I've just given the boys some Bully St1cks (G00gle it if you don't know) because more than anything I need a few minutes of quiet. Last night was awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I didn't even start home until 5am.
I worked my ass off for several hours. I had forgotten how much it hurts to open hundreds of beer cans, and wound up having to put electrical tape on my can-popping finger to reinforce my nail. The customers were mostly nice, except for the guy who was already pissing us off at 9:30 (the doors opened at nine). We was a big, goofy, red-necky guy in a button down shirt, camouflage pants, and checkered vans. Strange. Loud. We all tried nicely to get him to back off and slow down a bit. He was in our faces, as well as the faces of any and all customers who happened up to the bar when he was near (which was often, because he was a thirsty boy). I finally decided to cut him off because I didn't want him running all the other people off and sending them to the other bar. So when he came up and ordered, five shots of Jagerm3ister, I smiled sweetly and shook my head.

"What?"
"Nope. Can't do it. Sorry."
"You want one?"
"No."
"Okay, make it six then."
"Not gonna happen."
"Seven?"
I shook my head. He leaned forward and looked at me blearily, clearly unable to do the math.
"Why?"
"Look, you're putting me in a difficult position here. If I give you these shots, you're going to pound them all, pass out or get thrown out, and miss the show. And then you're going to be really pissed off."
"We got tickets to tomorrow night."
"Not gonna happen. Seriously."

I didn't see him for the rest of the night. I suspect he went over to the other bar and pissed them off and got thrown out. What a douche.
The show was glorious, the money was great, and I got to catch up with the Centro-matic guys later. I wonder how often we will see them once we move. Anyway, good times were had by all, I was far too chatty for my own good, and I wound up leaving the club at five am, having smoked far too many cigarettes and knowing full well that i would be paying for it the next day.

Customer of the Night #291

There is a wall of people at the bar. Girls are waving their money in our faces ("That only works for strippers," I explain gently. I'll get to you when I can."). Guys are standing on the foot rail and leaning all the way over to our side. People keep coming in. When I ask the girl what she wants, she rattles off three drinks, and then tells me the name on the tab.
"Just gimme a minute," I say as politely as I can. "I'll get the tab name after I get the drinks. There's only so much I can remember."

Only so much because I have not worked like this for months. Also because I have already put in eight hours at my other job today, and after walking the dogs and scarfing a sandwich, ran down here as fast as I could. That was three hours ago.

"Okay!" she says, in a way that suggests that she understands. And then she proceeds to repeat her order, while I'm already halfway through making it, and then she adds on another drink. I stop and look at her.
"Just wait a minute, okay? I can only remember so much. Now- that was a gin and tonic-"
"I know, I know baby girl. You guys are working so hard back there. Listen, I need a job."
"A gin and tonic, a vodka water with lime, and a Bud Li-"
"-A vodka water, a gin and tonic, and a Bud L1ght, and a bourbon and coke. With well. Who do I talk to about a job? I really want to work here. This place looks awesome. My name is K-"
At this point she reaches out her hand to shake mine. Mine is full of glasses filled with ice, waiting for drinks that I can't remember because she is exhausting and she is only one in a couple hundred and I am tired and I just. Can't Think.
"Listen. You are not helping. You are not helping me get your drinks, or their drinks - I gesture, with hands full of glasses full of ice, at the other people who are also waiting for this girl to just shut the fuck up and get on with it - and I am not going to remember your name, or your face, but I will remember how much you obviously don't get it. Call the owner on Monday about the job. And please stop talking until I make eye contact with you again. That's when I'm ready for you to tell me the name on your tab, okay?"
I say all of this with complete calm, a sense of humor, even. I am making a smile with my mouth. I am not angry, and I am not yelling. I do not feel a sense of anything but total and complete over-it-ness.

The girl is completely unfazed. I hand her the drinks, get the name on the tab, and I can still hear her talking to me as I take the next person's order.

