Adventures In Unemployment

I reacquainted myself with that happenin' hub of social interaction last week when I filed for unemployment. My previous attempt to do so led me to the Elgin office, where a woman with a significant amount of blonde chin hair listened to me explain that I would be out of work for one month at the country club. She said nothing of assistance in filling out my claim and a few short weeks later, I received a nice notice from Gov. Rod Blagojevich telling me, basically, "Tough titties, kid. Guess you're not going drinkin' this month."

One of the cooks I got liquored up on regular occasions told me when we returned to work that the man filing his claim told him how to answer. He had a very enjoyable month off.

I didn't really drive to Aurora with visions or hopes of checks just arriving week after week while my former employers shook their fists and cursed in Greek at the very thought of me. Okay, maybe the possible ire caused by an unemployment claim could be fun.

***

While rewriting press releases and researching how former high school stars are doing at college was fun for a while, it was nice to finally have the editor at the newspaper give me some, you know, real work. Now that I know my voice recorder still works and the telephone hook-up for it has been replaced, I'm starting to remember why I went back to school.

"Did you receive your check yet?" the editor asked me a couple weeks ago.

Surprisingly, the fact that I was supposed to be getting paid for this kind of slipped my mind. Now, well, I'm starting to wonder when I am going to get paid. I start covering games this week for spring sports, which is great. But gas costs money and Hinsdale ain't exactly within walking distance.

***

Before I took that second job at the Italian fine dining place last Christmas, I applied at a less posh Italian place (re: a pizzeria) where a girl I knew worked. They didn't have an opening at the time.

Fast-forward to my current state of panic and desperation, and you might be able to understand why I decided to go back in and take up said girl on the messages she's been leaving me for the past month about how, suddenly, the restaurant's owner needs help.

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... I know I said I wouldn't work in a restaurant again. But you try telling your girlfriend that you'd like to take her out if you could afford it.

Then again, that probably would've been preferable to what I ended up doing: Taking the serving job that would require me to work mostly weekend nights. Since the lady works regular nine-to-five type hours, that didn't go too well.

So three shifts later, I quit so I could spend the weekend downtown. I told the owner I had been offered an immediate opening that I couldn't refuse. If I were being honest, I would've just said, "I'm going to two job fairs this week. Wish me luck."

***

A lady from the unemployment office called me to get my side of the story. I knew I was going to have trouble trying to explain how telling a sixty-something-year-old female supervisor to "Fuck off."

Still, it's fun to think that immediately after calling me, she had to place a call to the waffle house "pancake house" ("We're a step above other pancake houses," the boss used to say at meetings; to which I often thought, "Yeah ... but it's still a fucking pancake house all the same.") and talk about that final day with my former employer.

I'm not getting my hopes up about receiving anything. But that's okay. If I get rejected, I can appeal. And the longer I can be a nice little thorn in the side of that family's daily business, well, you just can't put a price on that.

