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Friday, March 31, 2006 Ever have a fight with a person? I'm having a fight with a store. It's a long, probably exquisitely boring story, but the short version is: they promised me this suit which I needed for a wedding, and didn't deliver. I wandered into the store when a Hugo Boss representative was there and they said they were getting two, cheap, in my size, 48 Tall, and so I said "Put me down for one. I really need a suit, I've got a wedding to go to and my suit's full of moth-holes." They said "Sure, we'll phone you as soon as the suits come in." But they didn't. They phoned some other dude, he came in and snatched a suit up, and they said they never got another one. So they just didn't bother to call. The more I mulled over this, the more it upset me. This is a store around the corner from my house, where I've been a customer for 13 years, ever since they opened. I've spent thousands of dollars on their Eurocrap. I went in once, they gave me their story. I went in again and said: "I just want to have one more conversation about this." And their "explanation" was no good. In fact I didn't want an "explanation" at all. The situation was crystal to me. They saw a quickie sale and took it. They said, in effect, to themselves, "Fuck Dave." And so I said "Fuck you, I am never shopping there again. You've lost my business." In slightly politer terms. So I had to scramble, the day before the wedding jetted down to Moore's the Suit People, grabbed a suit, jacket, tie, shoes, a total head-to-toe retrofit. They altered it and I picked it up in the morning. Perfect suit. Great wedding. Great service at the store. But here's the thing. They phoned me today, one week later, just to see how it went, "How was the suit, did you have fun at the wedding?" They probably do this every time. It's probably some sort of policy. Here's the thing: I don't care. They earned my loyalty. I will now shop there the rest of my life, whenever I need a suit. I will never set foot again in the dumb first store. And I sent an e-mail to the orginal store explaining this. They're local, I like to support local businesses-- up to a point, the point at which they treat me with less than extra-special consideration. This is money we're talking about. I want to be treated like a fucking King. So if any of you out there own a store, and you think, "Ah, no point in phoning customers up personally, that's corny, doesn't make a difference, anyway," you're wrong. It does. You should do it. Your business will prosper. It is all about extra-special consideration. I give it when I'm earning my money. And so I want to get it when I'm spending it. Dig? Sunday, March 19, 2006 week of maculine activities/society. poker thursday night. a terrible pitched battle. down most of the night, had to fight like a demon to pull myself out of the hole. walk out of there a lousy double-sawbuck up. but i must win, my bloggies (ooh the new eminem is on the radio, I'm diggin' it), there's a terrible pressure. as I left all three of my little waifish children looked up with saucer eyes and said "Daddy, I hope you win tonight." My three year old looked up at me. He has the face of a cherub, he is still closer to the animals, to leaves and trees and nature, than he is to the city and the world. His face is like an apple pie. When I'm lying in bed with him at night, and he turns that face upon me, it's almost scary-- like the face of god. too beautiful. "I hope you win, too, Daddy." Like there's not enough pressure anyway. I've got to win to impress Pam, too. When I get home, it's the first thing she asks: "How'd you do?" Because if I win, see, I'm a winner. (I put this to Pam the next day. She did not answer. Finally, I said, "What do you think of that?" "Well, there may be a grain of truth in it.") If I lose I'm a loser. I'm one of those rare cases where everything is in such balance winning or losing could tip it either way. Most guys, even if they lose, are still winners; and vice versa. Not me! My life hanging so finely in the balance a win or loss at poker could tip me over into "winner" or "loser." At this point in my life I am one-half winner (two books published, TV gigs, magazine stories, etc. three kids, nice house, nice wife) half loser (cf my tax returns for the last three years). My kids look at me like: "Hmmm, Dad doesn't go to an office like other dads, he doesn't even appear to leave the house all that much. He seems to whine and fume about his career quite a bit. Is he a winner or a loser?" Answer, kids: only time will tell. I'm still in the battle, boys, I'm in the trenches with motherfucking bullets bouncing off my helmet. Smoke in my eyes, the field of battle obscured in a thick fog out of which good men, men I've called "friend" stagger, clutching sucking chest wounds-- and die, clutching my lapels, blood