2000 - Thanksgiving in Caruthersville, Mo.

Thanksgiving, 1996
A tradition is born, revolving around Pilgrims, turkey dinners and five-liter boxes of Franzia wine. The first two I take care of with my family, the last with my best friend Jason, who invites me over to his house to split the equivalent of 6.7 bottles of cardboard-encased wine, to be dispensed from a space-age silver pouch and plastic spigot. We take down the box in two or three hours on his back porch while smoking cigars and listening to old Prince albums. We’re both incredibly intoxicated by 11:30, when a rerun of “Carson’s Comedy Classics” hits the Family Channel airwaves. This is the second time in my life I've been drunk, and when the mercury breaks on my BAC meter, I end up telling Jason I love him, man, I hope he knows that, a dozen or more times.

Thanksgiving, 1997
Back porch, cigars, Prince and more than a gallon of Franzia wine. This time the box is gone within an hour, and we’re practically passed out by midnight. I’m on my back on Jason’s bedroom floor when he loses his Russian roulette game with Uncle Vomit and sprays a light purple pool of wine and half-chewed pretzels across the bathroom linoleum. Jason’s mom, dad, visiting grandmother and brother emerge from various corners of the house to chide and chastise him as I watch from the bedroom doorway, leaning against said doorway for equilibrium’s sake. Jason’s brother’s fiancé needs to go home, and I’m parked behind her in the driveway. She asks me for my keys, but I’m reluctant to give them to her because I have no collision insurance on my car. When I mention this aloud, in less than eloquent terms, everyone seems to think it’s really funny.

Thanksgiving, 1998
Same routine, only Jason and I are joined by a third. His girlfriend of a year and a half, a sweet, intelligent high-school girl named Amy. They’ve just broken up so Jason can chase after a girl at his college, but there seem to be no overpowering emotional issues involved. We just have a great time, splitting the Franzia box, cigars and Prince and heading to 7-Eleven for junk-food supplies. Later, when we’re all downstairs, trying to sleep, Amy and I start holding hands in the dark. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I take things a lurching step further and pop her hand in my mouth - finger at a time - and suck away. For another reason unbeknownst, she seems to tolerate and possibly enjoy it until Jason breaks things up by asking what the hell is going on down there, it sounds like a family of four eating a chicken dinner.

Thanksgiving, 1999
Jason has flown in from Seattle - where he moved a couple months ago - to see his family and friends, and I’ve driven up from Columbia for the same purpose. Our paths intersect on his back porch, and Year Four exists in an uneasy state of truce. He is together with the only girl I've ever loved, after all. I call in my roommate Charles to help split the box, and Jason invites our old friend Keith. The Franzia dies a quick, painless death, and we all move on to cans of Bud Light. The truce is broken when Jason and I get too drunk and arrive at the conversational topic of Logan and how Jason whisked her away from me. As always, that I never actually, technically dated Logan makes it no less serious an argument to me. Charles and Keith go inside to watch “South Park” midway through the proceedings. I don’t get fully pissed off, though, until we’re taking a whiz on the neighbor’s fence, side-by-side, and Jason manages to impose an emotional breakthrough on me. I’m drunk and freezing cold, and I find myself drawn into a lingering hug - after we’ve shaken off and zipped up, of course - and telling his ass, “I still love you, you're still my friend,” over and over. It's mainly the alcohol talking. Five minutes later, I grab Charles from upstairs and head back to my family’s house, which is only three minutes away. Thankfully.

The only light falling down on me is the steady bluish-gray and white dream-state illumination of the moon and stars, and that comforts me. So does the near-total humidity, which seems to box us all in and warm up an otherwise chilly fall night. The headlights from Jack's Saturn point out into space, twin search beams bouncing off all those invisible dewdrops in the air and finding nothing at all. Both lights are parallel to a row of trees, which sit in darkness just beyond them. It's a spooky tableau, somewhere in the bootheel of Missouri, and we're using it as a backdrop for this year's ceremonial Franzia wine-box devouring.

"Year Five - what is it you give for the fifth anniversary?" I ask Jason, who's leaning against his big brother's car and sipping from his first Solo cup of Chillable Red. "Paper, right? Or is it the gift of luggage?"

Before anything else can be said, Jack - Jason's oldest brother - passes a crumpled Coke can my way. "This," he says. The brother, not Jason.

I take hold of the can and rotate it slowly back and forth, like a lawn sprinkler. "Garbage. Garbage for the fifth anniversary. It figures. Why reward your partner for only staying with your ass five years?"

"If you don't want the can, then give back the can," Jack says, playing along. "Nothing worse than an ungrateful bitch who can't appreciate a proper anniversary gift."

"No no, I can appreciate it." And I take the lighter from Jack's outstretched hand and ignite the bowed-in center of the horizontal Coke can. I take a harsh but satisfying hit from the lip of the makeshift pipe and send the can Jason’s way. He's getting high with us for a change. "It's the thought that counts," I say, my voice sounding guttural and restrained from still trying to hold in the hit.

We get another round out of the Coke can before headlights appear on the horizon, the first non-Saturn headlights in more than a half-hour. We're convinced they belong to the cops - they have that law enforcement glow, to our stoned, half-drunk eyes anyway. So we each perform a cover-up task, executed so quickly and smoothly that it seems like we pre-planned it. I stash the wine box in some nearby bushes, and Jason sets our three Solo cups side-by-side-by-side, upright behind a tree. Jack hides the small, rectangular piece of foil containing the weed among some protruding roots from the same tree.

We try to look nonchalant, like we're just here, hanging out in the dark along an unpaved road in the woods. Three sober buddies killing a few hours on Thanksgiving night. And before we can even say much about the situation, the approaching car with the bright-ass headlights stops a half-mile up the road, makes an awkward, three-point 180 and speeds off.

"Must've thought we were the cops," I mumble, and as the taillights recede into the distance, we all move to retrieve our respective contraband.

The wine box and cups come back without a hitch, but it doesn't take Encyclopedia Brown to know what's up when Jack starts in with, "Shit!" "Fuck!" and the rest of the Tourette’s lineup. The weed has come up missing. The foil rectangle has been spared, yes, but the immediate area around it seems to yield nothing but dirt, overgrown grass and weeds. The wrong kind of grass, and the wrong kind of weeds.

Jack moves the Saturn to where its headlights - brights, even - are flooding the area around the tree, and we hunt together for four or five minutes, but our marijuana supply has mysteriously returned back to the earth from whence it came.

"Those fucking rednecks owe me some serious weed," Jack declares, and for a brief period, it's the most pissed off I've seen him since I threw up all over his apartment three years ago (on the night he moved in, no less). It was only a dimebag or so, but it was all we had for our weekend excursion.

Something about this beautiful, undying Thanksgiving tradition - something always goes wrong. But every year we honor the tradition anyway. It's a for better or worse concept, just like in a real marriage.

--

I was sure the wine-box tradition would die this year, once Jason told me he and Jack had to spend the holiday in Caruthersville, home of a set of grandparents on their mom's side. Representatives from the entire family would be gathering to celebrate, but for some reason Jason’s mom and dad wouldn't be going, and his girlfriend was a couple thousand miles removed. I got the invite, then, and he assured me I'd be welcome and we could treat the occasion more as a party than a get-together for someone else's family.

I still felt somewhat out of place when we walked into Frank and Carla's - the grandparents - house around 5:30, a full hour late for the family dinner. We were half-high, and my stomach was still near-capacity from eating Thanksgiving dinner with my family three hours prior, but a couple minutes in the microwave and we all had another enormous meal to eat. Carla's warmed-over turkey was actually better than my mom’s, although I'd never tell Mom that.

I'd met Frank and Carla many times and had at least a passing acquaintance with most of the handful of aunts, uncles and cousins present. From the (late) moment we arrived, Jason, Jack and I were collectively known as "the boys." And after serving a few hours of family time, we boys grabbed a few empty plastic cups and excused themselves from the proceedings.

