DISCLAIMER: Follies are not for those who are pregnant or may become pregnant. Exposure may cause skin irritation, stroke, heart attack, blindness and death. See a doctor immediately for interest lasting longer than 4 hours.
The intervention was a failure. My car’s been playing it fast and loose. Had a come to Jesus. Told it I was very disappointed. Didn’t know where it learned this sort of behavior. Certainly not from me. Wife took it to work. Automotive rehab. Charged the AC.
Day 1:
Car retaliates. The entire electrical system implodes. Now the instrument panel won’t even light up and the ventilation fan is dead. The driver’s window fell completely off the track and turtled down inside the door. Had to take it apart last night to fish it out. Cut my hand on the door panel and bled all over the molding. I could just park it in the employee lot with no window for 4 days. Bad car.
Almost don’t bother fixing it. Maybe a little tough love would be good for it. Make me feel better anyway, watching that evil car suffer. Multitasking parent challenge met: told the kids to go play in the street while daddy fixes the car.
Not dissuaded by idle threats, my car vindictively announces the parking brake is still set once a second for the entire 40 minute drive to work. (2400 beeps) The amount of annoying this generates on its own borders on absurd. But wait. I can’t roll my window down and the fan won’t cross the picket line even to blow warm air on me, so I open the sunroof to let in some noise. This is ludicrous annoying. Possibly even plaid.
I can’t help but laugh. One of those S&M “hurts so bad I’m starting to like it” moments. If I concentrate in just the right way, like off-center viewing, it’s funny. Lose that null point for even a second and I’m going to find a fuel truck and breed my car to it over and over. The window falls down into the door twice on the way. I only have to pull over once.
At the employee lot, the card swipe gargoyle has a leopard print umbrella fully deployed. It’s overcast but not raining, and doesn’t look like it will any time soon, but fortune favors the prepared.
At Starbucks, the girl gives my change. I shuffle down the line. Then I hear, “Please keep all the people that come through here safe and get them to their destinations safe.” Nice prayer I think.
‘Wait that was for me? All of them?’
“Well the ones on your plane.”
‘Oh just those guys? I can work on those guys.’
When I open the door on the jetway. A fueler is sitting against the wall about half way down. As I get close he turns his back like I’m going to take his cookie. I assume he’s surfing porn on his PDA. No. As I pass, it’s not a phone, it’s a calculator. He just seems to be playing with the tilt-up screen and pressing random numbers. Maybe I should show him the wonder of 8008.
Same Coiffer Capt. with the questionable tag-team hooker penetration practices. We’re off to Vegas for a 20 hour overnight. The world is awash in possibility. I don’t gamble a lot but the Michigan race is on and I do like my tinkle tonic. He likes to gamble.
I foresee this play-no play decision tree resulting in me taking a ride on the Fuck-it train. Probably miss my stop at I’m-sorry-ville and have to walk back from What-the-fuck-was-I-thinking-burg. Bad neighborhood.
We go to the hotel and change. Van driver takes us to Ellis Island. A locals type hangout. Dark. Constant gurgling babble of slots. Lots of red and black vinyl. Brick walls. They have their own microbrewery and 5 different selections for $1.50 for a 16oz glass. All day. Every day. The food is surprisingly good and cheap.
Not wanting to get sand in my beergina, I stick with the wheat. Comes with a little slice of orange on the rim which I immediately crush and drown in the beer for acting cute. I literally could not be happier. Stuck in Vegas with nothing to do but drink Barley-Based Adult Beverages (B-BABs) and watch NASCAR. I tell the guy next to me he can stop pinching me. I know I’m not dreaming.
No seriously. Cut it out.
The race is over by about 1500. We walk to Billy’s in hope of catching The Fat Elvis but he’s hibernating. Discover there’s a partial habitrail between casinos so we can mostly go from beer to beer without getting pounded flat by the 105 degree reality outside. Billy’s has dollar margaritas. Slushy double-fisted insulation for our “Creatures of the night” scurry from anthill to anthill. Capt. wants to play Blackjack. Fuck it. I am pleasantly surprised the ATM only charges me $2.50 for the privilege of extracting $20 to feed the tables.
