Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Undertechnologized

So this weekend was one of the worst working months of my entire lengthy storied* career in the bar/restaurant sector of the service industry. Friday started innocently enough after a nice lunch and a lobster nap and a rolling-in-early for a change. Everything was simpatico, all greasy wheels and whale-snot slick, and there was even an early finish for This Guy. In bed by midnight and blissful slumber soon after with the help of some Mogwai. But roundabout two-thirty in the HEY!-M the kids roll in with heavy buzzes in tow, shouting my name from the foot of the stairs. This has become a trademark move in our humble household, one to which I am not averse. Especially when awakened from said blissful slumber by the pressing weight of female bodies and carefully placed neck and ear smooches. Makes getting up for bored games more than tolerable. So there were Apples and there were Apples and then there was even blissier slumber, and I roll out Saturday morning feeling peachykeen and ready to rock the heavy crowds.

I should have known something was wrong when I'm sitting at the T-stop and my pocket starts buzzing. Never a good sign, especially just before a workday. There are three people on the planet who might call me at 11 AM on a Saturday, and none of it's usually good news. My place of bidness is the last of the three, if first in frequency. I ignore the ring without an ID-check because Hey, I'm on time and enjoying my book even in the frigid temps** and whatever they're gonna tell me can surely be rectified after the thirty minutes it'll take me to get to the Square. So I keep reading and the train comes and shuttles me quickly (for a change) and with expedience toward my destination across a frozen Charles through tunnel over track and I get off and walk out and down the street and then I see the fire trucks.

Five within two blocks, and I'm thinking What's the rumpus? Kess-kuh-say the hubbub, bub? as I'm walking upstairs and I open the door and am greeted by the sight of a dehumidifier the size of a Samoan dwarf working in our tiny office and high-output fans about the floor of the main room and a soggy splosh announcing every step I take. I'm greeted by our owner, fresh off a flight from Delhi, and our GM and they've been there since like two AM--awakened even earlier and powers-of-ten more rudely than I had been--and it seems our faulty little building in New England hasn't the heat it takes to keep the pipes from freezing when it's colder than a welldigger's ass. The sprinkler line, you see, had frozen and burst and showered ironically unfrozen water upon all that we hold sacred in our cozy little establishment. The bills were wet and the checks that pay the bills were wet and the walls were wet and the floor was soaked and even the paperclip holders were filled to overflowing and, most disheartening of that whole inventory of woe and difficulty, our computer and our point-of-sale server and our phone lines and our DSL and everything we run that separates us from your local Waffle House*** was hopelessly flooded and non-operational Until Further Notice.

The knot in my stomach was palpable, felt like an ostrich egg in a poodle's ass, because I knew what was happening: Come hell or (fuck it all) high water, we would open at some point that afternoon. And we would open flying blind, understaffed and unprepared for our forced reversion to that oldest and most dreaded restaurant technology:

Paper.

I'll digress for a moment: At the German gig on Bourbon Street, we worked strictly paper and dot-matrix roll-register. Every plastic transaction was a carbon-imprint for the first year I was there. It's entirely possible we were the last paper-based booze operation in the Southern 48 at the turn of the millennium, and it was a hassle. We got our plastic tips compiled only every six months, at Christmas (like it was a goddamned bonus) and at the beginning of June, when the slooooow months until Labor Day loomed like forgotten dogshit come the first thaw. It's a helluva sound, the shuh-CHUNK! of a handcranked credit card machine as it thunders in behind the bass saxophone of a Dixieland combo, off-tempo and (at least the former) entirely unnecessary in this modern era. But we did it and we took it because it was a pretty good gig, all things considered.

That was a long time ago.

Since then I've worked non-computerized accounting systems, where whatever we've got in the register goes to the bank in the morning. Less, of course, the couple of hundred in change to get us through the next late night. But there was always a swipe machine that magically teleported one's electronic identity to and from a bank's server somewhere in Dubuque or Bangalore, returning with a hopeful approval for the requested loan to be granted us, the payee, by the bank, which would see to their loan's being remitted at some later date by the cardholder at a substantial rate of interest held over a longer term than the desired effects of any purchase made by said cardholder at our place of business. Where, incidentally, we pushed the last legal drugs accompanied by the sweet soulful strains of some seriously grooved entertainment.