bubbling out of their mouths, a beseeching look in their eyes... ...or perhaps you think my metaphors are a tad...o'erwrought? ...anyway, the new guy, the newbie played like a hustler or a shark-- or a total rube, it was hard to tell, at first, which. he literally hauled out one of those little cards which tell you what beats what, "Does a straight beat a flush? Does three of a kind beat two pair?" (answers: no and yes) etc like a fucking rube from a lowbrow comedy! we eyeballed him through our eye-slits. is he for real? but what we were privileged to witness as the evening progressed, in my opinion, was an extremely quick learning curve. exponential. halfway through the night he'd taken the temperature of the situation, and was betting with unwarranted aggression. usually we ease into betting, seeing what our cards are gonna be (in, say, seven stud), then bet as our hands improved. he observed this for a while, and as I described it to my friend, in his learning curve, he went from a to b to c...to G! He'd bet big on his first card-- "Eight bucks"-- trying to knock out the chickens. It worked! For a while, then when it stopped working he switched tactics... ...and this was the great part... our friend patrick was way up, up like no one has ever been, somewhere between $200 and $300 (in our game it's rare to go home more than about $100 up). he was unstoppable. he was unbeatable. every hand he had cards, and he was using his giant stack of chips to just punish everyone else. it was like being continually being pushed down by a big, bad bully who is just much bigger and stronger than you. you get up and he pushes you down again and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. the new guy observed this. the, on one card, he went all in. just like the guys on TV. actually he went all in plus $20. it was on a big pot, there was between 80 and a hundred bucks or so in the pot, patrick thought he had an other one won, and the new guy bet $55 on a single card. patrick stared at this bet, his brows knitting, eyes narrowed. time passed. then he folded his cards. and it was a bluff! the newbie had nothing! bupkes! the terrible arrow of this bluff, this lie which was also a terrible truth, pierced patricks armour. mortally wounded, hit right in the 'nads of his chip-stack, he eyeballed the newbie: the wheels and gears in his brain started to whirr and spin ever faster. as they will when you've been stung, tagged, wounded in battle. he looked like he'd been shot. that newbie gave our game, which had been threatening to slide into a sort of complacent groove, a goose. it was a battle once again. after all, that's the poiunt of poker: NOT to socialize, as some fools say-- this isn't a sewing circle or mah-jongg game where we sit around and say (ny new symbolic comment, gleaned from a question one girl asked of another in our circle recently): "so: I understand you're dating someone new: who's the Mystery Man? What does he do?" -- this last bit delivered in a sort of sing-song, as if the speaker knew you were expecting the question and have a ready-made answer ("oh, his name is bill, he's an architect and he's so dreamy") -- no fuck that! I don't want any information about my friends. I want seeing them to be a vacation from information. We're awash in too much info as it is, I want to cross swords with them in a microcosmic battle for cash... ...and in the end I tagged the newbie with his own technique, went all in in a game of seven card stud on a monster pot, the newbie (thinking I was bludding) called, I rolled over a flush, and that put me from about $60 down to I think about $70 up. Later I lost some of that so in the end after hours of horrible battle, bloody and bruised, eyes inflamed, lungs scorched, liver throbbing, I went home a lousy, stinking, steaming $20 up. But at least I could look my longsuffering wife little orphan-like children in the eyeballs and sy, "Kids, I won. Darling I am a winner." But in the end no one even asked. *** On the other hand I turned down the opportunity to go to a strip club last night. Not sure I can even put my finger on why-- and I just heard on the radio Bubba Sparxxx came up with the concept of his most recent disc in the strip club; so maybe I should've gone, but... oh and there's nelly saying his 7-year-old son has a "grill." (teeth jewellry) funny... ...I don't know, I didn't feel like it. it was a stag party and they were going out to the airport strip or something. truth is: maybe if it'd been downtown I would've gone. but there's something about these suburban strip clubs, they're for the hard-core hard-up. lots of potential to run into dudes who are too into strip clubs-- just as they'd come from "sgt. splatter's" paint-ball thingie, and there were plenty of "too into it" guys there, too. anyway, I bailed, just as everyone was getting into the van. shock and horror from