At Shea’s we roam up one side and down the other looking for THE Blackjack table. There are rules. The Capt. explains this. They are numerous and complex, but the gist is – no hot chicks within a 20 foot radius of the table. Loose electron passage of hotness is acceptable, but no cute dealers, or girls playing at the table. This line of reasoning seems counterproductive to me since I suck at gambling and therefore tend to focus more on booze and scenery, but ok.
Gambling is unnecessarily complex. I give my money to a man who gives me chips to play with and then give back at irregular intervals until they’re all gone, while the waitress brings me the drinks I was trying to order in the first place. Inefficient. Maybe it’s a union thing.
Manage to eek back to the $20 I started with. Now I’m done. I siphoned off an hour of drinks. Capt. says I should go all in. Fuck it. Put my $20 on one last hand. Get 2 face cards. Capt. says double down. I have no more money. He spots me. I get 2 kings. Get paid $80. Give him back his $20 and half the winnings. (After he suggests I share it with him.)
On that high note we go down the street for burritos. While we eat, 4 platinum bleach-blondes wearing big shoes and small white bikinis complete with oversize shades and requisite tramp stamps, clatter in. Deliberate. Clatter out. Come back in. Can’t decide what to eat. Proximity to each other seems to help. Maybe they’re networked. A hive mind capable of tremendous calculation. Steak or chicken.
Sated, we move out for craps. I stop at a kiosk and buy my son a “<<Name’s>> Room!” metal plate with a racecar on it. Back to Shea’s.
We find a craps table using the same questionable guidelines as Blackjack – looking for negative hotness. And thus: a leathered older couple with serious faces and matching “his” and “hers” gold disposable lighter covers, two fat Asian chicks in muted sundresses and a tall middle-aged guy in a Hawaiian shirt who looks like he’s been up for a long long time. Perfect.
My money is frightened by the big city lights and loud noises. Most of it flees into the dark warm confines of the table before I can calm it down. I am starting to question the validity of the rules. In a last ditch effort I decide to roll. I never roll, but I can’t suck worse than the rest of these luckless lose-strocities.
I can’t hit the table. I throw hard. They bounce out. Give me another pair. I throw soft. They bounce out. I do it again. And again. Strained patient smiles are ricocheting off my impenetrable carapace of gaming ineptitude. I get enough of them on the table to lose the rest of my money.
Capt. has been trying all afternoon to hook up with a FA who also has an overnight here. So far, no joy, so I convince him to head for the hotel. We call a taxi because it’s 3 miles back to the hotel and I am tired. Almost make it back to the hotel and the sweet promise of sleep when he gets her on the phone. Now we are off to Planet Hollywood. Pick up the target FA and her M-FA wingman.
I know the M-FA she is paling around with. We worked at another airline together. Nice. Polite. Short. Married with kids. The hook up girl is loud. A good good-time quality. We go to the Heart Bar. Capt orders a Diet and Captain. She orders a Ginger and Captain. I order a Diet/Ginger and Captain just to be an asshole.
A kelp forest of beefy security guys in bad suits and goatees surge into the bar. They start looking under chairs, tables. Ask us if we’ve seen a roulette ball. I helpfully point out obscure and unlikely places it may have gone.
They search for ten minutes. The waitresses get involved. Gratuitous bending and stretching. A pride of tray bearers in black boots, fishnets, hot pants and bustier. I suggest more places it probably isn’t to facilitate more bending and stretching. We get back to the hotel by 2100.
Day 2:
Coming back to <<HOME>> the aft main fuel pump in the right wing tank fails. Not a big deal unless the forward pump fails too. An unexpected flameout at 410 would be a pucker factor of roughly “shit your pants” on a scale of 1 – “shit your pants.” We keep an eye on it. They defer it in <<HOME>>.
FA comes up during boarding for our next leg. Makes gang hand symbols at us to describe the passenger demographic. Shows us her growing collection of business cards. Lots of “Talent Development” and “Career Sculpting.” In other words “I’m staying in my mom’s basement and she has a color printer.”
