A Christmas Greeting

I hate you all. Sorry, but after spending Christmas Eve with such a collection of failed birth control, any appreciation I had for humanity is gone. Are you a member of the human race? You're on the list.

Actually, I'm just being pissy about having to work the holiday.

Still. Christmas Eve at the casino was a lesson in patience and the fact that I didn't end up in jail or fired has to be chalked up to my general good nature. What a group of ass-stain. It goes without saying that if you're playing three-card poker on Christmas morning, there's something clearly askew in your pathetic little life. But I'm not sure I was prepared for this.

A chronological account of jack-assery:

The first table I dealt (four-card poker) to was light, just two players. The first was a jolly fat man with a dirty beard wearing holey sweatpants, a Skoal t-short with a coffee (or gravy) stain on the left tit. He would not shut the fuck up. Hey, asshole? The reason you haven't seen a straight flush in six hours? BECAUSE THEY'RE PRETTY GODDAMNED HARD TO GET. We don't pay 40-1 odds on a hand because they drop out of the sky like babies from Angelina Jolie. The other degenerate flesh waste at the table was an 80 year-old lady who kept complaining about how uncomfortable the stools were. Oh, I'm sorry, you chain-smoking, menthol-oozing cancer-ridden stick bag. Perhaps you'd be more comfortable AT HOME on Christmas Eve with all your cracker family. Pull up a bean bag chair and dig into your Stove Top next to your third husband. Soylent Green.

Of course, Sasquatch in Sweatpants was there. I think I've mentioned her before. Over six-foot. Oxygen tank. Haircut stolen from Braveheart. Sweatpants. Limp. Surprise, nothing to do on Christmas Eve.

On a side note: We don't employ a security guard who could stop Larry Flint from making off with the vault. What a collection of sausage and limpers they are.

My last table, all Vietnamese (or Korean. I know they weren't japanese because they were all stupid and I know they weren't Chinese because I still have some human rights) playing Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em, our most complicated game. Of course two of them didn't know how to play, and I couldn't explain to them what they were doing wrong because I don't talk like the guy who sold Gizmo to Billy's dad. Lots of pointing and head shaking and futilely trying to explain why my 9 kicker beats their 2. Then there was the guy who just kept killing it, flopping flushes and straights and constantly standing up so fast his chair tipped over and yellling "I ruv you deerer!" in a rasyp, high-pitched voice. I'm telling you, this guy couldn't have been more excited if he's just gutted Hawyeye Pierce. Next to him was a couple who took forever to make decisions, which wouldn't be a big deal if A) the decisions weren't F'n obvious (10-2 offsuit? Don't bet.) and B) if the last chick at the table wasn't constantly yelling, "C'mon dealer. Fasterfasterfaster. I gotta get home to open presents!" Seriously. This is at 9:30 in the morning, and this bitch is getting upset at ME because her kids are waiting at home for Asian Santa Claus? Eat rice and die, Far Eastern Heathen. At least she was hot for a mid-40's noncasian.

Also: When not playing blackjack, it's not funny to yell "Dubber Down!" Just because I dealt you a 9-2.

Another side note: I'm not actually racist, but last night brought out the best.

I leave for work in 5 hours for a night that's sure to be twice as busy as last night. Be sure to check the Minnesota police blotter. It'll surely be listed as a hate crime, but not THAT kind of hate crime.

Seriously. Merry Christmas everyone. I mean it. However, you can take your 45+ degrees and suck it.

Another Saturday night

Saturday night at the casino. Hot women in cocktail dresses. Dudes dressed like Clooney, trying to impress hot women in cocktail dresses. High rollers, big earrings, a little too much exposed skin. Young-just-out-of-college kids with too much time and money and their hands getting excitable in the poker room . Older wealthy couples with too much time on their hands sitting at the blackjack tables. Single retirees who invested well spinning the high-stakes slots. Everywhere, the smell of perfume, money and good cigar smoke.

Uh, no.

The most attractive thing I saw while dealing this Saturday night was a mid-30s guy who looked a lot like Matt LeBlanc, circa Friends, Season 1. Even sported the horrible leather vest and the weird asymmetrical haircut. The next most attractive thing I saw was a fake blonde whose face looked like 45 years of dive bars nights. Lines that would make Pacino’s grill jealous. Neck-down, it appeared as if she’d won 10 grand on some Cincinnati scratch-off and got a nice new set of boobs and a decent dress from Macy’s to show them off. Scoping her from the table-up went something like this: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-GOO!

