My Tipping Strategy, Explained
I don't think about it that often, as I am a chronic overtipper. Do the barest of minimums and you'll be handsomely rewarded. Bring me the right food in a somewhat timely fashion? Twenty percent, no problem. Smile at me and be cordial? Shoot, I'll think nothing of dropping 25 percent on you. But know this: You, as my waitperson, are guaranteed nothing.
To my knowledge there's no law governing gratuitites. If you completely blow it like the waitress at Spettro did last night, you'll get a measly 15 percent, and that much only because wife Tracy is a former waitress and an even chronicer overtipper than me.
But let me give you some backstory first. Spettro is a fine dining establishment in the Italian tradition. It's one of Oakland's only hip eateries, and I love their nouvelle take on traditional Italian stuff. So basically it's our go-to restaurant when we want something a li'l upscale, or are just sick of our usual veggie Asian places. But the service is, in a word, abominable.
The waitstaff are obviously too cool to be working there, and they take great pains to make this obvious. Your needs as a patron are a distant second to their needs to appear supercool. Not a great dynamic in a service industry, but certainly not unheard of.
But the service last night began auspiciously enough: our waitress was friendly and personable, and fairly attentive in the early rounds. But then she disappeared. Gone as if she had never existed. I had to, on two seperate occasions, take my water glass to the bus station and fill it. It was pretty cool the one time though, when I got a "Behind you!" from a busboy. I think he thought I worked there. That was fresh.
So on top of that, the dish I ordered came not prepared to my spefications. I guess they took "extra spicy" to mean "not at all spicy." Not a deal-breaker by any means — it was still edible and quite tasty — but not as I had requested. And I was not afforded the opportunity to proffer feedback, as our waitress never, ever returned to our table to ask how stuff was, to refill my water glass, nothin'. Again, this detracted only slightly from the overall dining experience, but I was reducing the percentage of her tip throughout the meal. It started out somewhere in the 22-23 percent range and had dwindled to a meager 15 percent — bare-ass minimum in my book — by the time the check came.
But here's the catch-22: she probably didn't get the message. No, she probably thinks I'm a cheap bastard, not that her service was lacking in some way. So I made a point of filling out the little comment card to express my displeasure, and I'm pretty confident it was wadded up and thrown away posthaste.
So whaddya gonna do? Stop going there? Nope, the food's too good, and the alternatives are too few. No, I'll go there again next week, and I'll probably get lousy service yet again. And I'll probably tip 15 percent again. And probably come to be known as a cheap bastard. Oh well. Somehow I'll manage. ßßß
The best way to hate is the worst.
)
That's the steam grate at 7th and Stevenson, right near Market St. in San Francisco. You can click the thumbnail for a big version if you like. Figured you hadn't been treated to any of my emo black & white photography of late, so there you have it. Immediately after taking this picture, some junkie got in my face about "taking his picture." Dude, whatever. I know aliens talk to you through the fillings in your teeth and robots are stealing your luggage, but I'm not taking your goddamn picture. So step off.
I seem to be a lightning rod for all the neg vibes in San Francsco lately. Construction worker guy the other morning (Granted, that was entirely my fault, but work with me here.), got into it with a marketing guy at work yesterday, and junkie dude this morning. It's just too tiring. Being aggro is a young man's game, and I'm pretty much done living that way. Too much work. So hey, everyone? Back up. Thanks.
So in other, much happier news, it looks like my parents got a place. They arrived in California 10 days or so ago, having sold their house in Connecticut, but in the interim the house they hoped to move in to in Alameda got snatched out from under them. But they got a call late last night telling them that the offer they'd tendered on this other place had been accepted. So I imagine they're awfully relieved today. Huzzah and kudos, etc.
OK, so all the grindcore, punk rock, and gangsta rap has been removed froom the Winamp queue for the morning in the hopes that the soothing strains of Jeff Buckley, Ryan Adams, Dan Bern and their ilk can rid me of the evil spirits that are plaguing me. And maybe I should return that tiki I found to the burial cave. Just a thought. ßßß
Don't forget to insert clever headline here.
Quick band update, for both of you who care.
Looks like we're officially settled on the name: The Hills Have Eyes. After the Wes Craven movie of the same name, obviously. It was on IFC this past weekend. Scary-ass shit.
We're still writing furiously, and we've got eight-and-a-half songs as of last night. The half is a song that I'm still writing, and will probably even write lyrics for and perhaps even sing. Yikes. Haven't done either of those things since the Skankin' Pickle days. Freaky. Anyway, hopefully it won't suck too too badly. But it might.
So I'm officially too old for this shit. For the past two weeks I've been burning the candle at both ends with more aplomb than at any other time in my life. Shows, rehearsals, dinners out, and tonight guest speaking for a friend's Fundamentals of E-Commerce in a Global Society class. Ummm ... yeah. I guess I can do that, sure. I make stuff up for a living, sort of, so I bet I can fool a class full of kids into thinking I know what I'm talking about.
Tomorrow night is drinks and dinner out with old college friends, Friday might actually be a night off at home, then Saturday night is two birfday parties. I will pay for this. I will be struck down with a cold, or a flu, or a cold and a flu. Or a touch of the anthrax. It's nature's way of telling me to slow down. 'Cuz I can't do it on my own. Carry on, nature.
