I wish I had...

a pair of warm socks.

a fireplace.

hot cocoa.

marshmallows.

and something new to investigate.

Winter Slumber

The restaurant has been characteristically dead the past week.  Last night I had two tables, the previous night three and the night before that four.  During the week we absolutely must have two servers or else the owner will freak out so there's half the money and twice the time to be standing around.  There's a couple of activities that I partake in to pass the boredom and there are as following:

1.  Sneak up to the office and play on the internet.

2. Find globs of sticky tack and make them into animals.

3. Sneak into the kitchen and eat bleu cheese.

4.  Devise paper games (Exquisite Corpse, Paper Telephone, etc.)

5.  Read the newspaper over and over.

6. Continue my search for gold in the hollow wall.  I've carved a pretty big hole that someone adorned with googly eyes so I added a mustache.  This search for gold is serious business.  In the 30's the building the Blue Bird is in was a speakeasy.  The guy sold barrels of moonshine and only accepted gold bars as payment.  At the time, gold bars were illegal and could not be exchanged for money.  After the guy died his son decided to remodel his house and found forty-thousand dollars worth of gold bars.  I think he hid some in the building too.  Jorge and I also theorize that there are dead bodies somewhere too.  I hope we find the gold first.

Anyway, I am off today, entertaining myself with episodes of The Office and chicken breasts.  Hope you're all having a dandy day too.

BEST PET AD EVER

I was skimming through the want ads today looking for bulldogs and I found this:

KINKAJOU- 5 yr old male, bottle raised, $900 or trade for guns.

Old Friends ctd.

General Clark P. Willis on civilization:

"You know all this marriage bullshit?  It's all the fuckin' civilization tellin' young men that they need to marry for the pussy.  And they think 'Aww, I'm so in love with this girl' and they tell you that, and you know what?  It's all bullshit, they've been trained to think like that.  I tell you what, if a man ever tells you any kind of that crap like, 'Baby, I can't live without you, you're my sunshine,' you tell that man to go fuck sixteen porn stars and then see if he still wants to marry you.  Now you gotta loan him some money cos fuckin' porn stars is big business, see, it can get real expensive but at least after that, you know he's in love with you and not your pussy.  Trust me, it's worth the money."

Best.  Advice.  Ever.

Old Friends and Resolutions

Old Friends

"I'd sure like a yodelin' honey canyon right about now."- Clark P. Willis

There's this guy that I have known for about five years, ever since I started my first restaurant job at the Cup and Saucer.  His name is Clark and he is a railroad foreman.  He's an eccentric and has the foulest mouth God ever gave anyone, including me.  He comes in regularly, always ordering the fish special and if he's feeling like it, an apple crostada.  He drinks coffee in the winter and ice tea in the summer.

His favourite subject is, of course, pussy, more specifically the one that belongs to the owner of the restaurant.  He's imagined her pussy in so many different ways, different hairstyles, tastes and whether or not it has teeth.  He's come up with countless schemes that will get him into her pants.

This is all in jest, of course, but he plays a dangerous game when he knows her husband is there, lurking nearby when he'll lean towards me over the bar and say, "You think that since I brought in that blow torch for you fagnasties and pedophiles to make creme brulee that she'll give me some pussy?"

The world is divided into three categories for Clark, pedophiles, fagnasties and Mrs. Goodpussy's.  The first is reserved for anyone Clark doesn't like, bosses and rich people.  Fagnasties are the rest of us, especially if we're gay and Mrs. Goodpussy's refer to the owner of the restaurant and an interior decorating friend of his.  

The man is a legend, basically.  I've never met anyone so fascinating, so off the grid.  He shows up to the restaurant with filthy hands and proceeds to pour olive oil over his customary mountain of bread and eat it.  Yet he spends an average of thirty dollars on dinner and another ten on tip almost every night.  When he buys new shirts I can always tell, because I have to cut the tags off from the underarm after he's worn the shirt all day.  He tells me if any pedophiles bother me I just have to tell him and he'll take care of the problem.

Clark used to be in the Army, and is a Vietnam vet who was in the shit with people's heads exploding and unforeseen gunfire and  intestines spilled all over the ground.

When he came back, his PTSD was so intense that he couldn't function.  The Army dealt with it by giving him sixteen electroshock therapy treatments and then a certificate, officially proclaiming the Clark was now ready to re-enter the world as if nothing had happened.

So now he sits at my bar every night, barking to either see me, Monica Lewinsky, or Lori, Lorelei Shugabritches.

And there he sits, the lost child of the United States Army, as mysterious as a scientific anomaly.  

Resolutions

So I have made the resolution to stop being afraid of doing things, especially things that will advance my future career/life.  The things that I am afraid of doing are insane, listening to phone messages, paying bills, working on projects... Things that I really really enjoy doing are put to the wayside because I am afraid that they are not going to be good enough.  I know, right?  **Paging Childhood Trauma, please come in Childhood Trauma."  I've decided this year that my official resolution for this year is: Fuck it.  I am going to make 2009 my bitch.

And now that you all know, I have to do it since it's been posted in the infinite universe of the internet and if I don't do it, everyone will know.

It's going well so far, I actually complete a to do list yesterday and I've lined myself up to hopefully give a lecture at the Infoshop.  I'll let you all know when that is and hopefully the movie theater will be up an running before too long.

"Can you please make an announcement that all pedophiles must leave the restaurant by nine p.m.?  Thank you."- Clark P. Willis

New Years and D-Day Aftermath

No one cried.  In fact a brand new server who has only worked daytime worked her first dinner last night.

The night culminated in lots of champagne.  I nipped off other people's glasses, no one cared.  Shared a piece of pizza with someone I can't have.  Legally, anyway.  Two people bound by a common language at random occurred, genital regions were looked at.  The fifty-eight year old five-foot ten owner ended up standing on the bar with my promise to catch her if she were to fall.

Embarrassingly woke up on the couch at Ernesto's mother's house and after I went home I oversaw the cooking of pasta and chili.

At lunch Tarik and I ate at Westport Flea Market.  I'd never been, but had always wanted to go because Bob Berdella ran a stall there.  Felt a distinct creepy crawly feeling licking the back of my neck.

Took a nap with Ernesto, woke up feeling overheated.  We made steak and guacamole and toasted a glass of champagne.

He sleeps now, breathing heavily and audibly.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is on the TV, being brilliant as always.  Laura Linney looks so cute I could eat her.

It was a good first day, let's hope that all that follow are the same.