#67 "Otto's Summer Vacation" In Color! August 6, 2013

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For one reason or another, I remember starting this one (or at least adding the strange baldish woman[?] in pink) on Mother's Day 2011. How can I even remember that, you ask? Well, the answer to your question is that I have no idea how I can remember drawing a specific drawing on a specific date nearly four years ago. My memory is not that great, to tell you the truth. I blame it on years of hard living, and the fact that so much happens to a person living in New York City that it gets harder and harder to remember things. As one living in NYC, you are constantly being bombarded with sensory experiences. Just getting to work, you are surrounded by people, noise, movement, showtime, traffic, and of course, more movement. Add in a fair amount of partying, and you can easily forget what you just did two nights ago. Of course, you can go back and really concentrate on what you've been doing with yourself for the past week, but to go back and remember what you did on a random Tuesday last month, or Mother's Day in 2011? That seems difficult.
However, I know that I started drawing that woman[?] on that day. Here's the story.
Let's back up to when I first started working at the Loup 13 years ago. I had to work Sunday brunch for the first 5 years I worked there, as far as I can remember. It was a brutal shift. I was in my 20's and I was going out all the time. Having to be at work and functional on a Sunday morning was the last thing I wanted to be doing, but I had to pay my dues. We were never really that busy during brunch, so it would have been fine, but for some of my co-workers who certainly did not like me when I first started. They would make my already dreary mornings a living hell. And so we worked together for 5 years, eventually becoming "friends" in the process; actually a couple people who could tolerate each others company while working together. So, it was right around this time that Lloyd decided brunch needed a face lift and added jazz to the mix. So now, even to this day, the Loup has Sunday jazz brunch. At that time, we also dabbled in the idea of having jazz three nights a week  with The Junior Mance Trio. Junior didn't really like that gig, and so now we have the Trio every Sunday evening. That is worth coming in for. As I have probably mentioned before, Junior is a legend, and to see him at such an intimate venue is a treat that you can't get anymore virtually anywhere else in the world. Jazz brunch, on the other had, is like punishment. Thankfully for me, I only overlapped with the jazz brunch for a very short amount of time, and so I got to have the experience, and then be happy in the knowledge that I didn't have to work it anymore. However, sometimes people are out of town and need to have their shifts covered. I will happily cover shifts for my co-workers; even Sunday brunch, albeit grudgingly.
So, that's what happened on Mother's Day 2011. Tomoyo must have been in Japan or something and I picked up her Mother's Day brunch shift along with my Sunday night bar shift, making for a Mother's Day that we ended up calling "Your Mother's Day." ("no, your mother's day!") I like to party and I like the ponies, and The Kentucky Derby happened to fall on the day before Mother's Day that year. So the day before, I was down in West Chester, Pennsylvania watching the Derby with some friends of mine. A couple of us knew that we had to come back to the city first thing on Sunday, so we didn't party that hard. Just kidding. We woke up on Mother's Day and three of us slogged into my boy Cramer's Mini Cooper. I was in the best shape, so I drove. Cramer promptly curled up in the back seat and passed out, while Gabrus and I laughed our way to New York.
Once I got to work and had my coffee, the Mother's Day crowd started filing in. We weren't particularly busy, and so I started drawing this picture. The band was playing and my drawing was the closest thing I could do to tune them out. But, right around the time I was finishing up the woman[?] that's when the torture started. The band leader's wife got up and started singing. She does this sometimes, and it is pure insanity. Her song choice is nuts, her tone is deaf, and it creates a sound not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard. Of course, this is just my opinion and who am I to judge? So, I start tensing up and then it all goes to hell once she goes into her second number. I can't tell what the melody is until she launches into the first verse. "Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry..." Yes, she was singing "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" from Oklahoma. But in the jazzy mood.
I couldn't handle it. The song broke something in my brain. I dropped my pen and went out from behind the bar and out of the restaurant, letting the waiters know that it was a self-serve bar for at least the time it took for this song to be over.
So, did we get to the bottom of this? I think we did. I think I remember that I started this drawing on Mother's Day 2011 because I went through a traumatic experience that day, and because of that, I remember the exact origin of this slightly unnerving drawing. The brain can work in mysterious ways. In fact, even though we know that we have a brain and it controls everything we do as humans, we have very limited knowledge about how it actually works. So chalk this one up as another unexplained little nugget of mystery. It's funny too, because the more I stare into the black eyes of that woman[?], the more it reminds of those dark days of working brunch, where the coffee is never full enough, the eggs are never fluffy enough, and the Bloody Mary's never have enough booze.