The sad thing is she will probably get hired.

Customer of the Night #21: Angry Drunken Mumbler

Friday night was so busy that I hardly had time to pay any attention to anything, much less bother to get pissed off. For the most part people were really drunk, but polite enough, and everything was going smoothly. It was busy enough that we had three bartenders, with a barback that was also slinging a drink here and there. So this guy that I haven't seen all night comes up and I go over and ask
"What can I do for you?"
"Grlmphclosemlghtabgrlmmph," he replied, making a swirlie motion in the air with his hand.
"Close your tab?" I responded. I am fluent in Drunkanese. "Okay, what's your last name?"
"Grlgggrmmph."
"Great. I'll be right back with that."

I retrieved his card, ran it through the credit card machine, and stopped to find a pen, at which point I ran into T, who seemed a bit testy. Apparently his night was not going quite as smoothly. We exchanged a quick couple of words, and as I was turning back to the Drunk Mumbly Guy, he looked blearily in the general direction of my left ear and demanded to know where his drink was.
"You didn't order a drink. You asked me to close your tab."
"Mmmglph... bullshit...drink mmmglph."
"No, you didn't ask for a drink, and you obviously don't need one, because you are totally wasted, so please sign your tab."
He flipped me off, and before I could say another word T was in front of me, pointing in the guy's face and telling him to "sign his shit and get the fuck out."
The guy continued to protest, and T poked him hard in the side of the head. I knew what he was doing, and I found it a bit unnecessary.
"I've got it," I told him. I was wrong. There followed much repetition, me trying to get him to sign his credit card slip and him being drunk and stupid, until finally i went over to my boss.
"I don't have time for this shit, can you please handle it?"
N, the other bartender, who is bigger than T or me, went around and escorted the guy to my boss, who was waiting with his card and the slip.
In the end, the Mumbler was escorted from the building by his throat to the sidewalk, but he tipped us so that was okay. Idiot.

I woke this morning to a thud, and when I sat up I found Wyatt, dazed and I daresay a little embarrassed, shaking out the cobwebs on the floor next to the bed. It was early, and though I had sworn to sleep until at least eleven, I was already wide awake, so I stumbled downstairs for some coffee.

Last night I bartended a wedding for some douchey former frat kid types. It's funny how they can get older (and look even older than they are, thanks to the fake tanning and whatnot) and never change. By "funny", I of course mean pathetic and gross. There were two girls there who were so plastic and terrifying that I couldn't stop staring at them. The Blonde One was bitchy and never made eye contact with me no matter what. The other two bartenders were guys, you see, so she had no use for me. She and her Hooker-like Friend both bought a round of shots from FB, and they bought one for him and "the other guy bartender" as well. But not for me. Not that I wanted one, mind you, but that is a really shitty thing to do. I think she was pissed off because my tits were nicer than hers and I didn't have to buy them. Her Hooker-like Friend was brunette, scarily tan, and wearing a skimpy white top with no bra (to a wedding- very classy) and short shorts. She kept standing with her chest puffed out like a rooster - also very classy - and one hand on her hip. They were loud in an attention-seeking way, and nobody at the wedding liked them except the two guys they were with. I think it is possible that they were both hookers. If so, I hope they weren't expensive.
There was another chick who was also incredibly bitchy to me. She was actually attractive, dark-haired and with a sense of style that wasn't as cookie cutter as everyone else in the room, but her attitude pretty much ruined it. After the second time she barked an order at me I stopped asking what she wanted and started opening her shitty domestic beer and shoving it at her when I saw her coming.
I swear to the gods, despite the snarky nature of these missives, I am actually a very nice person behind the bar. After all, it doesn't behoove me to start off an evening acting put out that people expect me to wait on them. I actually enjoy my job quite a bit, and my philosophy as a bartender has always been to treat people like they are my guests. The problem comes when your party gets crashed by assholes. When that happens, I can't help but respond. Luckily my boss had warned me in advance that these were "Horrible people," so I was ready. My expectations were low and my tolerance was high.
There was a couple there with two children. The woman was pretty in a soccer mom way, blonde and yuppie, with a balding blonde husband and two Hitler Youth kids that kept being fed soda after sugary caffeinated soda. They got more hyper and more annoying, and their parents got madder and more reactionary. Made me want to kill them all. The guy had a one word vocabulary: "Guinness." This was grunted at each of us bartenders in turn, without a please, a thank you, or an acknowledgment that we were, in fact, people. I started saying "You're welcome very loudly each time I set a drink in front of him. It didn't have any effect. To those people we aren't people, after all, we're The Help. Well, The Help was getting paid by the Father Of The Bride, one of maybe two nice people in the whole room, and The Help had a guarantee, so The Help kept their heads down, smiled and laughed and joked with TFOTB, and put as many drinks as possible across the bar. I poured the well drinks STOUT, dreaming of the wretched morning that would follow for those people and their toilets.
The band was horrible, too. They played some old Motown songs and what would have been cool soul numbers, but they were so white that everything sounded like J1mmy Fucking Buffett. It was horrible. At least they were nice, though. At one point I served one of them a beer, and I said

