What I remember:
I came into work to find out when I would have to come back to work after my lil trip to New York. The manager says: "Let's talk downstairs, Brendan."

"Alright," we trot down there.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm on my way to New York so I can--"

"No, I mean, what are you doing with your life? I mean, here you are, a thousand miles from your brother and your family. You have three jobs and you don't even like most of them and you definately don't need the money. Have you even editted anything this week? Written anything new? No. You come in here everyday and you make the customers laugh and then you make more money in tips than everyone else and you exceed the average net-sales per guest by over thirty percent. But then what? You're going to let a great girl walk out of your life for good, you're going to let your brother get married on the east coast without you, and you'll probably pay off you printer before you even edit a third draft of your project. And why? Because you're too scared to walk away from your cake-walk-life for a few months? You're fired."

"What? You can't be serious."

"I am serious. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in the three months I've been a manager here."

"But the owner will never let me go. As you say everyday, I am your best and brightest server."

"I know, that's why I'm going to tell her that you overcharged some senior citizens on a bottle of wine--no big deal: they ordered the San Fluer and you brought them the Triennes Fluer. A forteen dollar difference. How's that sound?"

"You'd do that for me? I mean...I don't know, I do have the perfect life here."

"Well, how about this--Are your turntables in the car? Okay, what about your laptop? Well, just take off from here. Leave your fifty dollar waitering shirt in the exployee room. I'll make sure no one takes your locker. Give me a call in three months and if you've got a working draft going and your brother has the baby then you can come back here for a while."

I walked out the door and got into my car, I have parked facing east on Division St. I could almost see the onramp for route 90 and I knew that on that road, a thousand miles away, was the rest of my life.

"Wait!" He screamed and ran out the door. For a manager, he sure runs like a bitch. "Wait!"

I rolled down my window and flicked on my hazard lights--there's no other way to show that I'm stopped, I don't have turnsignals anymore. "Your printer! You gotta go home and get your printer before you go." He crammed a hundred dollars in my hand along with enough sushi to last me the entire trip and a special bottle of sake that would give me seven hundred miles to the gallon.

Everyone went to work already back home. The last time I was up this late I was still at work and people were still drinking.

Having spent the past three days at school with Ben I recognize that I'd rather be broke, unemployed and apartmentless than go back to college. Ben's school is a place for awkward asthmatics with funny names to have four years of belonging, and that's just not where I belong right now.

Never thought I'd have to make that decision again.

It's a very strange thing--when you've spent three months getting up in a city you love in an apartment you love and going to a job you love--to wake up in the front seat of your car, as a truck blows by, and try to remind yourself why you're there, why you have all your possessions, and why you have boxes and boxes of chinese groceries.

It'll take me a while to get to all of this but on my way to New York I stopped into my restaurant to find out when I have to be back at work. And I got fired. In my car I had my turntables, my laptop, the books I've been meaning to read, and three shirts that I wear sometimes. That's pretty much everything I own, so I drove away from the city. The only reason I turned around is because I still had a manuscript, a novel-printer and half a bottle of hair product in the house.

On the way out of town the first time I knew I was broke, jobless, and room-less, so I pulled off in the south side and tried to spend $150 of foodstamps in the ghetto. Turns out that's hard to do at Aldi. I bought cans of beans, juice, no-name cereals, a sack of potatoes, and prepared myself for the amount of preservatives I was on my way to. Then I still had a hundred left.

I drive to Chinatown and bought more tofu, fancy-ramen, canned-coffee drinks and soymilk than I could carry.

When I took this picture this morning I knew none of this information, which I will explain in detail later:

1) That I wouldn't have to show up for my last day at the job I just quit.
2) That I would't have to show up next week to the place that I quit my good job for. The placed I love(d) and where I thought I would be for a long long time.
3) That I still had $162 left in Illinois foodstamps.
4) That I am completely screwed.

Maybe this is too personal for the format,, but everytime I take an all day car trip, like I will today, like I did when I left Deleware, like I did whenever I drove 12-hours to or from Kenyon, I wear the same pair of underwear. Each time.