Jack told Frank and Carla he was going to take us city kids on a makeshift tour of Caruthersville in all its small-town glory. That leg of the trip that took about seven or eight minutes - for the next half hour, Jack pulled off the town's main road and tore through the unlit, unmarked gravel and dirt paths. Until we finally pulled over, broke into the Franzia box and loaded the Coke can up with weed.

--

It starts raining about fifteen minutes after Jack misplaces the contents of the dimebag. I didn't bring my one-hitter along because I had an odd, paranoid vision of it clanging to the dinner table in the middle of the prayer and popping open to spill a twenty-sack all over the fucking yams, which would cause my certain banishment from any future family events.

By this time we've pulled off the dirt road completely and are surrounded by woods. The Saturn's headlights are shining out at tree branches, brush and old headstones, most of which are tilted slightly to the left or right. The raindrops fall in euphonious surround-sound, but most of them get caught up in the foliage. Only a few drops trickle through, and we're already too blunted to mind.

"Look what I rounded up," Jack says, closing the driver's side door and presenting me with the Coke can, which has somehow been miraculously reloaded.

"No shit?" I look down at the ample bowl Jason's brother has loaded from thin air, and suddenly I'm ready to proclaim him my Rastafarian messiah. "I thought you spilled it all."

"I had an emergency micro-stash, and this is all of it." He sets fire to the can-bowl, and the glow from the lighter illuminates his face for a few quick seconds. He exhales. "I was saving it for a rainy night."

The micro-stash is going quick - only Jack and I partake - and so is the Franzia. I've been the wine-box custodian since we got here, and it feels noticeably lighter every time I pick it up. Part of that assessment is due no doubt to the increasingly deep buzz coursing through my head and extremities.

If we had any more weed, I'd probably end up paranoid about drinking in a cemetery. Or at least spend ten minutes wondering about how many of these corpses resting in peace got here because of cheap alcohol like the shit we're slamming down. As it is, I finish off the Coke can and ash it on the grave of someone named Frances - possibly male, possibly female, hopefully not both - who died in 1963.

"You guys think it's disrespectful to drop weed-ash on someone's grave?" I ask.

"It's not like you're pissing on it," Jason replies.

"And it's not the first time," says Jack. "We partied out here all through high school. Saw some freaky shit, too. This whole cemetery is haunted."

"All fifty square feet of it?" Jason quips.

"It'd be an easy place to haunt, though, you know?" I wave around at the crooked headstones. "You just have a float a little to the left, a little to the right, a little forward and backward, and you've got your whole haunting ground covered. Piece of cake."

"We would come out here and drop acid," Jack continues, like he's not even listening to our smart asses, "and it was fuckin' crazy. Whenever someone would bring an Ouija board along, this same spirit would get on the board and refuse to get off."

"Nothing worse than a Ouija board hog." I try to dismiss the notion that I just saw something dart across the cemetery, out the corner of my right eye.

"He's over here somewhere." Jack takes a few steps forward, crunching some sticks and leaves on his way. I follow and crane my neck as he gestures down to a grave marker. "That’s the bastard - Eric Jules Kaiser."

"Did you ever ask him how much it sucked to have the middle name Jules?" I pantomime jerking my hands - index fingers and thumbs making a triangle - back and forth across an invisible Ouija board and spell out loud, "'F-U-C-K… Y-O-U.'"

"Eric was a dick, too." Jack tosses a quick apologetic hand down at the marker and says, dismissingly, "Sorry dude, but you were." And, as we're walking back toward the car: "He used to make things fall all around these woods."

"You think that might not have been a ghost but maybe, oh, gravity, Jack?"

"Gravity never quite has that perfect a sense of timing. Fill me up." He sloshes his near-empty Solo cup around for emphasis, and I become Box Bitch once again. Probably three glasses of Chillable Red left.

Jason and Jack spend a few minutes trying to outdo each other with stories of freaky spiritual occurrences while my skeptical butt sips more wine and stares across the cemetery.

--

We emerge from the cemetery just after midnight, Jack drop kicks the empty Franzia box, and it sails in a perfect arc over thirty or forty yards of darkness. We cross the gravel road into a barren field, dirt plowed into uneven rows, and we chase each other around, stewed to the fucking gills. We play a grown-up, full-contact game of tag, and Jack tackles the shit out of his brother in the first three minutes. When I'm "it," I hurtle toward Jason at full tilt and end up falling on my ass, skidding four or five feet in the sandy dirt. Which doesn't hurt in the least and isn't near as muddy as one would expect.

And somehow, don't ask how, we end up standing side by side in the road, and we sing "Bohemian Rhapsody" at top volume. All six minutes of it, in hoarse, drunken harmony. I sing straight to the moon, which is nearly full, and when the song's over, we collapse laughing. Every soul in the cemetery is embarrassed for us, I fear.

It's barely 12:30 when we realize the party's over out here. The rain drops are getting fatter and more abundant, and we're not quite plowed enough to ignore it. Jack mentions that there's one nightclub in the entire tri-county area and asks if we want to go there. Sure, we reply. Why not?

A minute later, we're back on the road, gravel issuing forth from the back tires of the Saturn. We bounce along the road as the windshield wipers whir rapidly and mechanically back and forth, slinging water to the left and right. Bob Marley's Exodus is still playing on the car stereo, and the soothing, utopian sounds of "Three Little Birds" are clashing almost poetically with Jack's manic driving. I buckle my seat belt.

We're just hitting civilization - which might not be the appropriate word, come to think of it - when we run into another bout of poor Thanksgiving luck. Well, a stop sign is what we run into, after the main road creeps up quick on Jack and he slams on the brakes. We fishtail and skid through the gravel, veer to the right and plow right over the sign, which offers no resistance. It smashes immediately to the ground, one ungodly metallic thud begetting another, and the Saturn slides out a few feet into the main road until we finally stop. Which is what the sign told us to do in the first place.

All three of us are about to catch our breath and force our hearts back down through our rib cages when we see the Highway Patrol car across the street. Jack sees it first, actually, and he informs us in a calmer tone of voice than I would have. I'm incredibly relieved to be in the back seat, and for the first time since we ran out of weed, glad I left my one-hitter in St. Louis.

The way his ass was driving on the gravel road, this seems like an ideal time to kick into one of those high-speed pursuits you're always seeing on Fox, but Jack's grown up a little since he was a Caruthersville teenager. He flashes his brights at the cop, who hasn't even had time to react yet, to make it look like he's flagging the officer down to report the incident. As any good citizen would.

Sure enough, those red and blue flashing lights are on us within the minute, and the patrolman wastes no time approaching the Saturn, either. But instead of, "Step out of the car," or any other standard you're-in-a-heap'a-trouble cop line, Rosco P. Coltrane opens with a whistle and a declaration of, "Boy, you sure took that stop sign clean off!" Like he's impressed and bewildered all at once.

And, like an invisible hypnotist snapped his fingers and brought Jack out of his city-boy trance, Jason's brother lapses right back into Missouri-hick inflection. "Tellyawhut, Officer, I couldn't hardly believe it myself!"

They bullshit for another thirty seconds while I'm trying to drink it all in from the backseat, then Rosco gets down to business: "Well're you boys gonna tell me the truth or you gonna tell me about a hundred thousand lies?"

"I know I was going a little fast there, boy no doubt about that, but with the weather the way it is tonight, I just misjudged that turn," Jack says, not even overdoing the drawl.

"I seen you guys comin' up the road there and it looked like you might be taking it a little fast…" Then Rosco slips back into his good ol' fashioned country wonderment. "You took that stop sign clean off! It doesn't look like it even put a scratch on your car."

