What I learned watching My So-Called Life

Episode 2.
The mom gets a short haircut, takes a dance class w/ bored husband and the instructor suggests that they dance w/ different partners. "Some people just try so hard and don't hear the music.  And they start to feel lost.  So they wanna look down.  Don't look down. "
Jordan Catalano tries to kiss Angela while she was saying something.
"According to this she was born yesterday." -Brian inspecting Angela's fake ID

Cavalier Eternel

All we can do is all we've ever done.

Overland Park, KS
Tamarac Square Denver
Sioux Falls, SD
Eden Prairie, MN
Bozeman, MT
Clearwater, FL
Okemas, MI
Wilmington, NC
Topeka, KS

I worked in each of these cities for about a month in a two year period.  All expense paid trip with room, board and per diem afforded by a moderate sized full service local restaurant chain that has about 60 or so units in over 20 states.  When it started I felt like I was on an extremely lame version of MTV's the Real World. Go meet some relative stranger and try to get along because you're gonna live together.  Some past manager of mine made a phone call and in no time I had a plane ticket, a check for $189 and instructions to be a certain terminal in DIA on a Saturday morning at 8 am where I would meet some other people who worked for the same chain as me but at different cities across the Front Range.  People a lot like me from Greeley, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Omaha.  And board a plane to Kansas City, Kansas. I believe this was in late January.
I'm not sure how to describe what this experience was like.  Sure it was a city I had never been to before and I was scheduled to work 60 hours in the first week.  Probably more but they were trying to take it easy on me since it was my first trip.  So, it wasn't like I was going to have a whole lot of time nor motivation to go and see anything in this city except the trip between the restaurant and the extended stay hotel.  And  absolutely no offense to the fine people of Kansas City but I believe I saw everything there was see with parts of my one day off a week, larger parts of which were spent in one or several bars.  If I were pressed to remember exactly what I saw I might come up with: Boulevard Brewery and riverboat gambling on the Missouri River.
Under such circumstance we got to know the people around us very well, very quickly.  We all had cunningly similar characteristics for the most part.  We were a team of, at the least 8 and at the most 12, trainers from across the country who all had a specialized position of training within the restaurant.  Those positions in the Back of the House were: pizza, bulk prep, dough and 1 to 2 trainers on the front line.  In the Front of the House there was: bar, host, usually 2 server trainers with maybe a supervisor, training manager and the management staff of that location, which was 3-5 more people.  Typically, the trainers would have 2 weeks before finish setting up the space and train a brand new staff of 50 - 100 and 2 weeks after grand opening to work alongside staff.  In nine openings I was the pizza trainer nine times.  Some openings were busier than others.  Some trips we stayed an extra week or worked upward of 80 hours in week.  Each city was so very different than the other, but we were still doing the same job no matter the city.   The training team was always slightly different than the next.  With every opening there were more new people who were just like me but from different places.  Never very far away places. But still even more familiar because we were usually pretty close to each other.  We would become great friends very quickly.  If we weren't working or drinking together we might have been sleeping next to each other.  One time in bunk beds.  These were versions of me from: Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Oregon, Arizona.  We would go through some serious service hell together. We would inevitably become involved in each others' lives.  The trips were longer enough for us all to really get involved with the construction of this monster that we had to make stand, walk and run away as we stand in the dust.  The last week of each opening was usually pretty dusty.
Then we would go home.
We said we would keep touch but we almost never did.
Only a couple times did I see another trainer not on the road.  Borrowing product from each other, maybe filling in for a cross town store during their company party.
I could always remember stepping through the front door of my apartment upon returning home from an opening.  My heart would well up with anticipation and would quickly deflate as I opened the door and realize how much more clean was the hotel room.
  I felt like I was part of a restaurant  A-Team.  Except that we weren't fighting for any type of justice and the plan we hatched took about month to carry out.
We were all restaurant purists who got to lay our eager fingers on a blank canvas.
Nine different cities.
Countless different people who were just like me.
I hope to record as many of  the actual events as I can recall.
Names may or may not be changed.