#67 "Otto's Summer Vacation" August 6, 2013

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I had been sitting on this blog post for a while, and now it has come back to bite me in the buttocks. I should have written a nice puff piece about Syracuse University athletics. I should have written about my lifelong fandom of Syracuse football, basketball, and lacrosse. I should have listed all my favorite basketball teams, players and eras. But I didn't. I waited too long, and now this picture has been convicted by the University to be illegal enough to warrant banning this year's basketball team from the post season.
For those of you who don't follow men's college basketball, Syracuse has had a very good team every year since I was a child. Growing up in Syracuse, the basketball team helped everyone get through brutal winters and gave us something to cheer about in those dark times. I grew up and moved away from Syracuse, but my fandom stayed with me, until it reached it's peak in 2003 when Syracuse won the National Championship game with Carmello Anthony, Gerry McNamara, and a whole bunch of talented young men and a swagger that would have taken them to the Promised Land again the next year, had Carmello not gone Pro. Since then, I still watch numerous games throughout the year, and always watch The Cuse in The Tournament. Not only to I watch and cheer them on in the Tournament, when I fill out my brackets, I always have them winning the whole enchilada. Some people tell me that the method I use is insane and will never win me any money, but hear me out. If I won some money on my brackets one year and I had The Cuse not winning, it would be a hollow victory. Second, and more of a nightmare for me, is what if The Cuse did win and I had picked someone else to win it all over The Cuse? How would I live with myself?! For the rest of my life, I would say, "Yes, I am happy we won it all that year, but you'll never believe I picked Loyola to win it all!" Bonehead move! So, I always have them winning the whole thing, and I have only seen that happen once. It's not as crazy as it sounds, either. The Cuse is usually ranked in the top ten every year, so the probability of them winning the whole thing each year is actually pretty good. Better than Loyola's chances, for instance.
So, this year, Syracuse is on probation and it's 2014-2015 season is shot. The Seniors won't be able to play in the Post-season at all this year. The reason why is pictured above. That's right, Otto the Orange is a degenerate druggie. No, actually, the real reason is way more boring. It's about possible manipulation of grades, hours that interns were given, and other boring things that all Universities with huge football and basketball programs do, but only some are getting caught or being made examples of. I wish they were on probation because of Otto's weed abuse. Otto was born to The Cuse in 1980. Prior to that, the mascot was an indian, or "Saltine Warrior," since Syracuse was once known as The Salt City. Native Americans successfully petitioned against the Saltine Warrior in 1978, and the mascot was dropped from the University. They went through one more iteration before Otto came on the scene. Then, Otto wasn't an "official" mascot of the University until 1995. It was around this time that Otto started smoking pot. You see, the team was really good back then, and Otto was a little nervous about becoming "Official." So, he started smoking grass, and he really liked it. This continued for fifteen years, and what a great span of time that was! A National Title game in 1996, a victory in 2003, the longest (and greatest?) game ever in 2009, and so many great young kids to smoke with! Well, the NCAA caught wind of what Otto was up to on off days and after the crowds had left The Dome for the night and they were not happy. They started hounding the University until finally they had no choice but to self-impose a post season ban. Otto, of course, is devastated, as he always travels with the team in the post season. Upon hearing the news, Otto invited the whole team to his little cave underneath The Dome for one last killer session before giving up marijuana forever.
Or, until next summer.
Until then, you can see Otto cheering on his beloved Orange at home games from now until the season ends in March. Then, we'll pack up this miserable season and get on with our lives, eagerly awaiting next year's hopefully "Probation-free" year. As for the Cuse-free tournament this year; I might still have the Cuse win the whole thing. Sure, they won't actually be in the running, but I bet they still have better odds of winning it over Loyola.

