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Posts for the date of Friday, April 05, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 2:49 PM |
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gra·tu·i·ty
n. pl. gra·tu·i·ties
A favor or gift, usually in the form of money, given in return for service.
Got that? It’s a favor or a gift in return for a service. It is not expected, nor required. Do you understand? Now put your damn tip jar away.
Why is this the sudden rage? Everywhere you go there is a jar with a hand written note saying “Tips” pasted to it. Generally, these are counter-service related places like sandwich shops and coffee joints.
It’s always galled me that I have to tip a bartender for filling a glass with a beer. Now the pimply little bastard behind the counter of Starbucks, with his grimy “hipper-than-thou” mussed up hair and pasty white skin expects me to donate a portion of my change to him and his cohorts?
They are making coffee, for Christ’s sake. It’s a service I perform at home for free. Or, if I need coffee on the road, I can stop off at 7-11 and pour my own cup.
But, this is Starbucks, the flannel home of the disenfranchised youth and last refuge for persecuted Yuppies of old. This is special coffee. Coffee that is over-roasted and over-brewed. This is coffee that costs a buck eighty per cup. Quite the bargain, if you live in Antarctica. However, in a society where there’s a Starbucks on every corner, paying a premium for the McDonalds of the heated beverage world seems exorbitant. Add on to that an extra dime for the talents of the kid behind the counter . . . well, you have a two-dollar cup of Joe there. More than some beer. Not good beer, mind you. But at least beer makes you forget that you’re fat and ugly.
Perhaps I’m being hasty. Maybe I’m not giving enough credence to the talents of this young Barrista. This cowboy of java. Let’s review my order:
One Venti (not large . . . that’s not “cool” enough) brew of the day. No flavor other than what nature intended. A tiny bit of room for cream.
What does Starbucks boy have to do in order to seal the deal?
1. Pick up cup.
2. Place cup under spigot.
3. Pull.
4. Hold cup steady under spigot, lest he risk serious injury.
5. Release spigot.
6. Put top on coffee.
7. Press button that automatically calculates what I owe him.
8. Press button that tallies what I gave him and automatically calculates my change.
9. Hand me change.
10. Look at me with contempt when I dare put my twenty cents back into my pocket.
Elapsed time: 30 seconds. Which, I might add, he is being paid at least $5.75 per hour for.
It’s not a complicated job and he is not making his money on gratuity. He is making a decent wage. If it’s not enough to meet his bills well, get a friggin’ college education.
OH! He is getting a college education? That’s why he’s forced to work a lowly job in the service industry? Well tough crap. Take out a friggin’ loan. That’s what I did when I was in college and working a minimum wage job.
His services extended into the trained monkey range. Not to slight the work he does on more complicated fru-fru coffee drinks. Steam my milk and I’ll consider a dime tip. MAYBE.
You see, I reserve gratuities for a) skilled workers or b) true service related jobs. Not filling my coffee cup one time and ringing it up on the register. No extra mile gone. Nothing special offered to me.
This has me wondering. Perhaps I should put a tip jar on this site? How much is reading my inane ramblings worth to you?
Yeah, I wouldn’t pay me either.
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Posts for the date of Thursday, April 04, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 9:21 AM |
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Damn this movie addiction. Damn them all to Hell!
Great, even in my rebellion against movies I can’t help but quote them.
Last night I was in a fog of exhaustion and illness. My wife and the kids went to bed early. Rather than start my night fighting with sleep combined with sinus pain, I went downstairs to watch TV.
Normally, there isn’t anything on, so I thought the flickering lights would soothe me off to sleep. Wouldn’t you know it, TCM was playing a tribute to the late Billy Wilder. Within seconds, I was hooked.
Cinema lost one of the true unsung greats last week when Wilder died. Though he hadn’t made a film in decades, his brand of writing and versatile direction has been echoing through film ever since he began writing films in the thirties.
