Improv Everywhere

A friend of mine sent me this link today. Eighty people dressed up in blue polo shirts and khaki pants and invaded the Best Buy on 23rd Street in New York City. I'm no fan of Best Buy to begin with. I find their usual cabal of employees to be less than helpful and knowledgeable. Whenever I have to go there to purchase something, I've already researched exactly what I want/need so I don't have to ask any of their employees anything. So that's why I find this sort of thing very funny. The best customer quote from the experience: "Everyone in this goddamned store is wearing a blue shirt and nobody knows a thing!" Hmmm, that's Best Buy on a good day. Check it out!

Slow down you b*stards!

Something about listening to Ministry's "Jesus Built My Hotrod" this morning as I walked to my office has motivated me to write another blog entry. It also helps that this morning also presented me with yet another funny and strange occurance to write about.

I don't know if it's the same in your town, but the local police here have taken to placing portable speed detection and warning signs all over the place to let drivers know how fast they're going. In this era of tight local and state government budgets, it's cold comfort to know that the police are foregoing an entire area of law enforcement and using cameras at intersections and detection signs instead. Let's face it: Krispie Kreme and Dunkin Donuts should be part of the local government and complete the local government's quest for inefficiency. But who knew that the local police would take a page from the Vatican's playbook and try a little Catholic Guilt on unsuspecting motorists?

For the lucky majority who are exceeding the speed limit, their speed flashes on the sign's display to ensure the eyes of a driver are distracted from the road. Now to me, the flashing sign seems like a very bad idea. You already have somebody driving over the speed limit, now let's do something to take their eyes off the road? Working for a state government agency I know that what looks good on paper oft times turns out to be a really retarded idea once it's enacted in real life.

This morning after dropping off my daughter at her summer camp, I head off to the store to pick up some carpet cleaning supplies. I knew the route I had chosen would take me right past one of those Guilt Mongering Monuments to Catholicism speed warning signs. At this point I should point out that I was raised Catholic, so I know what I'm talking about. As I rounded a slight bend in the road, the sign began flashing "38." I looked down at my odometer and sure enough that was me. There was a brief sense of accomplishment (probably the only time today I'll experience that sensation) as I crushed the 35 mile per hour speed limit. Then I noticed that the sign suddenly had gone blank for a second, and then displayed "6." Huh? 6? The radar in the sign had detected the speed of the girl jogging on the sidewalk in front of the sign. Excellent! No wonder why Americans are getting fatter; who wants to go for a walk or run when there's a risk they'll be nabbed by one of those police speed warning signs? Who wants to live with that kind of guilt? Not I, that's for certain!

It blowed up, it blowed up reel good!

I’m a guy, or at least I am until I experience some sort of tragic accident or really piss off my wife, in which case all bets are off. And like most guys, I share the same predilection for acts that could be defined as stupid and/or juvenile, especially during our younger years. Though we get older, most guys never really get past their interest in engaging in those same stupid/juvenile acts; as we age these acts become like a favorite shirt that we outgrow—we hang onto it because we like it but it’s uncomfortable to wear.

In my younger days I had a fascination with fireworks. Fortunately for me a number of my friends also shared the same hobby as I. Indeed, that first summer after I graduated from high school I made plenty of trips to the Augusta area, where my friend Tim and I would drive across the border to Wacky Waynes fireworks emporium in South Carolina. It was the eighteen year old’s equivalent of being a kid in a candy store! Almost every type of gunpowder-crammed, finger-removing, eye-gouging miniature explosive device known to mankind could be found at Wacky Waynes. We would spend sizeable amounts of our limited income there and return to Georgia to engage in pyrotechnical acts of deviance. Rockets that were intended to go some two to three hundred feet in the air before detonating with a colorful display became “Interneighborhood Ballistic Missiles,” as we would launch them at an angle and watch as they would explode just over the tops of houses a block or two down the street. At night we would launch bottle rockets at cars traveling down the dirt road behind his house, laughing at the “thud” as the missiles bounded off the windshields. Though fun at the time, these acts would pale in comparison to the thirty person fireworks fight outside the front entrance to a Kroger one night many summers ago. The front of the store was filled with people too afraid to leave the store! But that’s another story for another time. Jeebus, I hope my daughter never reads this.