others: "Dave? What! I'm disappointed!" I hate crapping out on a "big night," and I could see horror and disappointment in these 20-something's eyes. Once I had been a hero of debauched 20-something-dom, my novel Chump Change celebrating strip clubs, booze, staying out late, etc. and here was the author of chump change, bailing? I'm sorry, boys. I would've come. But I feel trapped in the suburbs. it was really more about that than anything. downtown, I can put my finger to my lips and bid adieu, je ne regrette rien, whenever I feel like it. in the suburbs you then have to battle with survival, like "how am I gonna get home?" and I didn't feel like that. *** oh. p.s. we were able, through a friend who works in the same office, track the trajectory of patrick's hangover throughout the next day, which was really, really fun. we'd phone our friend his colleague for updates throughout the day-- starting with the morning: first update: "he's suffering. hes put his head down on his desk. his ears are all red and inflamed." then, later: "he went out for some air." then when he came back our source reported he was looking quite chipper but predicted this was merely one of many "false dawns" in patrick's hangover: "it's like there's a species of chanterelle mushroom where you eat it and you feel really horrible and sick for a few hours and then it goes away and you feel great, you're like "God, that was close.' The next day you're dead." Saturday, March 11, 2006 this will be a slightly disgusting entry, my bloggies, I'm sorry. my friend doug lives a super-decadent lifestyle in San Miguel. A friend who lives down there too just popped by my house today. He was telling me all about it. Every day he (Doug) wakes up at one. Then shaves his dome-- which is ideally, Platonically bald-- and heads down to a local cafe, where he spends so much time they've named an omelette after him. seriously! it's called "the douglas," I guess, and it's an egg-white omelette with mushrooms, or something. his lifestyle is the opposite of mine, here in the hyperborean hinterlands, with three kids... anyway, this guy-- russell-- the fellow san miguelite, the guy who popped by, a photographer (he makes a great living taking snaps but he hates it, wants to be a musician; we got a blueberry smoothie together at "juice for life": I took the opportunity to ask him if he has ever thrown his camera over his shoulder at his assistant at the end of the shoot; he said he sort of has) also told me a funny story. --pardon me, doug, I hope you don't mind me sharing this with my bloggies-- he (russell) said a bunch of them went to look at an apartment for rent and then doug experienced a certain...peristalsis...and excused himself to go to the washroom...he was in there so long, obviously in the clutches of an epic, operatic bowel movement, that eventually his companions became bored and said, through the door: "We'll meet you out in the street." Finally he came out, looking sheepish (and several pounds lighter, har-har), and had to confess to them he had had a problem: the water wasn't working. Apparently a lot of Mexican bathrooms have this problem. Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, he wanted to just walk away and pretend the whole thing never happened. (Obviously. That's what I'd do. "Come on, let's just get out of here. This never happened," I'd say, making a motion with my hand like erasing a blackboard, or washing a window, and fixing my companions with a mesmerist's stare.) But apparently the apartment belonged to a friend of one of his companions, and they didn't want to leave her such a horrible calling card, so he had to go to a store and buy like a five-gallon jug of water; then they all had to tromp back to the apartment to pour the water into the toilet, so it would work. This struck me as a quintessentially embarassing situation. Long, drawn-out, excruciating; a problem that just wouldn't go away; and all played out under the hot, hot Mexican sun. It reminded me of something I thought was really funny when I was 20. so funny whenever I thought of it, for a while there, it cracked me up. It was my college roomate, Charles-- I'm cracking up now just thinking about it-- explaining to me how one morning, when he was horribly hungover, he had to take a dump so badly he had to walk in the shade. Because, see, it was a bright, sunshiny day, and he knew that if he turned his attention from the terrible battle he was waging keeping his sphincter from flying open-- to battle the sun's rays-- he would fill his shorts. So he walked on the shady side of the street. In agony. for a while, way back in college, that became a catch-phrase. "Oh, man," we'd say to each other. "Yesterday I had to take a dump so badly I had to walk in the shade." He hated it. But unfortunately for him, it caught on. Thursday, March 02, 2006 got a big check yesterday-- well, to me it was big. you, perhaps, receive a check like this every other week, but to your poor, wretched, ink-stained narrator, this check (which arrived the day after another check: it never rains but it pours) was a fortune, a king's ransom. so: went downtown, had lunch w/stacy my friend and former copy editor now editor at Random and picked up the tab. I begged her to allow me to pick up the tab. She wouldn't hear of it at first, then relented. On a high, with the sense of going from one triumph to another, I then hit St. Lawrence Market. Me with cash in St. Lawrence Market is pig heaven. 