"You mind if I get out and take a look at that, Officer? I was shore worried about that muhself."

Jack undoes his seat belt, and they head around to the front of the car, him and this hayseed cop. Rosco shines the flashlight around and turns up maybe a dent or two on the license plate. That's all.

The driver's-side door is still open, and we can hear the cop tell Jack, "Them Saturns're some good cars, boy I'll tellyawhut. I was gonna buy one for my daughter, and the salesman gave me a hammer and said, 'Go 'head, give 'er a hit,' and I told him I didn't want to do that, so he bashed the car hisself, and there wasn't a scratch on the thing."

Jason and I exchange a do you believe this fucking guy glance, as the patrolman switches back to cop mode and tells Jack he'd better come sit in the squad car and answer some questions for him. And they disappear behind us for awhile, while we undergo the same situational dichotomy as Rosco - we're amused, highly amused, but we realize there's still a pretty good chance of my friend/his brother getting in some serious trouble.

A second cop car shows up a few minutes later, and without trying to be too conspicuous, I switch positions and stare out the side mirror next to the passenger seat. Still can't make anything out. Now there's an industrial security truck sitting on the shoulder across the street, and an oversize rent-a-cop is ambling across the street to ask Rosco what's going on.

A rap comes on Jason's window. It's Rosco again, and he doesn't even humor us with condescending dialogue like the officers on the "Cops" show. He just asks for our licenses and disappears with them. Another fifteen minutes go by, and even Bob Marley's starting to sound a little impatient and unsure. But I have to chuckle when Rosco shows up at the front end of Jack's "well-made American automobile" to give the cop from the second squad car a guided tour of the damage or lack of.

"You think they’re making him blow the Breathalyzer?"
"Who the fuck knows. Jack had about half the wine we did."
"He's half the size we are."
"There goes the security guy."

I look over and the security truck is pulling away. One less pig at the roast. And another five minutes go by.

Then, just like that, the front door opens and Jack plops down into his front seat. He passes back our IDs and flashes us a canary-yellow citation. "It’s gonna be a sixty-five-dollar fine." He's surprisingly casual as he fastens his seatbelt.

"Rosco let you walk?" I ask, a smile finally crossing my face.

"Yeah, man. He asked if I'd been drinking tonight, and I told him, no, sir, well a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, but that was at like six o'clock. And he said, 'Well, boy, you don't look drunk to me. Your eyes are certainly responsive.' And we talked about domestic autos for awhile."

We all let out a hearty laugh as Jack eases off the shoulder and onto the main road at a fraction of his original speed.

"What about that fatass rent-a-cop?" Jason asks.

"Shit, that guy… He shows up, leans into the window of the cop car and asks about the stop sign. You know, what happened to it, why it was in the middle of the road all of a sudden and not anchored in the dirt. And the cop tells him he's got everything under control and this guy should go back to watching the textile plant. The security guy says, fair enough, and walks away, as he's crossing the road, the cop says under his breath, 'It's a good thing they don't let those boys carry guns.'"

We never make it to the nightclub, but you probably guessed that already. No, we head back to Frank and Carla's, Jason and I crash in a vacant bedroom - him on the bed, me on the floor, at my insistence - and we talk and laugh some more in hushed tones.

--

I look at my watch. Half past nine. My head doesn't hurt that bad, but I don't exactly feel like getting out of bed when Carla pokes her head in the door and announces, "Breakfast on the table, boys. Get it 'fore it gets cold."

Just as quickly, the door shuts and Jason’s snoring ceases. "What'd she say?" he asks, groggy as a post-op hospital patient.

"Breakfast," I mumble, and throw the blanket over my head.

Neither of us moves for another couple of minutes, as voices penetrate the bedroom door: "How late were they out last night?" "After midnight, I reckon." "What were they doing all that time?" "Come on, Grandma, why do you think they took those empty cups with them? They got drunk last night!"

Different relatives get different versions of the story, but officially, we went out driving and got shown around Caruthersville. We might have had a drink or two, but we certainly never got pulled over. Pass the biscuits and gravy, please.

The food is certainly the highlight of my Friday. The down-home breakfast is an absolutely mind-blowing affair, and it drowns out my hangover. Lunch is even better, but an entire day seems to pass before it arrives - as we repeat the television/Game Boy routine, we all take turns using the one bathroom, and I'm shocked to find any hot water to fill the enormous, iron-legged tub with when I go second to last.

Then it's back to Jack's Saturn for a trip to Kennett, Missouri, hometown of Sheryl Crow. We "boys" ride with Uncle Lou, who pops his trunk to reveal a pouch with four or five prerolled joints. "You fucking rule, Uncle Lou," Jack announces, and I'm inclined to agree.

The weed improves an otherwise idle drive, though I'm once again made to maintain around a bunch of rural relatives - Jason's extended family has rented out the Kennett community center, and they've provided enough food for a hundred people. Or fifteen stoned ones. There's an entire table filled with nothing but desserts, which makes the glutton in me spring a footlong hardon.

I introduce myself to a couple relatives as Leroy, Jason and Jack's second cousin, but mostly I keep quiet and enjoy the opportunities for people watching. Which are abundant. I'm not even high anymore by the time Jason, Jack and I sit around the community center piano and sing old Beatles and Elton John songs, but I can’t resist suggesting a certain six-minute Queen song. Which we sing again, in perfect harmony, while a half-dozen twice-removed elderly relatives smile and bob their heads to, none of them having a single clue as to how these "boys" spent their Thanksgiving.

Sunday Night Ritual at The Oz

DATE: Sunday, November 13, 2005
PLACE: The Oz - Sauget, Ill.
POISONS OF CHOICE: Plastic Bud bottles, Miller Lite draft
CAST OF CHARACTERS: Alison, Jordan, Jill


I'm at the front of the line to order a beer when a guy in a white dress shirt and forest green Dockers cuts in front of me.

"Can I get two VIP passes?" he asks the bartender, a plain-looking but attractive brunette in her mid-twenties. "Some girls just got severely groped on the dance floor."

"What's 'severely'? Like, was there penetration?" I ask him while the bartender is reaching into the far-right compartment of her cash drawer for the free passes. He never answers. He never even looks in my direction.

It's 1:41 in the morning - we took our sweet time getting out here, and I've been drinking for free the past few hours. The gratis booze has loosened my tongue a bit.

Bartender hands Forest Green Dockers a pair of VIP passes and he disappears back into the crowd without so much as a thank you.

"Sorry I ignored you there for a second," the bartender tells me. "What're you having?"

"One of those $4.50 plastic Bud bottles." She reaches into the cooler in front of me. "Can I also get a couple VIP passes? My Aunt Shirley just got gang-raped during 'Caught Up' by Usher."

She looks at me quizzically for a second, then realizes I'm full of shit.

"Just following the Dockers guy's lead," I tell her. "Seems like a good trick to get a free pass. But I bet he works here."

"The white one? Yeah, he's one of the managers." And she's off to help the next person.

I crack the cap on my plastic beer and look around. The bartender's right - there aren't a lot of white faces in the crowd tonight. It's 85 percent black, and almost all of the guys are dressed nicer than I am. They take this shit seriously. As for the ladies, well, hooch-wear seems to be the prevailing fashion.

--

The Oz is in East St. Louis, grouped in the microscopic town of Sauget, Illinois, with a 24/7 bar named Pop's and a pair of strip clubs. The warehouse-looking dance club is best known for what they call the Sunday Night Ritual, in which a DJ spins techno and hip-hop until five a.m. and partiers 19 and up can get in.

Sunday is the only night of the week underagers can gain entry, and it's the only night of the week I've ever been to The Oz. When you're a minion of the service industry, you're always going to have a handful of friends under the age of 21. And they're all going to have nineteenth and twentieth birthdays.