For the most part I’ve outgrown my interest in fireworks, but from time to time there’s some fun to be found in the “light fuse, get away, do not hold in hand” spectacle in watching things blow up. Writing my recent entry about working at a Burger King set my mind in motion, recalling all the people I worked with. I recall two people in particular and an event one night that almost put an end to my fireworks career before it got off the ground.

It was Halloween 1982, and my friend Gus and I had to work at the BK that night but were slated to get off work at eight that evening. Another friend and co-worker, Ben, was going to be coming by around that time and the plan was to head off and engage in some Halloween shenanigans. Ben shows up a little after eight, and the three of us head out in Ben’s Ford Pinto for a night out on the town. Once we’re in the car I notice Gus has a large brown bag on the front floorboard, and it contains about $60 worth of fireworks (adjust for 1982 dollars and that’s a lot of fireworks). We head to one of the richer neighborhoods in town, where Gus proceeds to launch bottle rockets and other fireworks at houses. Almost all of them miss their intended targets, exploding harmlessly in the yards. After a short time of doing that, we decided that we should look elsewhere for targets as the police had almost certainly been called by then and would be showing up soon. From there we made our way to an apartment complex not too far away and resume the launching of fireworks.

We hadn’t been there long when Karma decided on some payback, and this time payback really was a bitch. Gus had been firing “jumping jacks” at some of the brick buildings in the apartment complex. Once a jumping jack has been lit they fire off two fiery, colored orbs that bounce around the ground. On his fourth launch attempt in the complex, Gus set a jumping jack on his sling shot and lit the fuse—except this time he let the fuse burn a little too long. “Shoot it, Gus!” I yelled from the back seat. He did, and the sudden rush of air made what was left of the fuse burn that much faster. The jumping jacks had no sooner cleared the car window when they ignited. I remember seeing the red one head off towards a building. The blue one, however, came right back into the car.

“Oh SHIT!” Gus yelled, as the burning orb of Karma entered the car and landed squarely in the nearly full bag of fireworks at Gus’ feet. In about half a second the front seat of the car began glowing like a disco, red, green, and blue hues lighting the faces of Ben and Gus. Despite his best efforts to stomp out the fireworks, Gus simply couldn’t prevent the entire bag from going off almost at once. Within seconds the car was filled with the sights and sounds of brick after brick of firecrackers going off, a gross of bottle rockets whizzing around the interior, display cannons exploding. It was like New Year’s in Chinatown except in a space of twenty square feet.

Most of my recollections of the incident are the sounds, as I quickly hit the floor in the back and covered myself with my jacket. Then it hit me that the odds of dying in this car were pretty damned good. For one thing I was trying to protect myself by covering my head with a nylon windbreaker (nylon being well-known for its fire-resistant properties), not to mention that I was in the back seat of an unexploded Ford PINTO. Images from the news of Pintos bursting into flames after rear-end collisions filled my head. If the car wouldn’t survive being hit from the rear, what were the odds it would survive a small gunpowder factory going off in the front seat? How would my parents take the news that their son died in a fireworks explosion in a Pinto? Worse than dying was the prospect that we’d get nabbed by the police, and I’d have to explain to my parents what happened. Maybe dying wasn’t so bad after all.

After about twenty seconds of Ben and Gus being peppered by multiple, small yield explosions and rocket launches, the contents of the bag had all been detonated. Someone called “Abandon car!” and we all jumped out. We were all coughing from smoke inhalation, of which there was plenty of smoke to be found inside the car. My first impression as I watched the clouds roll out of the open doors was that it resembled something from a Cheech and Chong film. It was then that we realized that the car was still moving; Ben, in his haste, had forgotten to put the car in park. Gus and I tried to get in front to at least slow it down as it headed towards a line of parked cars, while Ben tried to throw the car in park. On par with the rest of the evening, the smoldering Pinto hit a parked car but didn’t do any damage. We all looked at each other with the same “Let’s get the hell out of here” look on our faces.