"You must be in the band."

"Because of my shirt?"

"No. Because you actually said 'please'."

He looked horrified, then pulled out his wallet and stuffed a few dollars in the empty tip jar.

When all was said and done I made an assload of money for not very much work. And, unlike those people, I didn't have to wake up and be-well, one of them.


Finally finished Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. Fucking brilliant. Have started The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon. I'm also due to pick up a book from the b.h.'s mom tomorrow. I started reading it when we bought it for her, then gave it to her, and now I need to borrow it back and finish it before his sister leaves town on the 12th, so she can read it on the plane going home. So I haven't been very good at reading this month, but I'm starting to get better. My hours at the BS2 are about to get cut for the season, so I suspect that I'll start tearing through books again.

Customer of the Night #540: B.Y.O.B. Guy

I was busy. It was crowded. I was pouring a Jack and C0ke for a customer when I looked up and saw two guys squaring off about fifteen feet away from the bar. The started pushing and swinging at each other, and just as I was looking around for a door guy and getting ready to rush in, I realized that they were joking. These two guys had obviously just come in, but they were already drunk. Great.

Next thing I know, the taller of the two is pulling a can of M1ller L1te out of his pocket. Just as he starts to hand it to the other guy, I spray him with water from the soda gun. He wheels around and looks at me.

"You can't bring your own beer to a fucking bar, you douchebag!" I said, re-holstering the gun.

"Did you just spray me?"

"Yeah. Put that fucking beer back in your pocket."

They approached the bar, his hand attempting to cover the (beer) bulge in the pocket of his khakis.

"Did you just SPRAY me?" he asked, more loudly.

"Yeah. If you want a drink, you have to buy it."

"Well now it's an eye for an eye." He was reaching into his pocket.

"Motherfucker, I will throw your ass to the fucking curb if you take that out of your fucking pocket again."

They conferred with each other for a moment and then he pulled out his wallet.

"We'll have two R0lling R0cks."

I reached into the cooler, produced the beers, and opened them. As I set them on the bar, I smiled and asked "Can I get you anything else, sweetie?"

If only retail were this easy.