My digression complete, let me reinforce that the prospect of working for an indeterminate period of time sans electronic communications in a high-traffic restaurant in a great location in a major American metropolis presented more than a few challenges. The first was procurement of manual credit-card slips. You know, the kind you only see anymore in gas stations in like Stumbleduck, West Dakota.**** Turns out that one wasn't that bad. The second was figuring out how to get messages to and from the tables to the servers to the kitchen (to the line and the tandoor and the foodrunners) to the bar and still get anything approaching the desired bill of fare to the table for which it was intended. The forms were easy enough to locate, as Staples is just downstairs and had reopened after the same flooding issues. So that's okay, but any practical implementation would mean schooling our FOH staff on-the-quick. Luckily they're rockstars and can hold their own despite the several language barriers in our tiny, borderless restaurant. As a bonus, we scored a hostess and a cashier before we opened at 5, so there was help if only for a few precious hours. All set, right?

And then we open, and then the people start trickling in, and then the trickle turns into the second flood we've seen that day and everybody's running and pretty soon it's like watching pit bulls carrying newborns on full heads of Kibbles 'n Meth. Half our kitchen is out on a catering gig, we've got like three new guys on the fireline, one of our dishwashers is drunk somewhere besides Dish for the umpteenth Saturday night in a row, our waitstaff are dealing with inordinately small tips based (one must assume) on the low-tech hindrances upon the timely receipt of food and checks and drinks and such--

--and I realize that none of this is very interesting to anyone who wasn't there and who hasn't worked in this sector of our nation's economy.

So a Nutshell Chronology: Two AM exit after three hours of hand-compiling checks and receipts and CC slips. Sleep (ish). Back again for a Sunday paper lunch, another pipe blows in the back of the building, no water or dishwasher or flushable toilets for two hours, Are We Gonna Close? Water back on, seating and serving for dinner and still working out the kinks from Saturday night. Another late night leaving. Fitful sleep, dreams of wrongs done past lovers mixed with standard Showing Up At Work Naked And Not Knowing Where Anything Is nightmares. Rolling in groggy and wiped for an unscheduled shift, a paper Monday at the start then (YIPPEE! SKIP!) wires fixed and server working but not until we put paper into 'puter. Day to dusk to dark, no fix that works, slammed and weeded and even have to serve (!) an 8-top. Rush dies down. Servers dance, laugh, have well-deserved pint. More paperwork, closed house, entering weekend’s work into system, Wu bangin' out speakers normally reserved for sitars and Hindi yelping, staring at computers and paper tickets from past three days and quickly going blind and numerically illiterate. Totals. Doublechecks. Triples. Forty bones off for the weekend, considering it a victory. Psyched, if hypercaffeinated. Deposit dropped, cab home to DOT, nip from The Good Scotch, too tired to sleep. Blog.

So here we are, and here I am, writing to you from the corner of Humbled and Exhausted. The latter is self-explanatory, but the former is truly a Statement. I saw (or was reminded) this weekend what a fragile relationship we have with technology anymore. In an age when nobody remembers phone numbers ("Screw it in the ear, I've got 'em in my cell!"), few know how to rock when all systems are not Go. It's a challenge to any of us brought up with Cable TV and Nintendo and Toaster Strudels. There were points this weekend when I wanted to quit my job, to walk out of a place that had been flooded--as far as I was concerned--back into the Fucking Stone Age, but something in me wanted to stick it out. I hate not knowing the ending***** to any story, even the most esoteric and inconsequential. I wanted to see how it all panned out, how we would fare when the river rose and the lights failed and the flints were struck while the youngins searched for dry tinder. Most of all, though, I found I craved the difficulty brought about by a dissolution of our feeble bond with modernity, however brief. Reminded me of the road, a feeling I miss far too often anymore. It was a waist-deep, sewer-stinking slog through waters curried with the spare and broken parts of everything since ENIAC, and it was a fucking trial. Sometimes pen and paper are all a man needs. There's no wi-fi in Shangri-La, after all, but nor are there any decent Indian joints.

