well. Actually, that was the only kinda funny part of the whole debacle.

Mexican Tricks of the Trade

6/28/06

I just thought I’d take this opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, to throw out some random information for those of you who have never been, or might be thinking of, visiting our Mexican brothers and sisters to the south. Also, there’s some just plain funny crap that happened to me while I was down there with my girlfriend, her roommate and her friend. You’re welcome.

None of us spoke Spanish, of course, since most English-speaking people view learning a foreign tongue somewhat like buying volcano insurance in Massachusetts. Two languages? Why on earth would anyone want that filling up their head? Everyone speaks English, right? – is I guess what we’re thinking. Fortunately, in Cancun this is pretty much the truth. I took French in high school, don’t ask me why; there are a limited number of Frenchmen on the ground here in the States. But it’s not as if Spanish is the hardest language to pick up; even accidentally it’s almost impossible not to pick up six or seven phrases.

By the end of the trip I was rattling off gracias and de nada and uno mas like…well, like a white guy very pleased with the way he can pronounce 5 words of Spanish. Incidentally, did you know that the best way to learn to say “gracias” (thank you) properly is to pronounce the “c” like a “th”? Give it a try. Oh, and another good tip for faking another language, slur your words just a touch. It gives you the air of casualness while mildly masking the fact that you gleaned the information by flipping through a guidebook in the lavatory.

If you’re going to exchange your dollars for pesos, wait until you’re in-country to do it. Believe it or not the best exchange rate can be found in the little kiosk-like things dotting the landscape of the streets. Most everyone will take American cash, and the street vendors usually prefer it. As one fellow with a staggeringly amazing grasp of the English language put it, “Eh, pesos are fine, but I’d rather have In God We Trust.” Good stuff. The only places that may not take dollars are the convenience stores. I don’t know this for sure, but I had exchanged a few hundred dollars into pesos because the money is colorful and it made me feel like I had more than I did due to the exchange rate. Said exchange rate is a nice one; approximately 10 pesos for every dollar, which makes it easy to figure out how much stuff costs when listed in pesos; you just move the decimal one jump to the left and bingo!

I hardly think the simple fact that a person leaves their ocean-wet swim trunks in a plastic bag for the better part of an entire day is cause for ridicule. Was it foolhardy? Sure. Did I end up throwing the trunks away because they smelled like a catfish’s vagina? Yes. Even so, I do not believe the simple fact that it did not occur to me that my trunks would mildew at alarming speed in the heat and humidity of a tropical region is cause for one’s girlfriend to mock and laugh at them. Even the smartest individual has idiotic lapses sometimes. I once saw her take upwards of twenty minutes to dice a medium-sized tomato with a paring knife. Take that, Ms. Your-trunks-make-me-want-to-projectile-vomit!

Near our hotel was a bar which had live music from a Mexican band every night. The band was Mexican in ethnicity only; they played the same contemporary play list for Baby Boomers that you can hear at any wedding. There’s something decidedly surreal about going for ice and hearing “Hard Day’s Night” sung with a Spanish accent in front of a large, orange edifice with “Tom Cruise’s Cocktail Was Filmed Here” emblazoned on the front.

Just across the street from the bar was a wide corridor which led to the next street over and more clubs and bars. This alley, fronted on both sides by bars, restaurants, tattoo parlors, hair braiding and tourist merchandise, was a main pedestrian thoroughfare and was always kicking, no matter the time of day or night. Anytime I walked down this street I was invariably offered drugs in a very amusing way. Some dude with a big smile would walk directly up to me and say, “Hey, you need drugs?” They’re very to the point down there, I find. Sometimes the pitch was more specific: “Hey, you want some smoke (pot/weed) or coke?” I have since heard anecdotal evidence that the blow in Cancun is really primo stuff, so perhaps I should have had a sampler, but the idea of either getting baking soda up my nose or being incarcerated in a Mexican hooskow didn’t seem worth the risk. Remember, kids, always know your dealer.