Most Saturday nights at my place of employ are decent as far as clientele goes. A good mix of trying-a-little-too-hard older Milfs, tight-jeaned college girls and their metrosexual boyfriends with the popped collars, stoic older gentlemen with sausage-fingers, big rings and creepy KGB accents. An interesting, not un-attractive mix, for the most part. Not so this past week. This Saturday night looked an awful lot like a Wednesday night. And let me tell you about the casino on a Wednesday night.

If you’re at the casino on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning, you are one of these people: The older Asian lady in a winter hat floating between 12 blackjack tables, trying to find a hot one and managing to lose 1200 bucks in the process. The grizzled old grinder trying to break even in the last three hours before he has to get back to painting those houses. The fat lady in quad-focals who stuffs her sweatpant cuffs into her socks before sprawling out across three stools to hit the button on a single video slot for seven hours. The dude with the permanent squint in one eye who keeps getting dealt 20 and slamming the table when the dealer slow-rolls a six-card 21. The young ugly girl with no apparent handicap who buzzes around in her Rascal, three Styrofoam cups of complimentary Mountain Dew sloshing in the basket. Oh yeah, I can’t forget the classic chain smoker dragging around the oxygen tank.

These aren’t specific examples. These are archetypes. I see multiple versions of every one of these examples all week long. Saturday is supposed to belong to the pretty and moneyed. Maybe we need to hire a doorman.

Music that strikes a chord (Zing!)

The newest Hold Steady album will forever remind me of empty houses.

My pal Seth recently mentioned that as he was loading some old Metallica into his iPod, he was struck with strong memories from our childhood.

I know exactly what he means. I’m sure that everyone has music that hits them this way, songs and albums that just push buttons and send you back, but this happens to me all the time. Virtually every song and album that I’ve ever loved jolts me with vivid memories of certain times and places. I’m not sure about everyone else, but for me, these are VERY specific.

Examples:

“Paul Revere” by the Beastie Boys hits me with being on the school bus, getting screamed at by Sweaty Bettie, our hideously mean driver. I wasn’t even the one playing the damn song too loud.

The entirety of Appetite for Destruction takes me to Charity Morris’s basement, where Scott Hunkus, Randy, Keith and a bunch of other randoms spent every afternoon of sixth grade playing pool and trying to get a glimpse of Charity’s older sister, Candy, in her bedroom. I can never hear “Rocket Queen” and not remember the time we caught a glimpse of Candy in her bikini. Those chicks are probably pigs now, lugging strings of failure children behind them at Wal-Mart every Wednesday between reruns of Guiding Light. But we’ll always have Appetite.

For some reason, “Red Moring Light” by the Kings of Leon reminds me of being at World Market on a billion-degree spring day.

Metallica’s Black Album takes me to TK’s art class, sophomore year, sitting at a table with Jeff Sheets and doing no art whatsoever.

There are a thousand others, but the most powerful of these memories, come from late 1995- early ’96. Airika and I had just moved to Akron, and I was largely a radio-listener then. I think of that little shoebox apartment on East Market every time I hear “Come Down” by Bush, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” by Smashing Pumpkins, anything on Cracked Rear View by Hootie and the Blowfish, and, for some reason, “One of Us” by Joan Osbourne. These songs remind me of loneliness (no friends), happiness (being on our own, and hey, a Subway right next door!), confusion (18 credits = too many credits to take with a full-time job), and the sewer smell from that horrible McDonalds where I slaved 40 hours a week. These songs remind me of exploring Akron, Airika and I in my shitty K-Car, poking into neighborhoods we shouldn’t have been poking. Also, for some reason, I think of Omar-The-Cat, even though he came later.

And now I have Stay Positive, by the Hold Steady, quickly striking such a chord. I’d been playing this pretty much non-stop as we were gathering our stuff for the move, and I’ve played it pretty much every day since then. Already, I think of our old rickety house in Akron, empty except for a few big Tupperware crates. I’ll think of our ill-advised drive to Minnesota, both of us exhausted from a day of packing and cleaning, my truck stuffed with all of our essential belongings, two dogs, a propane tank (don’t ask), one of us driving till we started the bob-and-weave, then the other taking over until the rumble strips started coming into play. Then pulling up our long driveway, dragging our meager possessions into a giant empty house, both of us (and the dogs) more tired than we’ve ever been. But mostly, it reminds me of two empty houses, one in the past and one in the future. Echoes and unfilled spaces

Stay Positive is a pretty good album, but it will be great in the long run, at least to me, because it will mean something. It’s now more than music. It’s a place and a time and a hundred different feelings.

And thank god it isn’t Joan Osbourne.

Nostalgia free

Five days till we hit the road, and I've been crisscrossing Akron, frantically trying to Get Things Done. Yesterday, as I was heading back from the UPS Store, I noticed something: I'm not going to miss this place a whole hell of a lot.

