Watching things go down at the bar this weekend, you would have thought that there was something serious and heavy going down.  Stress levels generally rise on Saturday nights as we approach the 1:40 last call — it’s the nature of our schedule, I think, and the fact that we almost always start off Saturdays dead and end up three deep at both bars around midnight.  It makes getting into the swing of things difficult, but Jason and Garth and Mariel and I almost always keep level by drinking enough to keep us on a happy plateau and joking about feeling the Hate.  This weekend, though — not so much joking.

And later on, finding out what it was all about — honestly, at this point, all I can do is scratch my head and wonder.  But then I think about it more, and I realize that I don’t stress nearly as much as most people, and that makes it hard for me to relate.

It’s not that I don’t get angry, or have flashes of an extreme temper.  I do.  In fact, I’m apt to snap at seemingly nothing on a long night.  But that’s it — I shout a little, or get blunt and rude with someone, or (once in a blue moon) punch a wall, and it’s over.  I’m back to Happyville.  I’ve never really gotten the point in hanging onto those tensions and letting them eat away at you.

Granted, part of it has a lot to do with my whole philosophy of the universe unfolding as it should.  And I don’t say that as though I have no control or input about the way things turn out; I don’t believe that I’m predestined to do every little thing that I’m going to do, that I’m just running on autopilot (good lord, if you really think that’s the way life goes, you might as well go ahead and kill yourself now; what’s the point?).  In fact, after reading Vonnegut’s Timequake, I now have the notion of having to relive a given number of years constantly nagging at the back of my skull, so I do my best to make sure that I won’t be stuck in a nightmare if that ever happens.

No, I just think that things have a way of working themselves out, for better or for worse (depending on your perspective).  If you fuck up and make a mistake, you can make it right (although it might be a different idea of right than what you imagine or hope for).  If things are going bad for you now, then you can do any number of things to make life better.  Your alternative — the one that I think most people opt for — is to obsess and stick yourself in a loop of worrying and bitching and complaining.

The problem here is twofold, though — you carry that stress, it festers and grows and rots and eats away at you, giving you sore shoulders, bleeding ulcers, and a rather displeasing aura.  It also doesn’t solve or accomplish anything; the problem that is causing you all the stress isn’t going anywhere, and therefore the stress and tension is sticking around as a nice foundation for all the other to sit upon.

I can’t remember who said it to me, but you can’t move forward if you’re constantly busy looking behind you. And that saying can be applied to many contexts, but this one’s included.  It always reminds me of the Serenity prayer (is that the name?) — the one that asks for the wisdom to know what you can change, the strength to change what you can, and the patience to accept what you can’t (or something; religious catchphrases aren’t exactly my strong point).

And that’s when I start to see and understand a little better: those of you who are carrying steel cables in your shoulders, puking blood for seemingly no reason, feeling lightheaded and dropkicking the gallon of milk just need to start letting go of the things that are out of your hands (worrying isn’t going to make it any better, yeah?), and doing something about those things that are in your control.

Look, I’m bipolar. I don’t sleep nearly enough — maybe four hours on a good night.  I don’t sleep because I’m too busy working or dealing with side projects.  I take terrible care of my body — I smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, I drink too much, I forget to eat at least two days out of every week, and what I do eat could hardly qualify as a balanced diet. And yet even with all that, I manage to keep my stress levels under control, and I mostly feel pretty good about things, no matter how they are, because I know what I can change (and I actively work on changing what I’m not happy with, instead of passively pondering) and I know what I can’t change (and I don’t sweat that stuff).

I’m not saying that it’s that simple — just snap your fingers and you can change a lifetime’s habit or worrying (although I do think it’s possible, if you believe it to be that simple).  But it’s not magic, brain surgery, or quantum physics.  It just takes practice and a little self-awareness.

Just think how much money you’ll save on Maalox, and how nice it will be to eat spicy food again. Oh, and to have all the irritants out of your life. That’s what sold me.

God, I hate Friday, because for me, it’s just the second time on Thursday that I see daylight.  It’s the joy of working two jobs, one of which goes from 9 AM until 6 PM, the second of which mirrors that in the night.  There’s just enough time between the two to grab a bite to eat and a shower, and contemplate the idea of catching a little sleep, before having to head out the door to one or the other.  Thankfully, daylight (or the lack thereof) keeps me from accidentally going to the wrong one.

