Chicago -
By Patty Hunter
Oh, local Chicago pizzeria, how I loathe thee!
With thine poorly tipping guests
And ne’er enough of the most popular beers –
I have never met one that drove me so crazy.
Oh, local Chicago pizzeria, you surely kid!
Surely no busser would use Sprite in the place of table wipes –
But alas! ’tis true, for a guest phoned and complained.
How hast thee possibly stayed Zagat rated?
Posted on July 30, 2009
By Jerome Haller
As I walked toward my store on July 4, an acrid smell hit my nose. It was the smoke enveloping the area. Fireworks had produced the stench and haze. A mixture of sounds attacked my ears: fizzles, small pops, loud booms that set off car alarms. Apparently, the locals had decided to re-enact the Revolutionary War.
One weary cop walked in the store. “How’s it going out there?” I asked. “Every day is a joy,” he cracked. Another griped about manning the paddy wagon on one of the worst days of the year.
Posted on July 23, 2009
By J.J. Tindall
WHITE DREAM
Dreams come
in clouds, floating through
the blue
brain. There goes fame,
there fortune, there
beautiful
Posted on July 20, 2009
By Scott Gordon
Last of a series.
To get to breakfast in the Windjammer, I walk up one flight of stairs and turn a corner. As soon as I’m around the corner, the perky photographer from Day One’s dinner springs at me bearing a life preserver labeled “JUNEAU” and yaps out some eager photo-command. I laugh her off and walk past another photographer who’s working with a guy in an eagle suit. After you get through the morning’s small gauntlet of photo ops, and in fact any time you enter one of the ship’s restaurant spaces, you hit an appetizing wave of Purell scent. Two automatic Purell dispensers flank every doorway, and one attendant stands by them all day, gently urging people to sanitize their hands. Purell is fucking gross, but I want people to keep buying me drinks after the great flu pandemic, so I step up. The dispensers always give you a gratuitous blob of the stuff. I’ve developed a habit of just sticking one finger out into the sensor; the friendly Latin American lady who’s always tending the Windjammer entrance has come to enjoy watching me do this.
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I believe vacation is giving me too much time to think. My activity today, the “Glacier View Bike And Brew,” will at least bring some peaceful moments as our group cycles through Juneau to the Mendenhall Glacier viewing center. More blue ice, more dirt. In the van on the way to the bikes, I realize part of my group is the LBJ-Ken Lay Fan Club, as I have secretly named a group of three domesticated wisecrackers from Houston. The oldest one is in the “gas and oil” business; the other two are his son and son-in-law. The first question the in-law asks our bike-tour guide is, “What’ the average house price in Juneau?”
Posted on July 17, 2009
By Scott Gordon
Fourth in a five-part series.
Well, the mystery dinner theater was not as big a trainwreck as I expected, but did involve a “gypsy” fortune-teller and a cursed diamond whose previous owners included Richard Simmons, and some backhanded small-penis jokes, just to establish that it was an adult-oriented sort of deal. But did the staff keep the red wine coming? Did they ever. I was blasted before the main course even arrived. Often I’d wave off one server’s refill offer, saying, “Nope, I better slow down,” only to have another swoop in minutes later and crank me back up without even asking. The best part was everyone had a nice buzz on by the time we spotted a pod of whales spouting water from their blowholes off to the port side. Consequently, today I am hung over from the mystery dinner.
Posted on July 16, 2009
By Scott Gordon
Third of a five-part series.
My mom: “Some cultures don’t have a sense of personal space.”
Me: “Yeah, like cruise ship culture!”
The “luxury” cruise combines the corporate retail world’s idea of “customer service” with an insecure three-star restaurant’s notion of same to breed a helpful hydra, sprouting forced grins and goofy interactions that linger a bit too long. I truly feel bad for Royal Caribbean’s hump-busting staff, but if they get any further up my ass, I will begin charging them rent. In what other situation would a complete stranger be allowed to waltz up to our breakfast table and feed my little six-year-old brother a few forkfuls by hand? I get the feeling most crew members might be required to have some kind of gimmick or trick, or that at least these people are pretty damn smart in their pursuit of tips and enduring loyalty to RC. While my dad and I were shooting pool yesterday, a server came up to the table next to us, tray in hand, and kept on balancing the tray as he wowed his customers by making a tricky shot with only one hand on the stick. A bartender the other night pulled out a magic trick in which a penny vanishes, then reappears, under a rocks glass.