The strangest thing about this was that the girls were never offered drugs. Yet anytime I was more than ten feet away from them I would turn around to find a grinning man willing to light up the pleasure center of my brain with illicit substances. Do I just look like I am desperately in need of narcotics? Maybe it’s just the fact that I was a white male in my twenties; bread-n-butter for partying in Cancun. Maybe the machismo of the culture figures women don’t have any interest in that kind of thing, or they simply don’t wish to deal with them; I dunno. All I do know is that if you want drugs, just be white, male and young and go walk around for awhile.
There was one incident in particular that deviated slightly from the norm. One of the times I was wandering about alone a guy came up and offered me drugs, as per usual, and I responded “No, gracias.” I was getting quite good at that by that point, having said the damn phrase no less than seventy times a day to maybe the most savagely aggressive vendors in the world. Seriously, these guys should work telemarketing. At any rate, I refused and he nodded and then said, “You want to go to a strip club? I’ve got a coupon, get you in 20% off; VIP!”

“Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I’m here with my girlfriend, so…”

Without missing a beat he said, “Yeah, but you can get away, right?” and gave me a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Somehow I managed to keep from soiling myself at the hilariousness of this response, kindly thanked him no, and wandered back to the hotel.

On the way back I was propositioned by a lady of the evening. I turned that down, too. In relationship parlance, if a strip club is a firecracker, fucking a Mexican hooker is the goddamn hydrogen bomb.

Cancun Clipper Club - 6/8/06 - 11:52 pm

As Anthony Bourdain has said, “be a traveler, not a tourist.” The latter puts one in mind of a 1960’s dad, clad in tiny little shorts, sporting a huge camera and sun block on his bald spot, bellowing that everyone has to pile into the station wagon (sans A/C) because if they don’t get going right now they’ll miss seeing The World’s Largest Ball of Twine or some other piece of roadside kitsch on the way to WallyWorld.

Sitting there on the couch, toasting my television with whatever random poison I happened to be sipping on, I wholeheartedly agreed and joined my surly TV personality friend in heaping distain and pity upon those unenlightened fools who pony up to a counter and purchase tickets in order to see their vacation of choice from the window of a tour bus. So imagine my surprise whenever I found myself suggesting that we take an all-inclusive tour to natural aquarium and park Xel-Ha (pronounced SHELL-ha) and the Mayan ruins of Tulum. I blame the sun, cigarettes and tequila.

It seemed like a good idea; I challenge anyone to o to the Xel-Ha website and not come away thinking “free booze, snorkeling and site-seeing at the Tulum coastal ruins? What god did I please?” The advantages of taking a tour bus are that you can drink as much as you want without worry about driving, you don’t have to brave the slalom-like lane changes of Mexican traffic, and no worries about getting lost. Sure, there’s not much chance of anything surprising or interesting happening, but you’ve also got the safety factor. As a lone, rather unimpressive member of the male species traveling with 3 females, this was not an insignificant factor. Oh, and should your bus be modern enough to be outfitted with video equipment, you get the delight of watching quality films such as Sky High. Kurt Russell was a delight. (On a side note did Russell sign like a lifetime contract with Disney? Seriously, the dude has been doing their pictures since he was like 8 years old. . . .)

The disadvantages? Well, aside from the negative bragging rights about how you braved the great unknown and nonexistent possibility for getting off the beaten path, there’s the fact that you’re shackled to the tour’s schedule if you expect to avoid hitchhiking back, and you sort of feel like you have to do everything possible in order to get your money’s worth.

For example, we boarded our very comfortable, air-conditioned super bus at 8 a.m. for the 1 ½ hour ride to Xel-Ha. However, after road delays and time schedule instructions, we actually got into the park proper around 10:45. Not too bad, except that we had to be back on the bus at 2:50. Having 4 hours at this place is something akin to cruising past the Grand Canyon in a turbo-charged golf cart driven by a coked-up madman, just screaming and holding on for dear life as rocks and sky whizzes by at dizzying speeds. As you might imagine, it’s difficult to enjoy the sheer pleasure of the place with a clock ticking like some psychotic game show countdown.