Crash

Apparently this is the week where I get all that irony that's been lacking in my diet. Last night, some asshole who had done laps in patchouli before coming downtown was wearing a "No Bio-Terror Lab" sticker.
One of the bands that played brought a big box of individually wrapped candies and left it on their merch table, so I ate around eight or ten Bit-O-Honeys in addition to my usual couple of beers. At the end of the night I felt like my teeth were wearing individual sweaters. I have a weird thing about sweets. I am totally picky about chocolate. I never eat any generic,foil-wrapped, holiday-shaped anything. I don't really like Nestle chocolate at all, though Butterfinger remains one of the best things ever created, in my opinion. I like Hershey's just fine, although any more I don't care for milk chocolate at all. And I can take or leave (though I almost always leave) Dove and Cadbury. I am a huge fan of both Lindt and Green and Black's, even though they tend to be a bit pricey. I would rather have a very small amount of very good chocolate than a whole mountain of the cheap stuff.
It's the same with cakes, cookies and pastries. I am rarely tempted by grocery store sheet cake, boxed brownies or packaged and chemical laden cookies.
But man, when it comes to Willy Wonka and his ilk, I can't seem to get enough. Smarties, Sweet Tarts, candy necklaces, Wacky Wafers, Laffy Taffy- you name it, I'll eat it. And last night I ate every Bit-O-Honey in that box. The other bartender, my good friend J, had also raided the box. At the end of the night, while we were breaking down the bar, he was walking toward me when he stumbled a little and stopped, looking like he might fall over.

"Are you okay?" I asked him. I knew he couldn't possible be drunk.

"I think I'm crashing from all that sugar."

Man, how do we survive this rock and roll lifestyle?

The Fly's the Limit.

So it seems that 0kkervil River is touring with Neko C@se as well as the New P0rnogr@phers. And they're coming to The fucking theater. Awesome. I've been meaning to check out Neko Case forever and ever. I am embarrassed to say that I am only now doing so. And I love it. Ah well, better late than never. We have forty gigs worth of stuff on the iP0d, so it's not like I'm totally sheltered. Now, off to see what TNP is all about.

And now for some random silly shit that probably only bartenders will find funny. You know how people (kids, mostly) have a habit of totally fucking up drink names because they don't really know what they're ordering? My old favorites were the "Amarillo Sour" (rather than the Amaretto Sour, which is as it sounds: Amaretto and sour mix) and the "Mattress" (which should be Madras, made with vodka, cranberry, and orange juice). My new faves are "Umbrella Sour" and "Stellar" (Which is supposed to be "Stella"- as in Stella Artois, which is WRITTEN ON THE BOTTLE. That guy only had to repeat himself three or four times before I figured out what the hell he was saying.
Yep, the fun never ends.

So there was this band what played the other night. They were young, they were dumb, and they were not good. This is not unusual, honestly, so I didn't think much of it until they started being kind of shitty to the sound guy. Not knowing what the fuck you are talking about is excusable until you start getting shitty with the guy who does know, who is only trying to help your shitty band sound better. So they were on stage soundchecking, and one of them would ask a question, and as the sound guy was trying to answer, the Douchebag Guitar Player would start noodling around on his guitar, thereby making it impossible for anyone to hear the answer to the question. He did this repeatedly. The SG was patient. The DGP was adamant that he have what he wanted, and at the same time making it more difficult for the SG to help him get it right.
When the band finally started, the GP was acting like a sullen little brat. He was wearing a white polo shirt and boat shoes, and I swear if he had just popped his collar up he could have been the James Spader character in any teenage 80's movie. (This begs the question: Do frat boys even realize that That Guy in those movies is the character that nobody likes? And if so, why would you want to look like That Guy?) Anyway, he started posing and preening while his girlfriend was taking pictures. Then he was really acting like he was bored because, you know, he is such a good guitar player that the shit was so easy. And then he did something so hilarious that I almost fell out behind the bar. He pulled it up and started playing it behind his head. I felt so sorry for the other guys in his band...
And then I realized that his fly was wide open.


Fuck, The New P0rn0graphers sound great, too. I'll have to make sure I get tickets to that show.

Why?

Why, in a bar, directly in front of the bartender who just gave you the drink you ordered, would you possibly reach into the fruit tray and get your own goddamned lime? Why, after your friend just did the same thing a minute ago, and the bartender ran all the way down the bar, gesticulating wildly, and telling you that it was extremely bad form, and that in the future you should simply ask for the lime, and she would be happy to get it for you? Why would a person do that?!