#66 "The Dirty Shirty Gang" In Color!!! July 17, 2013

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The Music Boxer

I hadn't been to work in a while. I was somewhere, I forget where now. It was probably one of two places, but the specifics are lost on me now. I was settling in to work as one does after an extended time away from the workplace. You know, when you are kind of happy to be back and working again, but still a little melancholy about the trip you were just on. You think about where you were a week ago, two thousand miles from work, where your co-workers were the whole time, toiling away while you were on a beach or something.
But I was kind of happy to be back. I certainly needed the money.
I was excited to get started, to see some of the regulars and chat about the adventures I had been on. I would tell them the highlights and maybe the lowlights. We would talk about getting there and getting back. Somehow people always like to talk about that. It's almost like it comforts them to know that going on a long trip requires a fair amount of travel between the two places. If this travel takes a turn for the worse, it helps the person who never left feel better that they never left. It makes them think that well, I didn't go anywhere but thank goodness I didn't, with all that confusion and hassle just getting there and back.
I was back. The guys in kitchen had already made the usual jokes about me not having a job anymore, they had given it away to someone else since I was gone too long. I had already told the stories over dinner to my co-workers, eager to hear something new. We weren't open yet, but there was already a little buzz of activity over at the bar. My Monday was their Friday. My first day back was their end of a long, awful week. They needed that first, second, and third drink. I needed some coffee.
I went into the coat room to change clothes, from my street clothes into my work attire. Button down shirt, tie, and bistro apron. I put on my King Kong tie and tucked it in so only the bi-planes flying high over the Empire State building were visible, while Kong himself stayed hidden beneath my shirt. People really loved that tie, somehow, even without seeing that Kong was always hidden away, minutes from an ugly death.
It was then that I heard it. It had been the next CD in the 5 disc CD player the whole time, I simply hadn't recognized that the previous CD was the same as it always was. And now, this. This one CD that was on an endless repeat. Waiting patiently as 4 other CDs played before it, until it spins into place and starts. I don't know exactly how long it had been in there. It must have been years, spinning around in the same order and playing the same music 6 nights a week for how long? How could anyone gauge that? The only people who would know tried not to think about it. Outside of the place, we all put it out of our minds; tried our best to not think about the tunes. I'm sure some of us dreamed about the tunes, over and over again, playing in our work nightmares. The trumpet, the saxophone, that one solo, that one note that isn't right but is so ingrained in our minds that if it were to magically become correct we would all revolt.
The whole CD came back to me in those first couple of notes. I could see the entire setlist in my head, knew all of the parts and all of the breaks. I didn't need to hear it, it was so deep within my psyche, I could recite it a capella on the street corner and pick up some extra change. I hadn't thought about it for the entire time I was gone, and now, within one hour of being back, here it was, waiting to greet me upon my returning. Like a bully waiting for me after school, waiting to beat me up because he liked the girl I liked but couldn't articulate himself enough to make her notice. He just bellowed and howled out the same tunes over and over again, punching, kicking and scratching at me with them until I wore them as scars.

#66 "The Dirty Shirty Gang" July 17, 2013

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Being a server or bartender in America, you are dependent on the system of tipping. We make a hourly wage, but it is the minimum wage, so in New York, it comes to about $5.00 an hour. That's double what waiters are making in 19 states, the lowest being $2.13 an hour to wait tables. That is not a lot of money, to say the least, so we depend on the system of tipping. A lot of people are against this system and think it should be abolished completely, with servers then making a salary like any other profession. I am of the school of thought that this is not going to happen any time soon, as it is not something that anyone ever thinks about unless they are working in the restaurant business. People who have never worked in a restaurant know that they have to tip, and so many times it becomes a power trip for them, or a discriminatory act. Some people hold the tip over their servers head nearly from the get-go, saying some things like, "we're going to be a pain in the ass, but we leave good tips." Other people warn you, usually in a joking manner, like when you spill a little water, or worse, some of the drink; "That's coming out of your tip!" It seems to me that at the end of the night, the tips have a way of equalling out, so you'll get those awful tips, but then you'll have some great tippers, so the two offset.
There are some instances in which the tip is entirely lost because of the way people divide up the tip. These days, most people pay by credit card. I don't mind this although our tips are then taxed, but most places these days also collect the cash tips at the end of the night and put it all in the pot so it's all taxed anyway. This is not the case at our place, so our cash tips are tax free. Again, since most people don't pay cash, or tip in cash, this money is usually just a couple bucks here and there; enough to buy a round of drinks, essentially. What really irks me though, and this was the point of this rant, is when people divide the check between each other using cash and credit card, because the majority of these people do it incorrectly. I am here to let you know the incorrect method and hope that in the future, you and your friends will divide it better. So, the incorrect way, and the way that is most commonly seen is as such. Two (or more) people will be dividing the check, I will come over to the table and one of them will hand me a bunch of cash, a card or two, and say, "put the rest on the card." That is incorrect! What usually happens in this case is, I do just that; I count the cash (9 times out of 10 it is more than half of the bill because people are "adding on the tip" as part of their cash payment) and then I run the card. Most times, I pick up the credit card slip and the tip that has been left is only counting the money on the credit card slip, so I am only being tipped on half of the bill. This happens all the time. For some reason, people don't understand that this is happening. They think that since the cash payer "included" the tip in their part of the bill that we are going to get that "extra" money as a tip. But, when someone asks to "put the rest on the card" they obviously know how much they owe. So, if you take out the cash tip, and put more money on the card, they accuse you of overcharging. Some of the time, the people who are paying with credit cards will leave the right amount for the tip, but most of the time, in this scenario, the waiter gets half of the tip that is standard. If the credit card payer is a lousy tipper, then it is sometimes even less.
The correct way of doing this is so achingly simple, it makes me crazy each and every time I get the line, "put the rest on the card." Before I get to that, let me just preface this statement with the following. I realize that not everyone who comes into the restaurant has a lot of money on their debit card. I realize that a lot of the people paying with credit cards are behind on their payments and drowning in debt. I understand all of this. But, this does not excuse you from paying for your meal. So, with that said, here is the correct way to divide the check with cash and a credit card.