Our main point of interest at Xel-Ha was the snorkeling which boasts such cool aspects as swimming into an aquatic cave and sticking yourself smack in the middle of a swarm of fish the size of motorcycles as people stand up on a bridge throwing food just to make sure the fish stay at peak frenzy.That was pretty cool. The snorkeling took at least two hours, not counting the wait in line for the gear and a valiant attempt by yours truly to make the proprietors sorry for the “alcohol included” portion of the admission price. The rest of the time was taken up with racing across the jungle portion of the park at a breakneck pace before toweling off and being herded back on the bus for Tulum.

Why I feel the need to not offend perfect strangers is beyond me, but after about 10 minutes of listening to the tour guide at Tulum say the same thing three different ways, none of which had anything to do with the actual history of the site, I was ready to detach myself and just go off wandering around. I wagered I could glean about as much information by consulting one of the local trees as this fellow was dishing out (why was he obsessed with describing the 2 seasons?) but I stuck in there for a full half hour, until I could tell he was winding down the “lesson” before I finally relented and went exploring with Hanni. For some reason, I guess I imagined our guide perhaps lying in bed at night, wide awake wondering “Why didn’t the short American with the unbuttoned shirt like my story?” Seriously, this is a sickness.

But the site was pretty damned amazing, even with the truncated archeology lesson. It’s not a big city, which is good considering our tour running down like a time clock in a game show, but it is the only Mayan city on a coastline, and just being around something that’s existed for some 800-1000 years from a mysteriously disappeared culture is pretty spectacular.

My recommendation? Take a sober friend and rent a car.

The Irritation of Little Man

6/23/06

What are the words I’m looking for? Let’s see…“horrified beyond all reason” seems to just about crystallize it correctly. Yes, yes, I think I am horrified beyond all reason at the movie trailer I have just seen. I’d seen it before, you understand, and sort of rolled my eyes and muttered something bitter to anyone who had the misfortune of being in the room at the time, but on this occasion the commercial triggered loose some new response in yours truly in much the same way that swallowing a quart of diarrhea would trigger a vomit response. By a show of hands, who has seen the trailer for this steaming pile of fresh hell called Little Man?

Proving that malicious idiocy is often rewarded and that, if not dead, God is indeed in a prolonged coma, the Wayans brothers have made another movie. I am reminded of the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words,” because there aren’t enough curses in the whole of human vocabulary to express my utter disgust for all involved in this project. Just imagine Shawn and Marlon Wayans gagged and bound with their own intestines, smeared with honey and placed on busy railroad tracks near a fire ant hill while a blind madman administers paper cuts and jet fuel enemas to their prone bodies. That comes close to expressing it, I feel. Oh, but perhaps you’d like to know what the movie is about....

Marlon Wayans is a midget jewel thief who, in order to escape the law, poses as a baby left on the doorstep of Shawn Wayans. Forgetting for the fact that Looney Tunes did this several decades ago (Baby Finster), I’ll let the fall-down retardedness of that plot sink in. The three of you out there who went to see White Chicks should enjoy it. Perhaps Sony Pictures has finally just thrown up their hands and breathed a collective “fuck it!”

On a deeper, more bizarrely sinister note, what the hell is 6’2” Marlon doing playing a midget? As I understand it, they strapped his no-talent black ass to a chair and just filmed him from the neck up, then CGI-ed it to fit onto a 3-foot body. Does anyone else find this even mildly psychotic? What was wrong with saving a truckload of money and morality and just hiring a midget who, you know, fit the role? You are never going to get me to believe that Marlon Wayans is such a big star that his box office gravity simply would not allow them to hire a little person. In fact, I would wager that for anyone with more than seven functioning brain cells, D-list celebrity Marlon is actually a modest strain of ticket sales poison. This is sort of like, if the role called for an effeminate African-American actor, and instead the studio threw Andy Dick into a dress and painted him in black-face. It just seems strangely offensive, as if there aren’t any midget actors looking for work out there.