6'5" perpetually hungry I love food. Food-- and fine wine. Asparagus and cheese stuffed pork roast: $17. Single fucking piece of halibut, my favorite fish: $17. Two pieces of the finest ribeye steak: $17. Everything was seventeen bucks. Clams, shrimps, gravlax, bread, vegetables, a giant hunk of Cambazola cheese (for Pam: to satisfy her vulgar lust for this odorific hybrid), an even bigger hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano-- $25-- for me, the family chef. This is Dave feeling flush: I buy a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano that costs a quarter of a hundred bucks. Quarter-C. Off to the wine store. Straight to the "vintages" section, natch. In the back. I noticed everything back in this darkened shrine to wine was recommended by someone named Steve. Different wines had like "Excellent-- Steve." Or "Wow-- Steve." Or: "Very good- Steve." So I went to one of the liquor store clerks. He was wearing a name tag that said Steve. So I felt a little dumb when I said: "Are you Steve?" He looked up. "I mean, the Steve that rates the wines in the back of the store?" "Yeah, that's me," he said with a friendly, open look on his face. "What's a higher rating, Excellent or Wow?" Because you see, my little bloggies, I had to have whatever was the better of the two. I, the Temporary Wine Conoisseur, had to have only the finest wines. "Wow," he said. "Wow's better." So I bought a red "Wow" and a white "Wow." In fact Steve escorted me to the back of the store and I started bullshitting him about wine but this quickly crashed to a halt when it became clear I didn't know what "full-bodied" meant. For some reason I had the idea it had something to do with the sugar content. Which it doesn't. So I shut my trap and plunked down the cash. Outside, hopped in a cab with all my bags. Mr. Big (who will wind up later peering into his wallet and thinking, as he always does, "Hey, I must've lost some! I wuz robbed!!!"). The wine was only O.K. Having said everything I've said you may not be interested in a wine recommendation from me, but here goes one anyway: Conundrum. If you're in the mood for a splurge (it's like $33 a bottle-- a splurge for me; perhaps you buy bottles of this level of expense and more every day; if so, e-mail me your career tips). It is a mutt of wines. Basically, it started out as bits and ends of various types of (white) wine. And it's "Conundrum" because it challenges even the most sophisticated of palates to sort out what all's in there. It's quite sweet but...it is also the single most delicious wine I have ever tasted. And how many bottles of wine have I drunk in my lifetime? Bad and good (most of my life I have mingled with the offspring of the world's Captains of Industry who usually have some decent shit lying around their fabulous mansions and yachts)? Hollow out the earth, fill it with wine (put a cork in the North Pole) and that gives you an idea. And yet I have tasted no wine as delicious (to me) as Conundrum. From the first sip, I was enchanted. *** as we parted ways, stacy said: "oh by the way I need a letter stating you have changed agents," etc etc. "because we need it as an addendum to your contract...you know, to reflect the new delivery date of your novel, August 2006." My mind raced back to when I was talkin' some shit to her last year about finbishing by then. So she's taken me at my word and enshrined it in a legal document! so what am I standing here talking to you for? I've got to finish a novel by aug. 2006, not to mention my script (2 weeks) a chapter of another book, also "Damage Control: the column," "Damage Control: the book" and "Damage Control: the TV show"-- not to mention all the frelance magazine stuff I do to put Cambazola and halibut on the table. I've gotta get crackin! (made a bouillabaise with all the fish and shellfish last night. like $10 a bowl. worth it tho, every penny: delish. leftovers tonight, washed down with none other than...Conundrum; I got myself goin' so much about it that now I must have some). Conundrum. It is a wine that is a mystery wrapped in a riddle, bottled and corked for the delectation of discerning wine sleuths, those whose palates are like Sherlock Holmes... Conundrum.
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