Getting What I Want

I found one of those "foot in the door" type openings at a small newspaper around here toward the end of January. It's not much right now, you know, with "budget" issues and so forth. But the idea is that I'll get back to reporting on some high school games when new seasons begin for spring sports. Considering that it's getting to be just too damn close to a year since I graduated, I feel a little relief.
I call my editor on occasion to see if there's anything new for me to do, and shortly after the Super Bowl while working on a local athlete's profile, I mentioned I'd have plenty of free time on that Tuesday since I wouldn't be attending the parade I had switched days for.
"Sounds like you're taking this whole thing kind of rough," he said.
Far from it. Actually, I got over the Bears' loss rather quickly.
The friend who had driven me to the party was actually a Packers fan. He would later say that, as a Cubs fan as well, to have the White Sox, Cardinals and Bears all win world titles in such a short time span would likely cause him to commit suicide.
Of course I was a little pissed that the Super Bowl turned out the way it did. But I figured with all the other friends being depressed and calling it an "early night"—seeing as they all have, you know, real jobs—I would just go ahead, have the Packer fan drop me off at the bar so I could play darts. After all, when your team loses the Super Bowl, nothing eases your pain like getting drunk and throwing things.
The problem was that we couldn't play darts. All the tips were already broken. So, plan A was out the door.
To make matters worse, I called my cab company to arrange a ride home. But there was no answer. Upon calling a second cab company, the female operator informed me it would be more than an hour until something was available. "That's fine," I said, to which she replied that now, suddenly, nothing was going to be available.
I tried to desperately plea my case—not having a ride; it's cold outside; if you're coming from Batavia and going to Elgin, I'm along the way; etc.—to no avail. Recognizing a man at the bar as a regular at one of the old restaurants I used to work at, I relayed my shitty situation and asked if a ride home was possible. I bought him a beer before asking for the favor.
He groaned that he was already giving two others a ride home. After asking me where I lived, he turned to a girl nearby and asked if she'd mind giving me a ride home, since I was at least along the way for her. After she said it was no problem, she passed off the duty to another friend of hers.
Ironically, the girl now giving me a ride home was someone I'd been either meeting eyes with at the bar or was guilty of leering at in a sort of creepy fashion (One older woman used to call the look my "rape stare," which sounds a lot less flattering than the innocence behind it). But on the ride home, still feeling somewhat low about the letdown of the evening, we got to discussing that I looked familiar to her and vice versa. She's been in my restaurant once before and she'd actually remembered playing darts with me and a few others on a previous occasion. Long story short: She asked me to call her the following day. And to think, if the Bears had won, I probably would not have met her again.
And that would have been a real shame because I've ended up seeing her with such tremendous frequency now that I'm growing a little concerned about how quickly my feelings have developed for her. This, of course, is not a bad thing, but I don't want to get overly sappy here.
For example, when she's graciously allowed me to gripe about still being a "waffle waiter," she can relate to shitty restaurant environments. Of course, as a recent graduate herself, she's landed a pretty sweet gig she more or less loves for the couple weeks that she's been there. And a co-worker of hers who landed a job at the same time as her recommended applying at a staffing service—something I'd toyed with before, but allowed to slip my mind when sending resumes via e-mail is so much easier and far more unproductive. It took a simple day and a few hours to drop off a handful of resumes at a few staffing agencies, and before I knew it, there were phone calls and offers to take tests for placement. Despite never having used PowerPoint in my life, I fared pretty well on that portion of the test as well.
While I wait for my social security card to arrive so I can fill out tax forms and begin working something resembling more of, you know, a "real job," I promised the girlfriend I'd be quitting the waffle house by the end of the month. After asking why I put up with some of the abhorrent ways this family of Greeks treats their employees, I promised, "My notice will be in before you get back from vacation."
Fast forward to today, exchanging the long-distance "miss you"-type text messages while adjusting to the loss of one hour of sleep (Thank you, daylight savings). After one party of five or six people left, I saw my cash sitting on the table and thought I would wait to pick it up after the patrons moved further away from the table. It just looks polite, I figure.
After having a sip of my coffee, I came back to find the table reset and no cash anywhere in sight.
My first instinct was that my boss' neurotic mother more than likely was the cuplrit. Yesterday, she grabbed two tips off my tables and threatened not to give them to me until I apologized for telling her to, ahem, "Chill out." When I reminded her that she hadn't apologized for telling me to "Shut up" on numerous occasions throughout the day, she eventually gave me the cash in all its wadded glory.
But claiming she knew nothing about what happened to today's tips, I immediately went to my boss and told him I had a tip swiped. They'll deal with it later, I figured, and then do nothing about it. As another text message came in from the lady, I printed up a sheet of paper and wrote:

MARCH 30 IS DEREK'S LAST DAY

That alone would have been enough to celebrate tonight, but it got better.
My boss' mother has a penchant for hassling myself and the two other male servers who work there about anything and everything under the sun. I joked with one of the hostesses not too long ago how at every meeting, we are reminded that the boss' mom has never fired anybody, but still has the power to do so. "I want to be the first person she fires," I said.
That must have been more than a month ago, but today, when being yelled at for drinking my coffee after just having made sure everything was okay with my tables, sure enough, the old bag comes up to me and begins berating me for not listening to her demand that I put the coffee down.
"Do you plan on doing any work today?" she asked me.
"It'd be nice if I get paid for it," I replied, "But apparently someone else is getting my tips."
"Good," she said. "You deserve it."
That response was just about all I needed to hear. I took another sip from my coffee and then simply said, "Fuck off."
She looked rather shocked and then told me to get the hell out of the restaurant. I handed her my nametag and pager, grabbed my coat and walked out the front door. I lit up a cigarette and smiled the entire way home.
They've got me listed for six shifts next week, but I'm not going to hold my breath for my boss to call me and apologize. Rather, I'm assuming he'll just expect me to show up and beg him to let me keep the shitty job that I planned on quitting anyway. Let him hold his fucking breath, I say.
After all, I've got plenty of better things to do.