From there we headed off to a nearby car wash to try to clean out the car some. The entire interior was covered with bits of paper from all the fireworks that had gone off inside the vehicle. The windshield was so covered in soot that Ben had to drive with his head hanging out the window. We had just put some coins into one of the vacuums and found some towels to wipe off the windshield when a police car came cruising past. I thought for sure we were pinched, but he slowed, gave us a look, and left. I guess he saw nothing suspicious about three teenagers covered in soot, in a car covered in soot and firecracker paper, cleaning out a car after hours at a car wash. Praise Jeebus for underpaid cops.

For all intents and purposes the evening was over. Ben’s charred and shattered Pinto dropped me off at my house, and I headed inside in hopes that I could wash off the sight and smell of gunpowder and charred Pinto interior before my parents spotted me. The next day Gus and I checked out the interior of Ben’s car when he arrived at work. The entire carpeting on the passenger side floorboard was either burned or had melted away, leaving just the metal below exposed. It’s funny reflecting back on the experience now, but it wasn’t so funny at the time. And I made a mental note that the next time I go off with friends on a similar expedition, I’m riding shotgun and NOT in the back seat—and definitely NOT in a Ford Pinto!

Venting again

A little guessing game today. Guess who's going to be paying for our staggering budget deficits and all the tax cuts which don't seem to help those who really need them? Hint: it's not the asshole on the right. Go ahead and cry, kid; I'd cry too if I were your age and my portion of the national debt was $28,003.05.

Honeysuckle & Exploding Trees

Despite the ever present large quantities of pollen in the air, this is perhaps my favorite time of the year. The reason for this is that this is the time of year when the honeysuckle fragrantly blooms in large quantities. I absolutely love the smell of honeysuckle. Were they ever to truly capture its scent and essence in a perfume, I can say that I'd definitely be in trouble. There's a distinct possibility that I'd end up buying a car or jewelry for the first female that happened by wearing such a perfume. Unfortunately, something else blooms at the same time as the honeysuckle and it brings on my allergies. I think that grass pollen becomes prevalent about the same time the honeysuckle makes its presence known. So while I love the scent of a honeysuckle bloom, I often cannot smell it due to my allergies.

Which brings me to today. I had an allergy attack actually start yesterday in the morning, but it wasn't until late afternoon/early evening when it kicked into overdrive. For me an allergy attack is often accompanied by aches and, sometimes, cold chills. Such was the case late night, when it became clear that work was out of the question today. So today was spent at home, taking drugs (not the fun kind either), catching up on some reading, taking a forty-five minute nap (which I really needed), and finally getting to record Harold Lloyd's Safety Last onto a DVD.

Early in the afternoon I decided to get online to check my email. Even though I wasn't at work, my job tends to plod along like a car without a driver. There were a few minor issues to handle, but they were easily dealt with a few email messages. I had been online about half an hour when I noticed that our computer room was getting dark; given the time and the west/northwest exposure of the front window, that shouldn't have been. A quick peek out the window showed the sky turning gray with a few rumbles of thunder in the distance, so I went to a favorite website where I check the weather radar. There was rain moving in, but it didn't seem to be that bad.

The rumbles of thunder continued to get louder but I paid it no heed. If anything severe was coming certainly our weather radio would go off. Suddenly the room was lit by a bright flash accompanied simultaneously by a clap of thunder that sounded more like an explosion than anything else. From behind my computer desk the surge protector, in which all my hardware is plugged into, gave an audible pop. My first thought was that the house has just been hit by lightening. My computer was still functional, so I shut it down immediately and then reached under the desk to turn off the power switch.