Leaving aside the bargain basement sense of humor necessary to enjoy this film, it just reminds me of another type of movie I hate which is offensive in the same calm, sorta stupid way. Namely, films where they either have a white person playing an ethnic role, or some Caucasian dude who assimilates into another culture and mystically becomes a really kick-ass member of the group. I’m thinking Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Last of the Mohicans, etc. I find it hilarious that batshit-crazy Tom Cruise, playing a Civil War vet in Last Samurai is able to pick up the art of wielding a sword so well over the course of a few months that he can fight to a draw a Japanese warrior who has studied this stuff his whole life. Is there anything white people can’t do better than the various mud races?!
Yeah, so, in closing…uhm…don’t go see Little Man. Have a mojito instead.

Cancun Clipper Club - 6/7/06 - 11:14 am

6/7/06


I haven’t had a chance to update until now, as I’ve been having too much fun spending massive amounts of colorful money which looks just different enough to make me forget that it represents a rapidly reducing stack of greenbacks in my bank account.

Hanni and the other two girls just went out to the salon or spa or one of those other things that women enjoy doing. For some reason Hanni was annoyed whenever I expressed no desire to get a pedicure, and I’m still scratching my head over that one. I don’t object to the practice in principle, or because of some inflated machismo, I just find the thought of sitting in a chair while strange women who don’t speak English subject my feet to salves and balms and other strange liquids about as appealing an idea as having a phrenologist divine my future from the bumps on my casaba.

It’s a little too early to start drinking, I think. We have two bottles of tequila, one magnum of champagne, one bottle of wine and a liter of rum inside the fridge in the other room, but it might be just a touch too far before noon for imbibing.

Yesterday the girls and I went, by way of a really rather comfortable bus, to Playa de Carmen, about an hour or so out of Cancun. It’s essentially a tourist town with what I can only assume are infinite stalls holding everything from canvas bags to a disturbing number of different pipes shaped like wieners.

Interlude: Okay, I’m down next to the pool now underneath a delightful straw hut-thing complete with hammocks. I am not using said hammock, as I find the idea of suddenly flipping over and landing on top of my computer distasteful. Also, I might spill the beer that I’m drinking. Oh, I forgot to mention we have a case of Corona. End interlude.

We’ve now hit three separate beaches, the first of which was around 9 pm on the first night we got here. We were nearly the only ones on the beach and it’s difficult to find darkness quite so complete and powerful as that which settles over the beach at night. There was just enough light to see a path away from the three rather large Mexican gentlemen I led us away from under a barrage of hoots and cat-calls and “hey babies.” Thankfully, Hanni was sufficiently inebriated to have not noticed. There’s nothing like traveling along a dark, deserted beach with three women to make you keenly aware of just how unintimidating you are as a 5’5”, 140 lb white dude. But, I was hauling around a fifth of Bacardi and a bag of ice, so maybe I could have plied them with drinks to keep everyone’s chastity (including my own) intact.

The other two beaches were varying degrees of spectacular; white sands and azure water within a 10 minute walk of our hotel. To date, I only have mild skin cancer on my shoulders.

I made a hole in the sand. It was an impressive hole, if I do say so myself.

On a sadder note, Cancun and the surrounding areas seems to have a powerful aversion to American whiskey. Bourbon, as well. The cheapest I can find (and finding it is no easy task) is $26 for a fifth of Jack, and $7 for a 7&7. Yikes. I find this terrifying on a whole lot of levels, and have had to satisfy myself with rum and cokes. For one so terminally fond of Seagram’s, it’s rather like the difference between 3-way sex with bisexual nymphos and getting a hand job in the walk-in cooler from an octogenarian cafeteria worker. But never fear, dear readers, I shall muddle through.