Sure, I'm going to miss a few people. And I'll miss the hell out of my back yard. I'll miss the occasional Monday night bitch session at Dano's with my pal Bob. But those things, I'd miss anywhere. They're non Akron-specific. And I'm not so sure there's anything specific to this place that I'll yearn for in the weeks, months and years ahead.

It's weird. I've spent 13 years defending this place. I always thought Akron was cooler than advertised, underrated as a city. And now, as I zip around, I realize that there isn't a single place or landmark that really strikes a chord. The only independent music store is on its way out, and while I love the Buckeye Bookshop, there's a hell of a decent used book store in Minneapolis. The new University of Akron campus is amazing, but I never got to use it, so how can I miss that?

So that's it. My Akron experience consists of a dying record store, a shitty bar that you can find on every street in every village in the country and a sweet college campus that I helped pay for but was never really mine. How can you spend your entire adult life in one place and not miss that place when you go? Is that a sad commentary on the city or my life in it?

Maybe this will all change on Monday. Maybe Akron will look better rolling backwards through a rear-view mirror. Or maybe this place really is nothing more than a series of interlocking strip malls paving the way towards Cleveland.

Garfield was right

Mondays do suck. Two weeks ago, I crashed my truck (I am ok). This week, I did this:


I will now go eat a pan of lasagna.

Also: Nice people

Look, Nice Person. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want all your friendly.

I realize I'm engaging and hilarious and if you strike up a conversation with me there's every chance I'll make a sweet baby-eating joke or show you a picture of an awesome turd I snapped in the Target restroom. Clearly, this is why you're lurking on the periphery of my conversations with actual people I know and tolerate, leering, waiting for your chance to interject. I need you further away from me, sharing your keen insight into the Brett Favre situation with someone who gives a shit what you think. Like your mommy or your cat.

I just don't need to know any more people right now.

Hey. Asshole.

The bill of that baseball cap should be bent. Not flat. How is that comfortable? Shouldn't it be conforming to the skull as opposed to pressing against it? And why is it shading your goddamned ear? How is that comfortable?? And for ball's sake, take the tags off. You. Are. Not. Fifty. Cent.

I hope you all get sun poisoning on your face.

Fingering my shit

So the company that is moving us is one of those 'full-service' moving companies. They move your stuff and they also pack your stuff. This is a great thing. Not only do they frown upon you packing anything, they pretty much insist that you leave it all to them. Most people would kill for this service, especially if it was free. Most people.

Newsflash: I'm not 'most people'.

I understand the company's stance. They want to pack EVERYTHING to cover their own asses. Makes perfect sense. If they leave some of it to you, who's to say what got packed safely and what didn't? These folks ask that you leave everything, from the dishes to the shoes to the double-ended-D-battery 'back massagers' out and ready for them to seal into their own boxes. I understand the policy completely. But that don't mean I like it.

There are 25 days until we hit the road. I should be DOING things. If I have a spare seven minutes, I should be packing a box. There are books to be packed. CDs. DVDs. They're all sitting on their shelves, taunting me. They should be tucked away. Bubble-wrapped. I should be taping crates. Clearing shelves. Cleaning newly cleared shelves. But I can't. And not only can't I do anything, I'm not allowed to do anything.

I must be the only person in the world who is driven crazy by a lack of work.

Untouchable

So this not-having-a-job thing is getting to me a little. I haven't been unemployed since I was, er, ever. Hell, for the majority of my legally-employable life, I've held down multiples. And now, here I am, no job...and no prospects. What a weird feeling. I've sent resumes all over The Great White Nowhere and...nothing. It's still early, but all this nothing is killing me.

Ok, 'no prospects' isn't entirely accurate. There are prospects. I'm totally eyeballing a local casino. Treasure Island Resort has an ad posted for blackjack dealers. On one hand, this seems like a fucking awesome job. On the other hand, I can't imagine the degenerates and goofballs I'd have to be nice to on a daily basis. Plus, I'm not sure I want to move into another job that I clearly won't be doing forver. This next job may have to be The One or I may have to ingest The Bullet. On the other other hand, those same degenerates would make incredible characters in, say, a novel. Could I deal and take notes at the same time?

Cold and alone

The subject of friendship has been on my mind lately, mostly because in less than a month, my friend count plummets faster than Minnesota bridgework. El-zilcho, to exact the count.