There's two Duran Duran records that I bring with me when I DJ. I hate the slow nights because I have time to look at the first one ("Rio") and I play it if either Duran shall be heard, and then I look at the other ("Faster Than Light") and think about endings. Then I put the second one back in the crate, but when I do, I file it in the back with the other crap I bring and never play.

I'm too young to think about mortality, but what honestly depresses me is this: someday things could happen for me and someone will pick this manuscriptout of their bosses trashcan and convince someone to make a bunch of copies of it and pay me. But even still, there's nothing to save it from being appreciate only as an inside joke even if the rest of my shit is okay (a la "Love Shack") or from getting ignored until I'm long dead ("Pink Moon") or from getting ignored forever ("_").

For Here or To Go
Life in the Service Industry
edited by Leah Ryan
$10.37+ postage (U.S.)
Orders outside the U.S.
isbn: 1891053442

Starting right now, I exist in paper format, as does my story "Diary of a Pizza Guy" which just came out in this anthology. Buy it or I'll never talk to you again.

This is the letter I handed to my manager tonight at the end of my shift at my shitty bar.

Why I’m
Quitting the Cr@codile Lounge
By Brendan
I just want everyone to know that I tried. Not very hard, but I tried. Everyday that I came to this place, I wanted everyone to feel like they could count on me. The first day I met Erik was my first lunch shift ever and he had eaten something that made him constipated, so I stayed on and worked sixteen hours straight. When you all the managers needed to work to open up the new restaurant, I wanted to give you the impression that I could take care of business while you were gone.
Montgomery told me about this place, about how they were hiring, when I went in to get my job interview haircut the first week I moved to Chicago. If I’d had more money on me, I would have gone to a place three blocks down and never met any of you, but Montgomery only charged twenty. You seem to always have one white guy on for few months at a time and I wanted you to feel like I was somehow different. White people love the possibility of getting discriminated against, so I found the opportunity oddly thrilling.
You all adopted me into your little family and I needed that, especially since I needed you all to hang out together at night so that I could make some money on occasion. When I got the job at the Sushi restaurant, I didn’t get paid for my first month and Erik came in early for me all the time so that I could leave and make no money in Wicker Park. But everyday I left here with some cash in my pocket and that kept me fed, it paid for my pain-killers, and eventually I got a work uniform.
Then on July forth everyone just started fucking up. The place began to loose its luster when I covered a whole week of days and everyone in downtown went to their lake houses and no one came in. Ernie and I sat around with our thumbs up eachothers asses all week watching TV. Everyday at about 2:30 I would fall asleep at table thirty-one and hope to wake up when we had customers. They started coming back the next week and that’s when the kitchen began to fuck up. Usually every order. Some table of nine would order five pizzas and I’d get them in categories as if the three people who ordered the Classic would rather have a slice of the two Goat Cheese pizzas that just came out while they wait fifteen more minutes to get theirs. Then there was the three weeks where every time someone ordered a Guiness Steak Sandwhich they’d get a Steak Salad and vice-versa.
Downtown is a city of morons who have nothing better to do that stand at the coffee machine and talk about where they went for lunch and how shitty the food was. They can only compare our restaurant to the relative speed of Applebees or whatever other bullshit place they think serves real food. For the first week I worked here everyone pretended to care about lunch. Autumn even had her street team hand out lunch menus. But then we opened a new restaurant.
Weeks ago I wanted to have a sit down with Corey and tell him some of the things I was thinking about and he couldn’t make it, and then we didn’t see eachother for a few weeks. I’m not quitting because Corey was too busy to give a shit about his least valuable player. If it was important, I would have called him. But I soon realized that you needed me to be the daily front man. Someone has to payout liquor and count how many frozen pizza crusts we got and someone has to answer the phone every time someone buys a new outfit and wants to know if it’s good enough for our dresscode. I told this to Kevin and he agreed that business was not good enough to expect me to work for free anymore and we worked out a provisional agreement. Ernie pretty much pays for himself by mixing cheap liquor into the good stuff, and I save the place money by being courteous, well dressed, and reliable when Kevin can’t be.