We're celebrating the former tonight - fellow restaurant server Jill just turned 19 - on the Oz's outdoor patio. The inside of the club is packed with bodies and body heat, but the covered outside is a comfortable 62 degrees or so, and the DJ is on a reggae-rap kick that sounds less annoying and one-note than you'd think.

Jill and Alison, a friend who also works with us, are booty-dancing on each other while Jordan - an ex-fellow employee and member of my Monday night bowling team - and I flank them on each end in bodyguard posture.

Neither girl professes to want to pick up anybody, despite the fact that they're dancing like they're currently engaged in clothed intercourse. And neither of us guys wants to dance, so we're left to deflect the seemingly endless parade of single guys in search of quick, anonymous ass. Jill and Alison each were already propositioned just walking through the club, up to the bar and out to the patio.

And, fuck, Alison is Jordan's girlfriend, so you can be sure he's taking the bodyguard stance seriously. Me, I'm standing back with a Black and Mild Mild, enjoying the scenery. The Oz is a prime people-watching venue, particularly when the hip-hop and techno cultures collide.

The patio is the spot for ravers on ecstacy to lose touch with reality and dance their asses off. Which basically means writhing around with a glow stick or Indiglo-powered cell phone in each hand while watching the colored tracers dance through their fields of vision.

But the balance of the clientele has shifted tonight, and now there are dozens of mostly bored-looking black folks standing around - a couple of them dancing - to the DJ's reggae-rap stylings while a lone holdout raver in the far corner swings a sad-looking glow stick. Also, someone's smoking weed out here. I want to find out who and make a new friend.

--

We get split up before too long. Alison and Jill want to hit the dance floor, Jordan goes with them to keep an eye on his girls, and I return to the bar for a two-dollar Miller Lite draft. Fuck the $4.50 plastic Buds.

And I take a lap around the building, eyeballing the handful of whore-dressed hotties and spotting a trio of enormous ladies - packed into their dresses like stuffed sausages - at the exit to the patio, fanning themselves with segments of cardboard boxes. All three are sweating profusely.

One trend at the Oz, all the obese people and various other eyesore misfits usually end up in the corners of the facility, near the exits, on nearly anonymous display but with an aching in their eyes that gives away that they hope they get noticed.

Whoever designed this building left us with very few throughways. There's one main outer and one inner walkway spanning the club's entire length and four narrow entrances to the dance floor. Traffic jams are frequent on a busy night, as are the unseen but exasperated-sounding DJ's mid-song crowd-control attempts.

"Once again, if you are on a walkway, do not stand still! Keep moving!" he says during the middle of 50 Cent's "Window Shopper." "Those of you crowded in front of the dance platform - that IS a walkway! If you are standing on the steps leading down to the dance floor, please go one direction or another! You ARE blocking traffic!"

I see what he means when I try walking past the dance platform, where a half-dozen guys' mouths are agape watching barely clothed patrons on full, sensual display mere feet in front of them. I take advantage of the slow-moving foot flow to gawk at the beauties myself. I have the same logic as when I wait in heavy traffic because there's a bad accident on the side of the road - it took me forever to get here because of this shit, so I might as well slow down and get a double eyeful.

I'm on the far end of the platform when the DJ switches to a techno song. The dance floor exodus is unbelievable. Dozens of African-Americans push past me to head to the bathroom or get a drink, and the people who remain on the floor simply stop moving and begin to talk amongst themselves. Even the platform girls climb down and mill around.

"Bored?" I ask one statuesque Nubian princess in a painted-on black dress.

"Shit yeah! I can't dance to this."

"That's Rule Number One of DJ'ing - you've got to read the crowd. If they're into something, you don't switch it on them." I look up at the tinted-window DJ booth, and mock-yell, "Are ya listening to me?!"

Down in the middle of the dance floor, the lone raver with the sad-looking glow stick is dancing like it's his last night on earth.

"That white boy's happier than a pig in shit!" notes the Nubian princess. I laugh and head back to the bar.

--

The platform dancer is the only stranger who seems willing to talk to me at The Oz. One thing about me when I go out - I view a crowd of strangers as a kind of social playground, and I set out to have exchanges, however brief, with as many people from as many backgrounds as I can.

But this is a hostile crowd, as far as I'm concerned. Everyone's here to get laid, and most of these people will either go home disappointed or settle for one of the summer-sausage self-fanners in the corner. So every conversational exchange from one stranger to another is assumed to be a pickup attempt. I could give two shits about going home with one of these girls - I'm not generally the anonymous sex sort, and I'm planning on going to bed and waking up alone. I just want to crack people up and have them crack me up, and no one's going for it.

I get a downright God-you're-pathetic sneer from a white girl at the bar while I'm waiting for my next Miller Lite. The more I hear the DJ issue these noxious-sounding crowd control warnings, the more I develop a bullshit comedy routine along the lines of, "If you're standing in the men's room, talking to your buddy at the urinals, holding your drink in your hand, shooting the breeze, and someone comes up behind you with a full bladder and his penis out, move out of the way! Other people need to urinate too!"

I give the white girl a couple examples of bullshit DJ announcements ("I know you're tired, but do NOT lie down on the bar and take a nap! Other people want drinks, and you are blocking them!"), and she practically throws up the loser "L" on her forehead before walking away in a huff.

When it comes time for me to break the seal and head for the urinals myself, I spot Jordan and tell him I'm headed over to Pop's and will be back in like ten minutes. I need a little fresh air, and a little less sardine-packed humanity.

On my way out the exit doors, I have two ladies literally tossed at me by a half-dozen burly bouncers. One of them is holding up her ripped red dress with her right hand, and the other is readjusting her weave. I pause to gawk, and one of the bouncers shoves me. ("Get the fuck out of the doorway!") And when all three of us are out in the cold, he pulls the door shut behind us.

"What the hell happened?" I ask the ripped-dress girl.

"Bitch was tripping, so I yanked her earrings out her ears! I got her good!"

"She ain't know what hit her!" says the weave-readjuster.

They slap each other a high-five, and Ripped Dress says, "Let's get the fuck home."

I walk toward Pop's, down the entrance-line barricades. We waited ten minutes to get in - the process of showing ID, being patted down, walking through a metal detector and paying a cover charge slows things down - but the entry flow is super-light at three in the morning.

Two middle-aged white guys sit on stools at the end of the barricades, on dress-code enforcement detail, arguing with a dazzling young urbanite.

"I told you to take off that long white undershirt," one of the enforcers is telling him. "And you went around the corner and tucked the shirt into your pants. I can still see the shirt. You're not gettin' in."

"Shit!" The urbanite turns and heads back around the building.

"I got to talk to my ride! They're inside!" pleads another dude who's been kicked out of the club for whatever infraction. The enforcers summarily dismiss him, and he slinks out to loiter in the parking lot and wait for his people.

"Long night, gentlemen?" I ask the enforcers as I pass.

"Every night's a long night," one of them replies. I can see the wear in his eyes.

"How strict's the dress code here?"
"No jersies, no hats, no white T-shirts, no red, no blue, no baggy pants--"
"That's like half my wardrobe."
"No shoes without laces--"
"Shoes without laces? Is that a gang thing?"
"Apparently, yeah."
"Shit, when did it get so complicated to go out and get drunk and dance?"

Pop's is a completely different scene. Twenty, maybe thirty people in a vast bar, sitting, drinking, talking, playing pool, Sublime on the stereo at modest volume. And these people actually want to talk to me. I spend the length of a vodka/club soda bullshitting with four guys in their thirties who are out getting loaded with the work week looming before them. One of them has to be at work at seven, and his friends keep buying him Jager Bombs. Lord have mercy on his soul.