Lead Of The Day

From Lee Jenkins' piece in today's New York Times:

MIAMI, Jan. 28 — On one side of the field Sunday will be a quarterback who completed more passes this season than Joe Namath in 1968, for more yards than Roger Staubach in 1977, at a higher percentage than Johnny Unitas in 1970.

He threw more touchdowns passes than Joe Montana in 1981, with fewer interceptions than Terry Bradshaw in 1979, and with a higher passer rating than Len Dawson in 1969.

On the other side of the field will be Peyton Manning.

Awesome.

I don't know who I want to win MVP more: Rex Grossman or Tank Johnson. But I'm thinking the guy who will win it is Devin Hester.

You Make Me Feel Like ... I Don't Know

I remember Charlie Pierce coming to speak to our sports reporting class not too long ago and recollecting that he couldn't determine how he, as a lifelong Red Sox fan, was supposed to feel when Boston was busy stomping the Yankees in New York during the seventh game that ultimately proved to be the final touch on an improbable three games to zero comeback that is basically unheard of in all of professional sports.

So was the Chicago Bears victory this past Sunday on par with that achievement? No, not exactly (the Bears were favored, after all ...).

But the feeling was similar. And that's what counts.

The last time the Bears made the Super Bowl, I was 7 years old and assumed that this was the way it would be every year. So, the following year, when Chicago got smacked by those bitchy Redskins, I broke into tears and Mom told me to go take a bath. When my sister tried to turn on the TV after I submissively turned it off, I fought with her about leaving the power off so I could deny the pain. And then I sat in the tub, weeping and realizing you can't win every year.

For right now, however—two days later, I'm still in a state of extreme joy. Win or lose in the Super Bowl, rooting for a team I love hasn't felt this joyous since Kenny Rogers threw the bases-loaded ball four that sent the Braves to the World Series in 1999 (We almost let that one get away, too—being up in the NLCS 3-0 and being up in the final game something like 6-0 or such).

Anyway, the day is something you cannot erase from one's memory. For now, I can't stop thinking about how the entire day unfolded. Let's indulge ourselves and relive the glorious ass-beating Chicago delivered (All times are approximate ... and likely inaccurate):

8:45 a.m.: I arrive at work, 15 minutes late. For the second day in a row, I write the phrase "Go Rexy Go" on the styrofoam cup I will consume coffee out of for approximately the next five hours.

2:00 p.m.: Game coverage begins and patronage dwindles. What tables I am still serving usually have to grab their plates from my hand as I stand tableside, staring at the television and failing to complete my own pass. "I'll take that for you," a woman says. "Take it out of my tip," I think.

2:30 p.m.: Virtually nobody in the restaurant other than carryovers who are sitting around and waiting for the wives, older relatives, or children to stop yapping. The Bears are up 9-0 on three field goals, leaving me nervous that the Bears are unable to convert in the red zone.

3:15 p.m.: I'm driving in the snow, realizing the car's traction isn't all that great. Shortly after leaving work, Thomas Jones runs into the end zone on his eighth straight carry. The Bears lead 16-0 as I wait outside the White Hen before buying cigarettes. It's the NFC Championship and our opponent hasn't scored yet. This can't be happening.

3:25 p.m.: Drew Brees seemingly orchestrates an effortless drive downfield with less than two minutes left to put the Saints on the board. Suddenly, 16-7 isn't as comforting. Three plays later, the half ends and I'm still uncertain whether I should be overconfident or needlessly worried.

3:30 p.m.: The cabbie says he will be at my house at 4:00 to give me a ride to my buddy's house, where the game is paused at halftime so he, his wife, and two of my other friends can play Wii.