His wordplay, whether for strong drama or screwball comedy was brilliant. He had a sense of meter that few writers will ever understand. Though written rather unpoetically, Wilder’s words were beautiful, harsh and startling at times. The words he chose were the words we would choose ourselves. His characters were as flawed and inarticulate as we are, and yet these awkward speeches and dialogues would beat their way into a poetic form unlike any other.
Particularly strong was the movie that sucked me in yesterday, Some Like It Hot. Wilder took his everyman alter-ego Jack Lemmon and city-bred, sensitive tough guy Tony Curtis and transformed them into men, dressed as women who were on the lam. A simple story that shouldn’t have made it past ten minutes. Yet, when you place these young men, trying to pass themselves off as women, directly across from the raw sexuality of Marilyn Monroe . . . they don’t have a chance.
Few films can make you laugh like this one. But they followed with The Apartment, a film of such bitter-sweetness that you cannot help but cringe and laugh at the same time. On one level, the film is the painful story of a man (Lemmon again) who allows himself to be taken advantage of by his superiors in the name of getting ahead. He loans out his apartment for his boss’ marital infidelities.
But at its core is a lovely love story between a lowly secretary and a beaten down man. That the secretary is sleeping with their married boss and its Lemmon’s apartment that is used for the secret rendezvous doesn’t matter. Both characters not only forgive the others flaws, they love them. Accept them.
Without Billy Wilder we wouldn’t have Cameron Crowe or Nora Ephron or even Rob Reiner. Names that we all know who owe a great debt to the wit and wizardry of Billy Wilder.
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Posts for the date of Wednesday, April 03, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:42 AM |
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Gertrude is finally asleep. Thank God. I’m exhausted.
Despite the fact that I took some form of NyQuil last night, I feel like crap. I didn’t sleep well and the sleep aid in the drug only served to make me feel cloudier and less alert.
My sinuses feel like two giant tennis balls, complete with fuzz. No decongestant works. Nothing makes me feel better except a washcloth dabbed in Vicks Vapo Rub. The menthol somehow soothes the irritated sinus passages. I look like someone with an ether addiction, lying on the floor with a washcloth over my face huffing the fumes.
The only other respite from pain comes from the teapot. When it starts to whistle, I stick my nostril right on the column of steam, sending searing hot water vapor traveling through my nasal passages scorching and opening up passages like Sherman marching through Atlanta.
Other than that, a nice hot cup of tea is rather soothing. Except. . . the only tea in the house my wife’s. It is tinged with all sorts of unnecessary spices, scents, fruits and flowers. A cup tastes like a steaming pot of potpourri. In the very least, my breath smells like my grandma’s apartment.
Every time I take a sip, I can’t help but think I’m ingesting the ground up bones of two of Strawberry Shortcake’s friends. Cinnamon Candy and Plora Plumbpie. They gave their lives to soothe my fevered brow.
Taking care of a baby who feels like crap while you feel like crap is impossible. Neither of us feels very cared for, so we sit together on the couch having moaning contests.
With the technical scores for timbre and length, I’m doing well. However, for sympathy and patheticness, Gertrude’s deep sighs and minimal whimpers far outweigh my gargantuan moans.
She looks so peaceful right now. I’m jealous. She’s off in slumber land while I’m stuck out here with sporting equipment shoved up my nose.
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Posts for the date of Tuesday, April 02, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 12:06 PM |
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There was a time in my life when I read only Literature. Steinbeck. Faulkner. Vonnegut. Joyce (took me a while though).
If I strayed from Literature I only read cutting edge new fiction that the commentators on NPR would commend me for undertaking.
The past two years have been different. I’ve cast aside my pseudo-intellectualism for stories and novels that tickle my mind, excite my sense of adventure and let my imagination soar into lands that are yet untouched by man, or even unimagined.
They are stories of allegory and whimsy. Satire and commentary, written by authors who have one foot in the present, one foot in the future and another unnamed appendage in their imagination.
By my description, one would think I’m speaking of high literary art. And I am, but few fell that way.