Whoever is paying cash in the party gives the cash to the person who is paying with the credit card. The person paying with the credit card keeps the cash and puts the whole bill on the card.
 Boom. Simple.

This way, the whole bill goes on the credit card, the credit card payer can leave tip in cash or credit form, and everyone is happy! The cash payer can feel good about his "tip included" payment, the credit card payer now has some cash on their person, and the tip is correct. Unless, of course, the credit card payer is a bad tipper. But t least they paid correctly!

#65 "Happy Campers" In Color!!! June 27, 2013

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Oof. That last post stressed me out!

I was inspired to write a post in the style of a short story instead of a blog post, and for some dumb reason I decided to write about being in the weeds. Well, it was like I was reliving being in the weeds, and the customers were real! Even the guy who tugged on my apron was a real person and I can see his face now! Argh! That is one of the challenging things about this project: I am forced to think about work while not physically at work. One of my favorite parts about being a server and bartender is that when you leave the job, it doesn't go home with you. I don't ever have to work from home. If I am not at the restaurant, I don't have to serve people. It really is a great thing. However, with this project, a little bit of the restaurant is with me all the time here on my computer. I am sure I have mentioned that I rarely draw people I know on these pictures because I don't want to have to think about them when I am at home. Don't get me wrong, Tim and I have inadvertently drawn customers and friends on these drawings before and probably will again, I am just saying that I don't usually do it on purpose. I would feel bad if I drew someone I like on one of these drawings and then all of a sudden, the drawing progresses and that person that I like finds themselves in some crazy scene like the one pictured above. On the other hand, if we draw someone who we don't like very much or who is a difficult customer, then I have to see them, color them in, and make them fit into the crazy scene like the one featured above. That means that I have to spend time with them that I usually would not do. I try to avoid difficult customers. I do not want to hang out with them in my own home in my free time, and they probably feel the same way about me. 

When we do get difficult regular customers at the restaurant, we usually will trade them out. For instance, if you are a problem customer for me, but Mike doesn't mind you, then you will usually have Mike as your server even if you are not sitting in Mike's section. The same goes with me. I will take Edie's problem customers and vice versa and on and on, amen. This makes the night better for everyone, including you. I mean, you don't think that you are a problem customer! You think that you are Cafe Loup's best regular and life of the party! But I am here to tell you that you are someone's problem customer. I think that I am probably someone's problem customer. I walk into a certain bar on a certain night with a certain someone behind the bar and they roll their eyes and say, "darn, that guy is back! Why can't he come in here on my night off?"

It's just part of life. You think you are a good person, a generous person, and a person who is liked by all people and babies and small animals. But you're not. Someone thinks you suck. And I think this happens a lot in restaurants because people who are problem customers don't know that they are being obnoxious a lot of the time. Sometimes it's the alcohol that makes them difficult. Maybe that one night they had a couple too many and started talking crazy to their server. Maybe they were just really hungry that one night and weren't in the mood to small talk and so they got a little snippy with the waitress. Well, whatever it was, your server remembers. 

Being a server is a hard enough job as it is without difficult customers. When I have a full section, which is 12 tables with up to 36 people in my section AT THE SAME TIME, I do not have time to have difficult people. That is 36 people all needing something and all at different times, so I am trying to figure out the timing of getting 36 people one thing at a time. A lot of the time, I have half of those 36 people being regulars who know me, and see that if I do have a full section, they'll be more patient than usual. And yet, with 18 people on my side, all it takes to throw the whole night off is one problem customer. Since the job is all about timing, and making sure everything is landing in the right place, one person making crazy demands or keeping me at the table longer than necessary is a formula for throwing off the entire night. On the other hand, if I mess things up on my end, the same is true. There is a very delicate balance and if as little as one thing disrupts that balance, a good night can turn into a bad night in a matter of literal seconds. 

That is why when you are a problem customer, your server will never forget you. There are people who have been coming to the restaurant for years whose face gives me a visceral reaction of dread and yet I can't even remember how they spited me. They may have done something 10 years ago, and yet, when I see them, I hand them over to Mike or Edie. Yet, even as I say that, I am looking down the pike at future T&J drawings and see more and more real life people making their way into the drawings. However, as you will see in future blog posts, the people who do make it into the drawings come with an interesting story. So, even though they might be awful, at least their story is interesting. Maybe it will be about YOU!