This is how we do things in the country

The Blue Parrot was and probably still is owned and operated by the Collacci family in Louisville, Colorado.  The Parrot at the corner of Spruce and Main wasn't the Collacci's family only restaurant.  In a genius stroke of marketing strategy they opened up another Italian restaurant under a different name less than a mile north up Main St.  Thereby, somehow, becoming their own competition.  The only other thing I knew about The Collacci family was that they hired under age kids to wash their dishes and if you learn dishes you can become a busser.  And bussers make tips.  My two buddies Paul and Kevin were hired as dishwashers and had been promoted to bussers promptly.  They delighted me with their tales of shift meals, talking to older girls, walking with 7-10 dollars a night and go in on a 12 pack later.  So I was hired and immediately put to work.  I distinctly remembered five of the first six hours of my shift were spent standing up against a three compartment dish sink doing absolutely nothing until someone told me that the actual dish machine where all the plates and shit were was actually around the corner and that I should promptly get the fuck to work. Once while holding this position I was kicked in the balls.  Completely out the blue by a brutish looking girl who was in the grade above me but came from a family full of adopted kids and had a sister in my grade who was a totally scorching hot  babe who and happened to be working on the line right in front us.  As she saw the whole thing happen she would also contend that it came completely out of nowhere.  I decided to fall over immediately and try to preserve any remaining dignity.
Later, I was promoted to busser where I quickly learned the Sat/Sun morning busser shifts were the best shifts of them all. The shifts were longer and slower and there was no dishwasher until after lunch. Which meant I still did a large portion of dishes.  It was on these shifts that I learned how to look busy enough and not necessarily work much harder.  I found several large of chunks of time to hide off and read comics or do nothing at all.  In the basement, back dock, dish pit or plain sight. Plus there was pancakes.
I was eventually let go because it was discovered that they weren't allowed to hire 15 year olds.  Even though my other buddy Aaron who worked there was younger than me and managed to not get axed.  It wasn't more than a week later that the place caught fire and there were massive lay offs while they remodeled.
I went back maybe 20 years later and I recognized a server that worked those Sat/Sun morning shifts.  She did not recognize me.

Keeping Track

My day last thursday was more than utter crap.  It was one for the record books.  I was enjoying my frozen walk across the desolate campus on the second day of the new year in Denver.  Right about the time I had set about three steps into the 150 year old building I thought that it would be just fine if it were a slow short quiet day.  The space that I entered was the bottling house of a brewery originally and I mention that because it would be curious how the same space could only have only three floor drains that are only slightly smaller than this laptop when its closed.  The bottling house, which is a little more like the mouth of a hibernating dragon, had been asleep for 10 days straight and as we may all do after such a grand slumber there was a considerable amount of drool.  All three floor drains had slowed to a stop and there was a one inch puddle of backwater inside the front door.  The entire dish room was also an inch or more of water standing after ten days of around room temp and smelled sort of like a large wet dog making sweet love to a porta potty.  Good news was there absolutely no perishable product in the building making it difficult to open to the public and do what I was meant to do.  I knew then that last thursday was exactly like every other unsurprisingly torrential day I have spent in a restaurant.  And it was also more than likely my very last day in this godforsaken career that has given me everything.
I don't think I have yet to mention how much I despised the management of this job who showed absolutely no respect or consideration for the power of this beautiful sleeping monster.  I won't yet call this dragon ancient but she is at the very least antique.  I mean here I was paying my reverence by cleaning up her drool with a squeegee at nine in the morning while she still slept.


My very first restaurant job was as a dishwasher at the Blue Parrot in Louisville, CO in the spring of 1987.

june 21 2006

that sweet indulgent fluid

bottles
pints
shots
cans
couches
floors
drunk best friends
models
whores
tattoed hands
cities
secrets
cats
vans
good times
laughter
bad decision
strippers
actors
average musicians
mornings after
walks of shame
the bartender knows me by my real name

july 4 2006

I love this fuckin country

Reflections on the Fourth:
I honestly think that the fourth of july may be my second favorite holiday after halloween.
Mainly because I don't consider it a celebration of America's birthdaybecause, let's be honest america has got some blood on it's hands- some people ( me included) think that this whole fuckin country is bankrupt.It's not about that.
To me it's a celebration of independence.
Independence allows me to yell fire in a crowded theater
or use my welfare check to buy a 40 oz. and a gun.
Independence is what Steve McQueen and James Garner fought for in the Great Escape.
And independence is going to allow me to drink many beers, grill a small animal, and play with fire and feel damn good about it!

"I love this fuckin country, and she loved me more than I could imagine, so I waited untill she slept and I stepped into traffic."

february 21 2007

I knew I couldn't ignore that dull pain in my jaw forever.
So I finally put my well paid for insurance to use and head down to the local dentist and awaited the bad news.
Why would it bad news? You might ask.
Well... I haven't been to a dentist in about
SIXTEEN YEARS
That's right, the last time I was in one of those chairs I was in high school and I was getting my braces taken off.
And here was the prognosis:

SIX CAVITIES
THREE BROKEN TEETH
(two of them broken off at the root)
ABCESS APLENTY
ADIOS WISDOM TEETH

And all I could do was laugh.
And smile.

The hygenist said "I've seen worse."

I laugh some more.

She said "you're taking this quite well."

What else could I do.
At least I'm fixing it now.
Plus, it makes for a good story.
Like this one.

The moral of this story:
Take care of teeth.
It's the only set you'll get.

And the next time you see me, cheeks puffed out and dazed from the Nitrous, smile and laugh.
In case I'm not able to.