And while we're on the subject of the anthrax, allow me to proffer my $.02: Calm the fuck down, everyone. I bet more people spontaneously combust every day and suffocate during autoerotic asphyxiation than will ever even contract anthrax, much less die from it. Everyone just breathe. It's going to be OK. Or it's not. We're all gonna die; in fact, we're dying right now. But that doesn't mean we have to live like we are. Lighten up. Eat something you're not supposed to. Crank up the bad '70s mullet rock on your headphones and rock out. Laugh at offensive jokes. Drive too fast. Live your goddamn life. ßßß
Theeee Yankees win!
Ugh. Not again. Please, Lord. Not again.
If I have to sit through one more New York/Atlanta World Series I'm gonna scream. Seriously. Nothing against either team, really; I mean, I got nothin' against most of the Yankees (with the notable exceptions of Clemens and Paul O'Neill) or the Braves, but I'm vehemently anti-dynasty. They're like sitcoms: boring and predictable. Plus there are all the bandwagon jumpers who only break out their Yankee gear during the playoffs. Lame. Those people make me crazy. Anyway.
The A's blew it big-time, and God bless Michele for not gloating too much. As she very astutely points out, "... the Yankees didn't win this game as much as the A's lost it." Three errors and countless other mental lapses by the A's pretty much beat themselves — with a little help from Derek Jeter. And really, after the carnage the good people of New York have witnessed over the course of the past month, it's kinda hard to root against the Yankees. But I'll manage. Go Ichiro!!!
Me and My Big Mouth
In the interest of bringing the Bronx to the Bay Area, I got into it with a huge construction-worker guy on the way to work this morning.
There are myriad rules about conduct on the BART system, some explicit, some implicit. One of the implicit ones is that when on an escalator, those who wish to stand stay to the right, and those who wish to walk do so on the left. But when I got on the escalator this morning, the left side weren't moving. Doing my best impression of a guy on the 4 train, I yelled up, "Hey! Keep it movin' up there!"
But this being the ultra-nonconfrontational Bay Area, people looked at me like I was out of my freaking mind. But dammit, I wanted to walk and would not be denied. "Stand right, walk left," I says, making explicit the implicit rule of perambulation. Still nothing.
Finally people start to go around the guy, and I see that the person blocking our pasage is a dude in a hard hat with a neck the size of one of my thighs. Oh, and he's glaring at me. So maybe it's cuz I'm in a daze, perhaps it was the angry riot grrrl music on the mp3 player, or possibly it's because someone put angel dust in my coffee, but as I file past him I say, "Why don't you move over? Stand right, walk left. How hard is that to understand??"
The look on this guy's face was priceless. His eyes got big, and he was too stunned to say anything but, "Why don't you shut up, dude." Maybe he said some other stuff, but my headphones drowned it out if he did. But then the full weight of what I'd just done came to bear. The guy is now behind me. I have headphones on and won't be able to hear him if he comes up behind me. He could have a whole posse of his construction-worker friends waiting for me to kick my ass. I am a fucking idiot. I think you'll agree.
But maybe he was too tired, too flabbergasted, or too earthy-crunchy-San-Franciscan, because none of that stuff happened. I walked the rest of the way to the gym with my heart in my throat, looking over my shoulder not nearly as often as I wanted to, but I'm still in one piece. No thanks to my enormous goddamn mouth. Live and learn, I hope. Live and learn. ßßß
Destiny, Not Dynasty
Well, what should have been a joyous occasion for A's fans and Yankee haters everywhere did not come to pass: New York managed to stave off elimination in both games here in Oakland over the weekend. The A's starting pitching was solid for the most part, but they just couldn't get the timely hits they needed to produce any offense. And then there was the loss of Jermaine Dye. Dude fould a ball off his lower leg and managed to break his tibia. Gnarly. Maybe not quite Joe Theismann status, but still pretty grisly. If you possess a strong stomach, here's a QuickTime clip of the breakage. OUCH.
So I'll have to wait until tonight to celebrate and tomorrow to gloat. Michele claims it's not over yet, but with Roger Clemens going again tonight, I have to respectfully disagree. Clemens looked pathetic in Game 1, and I fully expect a similar performance tonight. Now don't get me wrong: He's a gamer, and will go out a give all he's got. Fact of the matter is that he ain't got much to give. A's in 5. Go Seattle. I wanna see Ichiro. Word.
The Good Life
Tracy and I carried on like little kids all weekend, staying out way past bedtime ... even though last night was a school night and everything! Friday we went out to dinner with some new couple friends and checked out the Derailers at Slim's. They put on a great show as always, and even opened up for themselves. A la the Soggy Bottom Boys, they broke out the acoustical instruments and pretend hick personae and regaled us with Hank Williams covers and stripped-down versions of Derailers material. It was pretty awesome, but can anyone explain why you'd need a 45-minute set break after that? I thought not.
Last night was yet another trip to Slim's, this time to see Sparta, the band that contains three-fifths of At the Drive-In, but neither of the afro dudes. We timed our arrival perfectly, showing up right at downbeat of the very first song. As you might imagine, Sparta sounds a whole lot like ATD-I, but with some Murder City Devils-style rock thrown in. And that can't be bad, right? Here are a coupla mp3s that I don't think hold a candle to how the band sounded live, but maybe it'll give you an idea.
They blistered through a quick nine-song and we were out of there before 11:00. Amazing. Maybe they're old and had to go to bed too. ßßß
Don't miss last week's brilliant insight.