#65 "Happy Campers" June 27, 2013

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The Weeds

The phone won't stop ringing. It's on the fourth ring when I get up from Table 33 and sprint across the dining room to grab the phone from behind the bar. As soon as I pick it up, I hear the dial tone and see Ardes has come from in the coat room and has already picked up the phone, taking another reservation. At this point, I have been interrupted too many times to rejoin Staff Meal, and decide I should get dressed and ready to be on the floor. After all, Tim has a nearly full bar, two Marbletops, and it's not even 5:30. I change and as I am coming out of the coat room tying my apron, a four top walks in "just for drinks." I put them on Table 15 and go to the waiter's station to get them water and to make myself a cup of coffee. Usually, I have some time in between Staff Meal and Service in which I can relax a little and have a cup of coffee while preparing for the evening. I can tell that this is not one of those nights. Tonight I am already in The Weeds.

I get Table 15 started with some water and two Beefeater manhattans straight up, one with olives the other with a twist and olives on the side, a pint of Anchor Steam and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I take over Table 5 and Table 6 from Tim. Table 6 is Barbara and a friend of hers, so that's good. She's a regular and always has the same thing, but even she pulls me aside and asks for an order of frites. I put that order in, and on my way out of the kitchen I see I have two more tables. I put some sugar in my coffee and set up 4 waters for Table 10 and 12 and as I am doing that, Karen sits down on 11. So, I pour her water and her wine and put all of the waters and wine on the tray and pass them out. Table 10 tells me they are going to the theater and in a hurry and are ready to order, so I stand there with the rest of the waters and Karens wine still on the tray and listen to them order a beet salad with the sauce on the side followed by the chicken but with frites instead of potatoes and just a soup for the lady. Oh, and also two Manhattans, one dry, one regular, both up and made with Canadian Club. I make a mental note and hand Karen her water and wine, dropping the remaining waters on Table 12. I write out the order for 10 since we don't have a computer POS system and put it in the kitchen, because when you're in The Weeds, the last thing you want to do is forget to order food. I go straight to the bar and get 15's drinks and grab menus for 11 and 12 (even though I don't think Karen really needs one) and drop the drinks on 15. At this point they tell me that they think that maybe they'll order some "small bites" so I drop the menus for them and rush back to the menu stand to get another 4 menus. At this point, Table One is being sat with another 4 Top and Liz and her friend have snuck into Table 2B. So, now I pick up another 4 menus to make 8 for 4 different tables and drop them on 12, 11, (one extra on 15) and 1. While I was doing that, I got the drink order from 12, a bottle of Cotes Du Rhone, and then go get Liz's Extra Sour Gray Goose Gimlet and her friends Pinot Grigio order and tell Table 1 that I will be right back to get their drink orders. I forgot about Barbara's frites so I race back into the kitchen and pick them up, wondering where the heck everyone else is, and being a little sad that our runner doesn't show up for another hour, and Table 10's soup and beets salad is also ready, so I pick up all three things and distribute them to Barbara first, and then soup and beets to Table 10. I stop to say "hi" to Karen and explain that I am already in The Weeds, so that I might be a little slow when the guy on position one at Table 15 actually grabs the back of my apron and tugs on it. I turn around to him as he says, "I think we're ready to order." My blood boils a bit when the girls at the table say something along the lines of, "Oh, we are? I haven't even looked yet!" and the tugger says something like, "I'll just order some small bites for the table." At which point he essentially lists off all of the items on the appetizer menu and takes a vote at the table until they have ordered 2 appetizers and an order of frites. During this time, Table 3, 4 and 16 have all been sat, and so I have a full section and it's barely 6:00.

Flash forward to a half an hour later. The runner has finally showed up, although my section is full and then rest of the restaurant is filling up fast. It's just one of those nights where The Weeds poke through the pavement at an extraordinary rate and there is nothing you can do to stop them. I knew it was going to happen as soon as I walked into the restaurant a little after 4:30. The book was packed and the phone just wouldn't quit. That's how you know. You can feel it from the frantic energy in an empty restaurant. Now here I am, two hours later without time to even drink my coffee which sits untouched on the waiter's station, cold and stale. I see it and down it in one gulp, picking up drinks at the same time and racing over to Table 6 to get Barbara her bill. At this point I pick up Barbara's Gold Card and run it through our credit card machine. American Express has extra security so I take the extra time that it takes to process the order to process my section. I start from the front:

Table 1: Ordered food, waiting for apps, have drinks

Table 2A: Still looking at wine list although most definitely ready to order

Table 2B: Liz and friend on Round 2 of drinks. Probably ready for more. And frites

Table 3: Having drinks and looking at menus

Table 4: Drinking (light weights) very slowly

Table 5: Still here from about 5 and essentially taking up space. "Camping"

Table 6: Waiting for me to give her this credit card which is processing extra slow

Table 10: Eating entrees, going to be early for the theater

Table 11: Karen, ordered burger with half a bun rare-medium rare with frites sauce

Table 12: Eating appetizers, drinking Cotes Du Rhone

Table 15: Waiting for more frites after the first order wasn't enough, need more drinks

Table 16: Pleasent enough people. Waiting for apps....