--

I find Alison, Jordan and Jill in the back right corner of The Oz, sitting at the far end of a long, boomerang-shaped vinyl booth. Alison and Jill are both sweaty, having exerted themselves on the dance floor the entire time I was at Pop's. Both of them keep telling me they love me, and I tell them the same. Alison sits on Jordan's lap, and Jill perches herself on my left knee. "I'm almost 200 pounds," she whispers in my ear, and I smell nothing but rum. "Let me know when your leg can't take it anymore."

I can feel the body heat steaming off of her, and I ask her why the fuck she's still wearing that white shawl-sweater around her neck. That was me out there dancing, I would have coat-checked the shawl or tossed it up to the stuffed-sausage posse a long time ago. She doesn't answer me. She wants a closed-mouth kiss instead. I oblige her. Then my beer runs out, my leg starts to get tired, and I tell Jill I'm getting up for another drink.

When I come back, Jill's giving Alison a lap dance, and Jordan's adopted the bodyguard stance again. I watch the proceedings, rather bemused, and not even a minute later, Jill loses her balance and tumbles into Alison's left leg and shoulder. The same leg and shoulder, mind you, that were shattered in a serious car accident two years ago and are now held together with metal rods. Alison screams, her bodyguard rushes to the rescue, and all of a sudden it's time to go.

"Quick question," I call out to a hot-ass 19-year-old in the parking lot who's leaving with her boyfriend. "Were you groped on the dance floor tonight?"

"God, that's not even the word for it," she tells me, eyes bugged out a little. "It was like an air raid."

--

Jill and I make the return trip to St. Louis County in the back seat of Alison's Trailblazer, sprawled all over each other. The best-of booty CD we were listening to on the way out here (nothing like being 27 years old and drinking rum from a water bottle and belting out the chorus to "Dazzy Duks") has been replaced with a hip-hop mix I made Alison for her birthday.

I'm dictating, Music Nazi-style, instructions on when to skip to the next track and what songs to turn up and just generally annoying the fuck out of everyone, and I'm smoking another Black and Mild Mild with the windows down. I don't know why I've been wasting my time trying to befriend strangers all night - my friends voluntarily put up with my shit on a near-full time basis. It doesn't get any better.

Book + Cover + Judge = Wrong

DATE: Thursday, October 20
PLACES: Dorsett Inn, CFM convenience store, 1988 Nissan Sentra passenger seat
POISON OF CHOICE: Bud Light pitchers
CAST OF CHARACTERS: Me, Roxana, Lonnie, Bubble Jacket


I've been in a mecca of cracker suburbia for the past two hours with my friend Roxana. We closed together at work, walked up to a vast but nondescript hoosier bar called Dorsett Inn and drank Bud Light draft from green vinyl semicircle chairs at a low-top table. Spat lively one-liners and armchair existentialism back and forth while listening to the surprisingly good classic rock band, whose drummer used to tour with Jethro Tull. Or Uriah Heep. Or Thin Lizzy. The drummer told me all about it one night a couple weeks ago when I was drunker. I remember none of it now. Those particular detail-draining brain cells all bit the dust before my head hit the pillow that night.

The guitarist - a lanky blond gentleman in his early forties - sat down with me and Roxana during his break. He somehow turned an anonymous, half-drunk shout of praise from our table into a fifteen-minute conversation. I asked if his band could play any late-years Beatles album tracks, from the White Album or Let It Be, ideally. This is what caused him to take a seat with us. Turns out this dude also moonlights as the bass player in an all-eras-encompassing Fab Four tribute band called Ticket to the Beatles. He's the Paul. Or the John. Those detail-containing brain cells also have already gasped their last, it appears.

Roxana likes the Beatles alright, but her tastes in '60s rock run more toward the Mamas and Papas, Roy Orbison and - inexplicably - Lesley Gore. She also introduced me to one of my now-favorite Temptations songs, "I Wish It Would Rain." But Roxana isn't much for back-and-forth stoner-rock chit-chat, so she fell silent while the Paul/John guitarist and I rattled back and forth about his band, other Beatles tribute bands and end-of-run Fab Four classics like "Dig a Pony," "For You Blue" and "I've Got a Feeling." Apparently, the Ticket to the Beatles repertoire includes all three gems and dozens of others, and will be playing PJ's Martini Bar on December 9. Those detail-containing brain cells will soon gasp their last, too, I imagine.

Anyway, that was my first music conversation of the night with an aspiring artist. I'm currently involved in my second - hip-hop talk with two rookie rappers at the counter of a CFM convenience store three blocks up the street from Dorsett Inn.

--

I was directed to the CFM by the DI bartender upon asking her the location of the nearest place to purchase beer. The plan was to get beer, walk the just-over-a-mile trip home and drink it outside. It's a nice night, I'm hanging out by/with myself (Roxana had her boyfriend waiting to pick her up in the parking lot, and I wanted to stay until my jukebox music ran out), and I normally don't mind walking 20- to 30-minute jaunts to or from home. But by the time I hit CFM just now, I got to feeling lazy and didn't want to walk anymore. Figured I'd just call a cab and swallow the six bucks or whatever.

Walked into the CFM, held the door open for a couple Standard White Males in their mid-thirties and headed to the beer coolers. Had myself an idea: If these guys are just going to get a six-pack or whatever, I should offer to trade them beer for a ride up the road. I mean, what the hell, I'm intelligent, well-spoken, clean-cut, reasonably sober and lily white in the county. Totally low-risk in their eyes. I'm even wearing what is obviously a service-industry uniform while carrying around an apron bearing the name of my workplace. I'm completely traceable back to this immediate community, and I'm offering to buy their post-bar beer if they'll take me four minutes out of their way. Sounds reasonable.

And I approached these guys:

ONE OF THEM (overheard): How much do you want to get?
THE OTHER (overheard): I dunno, I gotta get up in the morning. I'm only good for like two or three.
ME: Hey, if you guys are just gonna get a six-pack here, let me make you a quick proposal.
ONE: Yeah?
ME: I will pay for your beer if you give me a ride a mile up the road. I'm coming home from work and I don't feel like walking.
THE OTHER: Hmmmm.

[Neither appears willing to look me in the eye. Five seconds go by.]

ME: Well guys, what do you say? Do I call a cab and pay the driver, or do you get free beer for five minutes of driving time?
ONE: No, I'm not comfortable with that. I'm sorry.
ME: I can understand where you're coming from, but shit. I'm a peaceful guy. I've lived and worked around here for five years. I don't carry weapons. I don't mug.
THE OTHER: Man, nothing personal, but we're from Chicago. We don't trust anybody.

And they paid for six low-carb Mick Ultras and left. I plopped a twelve of Bud Light on the counter and asked the cashier, Lonnie - a twentyish brother with more gold teeth than white ones - if he had a phone book back there. He said yeah, sure, he knew there was a Yellow Pages around somewhere. And I explained my situation, that I needed a ride to a place that was barely up the street and had just been turned down by the Chicagoans.

"I can't stand folks from Chicago," Lonnie said, plopping a dog-eared phone directory on the counter. "All uptight, acting like there be danger everywhere. Gimme a St. Louisan any day."

"I figure it was me that got asked that, I'd take the deal in a second - a six-pack to give someone a quick ride," I said kind of absently, thinking whether I should flip to "C" for "Cabs" or "T" for "Taxi." "I mean anyway, I'd rather throw a few bucks toward an average person for a favor than pay a company to do the same thing."

"Hold on a second." Lonnie headed at medium-high speed around the end of the counter and out the aisle past me and toward the door. "Lemme see if he still out there."

Lonnie pushed open the door and headed outside while I browsed CFM's behind-counter display of flavored blunts - Swisher Sweets offers their sweet, sweet tobacco in Peach and White Cranberry now, it seems. Lonnie was back a half-minute later, flanked by a 6'4", 300-pound dude in cornrows and a huge black bubble jacket that seemed to suggest it was 20 degrees outside instead of 55.

