Home
The Higher Ground
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 2089
Monday, briefly sober and escaping myself, hidden behind a copy of "The Roadside Geology of Washington" (Summer approaches, I need to be prepared. For anything, anywhere...). And I find myself beside one of those annoyingly going-well first dates from Tinder or OK Cupid or POF.
He's pretty happy talking about himself. She's pretty happy listening, although she gets boring in the end and interrupts to talk about her own shit.
And reading and pretending to read and eavesdropping, and, fuck, really, I could do this a lot better, "CUT!", but it isn't my show...
Pussy Riot - CHAIKA
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Music
- Hits: 1933
{embed:youtube:VakUHHUSdf8}
I kinda like it. How could you not? Maybe they should do a version for Donald Trump...
Valentines 2016 - (2)
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2381
Finally, the last day of Valentines. The day itself.
It pans out pretty much as expected.
Around 8 tables don't show up or call to cancel. Standard. We get walk-ins, on a Sunday night (we never open Sundays), people who pretend not to know that it's Valentines or Sunday and argue the set menu pricing before finally walking out again. I don't give them good odds for getting lucky later...
And we get the walk-ins that pretend to have a reservation, they don't, or we can't find, but we find them room...
...And then they complain that they weren't informed of the set-menu pricing, argue, and I can believe one, that we didn't record the reservation, but 2, well, that's a stretch. If you booked for Valentines Day we told you. If you tried to book for Sunday we told you we're closed or - that it was Valentines Day - and there was a set menu. Bollocks to this, the bullshit people will try. One mistake, for sure we could have made it, but this combination of no-reservation, no-knowledge of Valentines Day Set Menu, well, it's bullshit. Fuck off.
They stay and eat, drink hot water and lemon, tip $5.00 on 4 courses and a $200.00 bill. Not surprising, but if they could have ordered off the menu they would have spent $50.00 and tipped $5.00...
The couples, what you would expect, if you knew hospitality, a few couples, happy, celebrating the occasion, in love, not your own quality of love, not what you'd want by a long shot, but they each have what they were looking for, they're happy, and you're happy too...
A few, not so happy, this formal acknowledgement, it's the chance to air grievances, make inappropriate disclosures...one couple, the last to come in, both well dressed, he, a swart, burly young man, around 30 or so, her, late twenties perhaps, taller, (than him), lithe, angular features, possibly a paid date (we've already had a few of those, there are always those this time of year...and paid, what, really, is the difference between the payment over an evening or the payments over a lifetime that so many of our regulars find so much more socially acceptable...?). But they're talking and it's obvious they know one another...She's attractive, for sure, in a generic sort of way, but the nephew, he's astonished that she's out with him, can't figure it out...
By the second of their 4 courses they're the only table left in the restaurant. It's 10 PM on a Sunday night, I've sent everyone but myself home, just me and T*** and his girlfriend, we're talking, and this table, dawdling over their soups and salads...
And she's divulging, in cautious increments, about how their shared friend X doesn't know that they're dating, because it's on a need to know basis, and ...
This I overhear, I'm not eavesdropping, but you hear things dropping off food, pouring wine, water...and he's in trouble...predictably the conversation - and their tempers - take a turn for the worse...
Been there, done that, he's in big trouble, heading for a fall...reminds you of all the chumps that propose on Valentine's, and get declined, and at first you think the girl must be a heartless bitch, but if he's so misunderstood the relationship that he's convinced she'll say yes, if he's sooo conventional that he thinks a restaurant crowded with strangers all up to the same mischief is the high-mark of romance, well, then, probably he deserves it...
I talk with T***, a good regular, although he always stays later than you'd like, and we catch up. Turns out he'd worked for J***, one of our respectable businessmen customers, and had saved his ass with a few sexual harassment lawsuits...always good to know...By the time the "table" finishes dessert it's 12:00, and the message she was trying to send, so discreetly, has been received, he pays for the food and first bottle of wine, she pays for the second, dutch of sorts, and she's hurrying to get into her jacket, she's been on dates every night this long, long weekend you suspect, and probably they've all worked out pretty much the same...