3:45 p.m.: On the second play of their first drive of the half, Reggie Bush blows past the Bears defense and makes it a two-point game. My mother—as she typically does during sporting competitions involving Chicago teams—either mutters "Shit" when something bad happens or says "Yes!" when there is a positive result. I pray for the cab to arrive soon ... (although the Illini rallied past Arizona when I watched that classic with my parents).

3:55 p.m.: Cabbie calls. He needs to go and switch cars ... tires are bald ... can't drive in this. Ten more minutes. Please don't make me have to watch this entire game with my mother, I'm thinking.

4:05 p.m.: Saints are lining up to take a field goal that would put them in the lead. My father and I shout that it's no good, falling short. Bears have great field position.

4:15 p.m.: Another three-and-out results in a Bears punt. I'm getting nervous. Where did that fucking momentum go? On the plus side, Brad Maynard delivers another nice punt that pins New Orleans within their own five.

4:18 p.m.: Drew Brees, caught in his own end zone and facing a deadly pass rush, throws the ball away. With no receiver anywhere nearby, I shout, "Intentional grounding!" Actually, it's a safety. Turning a two-point lead to a four-point is huge.

4:25 p.m.: Bernard Berrian makes an incredible adjustment to catch a Grossman pass that is somehow beyond the Saints' defenders fingertips, rolling into the endzone and making the score 25-14. Suddenly life is good.

4:29 p.m.: Brees is sacked ... and the football apparently came out on the replay ... but the whistle wasn't blown—or was it? To the replay booth when—the cabbie honks the horn. Time to go.

4:30 p.m.: I immediately turn on the radio upon taking my seat in the cabbie's minivan. "The Bears might've just gotten the ball back," I say. Sure enough, it's Bears ball on the Saints' 26.

4:35 p.m.: Snow is making the roads a bitch. My buddy texts me to let me know I'm a "fag" for showing up late and they're about to resume second-half viewing. Go ahead, I think. I tell the cabbie that my fellow fans at the destination are way behind in game time and he makes a motion towards the radio, saying, "Well you probably don't want to hear this ..." I stop him and say I can keep a secret.

4:40 p.m.: Cedric Benson runs 12 yards into the endzone to make it a three-score game. The cabbie begins to say how exciting it is to have the Bears going into the Super Bowl. Pessimist I am, I remind him there's still a lot of time left. I've seen crazier shit happen before.

4:45 p.m.: Brees is intercepted by Nathan Vasher and I feel speechless as we arrive at my buddy's house. I shake my cabbie's hand and remark how pleasant it will be to actually once again be in the Super Bowl. Slamming the door shut and thanking him for his efforts, I now have to keep a secret.

4:46 p.m.: I ring the doorbell and enter my buddy's "mansion," immediately asking if I have to go downstairs to smoke. Indeed I do. When he follows me, I can tell from the audio that they aren't too long after watching Reggie Bush somersault into the endzone and dance for the only time that day. We're smoking in the basement when he begins prodding me about what I know. "So, did the Saints score at least two touchdowns since you last heard the score?" I try to refuse to answer—"I don't want to ruin it for you," I say—but eventually shake my head "no." He asks if the Bears have scored since, at which point another friend comes down. The audio on the television is so loud that I can hear the fans booing when Brees throws his incompletion out of the end zone. As my friend repeats his question, Joe Buck can be heard saying how the Bears want a flag on the call and Troy Aikman is saying how he thinks Chicago will get it. I point at the ceiling and say, "Safety." The friend who has just entered the room is clueless to what I'm talking about and doubts me, but sure enough, another friend watching the game shouts from the top of the stairwell: "SAFETY!"

5:10 p.m.: I'm amazed at how drunk my friend and his wife are—I haven't seen them drunk at the same time in quite some time ... if ever. Joe Buck is talking about how this could be a definitive drive for Rex Grossman when I realize what's coming up next. Sure enough, seeing the Berrian miracle catch is even sweeter when I can be the first to say that it counts. The friend who doubted my safety call asks if I knew that was coming and I say that it was the last play right before I got around the house.

5:12 p.m.: "There's still one more big play coming," I admit to that friend, right before seeing Vasher's pick. My friends are practically shitting themselves with excitement as they jump around the spacious room.