Other than that it’s been like a dream here. Tomorrow we’re going to Xel-Ha by way of the Tulum ruins for snorkeling, among other things. One other point I’m only slightly worried about; after Playa de Carmen yesterday we stopped by a Mexican supermarket to procure foodstuffs in order to save money on eating out, taking advantage of the fact that we have a full kitchen and my hard-on for cooking. I think I may have gone a bit nuts; we spent $70. It was a combination of my “kid in a candy store” glee at grocery stores, and the foreign curse of “it’s only $3 American!” (Seriously, though, beef is like weed prices in Jamaica!) Last night I made shrimp and Chorizo sausage with pasta in a spicy tomato sauce. We’re going to have to do a whole lot of eating in order to avoid meat slowly souring inside my suitcase in the belly of a big, steel bird somewhere over Oklahoma.

See? I'm a Good Sport

6/21/06

I wrote the following while in the Cancun Airport waiting for my return flight to the states, and happened to be near a television broadcasting what I discovered to be a "sporting event." Enjoy dear readers.

___________________________________


6/10/06



I've never been a big fan of sports (though I do like to listen to women's tennis) due, in part, I'm sure to the fact that I have zero athletic ability and engaging in anything more strenuous than bocce, shuffleboard or crochet is public humiliation on the scale of paying strangers to urinate on me. It was especially bad in school, when it was goddamn mandatory in P.E. and my male peers took the shit way, way too seriously. Any minor error was treated as if I'd just shown them a picture of their mother being violated by a walrus. I mean, who the shit cares if I got missed a catch in kick-ball simply because I was more interested in the topography of my navel? I thought this was a game, right? Well, no, not really, I quickly discovered.

Perhaps it makes me a poor male, but I even loathe televised sports. Cant stand 'em; I can think of few things more pointless and boring than spending hours (sometimes four or five at a time!) staring at grown men (most of them juiced so full of hormones they can only be considered "human" in the loosest sense of the word) who are doing things which seem to me to be ultimately pointless and sort of crazy. Why does an adult male wish to watch another male hit a sphere with a cudgel? What's the point? I find it odd and somewhat comical that so many humans attach their egos to these events, and, should their team lose, actually become upset over it. Clearly I'm missing something.

I've just returned from one of the many bars in the departure area; one of the smoking ports in the calm storm after going through security. (Stick with me, I'm tying it together!) But you can't merely stand there smoking, no, no. You have to buy something. They're like disgruntled 7-11 owners. So, sure, 9:15 is a little early in the morning for a rum and coke, but technically I'm still on vacation. And an alcoholic, so...

At any rate I found myself engrossed in the football (soccer for us Americans) game on TV; it's the World Cup outta Germany, don't you know. I've never actually watched a game, mostly due to the reasons listed above, but this was kinda neat. It's never really caught on here, but I don't know why: It's simple, (I don't have to memorize an instruction book or know bizarre numerical stats about the players to understand the game) and I don't know why anyone would say it's boring; it's low-scoring, but at least the players are constantly doing something.

You know whats boring? Football and baseball. I'll wait while the country finishes loading its collective shotguns and looking up my address. Ready? Okay.

Essentially these American sports are seconds of frenzied excitement punctuated by looooong stretches of time where nothing really happens. Either dudes are lining up for something called a "Double-Loop Nickel-back Fiery Douche" play, or a man with a large ass is rubbing a small spheroid and shaking his head "no," at another man who just wants him to play catch. That, my friends, is fucking boring. But soccer/football? That was pretty cool. And it has a time limit! Dig that? We all know when its going to end! Because, maybe, you know, we don't have indefinite chunks of our lives to devote to sitting on our asses watching steroid-addled lunatics. Maybe some of us want to go home and, oh I dunno, fuck or something.