For fuck's sake, it's like putting your mouth around the whole bowl.

Customer of the Night #412

This one is pretty common, actually, and would hardly land her in a blog post if I had had any trouble or anything interesting to say about work this week. But I didn't, so I'm using it. This may not make sense to non-bar types, but trust me when I tell you that it drives us all crazy, and it happens all the time.

My first customer of the night. Youngish woman, maybe twenty-five, walks up to the bar. She has obviously already been drinking, but is not wasted. She has a somewhat goofy grin on her face.
Me: Hi- what can I get for you?

Her: I want a Jag- I want a STRONG Jager bomb.

Me: Okay.

I pour the shot. And, because she made a point of telling me she wanted it strong, I actually measured exactly one shot of Jager into the glass. Usually I free pour, and there is a much better chance that you will get more liquor on a free pour, but since she was obviously expecting something "extra" for free, I was making absolutely sure that she was getting exactly one and a half ounces. This sounds passive-aggressive, I know, but this kind of request is totally stupid, and as I said, it happens all the time. (You want me to steal form my boss so you can get drunk on less money? And we've never met? Sure! I'll get right on that!)
So I bring her the drink, set it in front of her, and reach for the money she is handing me. As I grasp her money in my hand, she jerks it back and says

"Wait- is it strong?"

And rather than drinking it myself (eew) and telling her to go fuck herself (which any bartender will tell you that I would have been totally justified in doing), I smiled politely and said
"I guarantee you that there is a whole shot of Jager in there."

Idiot.

You're Kidding, Right?

Note to a former Athens resident with an already questionable reputation who visited my bar last night:
When you open a tab with a useless credit card, get drunk, and make a run for the door when we ask you to pay up, coming in the next day with a resume' is probably pointless.


Nope, I'm not kidding.

Happy I'm Not Eating Any Turkey Day, Everybody.

Every once in awhile, I like going out alone, sitting at a bar, and observing other people's bar lives. They are pretty much the same, but occasionally I am able to make an observation that I might have missed had I been otherwise occupied- you know, working.
So last night I stopped for a beer at a bar where one of my friends works. He had a small group of guys sitting at a table in the corner. They kept coming up, one at a time, every few minutes, and ordering rounds of shots. It was obviously a group of old friends who had come back into town for the holiday, and they were doing that thing that guys do where they buy round after round, proving how manly they are by showing how much they can drink. The trick is that none of them wants to be the guy who decides he's had enough, so they keep going long after a thinking person would. This was a particularly hilarious group because with each round, their requests became sillier and more girly (i.e.- they had more than four ingredients and a name that most men would be embarrassed to ask for). They did oatmeal cookies, fruity motherfuckers, and any number of shooters that can be described as "fruity but strong, and make it taste good."

My bartender buddy's wife was there, and after she had had a few she started making fun of them. Loudly. I remarked after listening to a laundry list of ingredients that they wanted in one round (there were like seven, and he only wanted four shots, which is just stupid):
"What do you call that, T - a Sandy Vagina?"

When she and I had gone to the restroom at the same time, one of the guys remarked to my bartender friend that "Those two lesbians are making fun of us for what we're drinking."

"Oh, you mean my wife and my friend's wife? Yeah, they're smart asses."

You could hear the other guy slap his forehead from across the room.

Half an hour later, when all the schnapps, flavored rum and pineapple juice started seeping into their collective bloodstream, I heard one of them outside getting loud and angry, and when I looked out he was on his feet, waving his finger in his friend's face.

"I WILL FUCK YOU IN THE ASS!!" he screamed.

It made me remember that old joke:

Why didn't Hitler drink tequila? Because it made him mean.

There's an updated version of that joke in here somewhere, but I don't know what it is.