I’m talking about Science Fiction. This is a genre that many people feel the need to urinate on. And, often, rightly so. There is a plethora of pastiche that is written by little boys who never grew up and feel the need to splay out their bizarre sexual fantasies that involve princesses of other worlds and imaginary animals. Men who, though they are financially wealthy, still live in their parents’ basement write them.
The Sci-Fi I’m reading is considered “hard sci-fi.” What does this mean? The stories contain technology that is either on the horizon, or should be. The best example of this is anything written by Arthur C. Clarke. Remember that space elevator I mentioned last week? Clarke’s idea. Solar sail? Clarke’s idea. A space faring propulsion system that uses water? Clarke’s idea. The communications satellite? Clarke’s idea.
This is actual science based upon real physics theories that are being expounded to day by the likes of Hawking, Barrow and Kaku. Or based on theories that were posited by the likes of Richard Feynman and are now beginning to take shape.
Using technology as a device, these books and stories look at the world we have created and what may be happening to it. They deal not with the geeky aspect of science (though that is a part), but they look at how we are reshaping the world.
Any great story is simply an allegory. Whether it is a murder mystery, romance, or science fiction, a great story can teach you something about yourself. It doesn’t matter that it takes place on a space colony or on a different planet. The characters that inhabit this imaginary world are human and, as we’ve learned so brutally, human beings never change. But their toys do.
Once upon a time the chain and mace was a weapon of mass destruction that was replaced by the catapult that was replaced by a cannon that was replaced by a missile and so on. Science Fiction merely takes a step beyond and looks at what we may do with the power we’ve discovered in the future. Often, it is as bleak picture because . . . well. . . we’re an odd damn species.
Satire, allegory, morality. These are the benchmarks of great literature. Where I once felt a pang of guilt for reading what I once considered tripe, I now feel great pride. Why? Because I have discovered something that few realize.
That Science Fiction, great Science Fiction, is a mirror of our own lives, obsessions, fears and faults. That a great story, no matter what the form, is a great story.
It is no more my fault that Piers Anthony writes juvenile tripe, as it is your fault that John Grisham writes juvenile tripe.
Paul Auster? Great modern author who has peered into our souls and writes absurd, poignant, funny stories. John Varley? Great modern author who has peered into our future and writes absurd, poignant funny stories.
But few will agree. I blame Ice Pirates.
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Posts for the date of Monday, April 01, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 5:28 PM |
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Sorry for the lack of updates. I say that often, don't I?
I've been on full-time daddy duty. Working at night. I'd say I'm tired, but my wife would probably try to kill me. I soothe my soul by listening to Nick Cave which, by the way, only rips it open further. Found out my soul is made of saw dust. Very messy.
Let's see . . . is there anything I can update you on since my last installment?
Well, one of my authors at my freelance gig died. Figures. I'm the angel of death when it comes to authors. No matter what project I work on, someone ends up dying. They're currently making a list of all the authors they want to give me.
Easter was joyous, I suppose. I got to see Panic Room, which stars Jodie Foster, a woman whom I love. I once had a theory that she'd run away with me. Besides the fact that she's a decade older than I am, possibly a lesbian, inspired a presidential assassin, a powerful and talented movie star and MENSA smart . . . I figured it was a plausible fantasy. She never called.
I wonder why Easter has no songs to go with it. Why is it that Christmas gets all the music? I mean, if Easter marks the culmination of everything Jesus was supposed to do, isn't that a little more important than his birth? I don't want to deny Jesus his free dinner at Denny's, mind you, but I would like his work to be appreciated. The guy not only died, but he came back to life. That's not easy. Hell, Elvis didn't do that and look at all the recognition he gets. The world needs more Velvet Jesuses.
By the way, I may have said the most offensive thing of my entire life yesterday. I was thinking about Easter and Passover, the whole religious angle. So, I said, "Jesus died for your sins, but came back for the buffet." I was promptly told I was going to Hell.
What's a holiday if your soul hasn't been damned for eternity? Next I plan to ruin Memorial Day.
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