"Tell him what you want him to do again," Lonnie said. I told the dude. The dude said hell yeah, no problem. And we've all basically been hanging around the front counter, talking about music ever since.

--

Lonnie and Bubble Dreads are debating the merits of up-and-coming MC's, original beats vs. samples, lyrical strengths and weaknesses, how present rappers stack up to past greats, etc. I mainly lean back and take it all in - they know a hell of a lot more about the topic than I do. And I crack the fuck up when they trade off listing the most piss-poor amateur rapper names they've come across. Twice Bubble Dreads and I have to move out of the way for Lonnie to ring up the beer and cigarettes of random customers.

I'm entertained and engaged by this pair of strangers, and in a flash I think about how I wouldn't be in this situation if I gone with my first instinct and gotten a ride from the white Chicagoans. Who I just kind of automatically assumed were safe because they were white and clean-scrubbed, and who I just kind of assumed would accept my offer because I'm white and clean-scrubbed.

I would have definitely shrugged off the notion of asking the huge black guy in the bubble jacket who was bumping the Three Six Mafia from his 1988 Nissan Sentra. But the white folks looked down their noses at me and told me to fuck off, and the black folks helped me out immediately. Warmed up to me and quickly revealed themselves to be individuals who belong in the like-minded personal collective I refer to My Kinda People. Cue the line about how judging a book on its cover = bad.

It's interesting how our society conditions us to only trust and stick with our own. We're divided and subdivided along preexisting lines of race, religion, physical appearance, sexual orientation, etc. And, whether we realize it or not - and often even if we know we know better - humans are innately suspicious and fearful of people who aren't like them on a surface level.

I mention all this to Lonnie and Bubble Jacket when the aspiring-MC conversation wanes. They echo the sentiment - good and bad people come in all stripes. Jacket heads out to warm up his Sentra, while Lonnie says something I'll think about later: "The difference in a situation like this with a stranger is, most white folks will start to think too much and worry and back off. Black people just feel and do. They empathize, they know what it is to want and need help, and they know what it is to actually help. So they help."

--

Bubble Jacket moves some papers and trash from his front passenger seat to the rear. The entire back seat is eaten up by custom speakers in carpeted wooden boxes, and the shit booms when he turns the key.

Before the car's gear shift even goes to drive, Jacket reduces the volume on the music to whisper mode. I ask him to turn it back up - I've always been enamored of rich, full-bodied bass in any kind of music, and Jacket's Sentra has got the goods.

"Aw man, I would turn it up, trust me, but not in Maryland Heights. Not at two in the morning," Bubble Jacket says.

Maryland Heights has probably the most overpatrolled, underoccupied police department in St. Louis. MHPD is funded from all kinds of property and business tax - major casino, concert ampitheater, three business districts, solid service economy, etc. - to patrol a community with no serious violent, life-threatening crime. House calls in Maryland Heights are mainly domestic disputes, with the occasional break-in. That leaves plenty of time to hand out traffic tickets and DWIs (which bring them further funding) and pull over the occasional colored person who dares enter the neighborhood.

I used to think the racial profiling allegations were exaggerated, until the stories from my black friends and coworkers started to stack up. The most recent example - two mornings ago, at work, I watched two Maryland Heights cruisers and the Supervisor SUV settle in around my kitchen-brother colleague Derek. He had come up to ask about his schedule and made the mistake of loitering at the gas station next door and goofing off with another off-duty kitchen brother.

I said hi to Derek while headed into the convenience store for a newspaper, and two minutes after that, a cop had run his plates and turned up a warrant. Three minutes after that, two more cops showed up and started searching his car. Led him away in cuffs about twelve minutes after that. And it all started because he'd been spotted talking and laughing in a parking lot at 11:25 on a gorgeous Tuesday.

Word spread around the restaurant almost immediately. Our angriest coworker was a spoiled-ass blonde princess from Farmington ("When's the last time you got arrested just for walking down the street?!"), while the black female assistant kitchen manager in her early forties just kind of quietly leaned through the food pickup window and told me, "Now you know how rough we have it out here, Drew."

By contrast, since I moved to Maryland Heights five years ago, I've been let go on four occasions when I could have been taken down for violations of varying seriousness. The longest I was ever stopped was when I was pulled over sober in the afternoon for not displaying a front license plate, and the guy let me go with a warning fifteen minutes later.

--

So, yeah, turning down the radio at two a.m. in Maryland Heights was a wise decision on Bubble Jacket's part. I tell him about Derek being ambushed and hauled away - okay, well, he did have stolen tags on his plates, but his skin color had made him a target in the first place.

BUBBLE JACKET: Yeah you can't be anonymous in Maryland Heights as a black man. They smell us the second we cross the county line.

ME: It pisses me off. The whole race situation in this country puts me to shame. In humanity period.

BUBBLE JACKET: You can't trip off it, you just born into it. There's a long history. It didn't start with America. What matters is how individuals treat individuals.

ME: What I really can't stand is, I don't think there's a way to change it. There's slow, cosmetic improvement, sure, but the people who established the power aren't gonna give it up. They're only gonna try to get more power. They won't share, and they won't fight fair.

During this liberal little conversation, Bubble Jacket and I pass a Maryland Heights cop - he's tucked behind an office building on the winding side road we're taking - and we spend a few seconds in silence. He looks up in the rearview mirror, and I spin my head around to see if the cop will follow. I know there's absolutely no way I can get in legal trouble in this situation, but my heart rate jumps nonetheless.

"He ain't comin'," Bubble Jacket says, and I turn my neck to face front again. The guy in the cop car is probably taking a nap.

ME: Were you worried?

BUBBLE JACKET: Nah. I got no warrants, nothing on me. I was doing 30 in a 30. I almost want those dudes to pull me over.

ME: Fuck, are you serious? Even if you don't end up with a ticket, you're gonna get that second cop car on the scene in three minutes, and you know they're gonna rip your damn car apart looking for shit.

BUBBLE JACKET: I don't care. I want them cops to meet more brothers like me. I want 'em to know some of us know how to talk to 'em. Know how to be civilized and intelligent and keep our cool. And have clean records and no drugs and no guns on us.

ME: No one black I know carries a gun, but they all get searched anyway.

BUBBLE JACKET: They think we look the part of a criminal, but they pull me over I'll talk civilized to 'em and keep my cool and not come off like a damn fool. That's the only way to change their minds, let 'em meet more smart black people. More three-dimensional black people. Might make 'em feel stupid for sweatin' us so much. Make 'em fuckin' grow up.

--

I tell my cornrowed chauffeur to turn left up ahead, then turn right the Dumpster and go to the end of the lot. Pop open his back door, grab my beer and pull out that five bucks for the ride. I offer it, he takes it, he thanks me, I thank him, and he holds his hand out for me to shake.

"What's your name anyway?" he asks.

"Andrew." We shake hands. I'm glad it's nothing complicated, because I don't have the soul or coordination to carry out a handshake of more than four steps.

"Drew, I'm Sin." I flash him a quizzical look. "Short for Sinful, my MC name. I'm working on finding a better one."

I pop a beer and sit outside with the iPod and headphones. Listen to a bunch of hip-hop and old R+B. For a late October night, it's unseasonably warm, and I'm a lucky bastard in an unjust world. Every few minutes, I see a Maryland Heights police car go by, and I start thinking again.

About how, when I keep to myself and stick to the safe world I know, I miss meeting out on My Kinda People. Like the guitarist from the tribute band. Like Lonnie, the brother with more gold teeth than white ones. And like one cornrowed, bubble-jacketed newbie MC named Sin who has every reason to hate the cops and the white establishment but still has a genuine faith in humanity. And who knows way more about rap music than I ever will.

