Relaxed Mentalist

BITING THE HAND THAT PAYS YOU AND KEEPS YOU STOCKED WITH NICOTINE AND CHEAP VODKA

Example:
If an Airline Stewardess wrote in her blog of the pilots in her company being stoned and uncaring towards their jobs and the needs of their customers, her ‘ACTION’ would cause an adverse ‘REACTION’ towards the Airline’s business. People would not trust that airline, and would go to another airline, or, even worse, they would not trust airlines at all, choosing, maybe, to go on trains, or buses.

A blog recently shared on Facebook by Chef’s Diary (blanketing all waitstaff as stoned idiots who don’t care about your allergies, or, deciding to serve you A.when you asked for B., because they don’t care about you), is passive aggressive at best, and, shortsighted at worst.

The public has decided what they want. If you are so pissed off with your life, (and so jealous of a system that offers gratuity to servers and not to kitchen staff), that you cannot handle the change in the way Mrs. American Mom has decided to eat without striking back at your customers (and alienating them from ALL front of the house employees), you don’t deserve the job.

You are not in it for the love of it, you are making it all about YOU.

You are making it harder for everyone in the industry.

(and, what exactly do you have against Mrs. American Mom wanting to look good in her skinny jeans, anyway? That's a win-win, dude.)

Anyone with a computer keyboard these days is an expert.
Remember, there is a reason you’re not working front of the house, and it’s not because you are awesome.

It’s because YOU don’t give a shit.

The idea of these blogs should be to trumpet the industry’s MERITS and gain the public’s trust.
You are doing the opposite.

Your restaurant did, say, 15 less covers this week than last? Who’s to say 4 of those people HADN’T read a rant written by a disgruntled, POSSIBLY inebriated sous chef at a 24 hour diner in Idaho who’s blog looks like he works for The French Laundry, and made such an impression they decide they will now ONLY TAKE THE TRAIN OR A BUS. 

THINK people.

Geek Oriented

So, look, I know this is gonna come off as oddball to some of you, so I'll try to make it into a human interest story as well.

I like to draw.

I'm not awesome at it, but I have my epiphanies.

Anyhoo....two weeks ago I draw a van, and was not happy with it one bit.  
Here it is:

I had the 'look' in my head, but it just didn't come out the way it should have, even thoough I made all the perspective lines and grids. 

 

Most people would just throw it away and start anew, but what if I made the same mistakes again?  I thought I would.

In the days before the internet, I'm not sure what I would have done.

But we have the internet, and we have at our access thousands of resources on millions of subjects.  I will now tell you the background about the resource I was lucky enough to have help me.

The year is 1982 or so, and I am a thirteen year old geek who spends most of his time with his nose in comic books.  My favorite comic book had always been Amazing Spider Man, which wazs one of three Spider-Man comics back then.  (What, you didn't know about Spectacular Spider-Man or Marvel Team-Up featuring Spider-Man?  Shame!)   Around this 1982-3 period, I began noticing the artwork on the Fantastic Four comic had been, well, upgraded to Phenominal!  It was this 'new' guy named John Byrne, and his pages were so packed with mystery gadgets and gorgeous women flying in spaceships that looked like they were very real.  I was in awe.  I then found his other titles, such as Alpha Flight, which became my new favorite, and then he went to the Hulk, and......get it?  I was a junkie for this guy's art.

Fast forward to about 2004.  Now, John Byrne was still making killer comics, but the state of the comics industry had changed for the worse.   Whereas, in 1983, when I wanted to get a comic, I went down to the Winsted News Store on Main Street and looked at the 4 shelves containing the comics, magazines, and crossword books, picked one out, and left happy (usually).  

In 2004, the comics industry had moved to Direct Market Only, meaning comic shops, where REAL geeks played Dungeons & Dragons on the weekends, and after school, and if the owner didn't like YOUR favorite comic, he wouldn't get any, instead trying to force everyone to buy HIS favorite.  It sucked the life out of me.   I went home, and just on a lark, typed John Byrne Comic artist into Google and BAM!, up comes this BYRNE ROBOTICS.Com.  I was never so shocked, thrilled, or scared all at once.  Shocked, because, hey, this internet has everything!  Thrilled, because, this is the guy I idolized all that time and he has his own forum where he communicates with other zealots like me?  YES!    and, Scared, because, Oh, m

an, what the hell am I gonna say to THIS guy without sounding like a blabbering idiot?    

Well, I couldn't have been more wrong about that last part.  The man is a professional, and he's as normal as any one of my other friends/relatives.  He doesn't bullshit, and he doesn't put up with people who waste his time.  Just like me.  
So, remember that ugly van?  We're back to 2008 here....

I go and post it on John Byrne's Forum, where there are a ton of artistically gifted people flowing thru and about.  I post my Ugly Van, and my fears on perspective.  I want the van to look like it's shooting out of a  cannon, not squeezing out of a tube of frosting.