Bitch though it may have been, we done good. We done better than I would have figgered. That does not make any of it cool. Come the next localized Judgment Day, that next bus to Thunderdome will leave with me still sitting at the station, listening to my iPod, trying to text some other citified bedwetter about this great new ancient history exhibit I saw that centerpieced the Royal typewriter and the rotary phone and a weirdass musical number featuring an unidentifiable shuh-CHUNK! that may or may not have been totally post-techno.


*: Even if storied only unto myself and coworkers and the occasional roommate/girlfriend/vent-buddy/blog... But a brief sidenote to this footnote: There's sympathy and there's empathy and rarely the twain do meet, though everybody hates The Job at some point or another and the storying of such always leads to oneupsmanship in terms of shitty shitty days at the proverbial Office.
**: Which will soon matter more than they do while I wait in the wind and chill for the Inbound. Read on...
***: In terms of technology. Not to be taken as a disparaging remark on the quality or convenience or sheer waffley deliciousness of that Last Bastion Of The American Breakfast.
****: Gorgeous in March, especially during the annual Snipe Hunt.
*****: But I walked out of Basic Instinct 2 with neither curiosity nor regret. Not even about lopsided falsies.

No Joy In Mudville, Pts. 1 & 2

In terms of opportunities for psychological and spiritual growth, there can be few more strengthening (read: "utterly soul-crushing") experiences than suffering two major defeats in the same six-hour span. Such was the case Sunday evening, when the Saints were hamstrung by Chicago's inhospitable weather (and the Bears) and the Patriots were handed the business end of the proverbial spoon by "The Fucking Colts" (M's words).

Granted, such defeats are only as personal as one allows them to be, and it certainly wasn't me out on the pitch against Brian Urlacher or Peyton Manning. Nor were any of my close personal friends. Yet these defeats are made none the easier by such trifling consolations. When one puts his heart on the chopping block for the three-hour battle that is a Conference Championship, when the laurels of victory mean a ticket to that most hallowed, most super Sunday in all of American sport, one tends to feel the blow of a butcher's blade as if it were less metaphor than reality.

Alas.

There is usually, however, an opportunity for redemption afforded those like myself two Sabbaths hence. He can pull for the team that dusted his favorites, allowing himself the faint rationalization that his team lost to the eventual champions. Or, of course, he can wish those vanquishers fiery deaths in plane crashes and freak microwave-oven explosions. Defeat, then, becomes a test of one's mettle as a sportsman, even one whose proximity to the field of play is distanced by a glowing rack of liquors and an oaken bar.

But what, then, can one do when both of his sides suffer defeat, when his split loyalties are roundly punished by confluences of events and timing and horrible officiating and the like? What is he to do when he can't root for either team without admitting to a key flaw in his fanship?

He can watch the game for the game's sake, free from obligations to adopted homes, but not without a note of bitterness to sour the sweet strains of Prince's halftime program. He can wish either the most impressive defense in the league (Chicago's) or the best quarterback of the last many seasons (Indianapolis') the rewards they deserve for putting up massive numbers against strong opposition. He can revel in the fact that the winningest teams in both conferences are battling for the title in what will likely be a Super Bowl for the books, and not some piddling matchup of less-worthy elevens who may have squeaked through the playoffs unscathed and lucky. He can watch the game without the kind of blinding passion that leads to another Monday morning of horrifying, shuddering realizations of loss and abandonment, such as those he experienced only yesterday.

In short, he can watch some football. And so he shall.

Dispassionately, but with reservations.

Geaux Forth And Be Reborn...

One of my favorite things about bartending in New Orleans was doing so during football season. As pitiful as most games were, the matchups were always epic, even if only in our own minds. The Saints have always been a hard-luck team, and their fans have grown accustomed to the pitfalls of following a side with such a seeming proclivity for ignominious defeat. There's a truism in sports that goes something like Win, and your fans drink to you; lose, they drink for you.

Or maybe themselves. I forget.