Day 3:
I wake up. All good so far. But I am retarded and I don’t know it yet. Not in a global “Buy some Velcro shoes, it’s going to be a long day” fashion. My impairment is insidious but benign.
We are going to MKE. That’s it. That’s my stupid. We are going to MKE and nothing I do for the next 3 hours (Including landing in BWI) is going to change that.
I go down to the lobby. See a M-FA there. Ask him where he’s headed. He’s going to BWI. Another M-FA, same thing. And a third. I wonder if our back end took an earlier van because none of these guys are headed to MKE.
At the airport, there’s only one <<My Airplane>> and it’s headed to BWI. I look confused enough for the gate agents to laugh at me. I walk up.
‘Where’s Milwaukee?’
“Milwaukee? We don’t have a flight to Milwaukee. You mean Baltimore.”
‘No….’ Pull out my pairing……, yes I do mean BWI. I walk down the jetway laughing at myself. Tell the M-FAs. Polite laughs.
Programming the box I put in xxxMKE1. Nothing comes up. Oh yeah. BWI. At cruise I bring up to the Capt. that my perception of the northeast is totally fucked. I picture everything east of the Mississippi and North of the Mason-Dixon line like a bag full of those tiny bullshit Lego pieces that don’t fit anything and end up in the trash after you step on them.
This gaping hole in my geographical perception is also clearly manifest in the fact that I did not correlate that there was no state of New England until maybe 5 years ago. (Seriously.) I mean, there’s a New England Patriots, so how could there be no New England?
The northeast may as well be in Southeast Asia.
I mention to the Capt. that every time we go from LGA to MKE, I’m shocked that it takes 2:20. Also mention that I can’t figure how the flight from xxx to MKE could possibly be an hour. The Capt. looks at me funny but says nothing. He probably assumes I’m just being pointlessly tangential and I like to talk about Milwaukee.
I set my watch back an hour for MKE’s central time zone-ness. Go to pull plates for the arrival and it briefly surfaces again in my consciousness again that we are not going to MKE. We are going to BWI.
I fly us into BWI. We taxi in and park. After shut down, I’m trying to decide if I want to stand in line at Altera Coffee (Which is in MKE.) Or if I want to go outside security to Starbucks. (Also in MKE.) Walk up the jetway and notice that the Milwaukee terminal bears a suspicious resemblance to Baltimore.
I go wait in line for coffee. Finally got a (temporary) grip on that greased medicine ball that is “I’m not in Milwaukee.” I ask how many shots are normally in a large iced Americano. – 3. ‘Ok. Could I have one with 5 shots?’
Every. Single. Employee. Stops what they’re doing to turn and stare at the suicidal deviant. I do a little turn to see if maybe they’re looking at someone else.
“FIVE!!!??”
‘Yes.’
“FIVE.”
‘Yes. Five shots. Please.’ The guy at the cash register cannot even figure out how to ring this up. They consult. Gesture at the cash register. Furtive glances at me. Conclude that the best way is continue into the rabbit hole with 3 plus 2 equals 5. The guy raises his eyebrows like, “Here goes nothing” as he hits TOTAL. “$3.75 please.”
The chick who’s making The Beverage of Unfathomable Purpose is so completely derailed by the 5 shot thing, she starts to make it hot.
‘It’s iced. Iced. Could you tell her it’s iced please?’ I say to the cash register guy.
He has to physically touch her to get her to shut up for one second about the five shots. “It’s iced.”
She turns and stares at me for a second. Looks at the register guy who won’t meet her gaze and starts wiping up a nonexistent spill on the counter. “It’s not my fault.” He says. She looks at me again. Throws the pristine hot cup in the trash and goes to get an ice cup. Exasperated.
I move down to the end to wait. 4 times I look up and see the same giant black guy in MJ shades and a T-shirt that says “I heart hip hop.” Not standing in line, mind you. Headed up the concourse. Headed back. Headed up. Headed back.