Posted on July 15, 2009
By Scott Gordon
The second of a five-part series.
This morning I’m sitting in the outside portion of the Windjammer dining area, next to the glass-walled corridor inside. To my left is a little fat kid, maybe 12 years old, sitting alone and reading a book. A man walks up to the glass on the inside, looks to where the kid is sitting, and begins tapping on the glass with a fat, hateful porky-finger. Having failed to summon his son the way one might summon a fish in an aquarium, he taps on the glass once more, makes eye contact with me, then points to his son. I ignore him and keep on reading my book. Sure, I like to help people out, but A) it’s your kid, and I’m on vacation, and; B) if you’re the kind of guy who tries to reach his kid by just plonking your finger on a pane of glass well out of your son’s hearing, then you’re probably a mean fat fuck, and I’d like to buy the poor kid another moment of fat-fuck-free solitude. Least I can do, don’t thank me, and stop breeding.
Posted on July 14, 2009
By Scott Gordon
The first of a five-part series.
This past June, I took my first real vacation in nearly three years. I joined my parents, sister, little brother, and grandmother to seal myself away from work and the laid-back comforts of home in a container called The Serenade Of The Seas. A pompously named vessel “Godmothered” by Whoopi Goldberg and operated by the Royal Caribbean International cruise line, the Serenade churned us through a week-long journey from the port of Vancouver up to a few beautiful spots in Alaska. Of course, before I took off on the cruise, all my friends told me I should bring along David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and compare notes with Wallace’s infamous account of mind-numbing quasi-luxury aboard a Celebrity Cruises ship in the Caribbean. I’d already read this and brought it along on the trip, but never once cracked it. Because once you step into the world of a cruise ship, not even such a monumental iceberg of bad PR can pierce through. People are dropping a lot of money to be there (thanks, family!), often with their family units in tow, generating a fixed mini-society with a weird balance of elderly couples and mid-40s parents with middle-school-aged kids.
The cruise industry probably never had to worry about how Wallace’s essay played with readers in general, because cruise-ship culture is not a culture in which objections can take root. Even while I noticed that little has changed – the cloyingly attentive service, the inescapable, almost surreal tackiness – it’s mostly not even about that. What follows is merely an attempt to record the stimuli I experienced each day, but ultimately these thoughts are separate from what’s important, which is that I benefited from a change of scenery and catching up a bit with my family. One way or another, the Serenade helped me do that, so I can’t exactly stay mad at it. Plus, Alaska and British Columbia are stunning. So, indeed, I had a good time, but I also had way too much time to think about what exactly a “vacation” is and what it reveals about the vacationer. Since I’ve got to obsess over something at all times, I banged out the following ship’s log of sorts.
Posted on July 13, 2009
By Patty Hunter
I’m not so sure I want to quit my job anymore. I still hate it, but where else does a world-famous rock group’s order get botched, a jerk of a has-been actor sit at one of my tables, and an aggrieved aged customer old fling food at me all in the same week?
Posted on July 8, 2009
By Jerome Haller
My lowly status as a security guard finally became very clear on a recent Tuesday night. A cleaning crew had starting waxing my store’s floor. That did not deter a customer from requesting a lighter. The man wore a black jacket and black pants. His right eye sported a red shade. The other had a bluish tint. His breath reeked of hard liquor.
I told him no one could not get to the lighters because of the wax job. He left, but returned 15 minutes later. I repeated my earlier message. He walked out of the store and called the cops on me. Three squad cars rolled up. I explained the situation to an officer, who simply nodded and left.
The idea that a bum could call the cops on me made two managers laugh at my expense.
Such is my life in the current economic downturn. While completing college years ago, I wrote a short story about a hapless security guard. One liberal arts degree and a layoff later, I am a hapless security guard. Or what my father once derisively called a “door shaker.”
Posted on July 7, 2009