I walked around the house to make sure everything was okay. Things like this always make the news in Atlanta, where a thunderstorm usually yields at least one house strike for the evening news. All seemed okay, until I got to the back door with the intent of visually checking the roof. It was then that I noticed the large white oak perhaps 25 feet from our back door. It had taken a direct hit and the base of the tree appeared to be cracked or blown open from the lightening strike. A small hole had been dug in the ground where the electricity followed on the larger roots. Once the storm had moved out and the rain let up I went outside to inspect the damage. There is a second, smaller oak growing out of the same base which was also split. I found pieces of the bigger tree about thirty-five to forty feet away from the base. As much as we like the tree and the shade it gives, it looks like it will have to come down. I'm guessing that given its size and that it cost me $150 several years ago to have a smaller tree taken down, this one will cost a pretty penny to remove. Guess we'll have plenty of firewood for next year. And thank goodness that all of our electronics are plugged into decent surge protectors!

Fear of Frying

Most of us have had at least one of them in our lives—the crappy, teenage right-of passage job. When you’re just starting out in the working world and you’ve nothing to put on your resume, typically you find yourself working in the grocery, food service, or retail industries. On the plus side it’s a start, you’ve gotten your foot in the door to the work force and you’re making some money. On the down side you’re usually making minimum wage to be treated like crap by management and customers alike because, as we all know, minimum wage employees do not need to be treated with anything resembling respect or courtesy.

For myself, I spent some time working at a Burger King. It was something of a family tradition, my father managing a store up in New York, so I guess he thought I’d like to get into the family “business.” About a month after we moved to the town I still call home, I came home from school to get the worst news I could possibly hear: my father had spoken to the manager of the Burger King around the corner and I had an interview with her the next day. Dammit! It’s bad enough when one of your parents intervenes in a job situation, but fast food was not where I wanted to work. The prior two summers I had done volunteer work at a hospital and had demonstrated an ability to work well in a medical environment. Certainly I could do better than Burger King.

But with my immediate goal in mind of earning some money to buy a car, I begrudgingly headed off to what passed as an interview. At a fast food restaurant, an interview generally consists of three questions: Do you have a criminal record? Do you have any contagious diseases? Can you start tomorrow? I answered no to all three, needing a couple of days before I could start work. It’s been many, many years later and not only do I remember that first night, but as I started on the last day of the pay period, I still have my first pay statement from that single nights work.

It may be the same at most fast food restaurants, but at Burger King you started off working the broiler, the entry-level position in an entry-level job. In terms of the overall workforce, you’re a single-celled bacterium; life does not get any lower. The main difference is that bacterium do not wear an unsightly polyester uniform that, while offering some protection against grease splatter, are hotter than Hell—something very helpful in an environment where you’re grilling burgers. Over time, if you don’t quit after the first week, you can move up into other exciting tasks, such as working “the board,” where the hamburgers are prepared, the friers, and taking on the daunting task of preparing “specialty” sandwiches, like the chicken and fish sandwiches. The elite few with an IQ over 78 get to work the front counter and drive-thru taking orders and doing “push-out” (in essence putting the orders on a tray or in a bag to be given to a customer). The career dead-enders made it all the way to manager.

Working at Burger King is exactly what you’d expect from such an experience—it sucked. There were times it sucked more than normal. During the fall, Friday nights would almost always be exceptionally busy with local high school football games. Saturdays would be even worse, especially in a college town where, as the joke from Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman states, we have a large football stadium with a college attached. Not only was the place busy, but you also had to deal with the drunken fans who had returned to town to honor their alma mater by vomiting all over it. After a few times experiencing a typical fast food homegame Saturday, you begin hoping for a comet to hit the Earth and eliminate all mankind.