It occurs to me that I’ve been waiting for a while. I look into the caffeine clockworks and the gal is STILL talking about me and my 5 shots. Still compiling the drink as well.
‘You’re still talking about it??’ This beverage comes with 5 shots if you buy it a Starbucks.
“I can’t believe no 5 shots! That’s crazy! I can’t even drink 2!” The fucking girl next to her raises her hand like I should call on her next and says, “I do six shots.” Gives me a little smile and nod like we just introduced ourselves at an AA meeting.
After I put some panties and skirt in my hemlock, I almost collide with the giant “I heart Hip Hop” guy headed back the other way. Reflect on my way back to the plane that if the people who work at the coffee shop think you’re crazy, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at your caffeine intake. Yours I mean. Not mine. My conflicting liquids program is a finely tuned instrument of liver survival.
At cruise for LAX, a passenger wants to know our route. He’s apparently not satisfied with “J-6” and I already have my map out to see where the Mississippi actually runs for Folly purposes, so I trace our route. From MKE to LAX. (Wow.) Retrace our route from BWI.
We land in LAX and walk to the hotel. Back in the lobby 10 minutes later to catch the trolley to Manhattan beach with Capt. Kissey Zits. Down the hill to The Shellback Tavern. Order beers and nachos. Talk 80s hair rock. (Mostly he does. I smile and nod a lot. I wouldn’t know a Jovi from a Ratt if it were gnawing on my Whitesnake).
Our waitress is a size negative 5. She is about the same size as my 5 year-old daughter. From the same planet as The Rock. Could be black. Definitely some Asian in there. Philippino? Whatever. She is elf-toy tiny and has perfectly white teeth. She is very pretty but somehow asexual. Maybe because she’s been removed from her original packaging. She tolerates us. She has to. We are the only ones there at 1300. (See associated photos of some bathroom coin-purchase hilarity)
The Capt. has been texting a girl he met here a while back. He can’t remember what she looks like but he thinks she’s blonde. He updates her on our location as we reposition to the Manhattan Beach Brewery. They have a wheat beer with a name that is probably “Wheat Beer” in German. I demonstrate the same indifferent cruelty to all fruits garnish. Death by crushing followed by ritual drowning.
The mystery woman says she is going to stop by. I’m a little apprehensive after his denim muffin top fiasco a couple weeks back in SAN. Not sure I trust his judgment. Maybe he has a thing for girls in clothes that used to be pants. We work out the code phrase “Scheduling called…” if he wants me to buzz off.
The brunette shows up around 1615. He definitely seems to have a thing for denim. Tight denim tune-top dress with tiny boob pockets. I almost ask her what you’re supposed to put in those pockets, but I can’t figure out how to learn the truth without pointing out that I was just looking at her boobs.
Maybe that’s what goes in those pockets: The running total of how much eye time the twins get.
She is almost pretty enough to compensate for that tag team bovine bonanza he perpetrated in SAN. Almost. I can’t quite get a bead on what food service position she was recently relieved of. Even fuzzier on what job she’s looking for in Chicago. She orders club soda and fidgets a lot.
Maybe I make her nervous. I try to put her at ease by working my wife and kids into the conversation. No change. She says she has to leave to take a girlfriend her keys and driver’s lenience in Hollywood. Maybe she didn’t remember what he looked like either. The Capt. walks her out. We order more nachos. Wash them down with more beer. Catch the last trolley back to the hotel.
Day 4:
Finally get to go to MKE. <<Yay>> I celebrate this by waking up at 0455. Reason that if I get up now I should have time to stop by the crew lounge and book the wife on her SFO flight later this week. Cleanse and coif and I’m out the door at 0530. Set up the flight. Call the wife so she can gush over how awesome and thoughtful I am.
Head downstairs to meet the Capt. At 1 minute to 0600, I’m starting to get concerned that maybe he’s running late. Double check my pairing. We don’t leave until 0645. I’m up an hour early and dressed in the lobby to boot. Go back to the front desk and get a key. Have them double check my room number because I’m only mostly sure it was 318.
– end of line.