And with that, the credit card machine whirrs to life: 

"Transaction Failed."

To Be Continued...

#64 In Color!!! June 19, 2013

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When Tim and I started this project 5 years ago, we had no idea how far it would go. We were essentially just messing around, drawing pictures at work like we had been for years before that fateful day where we liked a picture enough to take it home and work on it outside of the restaurant. That first picture that I took home is pretty simple, but has all of the insanity of later drawings in it. Take a look at it here.
Tim and I would draw on the Triple Dupe Pad nearly every day we were at the restaurant, always adding (and sometimes subtracting) to the whole thing. We would draw on them while we had our evening coffee before the rush, and then again at the end of the night while sitting on Table 8 drinking beers and talking about the evening that had just recently ended. As time went on, Tim and my schedule became less and less intertwined. We used to work three out of four days together, and so we were working on these drawings a lot during that time. As the years passed, our schedules changed so much that Tim and I only work together for a couple hours on Friday evenings when I come in to wait tables in the evening and he finishes up his shift as the dar bar tender. I am not sure if that fact of not working together has slowed down our output, but we have certainly slowed down the production of T&J drawings.
 I rarely draw these days during the pre-shift coffee break. This is usually because I am much better friends with the bar regulars now, and so instead of turning my back to them and drawing insane pictures of aliens harvesting heads, I catch up with them and visit. Then, at the end of the night, it's usually the same thing. Instead of the staff sitting on Table 8, like the old days, we all hang out at the bar and visit with our favorite regulars. It almost seems wrong to call these people regulars since a lot of them are friends who happened to be customers first. That is how I would describe these people to outsiders. Yes, we met in a server/served environment, but we have gone beyond that relationship and developed a full-on friendship. This happens sometimes in some restaurants and bars, but it happens at our place more, I think. The way the restaurant operates, and the longevity of the staff makes it the perfect place to become really good friends with the staff and regulars.
For instance, years ago, a woman named Karen started coming in to eat. She would come in and sit at Table 11 or 12 (depending on which one was open at the time). She would read on her Kindle and have a glass of wine and eat a little something. Well, after a couple of times waiting on her, I asked how she liked the Kindle (they were new at the time), and from that question on, we became friends. She would come in every Wednesday and Friday for years and years. We became Bookface friends, and we would talk for hours about everything from technology to the Opera and everything in between. Now, you are probably thinking, well, obviously a young waiter and a single woman becoming friends in a restaurant is nothing out of the ordinary. That sort of thing happens every day. The only difference is that Karen and I are completely different people from completely different times. She could be an aunt of mine or some distant relative that would be a peer of my parents. But, because of the restaurant, we are now friends. In the outside world that never would have happened, but in the restaurant it happens all the time. The fact that I have so many friends my parents age and older is directly related to working at the restaurant. And so, I guess it is a little sad that the T&J production has gone down but the reason for the slowdown is a positive thing. I mean, friendship is more important that productivity any day of the week.