5:15 p.m.: Perhaps Cedric Benson's best run of the season is accentuated by the hop through would-be tacklers around the five-yard-line as the Bears cement their appearance in the Super Bowl. The Soldier Field crowd has never looked so alive as these playoffs, and my favorite sign is still the well-cut "XLI" in a sea of jumping fans.

5:40 p.m.: The nail was in the coffin long ago, but just to remind the team why he merits being rehired, Thomas Jones runs to the bottom of the television screen and then runs back up to the top of it before going into the endzone and finishing a 15-yard TD run.


And all this was before we continued getting drunk, watching the Colts go down 21-3, played a lot of Wii, and then watched Peyton Manning and Indianapolis fight its own way into the Super Bowl.

Friends: There are days ... and then there are days. And this will be one I shall not forget.

No Guts, No Glory

Usually I'd have picked up the latest copy of Entertainment Weekly, or something similar, and kept myself updated on the Oscar buzz. But perhaps the continuing streak of amazement that the Chicago Bears are still playing at this point in the season has made me less faggish—or something like that.

Nonetheless, I did pretty well last year at picking nominees (better than I did at picking winners, unfortunately, but at least I didn't gamble actual money last year), and with that said, my five to ten minutes of research has led me to believe that your ballot is going to read like this for the "Big Eight":

BEST PICTURE
Babel
The Departed
Dreamgirls
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

BEST DIRECTOR
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel
Martin Scorcese, The Departed
Bill Condon, Dreamgirls
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Paul Greengrass, United 93

BEST ACTOR
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole, Venus
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

BEST ACTRESS
Penelpoe Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Note on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Honsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Jack Nicholson, The Departed

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Adrianna Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Babel
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
United 93
Volver

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Departed
The Devil Wears Prada
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal
Thank You For Smoking

Is now a bad time to mention that United 93 is the only film I've seen of any that I just listed???

UPDATE: That's 32 out of 40 (although one incorrect pick was the right actor in the wrong film, but ...). Since this was another pretty easy year, that's a fairly weak showing in my mind—especially considering last year's track record.

But Dreamgirls getting the most nods and no Best Picture or Best Director nomination really will make things pretty interesting come ceremony time.

Fun While It Lasted

I was rather quiet around the pancake house regarding the newfound "holiday" job. But catch me on a bad day, and I was likely to murmur something.

So when one of the lifetime breakfast-shifters asked me about the other place, the roll of my eyes about the inquired differences must have been all she needed to hear before adding, "Night and day, huh?"

Then my Greek boss' mother must have come by complaining about me not using a tray or something before I replied, quite loudly, "Literally."

You be the judge:

STARTING TIME
DAY JOB: As soon as I wake up.
NIGHT JOB: As soon as I'm ready.

SMOKING POLICY
DAY JOB: Never.
NIGHT JOB: Whenever, and pretty much where ever I want.

TELEVISION PROGRAMMING
DAY JOB: Limited to family-friendly programming on local antenna programming (which immediately disqualified Maury Povich's two hours of paternity tests I like to round out my shift with, apparently).
NIGHT JOB: Bulls games, AMC movies ... hell, whatever we felt like watching.

EMPLOYEE MEAL POLICY
DAY JOB: A whole three dollars off ... everything. No more, no less. (And everything on the menu is at least three dollars ... unless you're anorexic.)
NIGHT JOB: Half off of anything you buy. (Except alcohol ... more on that later.)

BEHAVIORAL MANNER OF IMMEDIATE EMPLOYER
DAY JOB: Large Greek man in early-30s whom generally seems to have no desire to be working restaurant industry but enjoys the power of shouting at those under him what to do at certain points in the day. Since returning from the latest sales job I got duped in to and ultimately abandoned, he seems to realize how reliable I am at serving while granting that I'm incapable of arriving on time.
NIGHT JOB: Woman in her late-60s perhaps who must have inherited a fortune and sees fit to run it into the ground by taking over a formerly cheap sort of Italian fine dining establishment and trying to re-invent it in an already competitive atmosphere. We converse little, but since she spends her latter half of the day throwing back Beefeater's on the rocks before I arrive, she seems to sincerely appreciate me assistance on crossword puzzles.

