Mos Eisley
And the other Italian Waiter, the new one, wants to go for drinks, celebrate my return, a week back in hell, but even hell can become monotonous...
Drinks at an old watering hole, I owe the bartender this, she's related to the jeweler who declined all my "diamonds", they've recovered their old manager, a genius of the food and beverage industry, it's good to see him, we chat, he buys us a drink...
...then onward, gay bar, same-old, same-old, he likes it, likes how free everyone is there, I'm a bit bored...
From here, hungry, now to dinner, Chinatown, not U-And-Me this time, but the Golden Inn, classic late-night pit stop for the service industry...
It's the Mos Eisley of dining out...
Every despicable member of every notorious nationality is here. Every visible minority without declarable means of support, income, or otherwise justifiable existence have found outlet for their late night hunger...there are beautiful girls of every nationality and suspect morality, their pimps and clients, there are the innocents who've strayed after one too many (and nobody here can walk a straight line), there are the dealers and gangstas, the late-night Casanovas and their expensive prey, the too-fashionable nightclubbers, the cocaine vampires who never sleep and seldom eat, this, this is service hell...
The waiter, he doesn't take this shit, a larger Asian, he ignores the snapping fingers, gestures, he's got it down. They've their own mafia, and while it isn't as slick as John Wick be sure that if you cross them they'll fuck you up. We order, watch the show, the innocent late-night-after-the-club-drunkards, the "business people", the shitheads and dickheads and think to ourselves that we've got it easy...
We do. No kidding, we work in hell, but compared to this we're in paradise...
Dinner comes, we eat, watch, eat, pay, tip, well, we're not tipping for just ourselves, but for the probabilities of a decent tip off of all the tables surrounding us, for the assholes and whores that surround us that in all probability won't be leaving a dime, our tip, it's our apology for our tardiness, for humanity, fucking bloody hell...
- Details
- Category: Miscellany
Prison
A local mafia boss is in for a "meeting", is just out of prison, a 7 year sentence for conspiracy to murder, loan sharking, various organized crime related offenses...a proper stereotypical Italian.
His time, he's nonplussed, he's had lots of day paroles, supervised releases, he's been in the restaurant with his wife and kids, prison, meh, it's no big deal he tells us, he's got his own suite, the guards are all on his payroll, he gets what he wants, when he wants it, it's business as usual just he's not getting as much of the old conjugal privilege as he'd like...
This tallies surprisingly with what I'd heard from others. My father had always advised against my going to prison, I'd had some vague plans to try it out and see what it was all about, I'm old enough now that the possibility of being made somebodies bitch isn't a concern...but these testimonies, they positively recommend it...
Hitchhiking, outside of Drumheller, outside the penitentiary, 3 hours in the blistering heat before I get a ride. 3 hours in the fucking desert and I'm basically hallucinating and feverishly thinking I'll have to catch two headed lizards and eat them to survive...when finally...
I gotta like the guy, I mean, he's the first person to stop (not just slow down and tell me it was a dumb place to be hitchhiking...), and he's going half my way. We talk, my age, he'd done a few years in the Pen back there, he's built, a big boy, 60 pounds on me easy, he'd done his time for dealing, was a family man now, reformed, still, we talked and he told me how it wasn't so bad, wasn't bad at all, really, he had his own space, made money buying and reselling foodstuffs & tobacco, guards on the lookout for the surprise inspections, only regret that he missed the birth of his twin sons...
Now he's reformed, mended his ways, repentant, the first example meanwhile has (according to him) merely honed his skills and expanded his social network, and I wonder, what was the point?...
- Details
- Category: Miscellany
Hunter S. Thompson - Form Letter Reply
"You worthless, acid-sucking piece of illiterate shit! Don’t ever send this kind of brain-damaged swill in here again. If I had the time, I’d come out there and drive a fucking wooden stake into your forehead. Why don’t you get a job, germ? Maybe delivering advertising handouts door to door, or taking tickets for a wax museum. You drab South Bend cocksuckers are all the same; like those dope-addled dingbats at the Rolling Stone office. I’d like to kill those bastards for sending me your piece … and I’d just as soon kill you, too. Jam this morbid drivel up your ass where your readership will better appreciate it."
Hunter S. Thompson's prepared form rejection letter - following his success with "Fear and Loathing", he found himself with a pile of unsolicited poetry submissions. He prepared this form letter for Rolling Stone to send out with those articles it deemed unworthy...
Via Futility Closet
- Details
- Category: Calgary
Do good by stealth...
“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.” — Alexander Pope
- Details
- Category: Quotes
Page 615 of 997