Am I late every single day? Yes. I learned quickly that I could come in at ten and remove Saran wrap and Windex the chicken grease off menus and then sit around for two hours before we did anything, or I could come in at ten fifteen or ten thirty and do the same, only get a bagel on the way in. No one every gave a shit or every told me they gave a shit.
I showed up fifteen minutes early when Kevin said I could probably have a raise. Knowing that you cared about me for the half hour I’m needed everyday meant a lot to me. Autumn keeps saying that she knows this place isn’t my “bread and butter” but seriously, I made more money at the Sushi place in the week I didn’t work here two days and I didn’t even pick up any extra shifts over there.
It’s not the money that keeps me here. I like joking around with Ernie and John. I like that they call me Waldo. I like Fridays best because I don’t have to rush off somewhere and do something else and instead I can sit on the coolers and dish with Erik and Justyna. I would have quit a long time ago, but I knew that the people I would screw over would be Justyna—who works too hard all year in school and here, and Erik—but more importantly Erik’s kids. The biggest reason I never left is because you guys gave me a job when I couldn’t even afford a haircut and you took care of me all summer. You pretended to care about me and Taya and Autumn even found jobs for my broke ass roommates. I actually thought for a while that Autumn and I would be really good friends. She was so much for to work for when I got here and she even got me another job with he marketing thing. But she has never really liked me ever since I stopped handing out chapsticks for her and American Express.
I love this job when I’m on a busy night and Erik and Justyna and I can just float by one another and go from domestic to imported beers. I love on Fridays at four o’clock when Ernie wonders where the Mexican boys are because he always says, “Yo, where da Amigos at?” My favorite Monday every was when it got slow enough to Mark to close the kitchen and him, me, and that loud guy who writes for the defender watched the democratic convention together. Every time Bill Clinton said something good, that guy bought me and Mark and shot saying, Now that’s my mutherfucker!
I’ve never quit a job before or gotten fired. I got suspended once at a coffee shop, but that’s because I closed the store three hours early so that I could see Hank Williams III perform. I still don’t regret that.
I’ve never broken up with anyone either, for that matter. Usually I wait until I have to leave for another job or move or got back to school. But I can’t stay in this dysfunctional family forever. We’ve got Corey and Kevin for parents and none of us want to piss either of them off and everything would be fine if they could just agree on some goddam rules or if they could agree to whom they should defer. Every time I’ve gotten in trouble, I haven’t been slyly doing something wrong, I’ve been doing something that someone told me was okay, or that we had a meeting about and then gotten shit for it. Then there’s Alan, the ineffective step-father who doesn’t like to tell you what to do to the point that it’s weird and annoying when he tries to. Then there’s Autumn and she’s just the bossy older sister who thinks she should be the parent.
So please find someone new. Find someone new soon. Find someone so that Erik doesn’t have to be away from his kids and Justyna doesn’t have be there all day when she should be in school.
Brendan

And after all of that the manager sat with me for an hour while I got to tell him every single way they fuck up every day, and he promised that no one would see the letter other than the owner. Goddamit.

Labels: Chicago

Ben says this is his summer in pictures, but it's actually not. It's a filmstrip about my week. Hello, goodbye, goodbye.

It will take me several years or an engagement ring to figure out why anyone would have an adult life when they could have this.
Clockwise from left: El Gusto Taqueria, Wicker Park Farmer's Market Plums, Famer's Market Polish Baker, Annie's Fritata, Annie's Salad, Coffee from Filter, and Cheetos bought on foodstamps.

Tag Team

I Forgot To Tell You This

Annie grew up in the neighborhood and so she has actual friends around here, unlike us, who meet hundreds of people a day and can't remember if they were friends, customers, or crazies on the bus. They took us out last week--Annie, Annie's sister, and friends.--and we went to some house-music shithole near us and crammed in with everyone else for one drink. "We hate the music here! Let's go somewhere else!"