BEHAVIORAL MANNER OF IMMEDIATE EMPLOYER'S ASSISTANTS
DAY JOB: The girl who makes our schedule also works six days a week. We generally get along, aside from the fact that she is a Packers fan.

My boss' nearly 60-year-old mother shows up almost six days a week just to roughly exercise her neurotic behavior by seating whomever she pleases, harassing me about whatever she pleases, and making the life of everybody (even, sometimes, the customer) a living hell.
NIGHT JOB: The dining room manager (or something like that) is a couple years younger than me and just recently proposed to his girlfriend on New Year's Eve, which puts him two wives ahead of me.

We also have my boss' boyfriend, who apparently sits at the bar the entire day, begins those crosswords we were talking about, drinks coffee, and then switches to Jim Beam around, well, the time I come in. Timing is everything.

ALCOHOL POLICY
DAY JOB: No liquor is served, although it's frequently mentioned that the place used to be a bar.
NIGHT JOB: A wide array of spirits and wines are available. And employees are entitled to one free post-shift drink—if the closing manager sees fit (which they typically do).

UNIFORMS
DAY JOB: Upon asking another server if using a purple pen made me look gay, she replied, "You're wearing an apron with an apple on it."

It's green, and it basically covers up whatever tie I'm wearing with my white dress shirts and black pants.

Oh, and I have a name tag with two smiley face stickers on it. Now ... does that make me look gay?
NIGHT JOB: Goodbye tie, name tag, and green apron; lose the button on the neck of the shirt and tie the knee-length black apron around your waist ... good to go.

CHECK AVERAGE
DAY JOB: $10 per person, at best.
NIGHT JOB: $20 per person, at least.

CLIENTELE
DAY JOB: Regular elderly diners or their immediate local suburban families.
NIGHT JOB: Curious faux posh-types of the local dining scene.

TIP AVERAGE
DAY JOB: 10-20%, or roughly a buck or two per person.
NIGHT JOB: Steadily around 20%, or roughly more than five bucks per person.

GUEST APPEARANCES
DAY JOB: Two of the boss' mom's grandkids, one of which is guaranteed to burst into tears moments after arrival.
NIGHT JOB: Two dogs, one of which was a black lab whose belly I often enjoyed scratching right before placing the same unwashed hand upon a loaf of bread about to be cut by myself for any cheaper patrons.

RATE OF SERVICE
DAY JOB: Steady on most days and hectic on weekends. Four-plus years in the same location brings people back.
NIGHT JOB: Slow as shit nearly every day. Less than two years in a new location has people asking when the old place closed.

MUSIC
DAY JOB: Most of the time, it's Sirius' Channel 2 which plays the same Dave Matthews song we've all heard seven-fucking-million times now and Lone Star's "Amazed," which never even deserved to be played once.
NIGHT JOB: Live jazz on the weekends and Frank Sinatra-type fanfare during the week.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS
DAY JOB: Truly old-school black-screen, green-type appearance on equally ancient monitors. We type in orders by numerical codes, as though we were performing confidential operations within our own kitchen. Using the series "5-2-3" (which equates to "SEE SERVER" bring printed) causes alarm and panic among cooks and expediters.
NIGHT JOB: Touch-screen system that allows us to swipe customers' credit cards at every terminal. Any special instructions can be typed in on-screen via a keyboard option, allowing us to verify such urgent requests as "AARON IS A GIANT HOMO."

"SPECIALS"
DAY JOB: On Wednesdays, senior citizens get ten percent off.
NIGHT JOB: On Wednesdays, we have karaoke night at 9:00 p.m. Oh, and the risotto changes daily.

The "new" co -workers warned me not to get excited after one of my bigger nights during the weekend. "Don't quit the day job," they told me, as though the extra money the party I'd had and added to my already automatic gratuity on the bill wasn't sign enough of my awesomeness.

Behold the call that came in last Thursday as I was on my way to the "night" job after the "day" was over. The chef's last day had been a few days prior, but there was already a replacement.

No matter.