And here is where things are different from pre-internet days.  I get responses from all kinds of people, with some good solutions, some questions for me about my purpose for the van, and then, yes, the man himself comes on and gives me a tutorial in three paragraphs that is LIGHT YEARS ahead of where my artistic mind is, but I lap it up!

To give you a taste of this man's immense talent, I'll give you this shot, which he did a few weeks ago for a customer.

This thing is 30 inches x 40 inches.  That's 3 feet 4 inches wide by 2 feet 6 inches high.  The perspective on this peice is dazzling, as the Hulk is perched upon a unfinished skyscraper battling the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.  Friggin' unbelieveable.  

Just lines on paper.  Sheesh.  Don't believe me? Save the pic to your hard drive and call it up with a Graphics program, and check it out.

So he tells me this stuff, and I go off for a few days, and then I muster the confidence to try the van again.  I got this:

Better, I thought, but the back wheel was really bugging me. 

 It looked like it was twisting.

I post this one, too, and get a bunch of help again, but finally, it was John Byrne himself who saw the problem I was having.   

I wa trying to do a Three Point Perspective.  One left, one right, and one vertical, in this case, starting from below the eye level and coming up.   Because I was using small paper, letter sized, my vertical vanishing point was WAY too shallow.  I thanked him and then, did this:

Much better, much cooler.  Not the greatest, but, just look at the van I posted first, and you'll see.  I love the internet for just these reasons.  

G'night, all.

Happy Birthday Solomon

What do you call a day where:

•  you wake up at 1pm
  
•  eat breakfast 
  
• get dressed to go to the gym
  
• realise you forgot your gym bag when you get there
  
• go to the local hometown non-chain coffee shop for lunch instead and read the paper with a humongo cappucino and a chocolate croissant
  
• go to work expecting another slow shift at the beginning of the week
  
• only to be surprised by a freak electrical accident in town eradicating all power from the town's inhabitatnts EXCEPT our restaurant
  
• take calls from drinking buddies at the town's OTHER restaurants asking if they can send us THEIR customers AND their staffs for dinner and drinks
  
• get my head handed to me by THRONGS of hungy customers with no place to go but a dark, cold, damp house
  
• get surprised again by a bar owner from out of town making an appearance in our bar asking if I will play the grand opening night of his new bar in my hometown which I had no idea was even ready yet
  
• and still get home by 1:30am to the peaceful quietude of my place?
  

Why, you call it Monday, my friends.  You call it Monday.

I Had a Very Fun and Productive Week.

  One can only marvel at the wonders that life will throw at you.  

One month ago, I was entangled in as tragic a situation as could possibly be imagined.  

Today, Sunday September 28th, 2008, I'm humbled to be free and still of sound mind.

But enough poo!

Friday had brought me round to the facts:

I must prepare.  

I must prepare for the weekend of fun, benevolence, and just plain hard work.  

So I ventured home after work, (a mere twelve hour jaunt as a mild mannered but suavely savantish restaurant GM, during which I endured the brunt of the angry, the ignorant, and was treated to the just plain nice.), to begin.  

The house is perfect.  

Quiet.  Clean.  Quiet.  

Ahhhhh.
My mission for Friday:  

Program four hours of CLASSIC Country music and some contemporary crowd pleasers for a (what was forecasted to be) rainy Saturday afternoon Lung Cancer Benefit.

 Then, program sound effects and game show theme songs to be played during the first intermission at the bar Saturday night, during which I will MC the Dirty Word Spelling Bee. (Copyright ME!)

A classy, old school, grass roots family in town is throwing a surprise fund raiser for it's eldest sister who is battling the disease.  

Battling is positively not the word.  

I had seen said sister at a wedding (also DJ'ed by yours truly) this summer, and you could have fooled me.  She looks strong, and is by no means going to just evaporate.  She's as hale and hearty as can be, and if that doesn't make you want to do something productive with your own HEALTHY life, stop reading my blog.  

You're in the wrong place. 

         This place is about hope.

              This place is about FORWARD.>>>>

I am not Country music's biggest fan, but I can recognize greatness.  

Mostly when someone approaches me and says,  "This song's so great!!! Who is it??"  

That's mostly how I pick the songs I play live during my acoustic sets.  

Anything that will get a total stranger to come up to me and ask questions is hot on my list.  

This week's winner:  Conway Twitty's It's Only Make Believe

It was a crappy day Saturday, but a fantastic turnout for a great lady who comes from a great family.

I wish her the bestest of the bestest, and laughed at her brother David 

when he asked what they owed me.  

It is to Laugh!

You can't buy the feelings you get from doing good deeds.

I also made some great new friends.