#64 June 19, 2013

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One of my favorite parts about this one was making the ant farm. It seems to help this giant machine devised by large-brained aliens run well. Although maybe it is really just cosmetic. Regardless, I enjoyed drawing it, and I am not sure I had ever drawn one before. It's funny how there are some things that you never draw even though they are part of your history. When I was a kid, we had an ant farm. I am pretty sure we were inspired to get one by Raul's Wild Kingdom on the classic Weird "Al" movie, "UHF." Whatever the inspiration, my brother and I thought it would be a cool thing to have an ant farm. So, we went to the mall, and picked one up from Kay-bee toys or from the Nature store. You don't get ants at the store, which I initially thought was a little weird, but these kits are all sealed up so there's no way the ants would be able to survive on the shelf for so many weeks/months/years, so instead you had to send away for the ants. The company who makes the farms will then send you live ants through the mail. At this time in my life, I was living in Syracuse, New York, and anyone who has been to Syracuse, knows that it is cold there pretty much 10 months out of the year. So, when we finally got our ants from the real farm/factory, they were frozen solid and dead. It's crazy to think back on that, only because I am remembering them all frozen and dead, but also packaged in a test tube, essentially. So, my brother and I are looking at all these dead ants in a frozen tube and we are obviously pretty bummed out because we want to see these ants dig! Right? That's why you get the ant farm in the first place, because you can't believe that they will actually be able to do the digging (even though your whole life you've seen ants doing just fine on their own). So we sent back the frozen ants, and soon enough we had ants in a tube that were totally alive! We put them in the green plastic farm that was three-quarters filled with white sand, and watched to see if they would really dig. And weren't we pretty excited when they did! Wow, those ants really digging tunnels! Minutes of fun!
We had the ant farm for about as long as the average kid has an ant farm, which is to say, until the first batch of ants dies. Once they were in there and working away, the whole novelty of thing had worn off. Don't get me wrong, the inventors of the ant farm are geniuses. Whoever can make money by mailing bugs to suburban homes for 50 years is pretty smart. Not to mention, the simple design of the thing is pretty amazing. It's no more than a couple inches deep, and about the size of an 11 x 14 poster that is a self contained, living  picture. The more I write about it here as an object, the more I want to get one again, but in my adult life. I think I want one just to see if I could take better care of the ants now that I am a relatively normal, functioning adult. Or, would the ants grow to be a finite age and die, but not cannibalize each other. Because, that was one of my questions then, as it is now. What happens to the remains of the ants when they die? I doubt the ants bury one another, so where do the corpses go? Also, since there is no queen sold with the set, how does one continue the colony except by introducing new ants into the existing farm?
Luckily for me, there are still thousands of people buying and selling ant farms. In fact, NASA developed a new gel as a sand substitute which also contains nutrients for the ants, so they could be observed in zero-gravity. All of the questions I have just asked have been answered by the internet. That is a great thing about writing these blog posts. While I am writing, I have some pretty random stories that send me down strange rabbit holes of internet. This post is a perfect example of this; I would never look up ant farms or be interested in getting one, but since I was going down memory lane, it just kind of happened. Now I know NASA is interested in ant farms and their history goes back to 1900's era France. Yes, this knowledge is all but useless, but it might make for some interesting conversations at the bar tomorrow.

#63 "Highway 61, Re-twisted." in color? June 12, 2013

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When I was a kid I was really scared of horror movies. I couldn't watch them and my mom would  not allow me to watch them because I would have bad dreams about them for weeks. But there was this one stretch of time when me and my boy Greg Prescott would sit down in his basement and watch all the classic horror movies on afternoon t.v.; Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Creature From the Black Lagoon and so on. I think I was able to watch those ones without being completely scared senseless because they were in black and white and so they were removed from reality enough for me to stomach it. I have not re-watched any of those movies since that time in Greg's basement and I doubt I will watch them again. It is because I am very peculiar when it comes to black and white movies. I realize that there are true classics, and arguably the greatest movies of all time, all shot in black and white, but I find them to be less powerful than movies in color. I think it has something to do with the extra step away from reality, but I also don't like the way the actors in black and white movies act.
I understand that this view is broad and that there are exceptions to the rule, but I am speaking here in generalizations. I find that the actors are overacting and speak with an unbelievable affected accent. I can't imagine that is how people actually talked. However, there is one woman who comes into the restaurant who might just prove me wrong. Her name is Sheila and she must be 85 years old, minimum. She is amazing. Sheila comes in every Sunday after going to, fittingly, the movies. She wears a hat with a hat pin and always has a Dewar's on the rocks in a stem glass and then a light dinner with some Sauvignon Blanc. She is a dear old lady and is always going to see weird movies. I want to write a spin-off blog called "What did Sheila Watch This Week?" and have it just be a list of all the things Sheila watched. We've gotten to the point where we ask her what she watched and her opinion on it. For instance, she went to see "22" a couple months ago, only because she had never heard of it and thought it might be interesting. She had no idea she was in for Jonah Hill and Tatum Channing putzing around for an hour and a half. So we asked her what she thought of it, and naturally she said, "It was awful!" Now we are getting to the part where Sheila just might convince me that people talked weird back in the early days of film. Sheila has a way of speaking that very few people possess today and can really only be explained by harkening back to old films. She might be from England, giving her an undistinguishable English accent. Or maybe it's not an English accent, but upper crust American accent, which I am guessing was once an upper crust English accent that has been passed down a couple generations in America. To give you an example, you'll have to use your imagination and speak out loud, so if you are in a coffee shop or other public place, you might get some weird looks, but it'll be worth it. One day, Sheila beckoned Tim over to her table. He bent down to hear what she had to say, and with a big grin on her face, she said the following. This is where you have to speak out loud, as an 85+ year old woman with maybe an English accent. If you can't say it out loud, come by the restaurant and ask Tim and I to say it for you, it's one of our favorite sayings. So, ok, back to what she said. She leans in and says to Tim, "You know that waiter that I don't like? He touched my hat! Can you believe that?" I am laughing just typing that, but I am also laughing picturing all 8 of you devoted readers saying this out loud in your homes and/or offices. The point is, Sheila is the closest I have ever come to believing that people in old movies weren't just making up some accent because of a cycle perpetrated by the movies themselves.
I am no linguist, and so this theory is all assumption, and I would gladly listen to how I am completely wrong I am and learn the real reason that movie stars of yore talk in this slightly affected language. And I am only talking about white actors. Don't even get me started about black people being portrayed in black and white films.
Instead, I will just say that this drawing was a fun exercise in coloring in a monochrome palette on the computer. I had never colored a drawing in with a monochrome palette in Photoshop before. On the one hand I liked it because it made my job a lot easier because I didn't have to think about what color was going to look good where. This one also took significantly less time to color than the one that are "in color." Those ones take me an average of 6 hours to color, especially these days when the color is very detailed. This one took less time than that, although it was still pretty time consuming. It remains the only T&J colored in "black & white" so it will always stand out because of that. I think Greg Prescott would approve.