The Other Asshole; or Customer of the Night # 553

They say that a fool and his money are soon parted, but what they don't tell you is that an asshole and his money don't even get to say goodbye. This Guy (who was That Guy on this particular night) was dressed better than anybody else in the room, better than anybody at a football game ought to be, and every fifteen minutes or so I thought I had figured out who he was with. Except that he was apparently with everybody who would come within earshot, and he kept pulling out giant wads of cash and sidling up to especially young women at the bar and trying to buy them drinks. He wasn't that drunk at first, so I served him several rounds, but eventually I started motioning to whomever his latest victim was that he was cut off. This did not stop him from close talking every guy and inappropriately hitting on every girl (he was probably in his late thirties and was, frankly, in the wrong bar if he was looking for a date that night) in sight. Finally a group of girls got tired of him and, after he dropped fifty bucks on the bar to buy them a round of shots and turned his back, decided to spend it all. I didn't care, and obviously That Guy didn't either. They gave me a huge tip (from their own money) and ran away as soon as they could. This happened several times during the night: That Guy puts down money, latest victim gets drink, That Guy and victim do the shot, change gets left on the bar, and That Guy disappears to find another victim. It really did make up for the other folks that weren't tipping very well (see previous post).
I didn't want to kick That Guy out because he was mostly harmless but very drunk, and I thought it would be more of a hassle than necessary for our door staff, who had their hands full as it was. In the end, though, I had to. He came up at around one thirty and ordered a shot from the other bartender. I was busy at the other end of the bar and before I could get the other bartender's attention to tell him that I had cut That Guy off, he had already poured one. That Guy drank it, the other bartender walked away, and about ten or twenty seconds later, as I walked past That Guy, he spit his shot back out on the bar. I asked the door guys to remove him gently and they did. When I stepped outside at two to get a breath of fresh air before cleaning, I saw That Guy and the Blonde Douchebag. They were talking so close to each other's faces that I thought they were about to fight. No such luck. They were just so drunk they didn't realize how close they were to making out.

In other news, the b.h. found an excellent new blog. The link to Hot Knives (featuring two vegetarian line cooks from L.A.) is over there on your left. Check it out. The Grilled Cheese post from April 2006 was particularly amusing.

Customer of the Night: Blonde Douchebag.

Friday, guy with buzzed hair and a button-down shirt. He was already there when I came in, but he was sober and polite, and he knew what he wanted and had a tab (which is faster because I just make the drink and bring it to him and mark the tab, as opposed to taking his order, making the drink, bringing it over, taking money, making change, etc.) so on several occasions I skipped over other people to get him. After about two hours of this, while we were still totally slammed, he asked to close his tab. I brought it over and after giving him his credit card and his tab, I proceeded to take the order from the guy next to him. While I was making that drink, I overheard the Blonde Douchebag telling his friend that he wasn't going to tip. I thought that I must have misheard him, because up to this point we had had been getting along just fine.
After finishing up with the other customer, I went to retrieve Blonde Douchebag's credit card slip. Thirty-eight dollars, no tip.
Before I go any further I would like to explain that thirty eight dollars in the bar where I work represents a lot of drinks. This is a college town, beers are two bucks, and even if you tip twenty percent (which people often don't), you're talking about less than eight bucks on nineteen beers (or four beers and eight drinks, or whatever). Any way you cut it, it's not great, and not tipping at all is total bullshit, especially when i have busted my ass and provided you with excellent service.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" I yelled at the back of Blonde Douchebag as he made his way to the front of the stage.
He didn't turn around. I went around the bar, walked up to him in front of all of his friends, tapped him on the shoulder, and said very loudly, but not angrily
"Did I do something to upset you?"
"What? No. Why? What-" replied Blonde Douchebag.
"Are you sure? I mean, you got everything you wanted, in a timely fashion, and everything?"
He nodded at me stupidly.
"Really? Because you left me no tip at all on a thirty-eight dollar tab, so I assumed you must be pissed about something."
"No. You're a great bartender. You were great. Really."
"Well, I'll be sure and tell my fucking landlord you said so."