Ben had forgotten his ID and tried to beg the bouncer to let him in. "I'm 22. Come on. I have a beard. I just left it all the way at home." "Yeah, well, hop in a cab and go get it." We jump in a cab (we don't jump in cabs).

When we walked into the next place, I wonder if maybe they all have actors as DJ's and just play satallite radio. Same terrible shit. I started thinking I should make a kit for these nights. Mace, two needles, headphones, Thriller, License to Ill, and a few others just in case.

One of Annie's friends gets ready to leave and gets ready to shake our hands goodnight: "Hey, it was nice meeting you."

"Well, thanks," I begin shaking her hand. "I wish I could say the same." If I had any idea why I said that, I probably wouldn't get in trouble like this.

"What?"

"Just kidding, have a good night."

"No, no, look. I pretended to like you, alright? I was nice. But frankly, I think you're a little too much," turns to Ben: "Have a good night."

"Thanks," Ben shakes. "I'll probably never see you ever again, so, you know, have a good life. I hope you outlive your children."

"What? That's a terrible thing to say!"

"Sorry! Sorry, I meant, I hope your grandchildren outlive your children. I hope you're alive to see your grandchildren outlive your children. But then you can die."

She has this collection of about three death stares that I can't imagine someone our age having. She walks away and we can't stop laughing. It was not unlike the time my license was taken away on the road and he had to learn stick shift with the cop behind us so they wouldn't tow my car in that we couldn't laugh for five extra minutes.

"I don't think I made a good impression on your friend, Annie."

"I think she's messing with you too. She's in Teach-For-America."

"Oh, so she's working on her teacher-face?"

Annie (you remember Annie) had never been to my shitty bar, even though I have been to hers several times. I wouldn't mind letting this go, but I forgot my phone charger there last night and we went back around midnight.

For a shitty place, they really ham it up at night. Velvet ropes, three bouncers, ten-dollar cover. We walk in and the bouncer says, "You Brendan, right?"

"Yeah."

"Eight people came in here today wearing gym shoes and they said that the daytime bartender, said they could wear gym shoes?"

"Some guy said that?" When you need to lie, you can just make someone else into the liar and have that be it.

"Like eight of em. They came separate. Now, are you tellin' people they can be wearing gym shoes in here?" We have a dresscode for the same reason as prisons and parochial schools do: they want to throw people out in advance if they have to. "The owner's livid, the manager's pissed off, you better go talk to them."

We walk in and they place is packed. It just occured to me that Annie's come in to pick me up (twice) but during the day. We note how different it looks now. I confess that if I didn't work in a downtown hip-hop club that I would walk in and feel more out of place than anywhere in my life. Annie grew up in our former-ghetto and she went to a better college than I, so she's used to feeling out of place.

I covered for the other bartender this week so that she could go to Savannah, based on my recommendation and hadn't seen here since. She grew up in Poland and couldn't beleive that any part of American could be historic, beautiful, and not cost admission. She's also been my girl troubles coach and was glad to see that somone I talk about really existed.

"Gorgeous, Brendan! Just goooorgeous!"

"I know, she's really smart too."

"No, I meant Savannah, Savannah was amazing," she said. "But the girl is beautiful." She gave Annie a martini and openned a Stella Artois for me. I don't even prefer Stella, but I like being a fixture. There's a coffeeshop under the train I take to work and everytime I go in I get a drink I don't even want because the girl there thinks my first name is smallicedsoylatte.

Usually the music makes me feel whiter only because I look around the room as everyone mouths the words to a song I've never heard. But tonight we came in during the middle of the gratuituous Lil Jon Medley. This is where the DJ blends "Freek-A-Leek", "Yeah!", "Quit Hatin'", "Get Low'", and "(Shake it Like a) Salt Shaker."

"Gym shoes, Brendan?" The manager shakes his head, pissed. "You told people they could wear gym shoes in here?"

"Who said that?"

