Top Ten Things For Thanks

I am thankful for:

1. The Lakers. It’s embarrassing how much they affect my life. When they win, my mood elevates automatically. Off-season, I’m adrift. Once the season starts, my life has structure. I know it’s not right. It’s just how it is.
2. Daylight savings time in the Fall. The effects of that extra hour last me almost a week.
3. John August’s Screenwriting Blog. He’s real. But it’s easy to find ‘real’ screenwriter blogs; they all use four-letter words and tell you about what they had for breakfast. What separates John is first, his compassion, and second, his no-nonsense expertise. He shares freely.
4. Hendrick’s Gin. The work is done. The only thing ahead of me is a few hours of unstructured pleasure time – web surfing, computer poker, reading, playing music, watching the Lakers . . . and an icy martini. This gin is delicious.
   

   Hendrick's Gin

    It’s got enough of that juniper bite to get your attention, enough botanical flavors to be interesting, but also refined enough that it goes down nice and smooth.

5. The weather in Southern California. I spent half of my youth in the midwest, where there is about two months of good weather a year. The rest is either cold and icy or hot and sticky. Today it’s partly cloudy and temperate. My houseguests had coffee this morning sitting on the front porch. After Thanksgiving Dinner, me and the guys will have cigars outside.
6. My family. It’s a good group. We’re fortunate to have had a majority of prosperous, good times vs. bad. This year things are the farthest ‘down’ since the ’70s, but it hasn’t changed a thing with us, except we’re spending less money and scrapping more for it. I love them all.
7. Fender Musical Instruments. My favorite stuff to play. I own four or five Stratocasters, a couple Telecasters, and several Fender Amplifiers. This pic is with a couple Strats and my fave amp, the Super Reverb. Of course, unlike this picture, mine are both vintage, Blackface Supers.
8. Microsoft One Note. This is a hidden gem of MS Office. If you have it on your computer, open it up and look through the ‘Tutorial’ notebook that opens automatically. I’ll bet you think of some way it can be useful. For instance, as you might know, I’m writing a screenplay. In outlining, traditionally, I’ve written notes (often quite lengthy) in the margins of the printed copy, then attempted to integrate those notes into the next draft. But the notes are everywhere, out of order, hard to read, cryptic because of space considerations – a mess. Now, in One Note, I just log the scene and type away at my note. Needless to say, editing and reordering these notes is a breeze. When I’m done, I print the notes – nice, neat, and organized – and hit the next draft. I also use One Note on this blog. I have separate pages of the Blog Notebook for Ideas, Drafts, and Brainstorming.
9. Loyal Customers. Without these great folks, I would be poor and out of work. Just as importantly, they make my job a fun thing to do. Thank you for having personalities and treating us waiters as the real people we are.
10. Thanksgiving Day Itself. Most restaurants are still closed for Thanksgiving. The structure of society, though crumbling yearly, is still intact!

I hope everyone out there is having a happy Thanksgiving with their loved ones. Thanks for reading!

12 Hours And Home For The Lakers

Everybody, thanks for reading about the ‘No’ Lady. Hope you enjoyed it. I’ve got a mini-catalog of Customer Types ready to go. My MO is mainly to trot them out when a prime example crosses my path, so the whole thing is fresh in my mind – like the ‘No’ Lady. Instead of a rough character sketch, I’ll be able to give some cut-from-life details, some smelly emotions.

On to today. A marginal 4-table shift at Michael’s. Fortuntately, I was able hit for a high slugging percentage and walked with $99. Four-top ordered nicely, $249 check left $55. Two-top enjoying glasses of White Zin, $20 tip. A guy who should be a VIP was treating his chiropracter – a pretty blonde woman – to lunch: $149 check, $30 tip. A two-top featuring a Forty-Yard-Fake-Out woman (looks HOT at forty yards, but up close you see she’s out of shape, not athletic, and the face is older and not so great) showing off her knowledge of Michael’s for a handsome younger guy who was probably an assistant she’d like to fuck (ASLF). $12 on $60.

Short break between shifts to spend an hour working on the screenplay. Got some nice things straightened out regarding the science and logistics of what I’m laying out. The play is laid all out. I’m fine-tuning right now in preparation for a run at a first draft. My method is to outline a plot, read it and make notes about it, then re-outline based on the notes. Repeat, and again. I’m now to the point in the screenplay where it’s pretty solid what’s going to happen; why it all happens is pretty much accounted for; and my characters aren’t having conflicts with the previous two elements. So I’m going to let ‘er rip with a draft of the ‘real’ screenplay. We’ll see what happens from there. Wish me luck. BTW, I have written screenplays before; this is not my first attempt.

Carney’s was a wasteland tonight. It was rescued only by Dory’s co-worker from her other serving job showing up. That was a $53 tip for two diners. Dory and I walked with a mere $65. Otherwise, it was very slow. Unfortunate because yesterday saw the restaurant filling up – surely a $200 night. These are the economic times.

Vicodin-Boy (Frank the Bartender) was his better self, but towards the end he tried to tell Dory and I a story about how his bank was no longer denying debit card transactions above his account balance, instead honoring the transaction and charging over-limit fees. He almost choked on his tongue – he got so worked up.

It was either a few recently-swallowed Vicodins kicking in, or else he couldn’t handle the pressure of telling a story he hadn’t rehearsed a few hundred times. Frank is that kind of bartender/server. We all are to a degree, but he’s the worst. Once the soundtrack starts with him, it goes all the way through. Someone mentions dogs, in any context, and they will be treated/subjected to an etched-in-granite 10 minute soliloquoy about the 9-litter Portuguese Sheepherder (or whatever they were) saga he and his wife went through . . .

He’s a tight ass, too. But tonight when I asked for my shifter (we’re actually informally allowed two), I only asked for a half martini. So he poured me Hendrick’s, my fave gin, top-shelf and usually not on the shifter roster. Tasty.

Steak salad and a martini at home and the Lakers handled the Suns pretty easily. I’m happy and tired.