#63 "Highway 61, Retwisted." June 12, 2013

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You hear about haunted houses and buildings all the time in New York. There are even ghost tours that you can pay money to have people show you various spots in the city where there are tales of hauntings. Since this city is huge and it's history goes all the way back to the time before white people, you are guaranteed to be standing or working on the exact spot where someone or something was killed. Actually, if you think about it, every square inch of the earth is littered with the remains of something that was once alive, but that is a different, more complex story that I will get into at another time.
I have never seen anyone die in the restaurant, although I have seen people very close to dying and having to be taken out of the restaurant by the EMTs. It's always a scary thing to witness, but it's a thing that happens when you work in a place that is always open for the public to use. People die every day in all kinds of strange manners. Most of the time these people are not planning on dying that day, and so it's a surprise to them and the ones who are around them. Many years ago, I was working in the front of the restaurant and a young lady came in with her father and mother, which is a extremely common theme. But this night, things would end up being somewhat less than common. They had essentially just sat down at the table when I went over to get drink orders from them. As I approached, the young lady started screaming at me to call 9-11. Her father was having trouble breathing, and one look at him and I knew that, yes indeed, I should be calling 9-11. He looked awful; pale white skin with green undertones, an 1,000 yard stare in his eyes and barely breathing at all. It scared the crap out of me, so I took out my cell phone and dialed 9-11 for the first time in my life. I told the operator where we were and what was happening and to send an ambulance right away, and that was that; or so I thought. I went over to the manager to tell him that I had called and instead of being happy about it and saying that was a responsible thing to have done, he started screaming at me! He told me that I was under no circumstances to call 9-11, that it was his job to call 9-11. He said that he had already called when he overheard the young lady and my conversation and now he was yelling at me because the city was now probably sending over two ambulances. I know that sounds crazy, because it was. This manager from back then was crazy. He didn't like me very much and would use any excuse to yell at and berate me. I used to think all restaurant managers were insane and there was a special place in hell for them. No doubt I have talked about that at some point on this blog. I have since changed my tune a little bit, but now I have only upgraded it into the belief that restaurant managers are doomed to live out eternity managing restaurants in some strange purgatory-like restaurant that is always open.
So, anyway. One ambulance showed up and took the father away in a stretcher and out of the restaurant for the evening. I don't know if he died or not. He may have lived and is still a customer at the restaurant to this day. I did not know those people, so I wouldn't be able to remember them today. Since that surreal first time, I have seen the EMTs in the restaurant a handful of times. Every time I can remember, the person who needs them leaves the restaurant with full consciousness, thankfully. However, before the restaurant was in that location, there was a bar in it's place before it. Who knows how many people died there? And the fact that there are 100 apartments above the restaurant almost guarantees human death on that exact location at some point in time. All of this begs the question, where are all the ghosts?
I have closed that place up hundreds of times over the years and have never seen a ghost. How could this be possible? Yes, I have been a little freaked out on occasions very late at night when I am the only one in the whole place and there's no music and no sound. But even then, I am more freaked out about being robbed than about being scared by a ghost. Although now that I know restaurant managers are perpetually managing restaurants for eternity in the hereafter, I guess I should keep my guard up a little. After all, one our most evil managers died in mysterious circumstances about 5 years ago, so he may be haunting the establishment and I have merely not noticed. He's probably haunting a club though, now that I think of it. If I do end up seeing his ghost, I will certainly tell the NYC Ghost Tour people about it. This way we can diversify our clientele by adding occult members and finally get to the bottom of this haunted house thing. Because I really just want to know about the place across the street that I believe was built on an indian burial ground. But that, too, is a different story.