And then there are other interesting situations you cope with working in the fast food industry. I recall one evening a woman came to the front counter with a smile on her face, and starts off with a “Hi” in a soft tone that could only mean trouble. “My son just lost his cookies on your table,” she said, her smile never leaving her face. Just when you thought your minimum-wage, dead end job couldn’t get any worse, cleaning up some five year old’s vomitus off a table gets thrown in to remind you that you haven’t hit the bottom of the barrel just yet. The poor sod who got assigned the task of “clean up on aisle five!” headed off to the dining room with a cardboard box and a trash can. Many years later, thinking about this scenario, it brings a laugh and a smile to my face, though I’m sure the guy who had to clean it up would not agree with me. Then there was the time a couple tried to use Arby’s coupons at the store. I’m sure their ears are still burning from our laughter as they realized their mistake and made a hasty departure. I won’t go into detail how some drunken girl soiled the women’s room one night. All I will say is that the manager that night, a guy named Tony, took a peek in, said “Oh my God!,” and grabbed the hose to wash down the walls.

Perhaps one of the most memorable evenings came one Saturday night after we had locked up the dining room. On the weekends the dining room would close at 11 p.m. while the drive thru stayed open until midnight (the cheap owner’s version/excuse of a “late night drive thru”). My friend Mitch and I were assigned to work until close this particular evening, and it was not at all an unusual practice for us to send the person who clocked out at 11 to make a “beer run” to a neighboring wine and spirits store (long since torn down, now the site of an Eckerds—not a change for the better in my opinion). Though we had almost an hour to work, Mitch and I started drinking at 11:10 that night. About 11:40 one of our co-workers, William (not me), and six of his friends walked up to the drive thru window for Cokes for which to mix their bourbon. William was wearing white tennis shorts, which gave the impression he was in his underwear. Mitch, who loved to drink and was definitely feeling the effects of his love by this time, yells, “I can do better than that!” and proceeds to drop his pants right there at the window. Oddly enough, Mitch gave his two week notice not too long afterwards but the owner instructed the manager that it was okay if he didn’t work out those two weeks. To this day I can’t go to a drive thru without wondering if the person at the window is wearing pants.

The perks of working at Burger King were few and far between, and the people I worked with and I found ways of dealing with the monotony of working in the food service industry. Once our store started serving breakfast, we found a novel use for the small tubs of maple syrup. We would pour about three of them onto the asphalt outside the drive thru window, stick an inflated BK balloon in it, and place a sign in the window, “Hit Balloon, Win Prize.” No matter how far out of the way we put the balloon, people would try to hit it. The winners would get a FREE Burger King crown, which was met with the reaction one would expect when they were hoping for free food instead. And did you know that when you stack eight to ten packets of ketchup just outside a drive thru window they make a collective pop like running over glass when a car tire crushes them all at once?

The sign in front of the store was a source of fun and creativity. The store I worked at was originally in a locale where a Papa John’s Pizza is located now. When it was at that location the store’s sign was located by the road and was on the ground where it was very easy to get to. Those of us who had to close the store at night would take turns coming up with new phrases for the sign using only the letters already on the sign. The all-time best was done by my friend Gus one night when he changed, “Now at our mall store: Breakfast” to “Now at our mall store: Fat Breasts.” Two years after I started working at BK we moved next door to a new building, where the sign was located much higher on the road sign pole.

The last summer I worked at Burger King was perhaps the best. My friend Brett had been hired a few months before and we both shared similar interests. Food that had set out too long was thrown into the waste bucket, of which we actually had to document the contents for inventory adjustments. But once we had done that, Brett and I would sometimes subject the wasted food to “blast tests.” We found that four firecrackers would be enough to blow apart the typical Whopper sandwich. One evening a few of us (including the manager) climbed up onto the roof of the building and proceeded to launch bottle rockets at the line of cars in line at the Wendy’s next door.

Working in a fast food establishment is not a pleasant experience, to say the least. Most places live up to the “it’s a nice place but I wouldn’t want to live there” mentality. But at least it’s taught me to be nice to the folks serving your food; even minimum wage workers deserve some respect.