My thoughts on the movie Waiting

I've been a waiter at a mid-priced Italian restaurant chain in St. Louis for more than five years now. Bill Clinton was still in office the day I showed up in a short-sleeved denim shirt and black pants and was issued a nametag and apron. Five years, an average of seven shifts a week, and every one of them is a different set of inconsequential but highly entertaining conversation with coworkers and customers. There are good days and bad days, but my tips pay my bills, and my job is too easy, too comfortable, and too much fun to walk away from.

My restaurant coworkers are my family - we're friends inside and outside of work, and we're the same type of people. Waiters in general are easygoing and personable, just a little hard to motivate. You can work in a restaurant for a few months over a summer or part-time while you're headed through college, or you can serve pastas, entrees and salads for your entire twenties. Think about it - you're young and unattached, living at home with Mom and Dad or squatting in an apartment, you work afternoons and evenings, and you leave with a pocketful of cash and at least one social invitation from a like-minded coworker. Work, party, sleep, repeat. You can live like this for years.

Aside from attracting fun, shiftless people, the food service culture is an untapped comic goldmine. I can think of dozens of gags and bits based on true exchanges with and observations of customers, cooks, high school-aged hostesses and borderline-retarded dishwashers. When we servers aren't out front taking orders, delivering food or just schmoozing in general, we're in the kitchen exchanging notes about the customers.

We're talking about the old lady at Table 72 who just had all her teeth pulled and can no longer chew and called ahead to have the manager put her small canneloni in the blender. Or the middle-aged gentleman at Table 43 who freaked out because a single pea somehow made its way into his side of broccoli, and he's deathly allergic to peas and is threatening to sue the pants off our incompetent-ass restaurant. Or the morbidly obese regular at Table 64 who comes in three times a week and orders a 16-inch triple-sausage pizza with extra cheese and then sends it back if he deems it "too greasy."

A good waiter laughs at the world - he or she has no other choice. So when I found out there was an R-rated shock comedy coming out called Waiting, I knew I had to see it. And take a group of fellow servers to the theater with me. In the end, I went with a friend/restaurant manager, and we each laughed a couple dozen times. Then we spent several hours talking about how much of the restaurant-humor big picture first-time writer/director Rob McKittrick missed. McKittrick's finished product actually reminds me of a customer's tip - at best, the individual scenes are 20 percent funny. Then there are 15 percent funny scenes, 10 percenters and scenes that stiff the viewer entirely.

Waiting takes place during a single business day at a fictional chain restaurant called Shenanigan's. Think Chili's or Friday's or Applebee's or Bennigan's - midlevel American bar and grill food served in a big wooden room loaded with mismatched road signs and pop-culture print art on the walls. It's a fairly big restaurant that apparently is staffed with only one hostess, one manager, four cooks, one dishwasher, one bartender, two busboys and six waiters. Implausible.

I read other reviews of Waiting that trashed the characters for being one-dimensional archetypes and stereotypes, and some are. But the restaurant world is full of stereotypes. In my half-decade tenure, I've worked with every one of these people in some form or another, and watching the movie, I identified with each of the three male server characters.

There's Monty (Ryan Reynolds, who apparently played a very similar character three years ago in National Lampoon's Van Wilder), the smarmy, wisecracking veteran server. He's pushing thirty and still waiting tables, still having wild parties at his apartment and still chasing after underage hostesses. Monty uses detached, cynical humor to cope with what, on paper, resembles a mighty pathetic life.

There's Dean (Justin Long), who's spent the past four years in the work/party/sleep/repeat holding pattern and, at 22, is feeling the need to grow up and get a real job. Dean's mother, a queen of condescension, informs him at movie's beginning that an old high school friend has just graduated college and gotten himself a nice career in electrical engineering. While Dean's been doing absolutely nothing productive with his life.

And there's Calvin (Robert Patrick Benedict), the guy who's neurotic and quiet and far too nice for his own good. He couldn't get a girl in the sack if his life depended on it, and he spends half his work time over-apologizing to his tables and asking if they're mad at him. I've been there. I haven't, however, been in the elementary-level subplot McKittrick provides for Calvin - that he has a phobia of and inability to pee in public thanks to a stranger he thinks was looking at his package from the next urinal over.

The female server characters are definitely bland archetypes, to be sure. There's Serena (a blonde Anna Faris), who is attractive and utterly unfulfilled. There's Amy (Kaitlin Doubleday), who is attractive and utterly unfulfilled and currently in a noncommitted relationship with Dean. And there's Naomi (Alana Ubach), who is attractive and utterly unfulfilled and a complete rageaholic bitch. Only the last of the three is the least bit funny, and I've known a couple Naomis at my restaurant - girls who cuss up a storm in the back and wish bodily harm on their customers and, immediately upon pushing open the "out" door and reentering the dining room, put phony smiles on their faces and act super-sweet for the sake of tip money.

Dan the manager (David Koechner, who did a one-year stint on SNL in the mid-'90s) is power-obsessed and completely unaware of how pathetic he is. Dan's the type who will scream at the busboys for no good reason one minute and ask the underage hostess where tonight's post-work party is being held the next. Poor Dan doesn't realize he'll never make a friend at his job because he treats his employees like automatons, and that he'll never have a truly fulfilling career because he's hit a ceiling of mediocrity.

The busboys are one-note stoner wiggers. Teenage MTV clown Andy Milonakis is kept surprisingly subdued, save a violent whippet fantasy brought by sucking the nitrous oxide out of canisters of whipped dessert topping. And the underage hostess, played by Vanessa Lengies... well, shit, every waiter has met this girl at least a half-dozen times. Hot, completely aware she's hot, and overly flirtatious with every older guy for the sake of validation and attention - all while acting like she has no idea of what she's doing and of the fact that she's making the male staff drool. Our restaurant currently has a 16-year-old Catholic school girl who fills this role like a champ and has the undivided attention of every guy who works there. Except for the gay host.

And the kitchen staff... boy, did they drop the ball here. A restaurant's kitchen is guaranteed to be loaded with lively misfits, minorities and foreigners. Basically, everyone who lacks the patience or people skills to deal with the public ends up in the kitchen. I could write a book about the cooks and dishwashers I've worked with. The best we have in Waiting is the always likeable Luis Guzman as the kitchen manager, Dane Cook as the psychotic Floyd ("Welcome to Thunderdome, bitch!") and Chi McBride as the dishwasher. McBride is the movie's towering but completely composed voice of wisdom, dispensing psychoanalytic advice to the rest of the staff while spraying dirty plates and racking up dirty glasses.

Now, allow me a digression here. Waiting is being marketed as a must-see comedy for anyone who's worked in a restaurant, but anyone can tell you dishwashers are the last people you want to cultivate your advice from. Sure, it's ironic that the movie's sage is the dishwasher - the lowest-paid grunt who's traditionally the least socially functional in the restaurant hierarchy - but let me quickly provide five real-life examples of funnier dishwashers I've met.

*A black Muslim fundamentalist named Aleem who would attempt lofty conversation about serious issues while claiming inside expert knowledge of our conspiracy-laden world. But then, when you'd engage Aleem in lofty conversation, he'd offer the same two responses: "That is something," or, "That is deep." He's also famous for pulling half-eaten food from dirty plates and chowing down when he thought no one was looking, but if you'd ever offer Aleem the other half of your sandwich, say, he'd get completely indignant. Then wait until you walked away and chow the fuck down.

*Allan, a white male in his early twenties who used to take off his pants at the end of every shift and run them through the dish machine. Allan was also fond of telling jokes I hadn't heard since elementary school.

*Derrick, a homeless black man in his forties who slept in a van and, due to a medical condition with his feet, would work his shifts while wearing tattered house slippers or plastic bags tied around his feet. Derrick has worked and been fired from just about every restaurant in the neighborhood, and the local police say he has a fondness for cocaine of the powder and rock variety.