"There's like eighteen mutherfuckers running around in Nikes here, Brendan. Shit's gonna be crazy in here tonight." I still think "gym shoes" is some kind of codeword that I haven't figured out, like when I was nine and my brother had to explain that sometimes "bad" meant "good." But no, they mean sneakers. Why? What is so special about sneakers. I just want him to tell me, Look Brendan, mutherfuckers be wearin' sneakers in here, next think you know they be playin' basketball and runnin' relay races around the parking lot and the NEXT thing you know everyone wearing loafers'll be placing illegal bets on this shit. Is that what you want, Brendan? Illegal sportsbetting?

"People were calling all day and I told them we're Business Casual, so I don't know where they're getting this gymshoes shit from." We finished our drinks and left.

Me on the phone at the bar all day:

"[Redacted Name of Place], how can I help you?"

"What is your dress code?"

I repeat the vague words: "Business casual."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Just wear something nice. You got a button down?"

"Yeah, like if I wear a white button down and some linen pants is that okay?" Since most people think I'm gay, I really hate having to Queer-Eye total strangers.

"What kind of undershirt are you planning on wearing?"

"Undershirt? You mean like a wifebeater?"

"A wifebeater? Sorry no."

"Really? What if I wear a plain white shirt?"

"I'm just messing with you."

"Can I wear gym shoes?" They always say that. Gym shoes. Like I give a shit what you wear.

"Just look nice and act nice and you'll have no problem."

Maybe I've mentioned this before but I can't remember, I just want to go on record saying that DJ is the most overused semi-nounal participial in our lexicon. No one gave a shit about DJ'ing when they were making mix tapes, but once you could sit in front of Napster for five minutes and make a CD now you're Funkmaster Flex. Then Apple came out with the Airport Express* promising that you could "DJ a party from across the room!" Dj's show up in Sprite commericials, they justify trunkspace in Ford Focus ads, and they're a sub-excuse for ownership of any secondary electrical device.

People always ask me what I spin and I know that the corect answer can't be, General Party Bullshit. So I just say Eighties. Also, I was born in 1982. That's the year Micheal Jackson's Thriller came out. I know because I own it on vinyl. I own it on vinyl almost assuredly for credibility's sake.

When I walk in to my DJ Tryout they tell me that they're going to decide between me and an other guy and so they've booked both for the night. "He seemed really upset about it, are you sure you don't mind?"

"Not at all," I smile in job-interview-mode. "Totally cool, I'll go on at ten and midni---" He's playing house music. I hate house music. I've become unpopular more than once in this city by putting house music in the same level as house wine, house coffee, and house dressing. Which is to say it's a shitty subsitute that calls no attention to itself and is rarely notworthy.

Some guy turns to me at the bar, "Man don't you love this music!"

"Uh... yeah, it's got a good...beat."

"Really?"

"Yeah... really."

"I thought you were kidding, you don't look like someone who would get into this, I thought you were fucking with me."

"No, totally, I get into it," I name three House musicians that I approve of, who just so happen to be the inventer of the genre, the second most classic, and the current most prominent. "I, oh...I'll be right--"

I walk out the door at the time I'm supposed to go on and walk home for two records that I bought as a joke a long time ago. They're the remixes of Britney Spear's "Toxic" (by Felix da Housecat, whom I actually track-one-to-track-fourteen respect) and Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me A River."

We switched sets the way John Grisham would have me beleive people have study groups in law school. He leaves the fader on halfway so that when I cue up my first song it's playing softly on the house speakers. When I let him in for his second set, I transfer from a fairly basic Eighties song to "California" by Phantom Planet. Walking away I tried to not let the look on my face say what I wanted: Beat-match that, bitch

Three things that I didn't realize were great

1) No one likes feeling like an out-of-touch loser, and that's all you accomplish by playing techno in a dirty bar.
2) By having another DJ on, there were two hours in the night where I didn't have to fill with passable hits. Instead I just played every single record I brought.
3) In having to play two long-ass technoesque songs I had fifteen minutes at the start of the night to figure out where everything is, to organize some records, and to put a video in on the overhead screen.

This didn't mean, however, that I didn't run into problems.