As I walked away i heard his girlfriend bitching him out. A few minutes later a couple of his friends came up and apologized and threw a few dollars into the tip jar.
They all left.

An hour later, I look up and Blonde Douchebag is back. I am in the process of pouring three drinks, and he is standing three feet away from me yelling "Ma'am! Ma'am!" at the side of my head. I looked up and calmly said "You're going to have to wait."

I didn't wait on him. I didn't look at him again, until several minutes later when he put his hand out and told me he was sorry for not tipping me earlier. I didn't take his hand, but looked down at it and then back up at him with dead eyes.
"I'm glad that you're sorry."
He looked angry, like he was about to start a fight with me over it.
"I'm trying to tell you I'm sorry-"
"And I heard you. And I'm glad you apologized."
After we closed I saw him outside with the other biggest asshole in the room. More on that guy later.

Customer of the Night # 888: The Jackass

It's busy(ish). There is a band playing. Everyone is talking, there is a very loud ice machine just over my shoulder, and yet somehow I can still here this Jackass all the way at the other end of the bar. I thank the person I'm waiting on, shut the cash register, and go see what's going on. The other bartender has obviously had it with the guy. She turns as I'm approaching and asks if I know The Jackass. I do not. I have seen him before a lot, though, and he has never been a problem. What's the trouble? She rolls her eyes and before she can answer he yells something else that I can't hear. I turn to him.
"What's the problem?"
"You guys don't even have real Goldschl@ger in this fucking place."
"Yeah I know, we used to but..."
"Then it shouldn't be four bucks!!!!" he yelled.
"Yeah, I'm sorry, we used to have the real stuff, but this is pretty much the same thing."

Ah this point, The Jackass utters the fatal sentence:

"I'm a bartender"

followed by

"And I know what this shit fucking costs. If you're not going to have the real shit then it's three dollars."

I proceed to explain to him that the price in HIS bar might be three bucks, but in OUR bar it is four. We don't have any shots that are three bucks, just as we do not have two-for-ones, "Ladies' Night", or all you can drink specials. Politely, mind you. He continues to bitch. And I explain to him that no one can tell the difference except possibly for him (a connoiseur, obviously), and that no, we won't be ordering "the real stuff" because we simply don't sell much of it. During this discussion he got surlier and surlier, and when I reminded him that we sort of knew each other because I always wait on him when he comes to see this band (once every six weeks for the whole year), he didn't seem to care. He insisted that we needed to have "the real stuff" and that as a bartender he made sure his customers were happy. At which point, I told him (in what was probably not a very convincing tone) that I was sorry that he was not happy, and then I turned my back on him and walked away.
Less than thirty minutes later, I saw The Jackass out near what one might describe as a "pit" in front of the stage. A bunch of young guys were jumping up and down and pushing each other around, but not aggressively- they were just blowing off steam and enjoying the band. The Jackass was standing just close enough that he would get bumped into once in awhile, but he had plenty of room to back up and remain outside the fray if he so chose. Instead, he waited until the smallest, skinniest guy in the pit bumped into him, and then he threw the guy to the ground as hard as he could. The guy just looked at The Jackass, stood up, and moved on. The Jackass was even more angry now, as he was clearly hoping to have a good reason to beat up a guy half his size. Nothing doing.
Later The Jackass came to close his tab. I shoved it in front of him without a word, he signed it, left a decent tip, and went away. I thought he was leaving. No such luck.
At the very end of the night, I noticed that there was a credit card with the name of The Jackass on it back behind the bar.

"Ooh, did he drop this?" I asked the other bartender, a little gleefully, imagining his panic when he realized it was gone and the conversation I would get to have with him when he returned to pick it up, sober, the next day.

"No, he opened another tab."