*A mid-forties black Puerto Rican named Max who would regail me with retellings of dreams he had in which he engaged in sex with animals. ("I had this wild dream, yo! I was fuckin' a hippo! Every time I thrust in too deep, the hippo's head would come up out the water like [wide-eyed, gape-mouthed silent scream]!")

*A 53-year-old white male named Ralph who sported an open, cancerous lesion on his cheek, no hair on his head but plenty on his neck and arms, four to five teeth in his mouth and a mismatched glass eye in one socket. The glass eye was frequently pointing off to either direction and also oozed a yellow-green pus. He lost the eye, no joke, to an exploding chocolate shake machine when he worked at McDonald's. Ralph liked to make up outrageous, inconsistent stories about winning large amounts from lottery scratch-off tickets and had a beautiful wife who didn't exist.

There have been others, of course. A fun conversational game to pass the time is to nominate ex-employees for induction into the Dishwasher Hall of Shame. I'm guessing McKittrick didn't work in a restaurant for long and definitely didn't like it. These characters are more mean and bitter than fun, and they're cardboard in a way that most actual service industry people are not. The jokes in Waiting are more of the shock comedy variety - the movie's biggest running gag involves the Penis Game, in which male employees at the restaurant will pull out their genitals and, if any other male employee catches an eyeful, the penis flasher gets to kick the other employee in the ass and call him a fag. It's about as funny as it sounds.

And, of course, half the humor in a movie like this should involve the customers, who sometimes turn out to be more behaviorally challenged than the dishwashers. For a film that wants to pull no punches, there's all kinds of ethnic humor possibility here - different ethnicities, by and large, tip at different levels. Every waiter knows it, and every waiter talks about it. There are also patterns in the kind of food ordered by ethnicities. Why do black folks always order Chicken Fettucine and pink lemonade? Why do Asians always get the Linguine with White Clam Sauce? And how bad will a Hindu freak out when he realizes midway through consumption that his canneloni is stuffed with meat? This movie refuses to touch any of this ground. All we get is one unfunny gag about foreigners not knowing how to tip.

As for customers in general, most are nice and polite, tip 18 to 20 percent and have a sense of humor. But those ones aren't worth satirizing in a comedy. Give me the condescending couple who acts like they're in a five-star gourmet restaurant when they're in a casual three-star family restaurant. The people who ask for mugs of hot water so they can soak their silverware. The regulars who special-order every element of their meal, even down to the drink. The lonely old man who talks your ear off about his involvement in The Big War. The careless parents who let their small children rip up the table-tent ads and dump out the contents of the sugar caddy. The people who always try to find something wrong with their food so they can get it free. The people who get mad that they can't use their pasta coupons on a dinner entree or pizza. The self-appointed comedians. The requisite table with the screaming baby who spoils the mood of everyone in the dining room. The ladies who haven't seen each other in years and decide to take four hours to "catch up" during your dinner rush. The mannish lesbians who cause you morbid embarrassment when you first approach the table and ask, "How are you gentleman doing today?" The old lady who complains that her small Fettucine Alfredo, the blandest pasta you offer, is insanely overloaded with pepper. The hoosiers who spend big on appetizers and steaks and desserts and specialty drinks and then seem to have nothing left over for the tip. The old folks who insist on being as far away from the smoking section as possible. The smokers who take their babies into the smoking section with them. The bald guy who waits for you to leave the kitchen so he can press his 10 percent tip into your palm personally and tell you what a good job you did. The lady who brings a thermometer with her and checks to make sure the middle of her lasagna is exactly 180 degrees. The redheaded lady who pulls a long red hair from her pasta and is convinced it came from the head of the bald black pasta cook. The little fat girl who orders a cream pasta, cheese sticks and a Diet Coke, because her parents won't let her get regular. The big fat mama whose seat is shoved so far into the traffic aisle that you have to suck in your own gut every time you squeeze past her. The almost-teenage boy with the kid's menu in front of him who cries when you bring him the plastic kid's cup with the lid. The almost-teenage boy who spills his drink when you decide to give him the benefit of the doubt and bring him the big people's cup. The old lady who claims her steaming coffee is ice cold. The office secretary who tells you the iced tea is too strong. The mailman who tells you the iced tea is too weak. The ex-state senator pushing ninety who always wants to tell you about the time he met JFK. The families who come in with buy-one-get-one coupons and order two large pastas, four extra plates and six ice waters with plenty of lemon.

Waiting misses all of these. Instead, we get the lonely lady who's having man trouble and spends the movie's duration being hit on by the lesbian bartender. We get the mulleted hoosiers who are out celebrating a birthday and leave two bucks and change on a $63 check. We get a stereotypical pair of homosexuals. And we get a queen bitch character who sticks her finger in a steak, declares that it wasn't cooked medium-well, and sends it back. ("Really, how intelligent do you have to be to take an order and carry out food?") In probably the most talked-about sequence of the movie, the cooks and servers then add their own mix of saliva, snot, ass-crack filth, dandruff and pubic hair to the bitch's food before redelivering it.

I can't speak for every restaurant, since I've known friends of friends who used to urinate in pickle buckets at fast-food jobs, but I've never personally seen or heard of any of my coworkers sabotaging sent-back food with bodily fluids or scalp shavings or hairs. There are far subtler, funnier things that happen in restaurants - for instance, if people complain about their salads not tasting right and ask for it to be remade, you can turn around and bring them another salad from the exact same batch, and the customer will almost always say, "This one is much better, thank you."

There are some inspired moments that ring true, however. The movie is framed with identical montages of employees partying after work, showing us people who work together and play together and basically live out the same 24-hour cycle over and over. They hit on the archetype of the customer who eats the entire meal and then complains about how bad it was. And every waiter has had their share of customers like the hilarious, senile old man Monty gets - I've even said his line, "I don't care how bad a tip that guy leaves me. That is the coolest old man ever!" And the Penis Game subplot actually comes to a comical head, thanks to Tourette's-inflicted waitress Naomi.

There's also a sequence toward the end that every restaurant worker should identify with, when the cooks watch the clock inch ever closer to closing time. Not a single table comes in for 25 minutes straight, and then at three minutes to close, in walks a couple, and the kitchen erupts with a frustrated blend of curses and obscenities. This is something that happens nearly every night - you can turn off the sign out front and the neon "Open" sign in the window and even the parking lot lights, and people will still stream in five minutes to close.

I can remember a night about two years before I became a waiter, in which I strolled into a Chevy's Fresh Mex with a friend and a gift certificate good for two entrees, an appetizer, two alcoholic drinks and two desserts. Chevy's closed at ten that night, and we got there at 9:45. Ate a long, leisurely meal and drank three rounds in an empty restaurant while the closing waiters put all the chairs on the tops of the tables and got out their noisy vaccuum cleaners. When the waitress came back, check in hand, to ask if we wanted anything else, I said, "I thought this coupon came with two desserts." She informed me that the kitchen had been closed for a fucking hour and a half, and I asked if we could cash in the two desserts for two drinks instead. Steam practically erupted from the server's ears, but she accomodated my request. After sucking down that drink, we finally came to our senses, my friend and I, and settled our bill. By this point, the entire staff was in the doorway, watching us with evil eyes and willing us to leave. They stuck around an extra two hours for someone who got his entire meal free and left his server six bucks for her trouble. If I could travel back in time six years, I'd kick myself in the ass and call me a fag.

The owner of my restaurant, who also thought Waiting completely missed the point, has a theory. Every citizen of the United States, in his or her late teens, should be required to work in a restaurant for two years. As a hostess, busser, waiter, cook, dishwasher, whatever. It's an eye-opening experience, and it creates patience and understanding and changes the way you treat your waiters. And it sure as hell changes the way you tip. Rob McKittrick probably worked at a restaurant, yes, but I'm sure the owner of my mid-priced Italian chain will agree, he didn't work there for the full two years.