1) At work I alphabetized all of my eighties music onto five CDs. Two of them worked when I put them in the player, which is to say I could only play "867-5309"-"Electric Avenue" and "Video Killed the Radio Star"-"You Shook Me All Night Long."
2) With last call nearing, I played my 45 of Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight" and one of the people who was going to decide if I could work there started cheering, which meant I had to play all seven of my 45s and their B-Sides just to keep her happy.
3) After all of that, when I played Johnny Cash "A Boy Named Sue" a woman came up to me with a CD called "Road Trip Mix Volume 1" and begged me to play track six. I gave it a listen on the headphones. It was a techno remix of something by The Mommas and the Poppas. She disappeared and I hoped she would just evaporate all together. Then she came up at the very end: "Are you going to play it next?"
"No, I...we have to wrap up."
"Oh come on! Play it! Play it! Did you listen to it?"
"Only the first eight minutes, then I had to, you know, play some music."

Here's a fun fact for today: if you look up the phrase "muffler putty" on Canadian Google, this post of mine is the only listing that comes up.

So the answer is maybe. Tonight, if you're not doing anything, you can come to Inn J@y in Wicker Park and come see my DJ tryout. If you come and you drink and you tell everyone how my you like my music, I'll buy you something sometime. Swear to god.

Labels: Chicago

I may have finished school, I may have almost no chance of going to graduate school, I may have run away from school and promised I would never go back, I may have seen my first Back-To-School-Sale of the season and danced around the bar gloating, wishing I could rub it in some sad eight year old's face, but it doesn't make it any easier. The school across the street from us reminds me everyday now that summer is almost over. When school stars Ben, Dave, and Farsheed will move out, thus ending the three months I'll probably think about for the rest of my life whenever "Summer of '69" comes on. Man, that was 35 years ago. Will we still listen to that song in 2039? And if so, what format will it be on?

Whatever you need to add to this, I have to say that some of the best times I've ever had involved filling an ashtray with my friends. I love stubbing one out into ashes, into my ashes, your ashes, someone elses butts. And when I'm old, I'll scoff at the carcinogenic bowls on the tables I leave bars at eleven o'clock, but part of me will smile knowing how happy those people will be when they're my age knowing that they could kill themselves so blissfully with people they knew. And then I'll hook myself up to my oxygen tank and watch the Oxygen network.

Ben made the reservation and told the restaurant it was my birthday. Everyone in there talked to us in the fake act-as-if-I-care accent that we've had to learn. "And how old are you now?"

"Twenty-five," I said. "I'm an old man. Halfway to my death. Time to get married and move to the suburbs."

Our only real goal for the evening was to spend more on dinner than we ever had in our entire life. We thought the menu would have nothing but thirty-dollar options, only everything was less than ten. (joke of the eve: "Sir, I'd like to have the Spring Salad, and if you could make that cost twice as much, I'll tip the difference.") I would never want to work there. hor derves, salad course, soup, entree, desert. I bought a bottle of wine to be a big shot. As did Ben and Julia. And--I've never seen this before--they kept the bottles somewhere on ice and brought them out whenever necessary. I've always worked places where the goal was to get as much of the wine in the customers at once so they can buy another bottle or leave.

Also, when you're rich, like us, you get free shit. Some of us were low on cash and ate like real human being should, but the restaurant brought out these tiny-ass Spring rolls for everyone. After desert they brought a peanut-butter-chocolate soup for everyone (shot glass with a melted Reese's). It took two busboys, two food runners, and our waitress to get anything done at the table. Bread, plates swap, the presentation of the proper utensils, etc. I spent more on dinner than I made per week back in school.

And I'm pretty sure I'll never do that again.

Everything on this Demo is a lie but thankfully Chicago's inferiority complex may get me a DJ job.

This pretty much sums up my life. Talking to a woman today who had done alot of work in film, alot of movies you've seen and documentaries you've heard of being on Discovery.

"Wow, that's what's cool about living in Chicago," I said. "You can do that stuff. My only claim is that my hometown is where they made The Patriot Missile."

"The movie?"