Shit.

Next thing I know, I am re-stocking beer with my back to the bar and a very loud shouting match starts right behind me. I turn around and see The Jackass, with a door guy in front of him pushing him toward the door, screaming at one of the guys in the band (his "friend")

"Be a man!! Be a man!!"

The band guy, whom I have always gotten along with but whom I also have a healthy fear of, as there is a little bit of crazy just behind his eyes, is screaming

"You need to learn to keep your mouth shut! Shut your fucking mouth!"

The band member is being held back very gently by a sweet and very drunk co-worker of mine, who also happens to be the Biggest Guy In The Room. Co-worker was not working, and to this day has no recollection of the incident, but he was patting the band guy on the back and saying "Shhhhh..." very quietly while pushing him out the back door. It worked.

The door guy who was escorting The Jackass out the front door said very loudly
"Dude, I am not asking. It's time to go." After a couple minutes of this, the door guy finally shoved him as far as the door and The Jackass was gone.

I wished like hell that somebody would beat The Jackass up, but not in the bar. I found out the next day from one of the other band guys that The Jackass got into a fight at a gas station after they left, because the person behind the counter would not sell him a hot dog that wasn't cooked yet.
I suggested to the Band Guy that The Jackass may want to avoid coc@ine in the future. He was clearly not just drunk on that particular night. Oh, and did I mention he was in costume? Dressed up like a cop.
Yep, can't wait to see him again.

Perspective.

Greetings from SEC Conference Hell. We have now survived two home games and I would really like it to be over. Here is a short list of things that have happened since I was last here:

1. Our phone line got cut again.
2. They fixed the phone line and then the internet went out.
3. They told us the internet connection would be fixed in two days.
4. The b.h. had a birthday, and I gave him a super-fly new Ipod. 80 gigs of lusciousness.
5. Three days went by and no internet. They told us that our modem was broken and we would have to order a new one. If we signed a contract with them, they would replace t for free. We signed. They put it in the mail.
6. Went back to see our friend again at the jail. Found out that his car is still in impound, and it costs per day for storage.
7. Went to Guy at Counter Number One (remember him? We like him.) at the jail and found out how to get information on the car.
8. Called the tow guy. Got Friend to sign paper giving me rights to car. Went (with K, thank god) to get car.
9. Paid friend's rent, went to his apartment, got fleas on us.
10. UPS can't find our house. We have to go pick modem up. We do. It doesn't work.
11. First game day. Girl who looks like (very attractive) stripper grinds against guy at the bar around midnight. He looks a little embarrassed, but doesn't complain. I advise him to get home while the getting is good. He laughs and tips me well.
12. We have yet another moth infestation. I still don't want to fog the house, because we have four dogs to think of.
13. Our air conditioner breaks. Daytime temperatures are still averaging in the mid-to-upper nineties.
14. Game day, part two. Mostly uneventful, but for the raw sewage that was coming up through the floor behind the bar. Luckily, I wasn't at work yet.
15. The b.h. spends another two hours on the phone with a computer tech in India, and finally our internet is working.
16. Somebody knocked our mailbox off. I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but it was rather a bummer. I had to go to fucking W@l-Mart tonight, because it was the only place open after it happened. Booooo.

Also of note, we have started watching the Showtime show called Dexter. A serial killer who stalks serial killers. Interesting and well executed (no pun intended). Starring the guy who played the gay brother on Six F33t Under. Love him.
Got to see A.J. for a minute. He was in town for a few days. It was nice to see him, but as always, I didn't really have much time to hang out. Saw the Dictatortots on Thursday night. That was pretty cool. J. Roddy Walston & the Business are playing this Friday night. Really looking forward to that. ANyway, i have lots of other people's blogs to catch up on now. Hopefully I will have the energy and inspiration to write about some of this stuff more in depth.
Oh yes- Happy belated Birthday, Z! Your CD is on the way this week. Promise.