It's big news, this, at the restaurant, the Oiler's ill fated night out.
If you're not familiar, there's the news story here: http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Oilers+players+refused+massive+bill+Calgary+restaurant+owner/2397784/story.html.
The boys, they've discussed it, added the bill up and double checked the math, they're arguing that the Oiler's behaved badly, they should have just paid the bill, it all adds up.
The owner, he's thinking the Oiler's might have had some cause for complaint. I'm with him.
First of all, how did this make the news? Even in a small town like Calgary, it's definitely not news. But there's something deliciously spiteful about hating the Oiler's, that inane, childish rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton, and the press knows their audience. No, it's definitely not news, but it'll sure sell papers....
Second of all, there's a certain whiff of half truths about it all. Not that I suspect that the Oiler's are in any way paragons of virtue or good manners, I've never even considered it and would be surprised if any of them were. That's not what they're paid for. But there is something very suspicious about Maurizio Terrigno's claim that he would "donate the money to the Earthquake relief fund...". I'd like to see the receipt for that, and be reassured that the charity wasn't being run by his brother.... Note the interview charge he attempted to levy on the Globe and Mail...
Third of all, he's just alienated a very affluent clientele who not unreasonably expect some discretion and privacy when they're dining out.
Maybe that was the service charge they refused to pay. In any event, as costly as it was for them in terms of bad publicity, I suspect it will prove even more costly to the restaurant owner. Read the comments following each of the articles, others have found as well the faint whiff of sulpher in Maurizio's claims and I'll be not a little surprised if it doesn't cost him a fair measure of business, if not the business itself.
I'll end with this by Mark Twain:
"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."
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5 AM and I can't sleep. I'm quitting smoking.
Not the "My lungs are blacker than a coal miners, mouth stinks, teeth are falling out and I can't catch my breath getting out of my chair" sort of quitting smoking, although I'm sure that will come, rather a "I don't have 2 fucking cents to rub together because the damned cheques are fucking freaking late and in part again" sort of quitting smoking. The involuntary quitting smoking.
And I pace and I occasionally cry and there are moments of brief lucidity wherein I sit down to do some work but I can't focus, not even a little bit, and so I stand and pace some more and maybe weep and the cat stares at me, perplexed, l bark in return. . .
There's always the crime spree, but I'm saved from myself by my newfound inability to focus on anything, and no sooner have I Googled "Oceans Eleven" then I have forgotten what I am searching for and why I am even searching. . .
Oh yes, the crime spree . . .
So I dig out the patches, NicoDerm, step 2, a well intended gift for someone with no intentions of quitting smoking, cut them in half because I don't really consider myself to be a heavy smoker and slap one on my arm.
And in an hour I can feel the symptoms palpably, well, alleviated. Slightly. I can sit longer. Only a bit. The urges to cry, throttle, scream, bark, they still come, but they pass quicker. I toy with the idea of making this a permanent state of affairs. But the patches, after a while they burn on the skin, ache, like I've had a flu shot, the whole arm weakens, I can feel it, a peculiar bruising up it's entire length. And I wake in the middle of the night, wide awake, fully awake, my big toe pulsing...
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The children want to swap some of their unused video games, so we go through the box and line up a dozen or so they no longer play. Mostly XBox games, some in the case, all in good working order, and as I'm not familiar with the process the boy explains that I'll have to go along, they need an adult, they'll exchange the games for credit and get some different ones.
So we head on down. It's a busy little store this, a popular chain that sells both new and used games for all makes of console. And the clerk begins to scan the games in, the price he gives is the price that comes up on the computer. 50 cents. 25 cents. And I'm a little surprised, these things are expensive new, but maybe they're really cheap used. He looks a bit sheepish as he scans them in, the games, 50 cents here, 25 cents here, by the time he's scanned all the games in the kids have earned a whopping $6.00 in credit. For a dozen used XBOX games. And I'm wondering how much their used games are, if they're paying 25 or 50 cents per game, how much can they be charging for the same games?
I quickly find out. $15-20 per used game. For a game they purchased from their customers for under a dollar.
I catch the boys eye, can't bring myself to say anything, it would have been better to simply dump the games off at a thrift shop than trade them here at their usurious rates of exchange.
Now I understand they have to make a living. And maybe these games we were exchanging, they weren't the most popular of titles. But then why wouldn't they sell them at a dollar or two? Or, if they don't need the game, why take it at all? Why not set up a table in the middle of the store where people can simply swap unpopular games, 2 for 1, and make their money off the traffic that will naturally come through?
But reason is frequently lost with these companies. Suffice it to say I'll never purchase anything there again. And I think there needs to be a T-Shirt - "I was robbed at EB Games...", given away free to anyone stupid enough to exchange a game there.
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Call me old fashioned, but there it is. No one would disagree, we all remember when, yet now it's gone. Completely.
I am speaking, of course, of quality. By quality I mean thought, labour, intent, craftsmanship, design...Many of which are the intangible hallmarks of something that might endure. But endurance is not the issue. Perhaps I imagine it, but with the rise of technology it seems to have gotten worse. As if technology - cell phones, PC's, Televisions, by it's nature obsolete, has now made it more acceptable to make everything else to the same disposable standard. Picture frames, shelving, lamps, fashion and housing cheaply churned from sweatshops to be sold at exorbitant markup, then later discounted at thrift and dollar stores before making it's way to the landfill. Often the entire product lifestyle is under a year.
When things so lose their value, so often do people. The homogenized lives of factory suburbs and designer accessories is creating a new sort of person. One with the same qualities as we find in their cherished shops, disposable people who identify themselves with brands and lifestyles. There are no values. They've accepted the disposablity of technology, and so it becomes easier to accept the disposability of their car, their fridge, the furnace, the coat, their husband or child, many of which have arguably seen no tangible improvements in design or technology in 50 years. "But it's cheaper to replace it than to fix it..." is often the line, and it is, we encourage this, cheap goods made to be used X times and then thrown away....
Entire generations will grow up without the knowledge of quality. Or of only brief encounters, the ipod touch, quality, yes, but made to be replaced in a year. And this brief flirtation breeds a certain promiscuousness, a cavalier disregard for many of the principles I hold dear.
Call me old fashioned.
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