Either way, when your city's Eleven can't even muster a .500 season, you tend to do more of the latter than the former. Too many of those seasons have passed in the forty since the Saints entered the league, but it's always been sorta kinda alright by their fans. Given the fact that there are something like 90,000 bars and taverns in the N.O. metro area in which to root and lament whilst watching the game, there has never been a shortage of rainy-day drinking and armchair analysis. Even when said comes from a barstool sans arms.

When I worked the German gig, there were some Sundays when R from around the corner would be the only Saints fan in the joint (myself, I was a mercenary fan whose alliances were dictated week-by-week by the arrival of new and different hordes of tourists, each a dislocated fan of some likely-better team), and he would be relegated to drinking his Beck's in one of the far corners of the room's modest squarefootage, one tiny television registering with tinny mono sound the drubbing his--our--Saints had brought upon themselves by agreeing to play American Football of a Sunday afternoon. I would sneak over in the rare free moment to brush up on scores and lowlights, as the bulk of the bar's four screens and satellite package was dedicated to sugartitting the out-of-town fans of more prominent clubs who had stumbled down Bourbon Street nursing hangovers only slightly smaller than their Saturday nights, each requiring refreshment of either the tomato or sudsy (and sometimes both) variety. R and I would commiserate and discuss in no brief terms the horrendous choices made by our team, be those choices our coach's, or our quarterback's, or our owner's, or a combination of the lot. More often than not, it was the lot.

And after the German gig, there was a time at the Patio when I was more free to nurture my love/hate relationship with our Saints, when our off-Bourbon crowd was more inclined to sit and indulge their native team during its sixteenish ramblings about the Superdome's and other gridirons. There was even a Playoff game in there somewheres, a by-the-book, standard write-off handed us by the Minnesota Vikings in one of the Twin Cities. Not sure which. And not that it matters.

This Saturday night past, however, there was a rumbling in New Orleans that was palpable (albeit faint and only then through the floor and the soles of one's shoes) even here in the Frozen North. The famously loud Superdome hosted a meeting of men, twenty-two at a time, after which the New New Orleans Saints prevailed and secured for themselves a chilly Next Sunday in Chicago (though that last part was technically determined on the following afternoon). In the forty years of the franchise, this was the first post-season win for the men in black and gold. Sadly, Joe "My Cell Phone Rings Like A" Horn was on the sidelines for the historic event, but Deuce and Reggie made up on the ground what the team lacked in airpower.

But mine is not a sports blog, and this is not an armchair analysis. I have no room in these webpages for play-by-play, and I don't intend to make such room. What I do have is mad space for the things that shake my rafters, that make me shout from the rooftops. And that kind of enthusiasm, at the moment, is reserved for my New Orleans Saints. I have never been moved to root such as I have during these past sixteen weeks for the N.O. Eleven. Seeing them play their first game back in the Superdome on a Monday night, even though I was stuck at the Indian gig, was emotional to the point of ridiculousness. I usually skip halftime shows, but I disregarded more than a few mango margaritas to hear Green Day and U2 pitch and wail in support of a city's rebuilding. Kudos. Bravo. Bravissimo. More power to. Were I at home, tears may have been shed.

Putting my feelings for the city of my growings-up into words has not been easy since I watched it get wiped from off the map after Lady K. It's a feeling of loss that has impacted my being in a way I never expected, and probably more so for the fact that I had moved on by the time She hit. I've been back once since, and it was a rough week. My people were all safe and sound, none drowned in their attics, but there's something about driving through a town one calls home and seeing the Devil's Alphabet on every house in the Ninth Ward, watching the highwater funkline ebb and flow across the fronts of homes down Esplanade and Elysian Fields, knowing that Kermit's on a permanent Texan Tour and Henry's out Colorado way and Shorty's working L.A. in lieu of N.O. gigs because the venues don't exist no more, that makes a man shake out his bandanna and wonder what in the Fuck happened to his nestling place, to his sugarspot, to his home.

That's something for another day, though. On this fine bleary rainy New England morning, there are six days between me and the Saints-Bears game that will require much of my concentration, all of my face-painting skills, and more than a little of my scattershot wherewithal. So until and after then, my best to you and yours, and may your days include prayers and such for a city in Louisiana that was swamped but didn't drown, that died and was reborn, that may be flawed but won't be flogged.

Geaux Saints.

And Peace.