Boring? Not this. They're constantly running up and down the field, pulling off moves so astounding and graceful they seem to be playing in significantly lowered gravity, and exhibiting an endurance of which hurricanes would be envious. Yeah, big deal, sometimes games end in a 0-0 score, which I suppose has many American sports fans struggling to keep their intestines from exploding with indignation, but for me, I found the score to be incidental. If you're watching a game for the score and not the athleticism and excitement of it why not just skip a step and check the scores tomorrow to find out how much you owe the bookie?

I have to say I was intrigued and impressed by the simple, enjoyable nature of the event. I doubt I'll find myself settling in to watch an entire game anytime soon, but I have found myself watching for five or ten minutes whenever it's on in the lunchroom at work. I like it; it's neat...except that the American team sucks out loud. To date our only scoring goal was made by the other team accidentally. Wow.

As for the game I watched while sipping island liquors, I dont remember who won.


P.S.- I do find some of the things they televise on ESPN and its hoard of spin-offs interesting, but none of them can even loosely be considered sports: Poker, Blackjack, Dominoes, and imagine my delight when I ran across an honest-to-God "Paper, Rock, Scissors" (also known as Ro-Sham-Bo) tournament on ESPN 2 one night around 2 a.m.! Now that is fucking entertainment!

Cancun Airport - 6/3/06 - 1:57 pm

6/3/06

I’m sitting in “Restaurant Bar” inside the Cancun airport in Mexico. I’ve just ordered a Canadian Club and Sprite of which I am in dire need. Approximately an hour and a half ago I disembarked from my flight, which was supposed to leave St. Louis at 7 a.m., but actually departed at 10, due to a fractured-ass plane. I’m not complaining, as my girlfriend Hanni and her roommate are coming in on a separate flight in some twenty minutes or so, and I would have had just to sit here on my ass longer and probably become tanked out of my gourd on $8 drinks. And I’ve just realized that due to the fact they they’re out of Canadian Club, I have inadvertently ordered Passport scotch and Sprite. Dammit. I am a dufus.

I’m hoping they can find me whenever they get in. I left a message on Hanni’s voicemail which, I admit, might have been a little rambling and frantic, and she may or may not have understood my instructions. You see, I’m no longer in the arrival terminal, as, unbeknownst to yours truly, after you leave the structure you’re not allowed back inside. So my choices were: Stand out in the heat and sopping humidity for upwards of 2 hours while they arrive and make their way through customs, or hike the thousand or so yards over to the departure terminal with my 3 not un-heavy bags in a desperate attempt to procure whiskey and a pay phone.

Incidentally, there must be a phrase to describe the opposite of “technophobia,” because I think I’m afflicted with it. I would rather speak to or use a machine any day if it meant I could avoid actually asking a human being for assistance. It’s almost always faster and indefinitely more pleasant to the senses, as you always know if a machine isn’t working it’s your fault, and not some deep personal defect of the individual. Near as I can figure, the main requirement for the porters at the bus and taxi area outside the departure terminal is to swoop down on you like vultures to carrion, and to not tell you where you can find a payphone.

I asked no less than 3 people (not counting the guard who kindly informed me I would not be reentering the region) where I could find a payphone. Seems like a simple question, yes? Well no, apparently, and this is why I loathe humanity. Perhaps it’s a problem of the language barrier, but my “where could I find a payphone?” was invariably answered with the question “what group are you with?” referring to the thousands of taxi and bus companies loading passengers by the throngs as if en route to the rendering plant in Soylent Green.

Interlude: My drink has just arrived and it’s not that bad. It’s an extra 3 bucks, but I think I might have a Crown Royal next. End interlude.

Anyway, when I attempted to explain that I was waiting for some other people who were coming in on a later flight and just needed to call and leave a message on their voicemail, they very nicely informed me that I “could wait right over here, sir,” and gestured to an outcropping of nice cement upon which I could squat. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to explain that,

“I just need a payphone, thanks. Do you know if there’s one up this way?”

They invariably told me that I could wait here for my party, or that I could go ahead and get on the correct transport to my hotel. Getting into the whole story of how I didn’t know the name or location of my hotel (Hanni’s roommate Rene had that information, and no matter how many times I attempted to procure it somehow it slipped through my fingers like water) just seemed like too much trouble to bother.