The night place is now supposedly closed until the beginning of February. To many of the employees, shutting down came as no surprise. But still, not being given just a little head start to cover their asses and find work to, you know, pay their bills was a little insulting. Most, I assume had planned on leaving anyway.

And so as I spent my newly acquired free-Friday night out with one of the servers, and he mentioned places he'd be applying at before asking me where I would be looking, I simply sipped my drink, shook my head, took a drag off my smoke and said, "I'm not applying at any more restaurants."

And that was that.

Just a thought ...

My 2006 will end with a hellish series of double-shifts that will likely lead me to pursue adventures in which I almost certainly will drink heavily during the three days off I'll enjoy ringing in 2007. Ah, I do love New Year's.

I usually hate resolutions because they're almost certainly annually redundant and doomed to fail. I'm pretty sure I've listed quitting smoking at least half a dozen December 31sts—and I think this year was officially my mere decade anniversary of making people at Camel very rich.

I swore off making resolutions quite some time ago, but ... boy-oh-fucking-boy didn't they just start springing to mind this recent holiday season. Man, when you start a rare afternoon off by dedicating your afternoon to getting all of the water off the flooded basement floor before Dad gets home—and then Dad gets home after you dumped twenty or so buckets into the drain as evidence of your efforts only to watch Dad walk over to the drier south wall area, jiggle a plug, and then inform you that it appears the "suck pump" (Whatever the fucking hell that thing is ...) wasn't completely in the socket.

Oh ... well, fine then.

You feel stupid for spending three hours that could have been fixed in say, uh, fifteen minutes. Maybe ten.

Then you really feel stupid for looking at all the crap you've been leaving on the floor—again. "Didn't I swear to leave the sketchbook on the dresser from now on, you know, the last time this happened?"

I'd elaborate more if 2006 allowed it, but I've got shirts to iron. I now see why the second question of that interview—at this breakfast place nearly two years ago where my current boss nonchalantly asked, "Have you ever worked for Greeks?"—still strikes me with a certain "We warned you" sense of I having should known better.

So I'm compiling my list and wondering if there's more guilt in not fulfilling pointlessly declared resolutions than there is in just simply setting an enormous amount of basic achievements instead.

"I'll eat better."

"I'll get out more."

"I won't let a girl convince me to shave my chest again unless she's really going to make it worth the emotionally painful sense of self-embarrassment."

2006, I won't forget you. But 2007, I can hardly wait to get knowing you.

"It's cold outside."

Another great moment in ones soon to be ignored by Second Amendment-thumpers.

The Tie That Binds

One of the waitresses at work approached me with a smile on Friday, saying she had something for me. She has expressed a fondness for shopping at thrift stores in the past.

"It's an ugly boy's tie," she told me. (Ugly, of course, meaning the tie and not the boy, just to be clear.) It was adorned with black & white soccer balls and a gray background. At the bottom of the tie, one ball seems to be tearing through the netting of a goal, but it appears as though the ball has been shot through an electrical fence. I said my thank yous and promised to wear it the sometime soon.

Sure enough, on Saturday I decided to sport the tie since my own selection has been severely limited by timeliness (bats would be appropriate if this were still, say, October) or simply being lost (blue-checkered design that was a gift from an ex-girlfriend is mysteriously absent).

My boss' mother—as she typically does—comes up to me to review my uniform. Seeing as my apron is clean and my shirt is pressed, she has little to complain about. "I like your tie," she says. Ordinarily, this is the equivalent of a bad review.

Later in the day, a couple at a booth with another friend asks me "what I do." Not quite certain how to answer that question, I respond with something to the effect of "you're looking at it." For one reason or another, they state that I come across as somebody who works in banking, or "executive"-type work. Why they've drawn this conclusion is lost to me, but I catch a glimpse of my tie just above the top of my apron as I accept a business card they've handed me. No customer at the waffle house has ever given me a business card.

After running into another server from a different restaurant at the bar later, we're discussing the differences and similarities between our two establishments when he suddenly starts urging me to come in and apply where he works. I could do well there, he says. "I can see you come off very professionally," he tells me.

Again, I look down at my tie. I'm no longer wearing an apron, but usually I'd have lost the tie by that point too.