"No...the bomb."

Labels: Chicago

At my upscale, rich-get-richer Sushi restaurant on friday I sold a 12 oz bottle of Sake for $50. It was to my favorite awkward couple: white guy who brings his parents to meet his asian girlfriend. They of course refer to her on everything as if our restaurant has anything to do with her culture. I imagine myself someday sitting in front of a McDonalds in Brazil, explaining to my betrothed's parents in broken Portuguese, "No, no, my mother never really made me a double quarter pounder with cheese...but if she did it would taste just like this. mmmm...."

At my hip-hop club in downtown somone took a shit in the urinal.

There's a scene in my fiction project where the main character uses a women's bathroom for the first time at a truck stop. Earth shatter? No really.

I had no reason to wait for one bathroom to open. Really I just needed a bathroom. A bathroom with a lock. They had two, one in use. I walked over and poked the door in to the ladies room, a one-woman operation. It had a nice thing going on inside. Better wallpaper, nicer lighting than we’ve had recently. Why have two? Is it a convenience issue? Is it easier to keep one stocked with toilet paper? Is there marketing research involved?
You know what? Nevermind, about the toilet. I go in and I do what I have to do. And, well, ok, some things are different. No trace of graffitied genitals and that kind of thing. But think of how many more bic-penned-penises I will now be able to see...

But this is the women's room of the coffeeshop where Ben and I frequently go and pretend to do work where the men's room has a chalkboard. When the women's room found this out, they were pissed.

Things to do today.

1- Go to the farmers' market in the park.
2- Meet a girl there, discuss life.
3- Read her New York Times.
4- Edit the final 60 pages of my fiction project.
5- Wait for gigantic iPod payment to come in from London.
6- Hang out with Julia when she gets here.
7- Finish my demo tape for potential DJ job.

Posts like this are really just to make myself depressed when Ben and I are old and boring.

Last night at work I upset one of my coworkers because I told her that if I ever went on a date, which I never do, all I would be able to do is talk about how weird dating is.

"I mean, it's not like I'm a dating guy. It's just so weird. Hey, that was a great twenty five minute conversation we had in a bar. Would you like to have an awkward dinner sometime?"

"You're taking all the romance out of it."

"What romance? I'm just being honest, and I don't know if I could sit through the night without telling the girl what I thought. Man, isn't this weird? We're having dinner together because we think we might want to have sex with eachother. Isn't our culture strange? And don't get my started on bars, they're the strangest part of our culture. Bartending should be the shittiest job ever. You're working in a loud convenience store with shitty hours and crappy patrons. But it's a great job and people tip because they need you. Especially slimeballs who walk around thinking, Alright, I will have that girls inhibitions below freezing in fifteen more dollars. And people get married out of all this."

"I think that's a very cynical point of view."

"Lemme guess: you're in love." She leaves.

I've wired my entire life in such a way that I will know, within hours of meeting you, if we're going to get along. And that's the nice part about being superficial.

If I get up before the sun and put on nice clothes, I can convince my body to get work done before work. In four hours I have to open a bar. But I will accomplish until then.

If we had better memories, would we expect betrayal and terrible things from the people we keep closest? In movies you get introduced to five characters by name and in the end one of them is the killer, the robber, the friend who slept with the main character's girlfriend. In Scream you get to the end and It was the boyfriend all along ohmygodIcan'tbeleiveit, at the last supper, Judas sits next to Jesus and he ends up betraying him, not the thousands of other people that knew him, not the tens of thousands of people that heard of him, but one of twelve people named on the page before.

But if we could see a movie or read the bible and remember thousands of names and identifying characteristics would we trust other people any more?

About my four iPods

To pay off my huge debt on my laptop, I needed to make money. Maybe you recall a few weeks ago when I--the lame guy that Apple counts on to buy every new iPod--realized that somewhere they had better versions of something I already owned. Last November I bought one for five hundred dollars in loans that took me forever to pay off.

My hold switch broke and Apple gave me a brand new iPod, which would satisfy anyone who didn't have that terrible capitalistic yearning of owning the top product.