I finally decided to just wander up toward the airport proper and fend for myself in phone location. (Incidentally, as hard as I have harangued against it, I am starting to see the advantages of owning a cell phone…don’t rub it in.)

Interlude: I have just ordered another Passport and Sprite. No matter how many times I practice simple Spanish phrases such as “uno mas,” I always panic at the last minute and revert to “one more.” What the fuck is wrong with me? End interlude.

Success! Telephones! And they had credit card readers and everything! Only fifteen minutes later I finally figured out how to make an international credit card call (with all the fumbling around in the system, it could have cost me between $3 and $30; time will tell) and, at the beep, I informed my girlfriend

“Hi, darlin’, I’m in the departure terminal because I left the airport after customs and wasn’t allowed back in, so if you come out the area where all the buses and taxis are and make a right, you’ll see the departure part of the airport. Come in and take a left, I’m all the way down at the Restaurant Bar. Sorry you guys have to actually come collect me, but I couldn’t stand out there in the heat anymore. I love you, bye.”

And I did just that. So here I sit, typing furiously away and wondering how much battery power is left on my laptop because it has taken it upon itself to spirit away the little icon informing me of such things. I think it’s become self-aware like Skynet.

Hanni’s plane should have landed by now, and if I’m not mistaken they’ll be yanking their luggage off the turnstile at this very moment. I estimate another 20-30 minutes before I start to worry whether my message was too vague or if they got stopped in customs because she was smuggling uncut heroin in her vagina. Adios for now.

What Are You, Blind?

6/15/06


This isn't really a rag on President Bush; this is just a funny thing that happened. I give the guy enough crap and this thing was just one of those foot-in-mouth deals where you're trying to be funny only to discover you're inadvertently being a real cock.

Yesterday at a press conference in the Rose Garden (in front of more American flags than a V.A. lounge) after Bush returned from his wild, spontaneous 6-hour trip to Baghdad, the POTUS* was doing his affable, freewheeling Texan with a sense of humor routine with the reporters, ducking and jiving and just generally showing some "good ol' boy" levity. Now, I think Bush is probably a pretty likable guy in person, and probably kinda funny, but in impromptu, public forums his humor strikes me as a little desperate and forced. So it was only a little weird when he called on Peter Wallsten of the LA Times and said,

"Are you going to ask that question with the shades on?"

Wallsten, who was, in fact, wearing shades, replied with a grin, "I can take them off."

Bush still being jokey, not a prick, said, "I'm interested in the shade look. Seriously."

"All right, I'll keep it, then," said Wallsten.

Bush, addressing the cameras, said, "For the viewers, there is no sun." That was actually pretty funny.

"I guess it depends on your perspective," said Wallsten, still smiling, though clearly a touch uncomfortable.

"Touché," finished Bush, ending the banter and listening to Wallstens question about über-demon and staggeringly un-indicted Karl Rove.

So no big deal, right? A little creepy and not terribly funny but hey, the Prez was in high spirits. Well, the foot-in-mouth part comes when you take into account that Wallsten is legally blind. Ha-ha! Now that is funny! Wallsten has a retinal disease (Stargardt's Disease) for which he wears sunglasses to slow the progress of degeneration.

Like I said, not Bush's fault, but pretty damn funny. As a person who has, on more than one occasion, inserted my pied directly into my bouche, I can relate, and since it's Bush, who is so woefully awful at off-the-cuff banter, it's doubly hilarious.

Bush apologized today and there were no hard feelings from Wallsten, but whenever the President was informed of the gaffe, I'll wager he felt a little like I did when, at a family gathering, my father took me aside and explained precisely why it was inappropriate to go around tickling people in their crotch underneath the dinner table. But, to be fair, I was like 6.

I still enjoy tickling privates, but I mostly stick to those outside my family now.



*that's President Of The United States, to you and me, pard!