There’s a very different mindset required for the two.  By day, I’m by and large left to my own devices, and so I spent most of my day under headphones, writing white papers or code, another cog in a corporate wheel, Mr. Antisocial… By night, though, I emerge from my shell (mostly, at least until the end of the night), becoming outgoing, as friendly as I can manage, a non-stop ball of energy making things smooth as much as I can.  Oh, and I’m a little bit on the … how do you say paranoid without the mental health questions?

There’s an interesting bit in the Boston Herald about acts of violence committed by doormen on the unsuspecting public, and Rob comments for the other side. I’ve seen a fair share of doormen that took things too far, in fairness; honestly, most of the doormen and bouncers that I know — not to mention bartenders, barbacks, managers, etc. — are a little on the edgy-leaning-toward-hoping-for-a-fight side.  I think on the one hand that that’s also true of most Southern men (maybe men in general) in the 21-30 age range; I think on the other that you have to be in touch with your inner animalistic tendencies to work in this business.  Bouncers, by definition, are going to deal with violence on some level; doormen and bartenders catch grief day in and day out, from words to fists to worse.  It’s the nature of the bar business beast.

But fights that get taken outside of the boundaries of the place of employment are classified as assault, and fairly so; our job and responsibility is to remove the offending patrons from our bar.  Once they’re outside, on the sidewalk, they become someone else’s problem.  And I’ve seen some people get a little roughed up between the stage and the door because they took a cheap shot, physical or verbal.  I’ve seen people get badly hurt because they resisted the motion to the door and fell into a pool table or a table covered with beer bottles.

I’ve also seen people taken out into a parking lot and beaten to a pulp while waiting for the police.  I’ve seen acts of violence that you wouldn’t normally witness in a public place between two people who have, at best, a passing familiarity with each other.  And those acts are validated or justified by the position or title that the bouncer or doorman or bartender holds.

Not to place the blame on my peers, at least not entirely.  Rob’s right; you people are far from angels.  You get loaded up on alcohol, coked up, iced, or dusted.  You call us names, make inane requests and get mad when we don’t comply, insult our friends and regulars, throw glasses and bottles, break our pool cues, punch our jukeboxes.  You hit us.  You hit your friends, your fellow frat brothers, the hippie that is minding his own business, your girlfriend.

In that last case, I applaud whatever brutality comes your way, in or outside of the bar. Punch your girl — any girl — hard enough that everyone in the place stops at the noise, and I don’t care what happens to you from that point on; it’s all too good for you, even if it requires plastic surgery later, or ends with your head between a workboot and asphalt.

Not that I’ve ever seen this happen before.  At least, not that you can prove.  Or remember.

Dead sober but into my 30th hour awake.  You decide how much of that last bit is the bouncer and bartender in me, and how much is just me wanting to see a better world without people like that in it.

See, it’s not next Tuesday you have to worry about. It’s today. Although, if we want to get picky and specific, neither one really works, since next Tuesday is 6-6-06. So it’s like the day of the Neighbor of the Beast, not the Number.

By the way, the 616 thing is real, and funny. So all these years, the Satanists have been wrong (not to mention that they’ve been throwing the goat to the ghosts of Roman emporers, not the evil powers of Hell), and thousands of album covers and patches exist to prove it. Thanks, Slayer!

All this is symbolic and appropos of today much in the same way that some of you view Friday the 13th (me, I’ve always thought 13 was kind of a lucky number, and good for hockey masks, too). I fell asleep for 12 hours last night — dropped off after dinner at around 8 PM, and woke at 11 PM long enough to move from the den floor to my bed, reawakening at around 8 AM this morning.  And I still didn’t want to wake up, because it’s the first day of June — the beginning of meteorological summer, the start of hurricane season, and rent day to boot.

I’m convinced that today will bring news of the worst kind.  Or perhaps the best.  I’m still undecided. Either way, I can guarantee that there will be no 8 PM bedtime for me tonight.  No, I’ll be up late, probably working a little or a lot, slinging some alcohol both at you and in your honor (dow nmy own throat, that is), earning my ducats for another weekend.

And it’s not even Friday, yet.