We hear later rumor of a complaint, someone calling and demanding to speak to "the owner" at 8:30 AM on Monday, he merely hung up, Valentines, it's the perfect chance for the dissociated individual to realize that something's missing, vaguely wonder at the lack of connection with their partner, and find fault, not with their relationship or lover, but with the restaurant, the pricing, the ambiance, the service...
Now, Valentines over, the last predictable shitshow, should be clear sailing to summer...
Most. Embarrassing. Ever.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 2043
A person I know, probably not my son...
1 Week. Spring Break. He's not having a good time. Home to visit family, friends, to Calgary, he's finding that he has less and less in common with everyone he once knew. Friends, they're boring and conservative. They go for drinks...
The clubs, he wants to hit HiFi on my recommendation, they're happy at the National. Chalk and Cheese. And, being outnumbered, he invariably capitulates, the nights grow long and without purpose. I understand, been out with those friends, but we have the bars we compromise on, The Ship and Anchor springs to mind...and failing compromise I'll just say "Fuck it, see you later". The National, on 10th, a good source of vacuously good looking bimbos and juice monkeys, I'll do it for an hour, tops, then we gotta find someplace a little more interesting, this isn't my scene, not by a long-shot...his rare nights out are wasted...
There's a Burlesque show at Arts Commons, U of C, the point of burlesque, adult humor, ribald, suggestive, naughty, sexy, fun, erotic, but it doesn't cross the line into pornography, imagine a more sophisticated striptease where the girls get to keep all of their dignity and some of their clothes and you have the idea...a civilized but rambunctious night out, I urge him to go, I'll pay, I can't or I would, I have to work (Always, always, but spring is coming and the plan is brewing...), He tries to persuade his friends to come, he'll pay, they don't want to, think it's perverted. He's irate beyond measure, wants only to get back to Victoria...
An excellent example of what he probably didn't miss:
{embed:youtube:BpQjks_ujwQ}
I completely get it. It's the old Thomas Wolfe - "You can't go home again...".
I'd given him a set of portable lockpicks for Xmas, hidden inside a bogus credit card, for emergency use, or practice, the thought, inspiration, that he might become a double nought spy...he got busted with them flying from Victoria here, interrogated, released, he's not flown with them since, decides he's going to practice. On with a pair of old handcuffs...
Nobody with a high-school education should find themselves in handcuffs for longer than 5 minutes. No child of mine, anyways, the quick release and then vengeance, but the gaps in my parenting are soon exposed....I'd never taught him how to pick handcuffs, you don't need lockpicks, they're for the barrel-tumbler locks, like doors and padlocks and such, for handcuffs a bent piece of wire, a paperclip would suffice, or slender aluminum shank, to slide between the ratchets...
Half an hour later the cuffs had grown so tight the circulation to his hands is cut off, they began to swell, turn purple, he drives himself to the police station. They can't help, their keys don't work, they're not amused. From here to the firehall, where the firemen eventually use bolt cutters to remove them.
If he'd of called me, I could have told him how, but then, being in that situation would not be the position to call me from. I get it. He tells the story without any sheepishness, he's resigned, knows exactly how it appears, I laugh, it's without a doubt the best story I've heard in a while...
For future reference. Practice picking handcuffs before putting them on. When you've mastered that, then put them on and pick them. When you've mastered that, practice picking them when they're on behind your back. And if you haven't mastered it, for god's sake, keep a set of keys handy...
There are a couple of morals here, one, if you find yourself in any way needing the assistance of the police or fire department things have probably gone very wrong for you. And two, maybe don't go to the police for help...they aren't generally of any reasonable assistance.
I try to reassure him, he's bright, I can understand this, we've all been in similar positions...
"Don't worry...(the daughter) will be the rocket scientist. You just work on being an actor...."
Page 690 of 1083