I sold my five hundred dollar iPod on British Ebay for two hundred and thirty pounds or five hundred and sixty dollars, bought the new iPod for $369 using the my expired student ID to get the student discount, and got a two hundred dollar rebate for buying an iBook and an iPod.

Basically I got paid three hundred and sixty dollars for owning new possessions. But when the store gave me a bigger loan, I used it to buy three more so that I could sell them to British people--who can only buy the old iPod for eight hundred American dollars.

If anything I am only following the motto my family adopted during the potato famine.

Fuck the British.

Last night I got caught in a Karma feedback loop. A Polish guy came into my sushi restaurant and impressed his two female guests with three hundred dollars of fish and Sake. I like these kind of guys because I want big numbers for people to figure out twenty percent of. "Bring me Japanese beer! Girls, you want try Japanese beer?" I suggest our most expensive--eight dollars a bottle. He wants me to bring two. I suggest some more great food, and we go on from there.

When I run his credit card, it gets decline. I print out the decline sheet, circle the word DECLINED and write at the bottem, Do you have another card? But in two bottles of Sake and two Hitachino beers, he is too drunk to notice.

"Bring me the bill! Give me credit card receipt so I can teep you."

"Right," I point to the check booklet which has a pen and his credit card poking out. From the girls' side of the table it looks like everything is okay. "See right there?"

"No, no, I need to sign for the card!"

"Right, just uhhh... just uh...."

The girls laugh, "What are you blind?" Giggle, giggle. He looks closely, discovers his grave indescresions, and puts the card back in his pocket. I come back in two minutes and he hands me the booklet with four one hundred dollars bills inside. "Thank you very much, Mr. Brendan, you made tonight alot of fun for us." A wink and a smile, a handshake or two, and he's out the door.

Everyone else had a shitty night except me. I still made seventy dollars over that, a few more than the rest. But I didn't earn this money, so I took my coworkers out for a beer. Across the street they have two dollar mondays, so I get three beers and three shots. It's twenty. I beleive in the Keynesian approach to cash flow. I give the bartenderess thirty.

We do things that you do in bars. We drink. We share cigarrettes. We discuss alcohol and tobacco. I make everyone toast to "Cheney in 2012." I explain to the people I meet that I am joking. I talk politics with other people who pretend they understnad them. We play pool and I give the same girl more money for drinks.

My boss sinks the eightball in a game of pool which means that next time he wants to go out, I get to mention that I would be happy to embarass him in front of his friends again. I go upstairs to get four more beers from the same girl and she charges me four dollars and gives me the same wink the Polish guy did. So I give her another ten.

I beleive in Karma not because I know that the world would become a better place if we all looked out for eachother, but because I knew I would wake up this morning knowing that the world owed me ten dollars

At the Indie Club where Ben and I find ourselves on occasion there is a black bartender. With the exception of TV on the Radio, I would racially profile I would racially profile the culture otherwise. The place fills with kids who, from what I understand, all have parents who spent alot of money on their education. Most of those parents probaly wonder why their children won't wear a clean pair of pants. A pint of beer goes for two dollars. Some of their parents must wonder why their children don't take their privelege into The Loop and make some serious money, buy some nice house, a dog and new pants.

I bartend at a Hip Hop club in downtown. Racially profile that as necessary. A Corona is five dollars, and apple martini ten. Plenty of people get drunk on Martell and Hennessey, four shots of which exceeds the net gain of eight hours of minimum wage. It's full of kids who have kids, from what I understand. Of people whose parents are fifteen years olden than them. They deliver mail, they check your meters, they live with their parents until their kids start elementary school.

I look at that bartender sometimes. And I wonder, if we both think so anthropologically, who thinks the others culture is more hilarious. And who feels worse taking peoples money.

There's a section in the fiction project I've worked on for the last three years wherein I bring the comparison of a solitary friendship to that of a marriage. The two main characters really hate eachother by the middle of the story. I'm in the third draft and I've never made it through the entire section without having someone break up with me.