I don’t make friends easily. I know that comes as a shocker to anyone who’s ever witnessed my curmudgeonly ass avoid eye-contact with entire rooms of strange people. However, despite my Harvey Pekar-ness, I seem to have quite a large circle of close friends. I’ve never been the kind of guy who has those friends who will just pop over for a beer or to watch the game or just to hang out, but I do have plenty of people I can confide in and rely on. The problem is, each and everyone of these friendships has materialized through A)work or B)school. Every single person I’m friends has either been a coworker or a classmate or someone I met because of school or work.

I’m not that guy who’s gonna go to a bar or a party and leave with two new friends. If I don’t already know you, I don’t want to talk to you. Sorry. It never even occurs to me even try to make friends with people I don’t know. For instance, last week the moving company sent a dude over to check out the house for an estimate. Pretty cool cat. We bullshat for a good hour while he scoped my stuff and made notes in his palm pilot. He liked my dogs, was disgusted with the Tribe. This was a guy I could have easily been friends with. But I wasn’t ALREADY friends with him, so it never even occurred to me to try.

This is going to be a problem in Minnesota. I don’t know anyone there, so there’s no one to even lube the way, force me to be social. I could easily see myself housebound for months at a time, emerging twice a year to squint at the sun and bleach the food crusted in my Unabomber beard. Oh well, maybe I’ll get some writing done. It was nice knowing you, world.

The clock, it is a-ticking

Just under one month until The Big Shift, and it's finally starting to sink in that I'm counting down my last days in Ohio. I'm starting to notice little things I'll miss, starting to do certain things, see certain places for the last time.

Like my mulberry trees. We have four or five mulberry trees around our yard, and in the summer, when the mulberries are ripe, the branches bend toward the ground, heavy with fruit. Tilly the Dog LOVES mulberries. First she scours the ground for the fallen, then she'll stand on her back legs and stretch her neck like a damn giraffe. Or maybe a brontosaurus. Of course, she'll shit red and blue for the next two days, but whatever. Anyway, I'll miss those trees, and the way the older berries smell like wine. Which is basically the smell of rotting fruit, but distinct nonetheless. I don't even know if there are mulberry trees in Minnesota. Just one of about a billion things I'll have to learn over the next few months.

Other things. I've likely written my last column for the paper. Turned in my last order form at the comic shop. Made my last journey to see a show at The Beachland. Hell, possibly made my last journey to Cleveland, period. I wonder what kind of critters will hang around the yard wherever we end up living initially. I love my squirrels. I love my woodchuck and the occasional duck in the in the morning. I love sitting in the backyard at dusk, watching the bats play tag. Will I have bats in Minnesota?

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited as a fat kid at Sizzler to get out of here. But I've never actually experienced a whole lot of 'lasts'. Now I'm looking at a month of them. This is gonna be a weird mix of melancholy and elation.

The world. My oyster.

So now that Airika's going to be raking in the money I suddenly find myself staring at limitless possibilities. Once we get to Minnesota, I really can do whatever the hell I want. The freedom is a weird feeling, and kind of disheartening because I've just come across a terrible realization: I have no idea what the fuck I want to do.

I always thought I had it down. Work at a newspaper, get my name out there, write a book, make a ton of money, basically turn into Larry David on Curb. This has been The Plan. Well, The Plan got sidetracked by five years of the trucking industry. I took the job at Yellow out of necessity. When I took it, I was working part time at the comic shop and full time at the newspaper. I loved, LOVED those jobs, but I the money I was making barely covered the gas I was using. So I did what every good northeast Ohioan does and took a job I hated to make ends meet. "Just for a year or two to pay off some bills." Four years, two giant televisions, two new cars, a computer or two, etc, here I sit, miserable and really no better off.

And now that I can see the cover of this latest book closing, I'm not sure I want to go back to newspapers. Hell, I'm not sure the newspapers will have me back. The longer you stay in trucking, the harder it is to do anything but trucking. The rate at which your vocab shrinks while yelling at Teamsters is amazing. My writing has clearly suffered, as has my tolerance for...anything.

So do I really want to go back to the world of police blotters and high school football and small business openings? Sigh. Maybe I do. It was an easy gig, and I was kind of a rock star around the communities I covered.

In Minnesota, I'll have three options: Get a job at some newspaper or magazine, which may be hard or even impossible. Go back to school. Or find something else entirely. School is strangely appealing, but I have no idea what I'd go back for. A masters in creative writing seems logical, but gee, is that really going to get me anywhere? And I've just spent five years in the 'something else' field. I'm a little too old and weary to be taking another wrong turn, I think.

So here I am. So happy about starting new, but already fucking exhausted with figuring out what I'm going to do with the opportunity. I can't wait to get started, but I'm scared of what I'm going to find. Because I think I'm going to find that I'm not qualified for shit.

Nnnggg. Who'd have thought freedom would be so constricting?