Fast-forward to Sunday when I opt for my sentimental favorite, a tie entitled "Busy, Busy Cars" that was drawn by a nine-year-old girl (I'm guessing on the age, but you get the idea ...). It's my Sunday tie, I suppose, and the day goes on with no comment about my wardrobe—except from the same waitress who'd supplied me with the soccer ball art adorned around my neck. She sarcastically gives me some shit about not wearing her tie again, and I promise I'll wear it in the hear future.

I'm in a hurry on Monday when I exit the shower, run downstairs, grab the neatest-looking shirt from the rack and the only tie I can find: soccer balls. We are exceptionally slow—so much so that the waitress in question and I have time to begin, but not finish successfully, two crossword puzzles. Later that evening, I trek downtown to meet with a former editor still working at the paper when he points out that I'm looking "sharp." Again, I can only assume it's because I haven't removed the tie. Sure enough, a barback standing near us tells me, "Nice tie."

And so while I'm mulling over searching out thrift stores for more conversation-starting neckwear, today I followed up on that fellow server's advice and applied at his restaurant. Because, hey, if you can't find one real job, you might as well take on two decent ones to compensate.

The application was about as basic and vague as they come, and the interview might as well have been:

1) "What's your name?"

and

2) "When can you start?"

The answer to that second question is tomorrow evening. And with the annual Christmas Walk coming through town this weekend, I'm guessing I just booked myself a rather hectic little week. Or couple of weeks. Or couple of months. But let's stop there.

"And what should I wear?" I asked the front-of-the-house manager interviewing me.

As is common among fine dining, it's a long-sleeve white dress shirt and black dress pants.

"No tie?" I asked.

Nope; open collar. Perhaps now I can test to see if my naked Adam's Apple reaps the same attention one shortly-debuted tie earned within a single weekend, but I've got my doubts.

Emphasis On The "P" In The Acronym "R.I.P."

There's nothing quite like Thanksgiving to end a pretty ugly week of racial tensions in the media. Besides the post below regarding numbskull Mark Fuhrman's comments adding to the latest sad attempt by "The Juice" to profit off his ex-wife's death, we also got treated to Kramer going slightly postal at a comedy club and then making us further uncomfortable by trying to explain how he's somehow not a racist on Letterman. Oh, and in a slower media week, maybe somebody might have been a little more upset about what the typically asinine Michael Irvin had to say about the ancestry of a certain white athlete in Dallas.

I was thinking how we might need Rodney King to come out and ask for us to all get along again, the way a motion picture director would when dealing with a cast of out-of-line celebrities.

And that's when I woke up this morning, picked up the paper, and saw that the man who built a reputation getting the best of his large ensemble casts had died.

Anybody who watched this past year's Academy Awards telecast would likely remember that one of the night's bigger surprises (besides the show being trumped up as a celebration of how "courageous" Hollywood is every year right before naming a faux controversial piece of cinematic swill like "Crash" Best Picture) was Robert Altman accepting an honorary award and revealing that he had undergone a heart transplant years earlier.

It was sometime around the mid-90s (1996, I believe) when I discovered that video cassettes of older pictures were available for free rental at the public library. And I went through most of the classics quite quickly before becoming so consumed with taking in all of the older fare I'd heard so often but had never actually viewed. On one occasion, I watched all three of the "Godfather" films in a single day.

I don't really tend to lean toward any particular director as a "favorite," partly because there's too many good ones to choose from and partly because nobody can have that kind of remarkable consistency—the greatest directors can let us down on occasion, not with a particularly bad film, just a disappointment.

But going over the obits for Mr. Altman today, I was struck by just how many very enjoyable films he had made. Ask me my list of favorite directors yesterday, and I might've likely forgotten to include him. But from "M.A.S.H." to "Nashville" to "Short Cuts," his work always stood out in the singular way that you imagine any great artist's would: Only he could have pulled that off.

Of course, 1992's "The Player" remains my favorite of his. But just to make sure I've seen the entire scope of his beautiful career, I did the only thing I could think to do today and went out to rent his final film, "A Prairie Home Companion." I'm not especially fond of Garrison Kiellor, but with Altman at the helm, I'll trust that perhaps one last movie of his might make me believe that we can all still get along.

UPDATE: Okay, career gone for Michael Richards.