While setting up, two of the grandchildren were just so frickin' adoreable I couldn't help but have them join in for the fun.  Once they saw the microphone, I turned up the volume, and we had a four year old singing scat, and a seven year old singing EVERYTHING!  Very cool.  

That's Sara "SairBear" Roderick, top,
and her older sister Lauren "LuLu" Roderick, bottom.

Those are my sunglasses.
Tracy and Mark should be very proud.  They're beautiful, funny, bright kids.  Very talented.  

Later in the day, as I began to pack up, I noticed the hint of sadness in Lauren's eyes. Her new friend, and a new musical friend at that, was leaving.  We'd never met before, and I could just imagine her thinking we may never meet again.  

I reached into my hatchback VW and pulled out the Uke.  

As I handed it to her, her Dad looked shocked.  I knew that look, as well.

  
Ukeleles are a wonderful instrument.  They play in the same standard tuning as a guitar, only eight frets up the neck, and eliminating the two largest strings, the E and the A.  

They look silly, but they can sound angelic, and have a tranquilizing effect on humans.

When "LuLu's" face lit up at first grabbing the Uke, her Dad's mind went from, 

"Oh, hey lookit that lil' thing!" to 

"Oh, HEY!  Lookit' THAT little thing!  Why didn't I think of that!"

The wee lass ran around for the next twenty minutes strumming songs noone could recognize, (for they had yet to be written), and singing words noone could memorize, (for the stream of consciousness a joyful seven year old musters is incomprehensible to an adult.  You just let it flow, and enjoy.)  Music is a drug, I swear to you.  

Upon her return to the world of adults, and removing her faerie wings, I grabbed the Uke, and she and I, along with her Pop-Pop (Grampa), sang my version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", finishing the benefit in front of the final fifty or so people on such an amazing high note you'd think it was scripted.  

(And, yes, now you know it was.  By me.  Remember? Truth.)

We recieved thunderous applause, and many handshakes for our little show, and I hopped in my already/just packed emerald chariot and staccato beeped my way down the drive.  

 The rain?  

Pfeh.

 The rain cannot dampen the spirit.  

I was off to work, after the quickest of showers.  

Work was fast, work was hard, work was.....work!  The Saturday crew is not the Friday crew.  The rule is the rule. 

 Fridays don't work Saturdays unless they request it, 

and then they are granted the request at the sacrifice of a Saturday.  

Thus, work being work, people being people, the Saturday crew is a Tuesday turned up a notch.  Now, Saturdays as a DAY are the second busiest day of the week.  This week, as with last week, it was THE busiest day of the week.  I got my cardio in for the month on Saturday.

It was all made worth it, though, when at the strike of Ten P.M., E.S.T., the acoustic act I'd signed up began to play.  They weren't breaking down barriers or rebuilding the pyramids, but they were young and hopeful, and with a great upside.  I had scheduled one bartender, although she is a badass, and myself.  I don't collect tips, as I'm salary, so this was all hers.  We set a new two person shift record.  It was great.  I love my job.  Like any other job, it has it's internal shit poilitics, but the job in general is great.  I'm a people person, so it's easy.  

It's almost not work, it's so easy. 

 The best part?  I brokered the deal with the band so they had to work, too....

They do the door, they get the door.
The door must be no bigger than $3.
They must start at Ten P.M., break at Eleven P.M., and end at Twelve Thirty P.M., leaving my regular Last Call Bar Crawlers the Juke Box Saturday (Late)Night.

You know what? Good for the band.
They did their job.
They brought their crowd.

They collected their money

.They won new fans.

They will live to fight another day.

   A shot from Saturday night, Jo, one of the guitar players, and her Mom and friend.

 Good for us, too!
The band, which I promoted only on the Bar's Myspace and with in-house flyers, cost the business THIRTY SIX DOLLARS.
A $36 bar tab.

We won new fans, too!

There's nothing like seeing people with a few pops in them try and spell FURBURGER, or GONORRHEA.  Priceless.  Free gifts for all three contestants.  The sound effects were cool, but the "Price is Right" Theme, when timed correctly, is a show stealer.  Man-o, I love my Nano!

Saturday, September 27th, 2008 went so well, that even on the three hours of sleep I got later that night, opening the place for a twelve hour shift today was a breeze.

I'm glad I shared that with you.  
See you tomorrow.

It gets better every day.

Joesmith(realname)

The First Day, or, The Best of Your Life

Welcome!

It's been a looooong September '08.

All will come out in the wash, eventually, and nothing will be spared!

Nothing!

I will horsewhip myself in front of you for the stupid things I do, and say, and think!

I will accept the blame for things I did in the past!

I will narrate my way thru the ridiculous and UNmundane trappings of the world as it warps around me!

I am no different than you, dear reader, yet, the forces of nature see things differently, and at a decidedly different pace!

That said; It's nice to see  your smiling face around here.  We could all use a few friends like you, so pull up a yoga position and let's grok & roll.