Sneak Out of Work Right Now – Forbes.com

…Beyond tactics, it’s crucial to never feel guilty about being lazy. It’s that uneasy, evil feeling that gets a person out of bed before 10 a.m., and it’s fear and conditioning that makes taking a phony sick day unthinkable. Get over it. Steal back some of your own time…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YveSHqhOkdo]

Yes, I know it’s not real. But it could be, far too easily. Probably is, somewhere. And that makes me sad. And slightly scared.

There’s a lot on my plate for the coming days.  I need to think about the idea of moving, figure out what’s feasible and how badly I want/need to change locations.  I need to get my work situation figured out, maximizing money and minimizing work hours (among a billion other bits of criteria).  There’s some long-overdue freelance work that I need to knock out, and a couple of jobs that I need to play irritating bill collector on.  And of course, there’s all the usual madness of working, working, gigs, working, screening movies, and sleeping when I can.

In the meantime, I’ll be hoping that this feeling of temporal displacement either goes away or makes itself useful; I’ve been feeling more and more over the past seven days like it’s 1998 all over again.  Naturally, this is making me think both about Melissa and new relationships a lot — that’s what was happening to me this time that year, as far as memorable events.  There’s nothing comparable this year, and the feeling like it’s eight years back isn’t helping me ignore that. Now, if this is some sort of signal that a new romance is coming my way, more power to it.  If not, I’d like to say that it’s less pleasant nostalgia and more bedevilling torture, so please, cut it out.

Watched John Cleese’s WINE FOR THE CONFUSED last night as I was passing out, and again during lunch today, since I apparently lost consciousness during the preview part of the DVD. I’ve never been much of a wine aficianado (or, as I like to call them, fucking booze snobs), though it’s nice to have a bottle with the right meal every now and then.  I learned a little about wine during my time at PF Chang’s, but really just enough to be able to sound competent when I described the expensive bottles and recommended them with every meal.

WFTC, though, is something I’d highly recommend to any of you who like wine but not enough to become some sort of elitist prick about your drunk. It’s a little cable-TV-Python-lite in a few moments, but for the most part, it’s a “Wine for Dummies” in 45 minutes.  The first half of the program is about the grapes and the differences they produce in wine types; the second half is, equally importantly, about buying wine (both in stores and in restaurants), storing your bottles, and serving.  Quality stuff if you just want to know enough to find something you like.

It’s a rather dry time for new music for the next month or so for me.  I’ve got The New Black to look forward to in a bit, but not much else, and looking backward hasn’t really gotten me too much new (I finally tracked down the first Dark Suns disc, Swanlike, but it hasn’t held my attention too well after only a week; the new Tool disc is great, but I’m overhearing it at the bar; all the death and thrash that I’ve been checking out is mind-numbing).  The long and short of this being: I need some new music.  Feel free to make recommendations.

Sure, there’s the beach, the mountains, or just going to a hotel in another city.  And all of those ideas sound great; one of these days, I’ll have to check them out again, if only just to remind myself how the rest of you live.

This past weekend, though, I decided that it was time for a little mini-vacation. Working that second job, though, creates a minor obstacle — that second job keeps me working until early Sunday morning, so even an extra day tacked on to the weekend doesn’t leave me much time. Top that off with an iffy financial situation (one that not only discourages me from spending extra money, but won’t really allow me to skip nights of earning the “extra” cash), and I had to do a little creative thinking in order to get some time to myself.

Of course, when your apartment is without central air or sufficient window units and the temperature is creeping towards the mid-90s, just about anything is an improvement.  Which is why crashing on Garth’s couch from Friday until Monday was less like part of the Memorial Day weekend’s decadence (although you could certainly see it that way) and, by leaving my cellphone at home, more of a true getaway.

To anyone whose phone calls I seemingly ignored this weekend, sorry, but — well, for a few days, I finally managed to escape, so can you blame me? And if the answer is yes, remember that I have dirt on all of you that I’m not afraid to take to your significant others or the newspapers.

Besides, it was a whole lot cheaper and less painful than the plastic surgery that I considered.

What is it that makes people get so drunk that they lose their shit, completely and indefensibly? I’m not concerned if you want to get a little loud, or overly flirtatious with everyone around you.  That’s fine.  Comes with the territory (although I swear to god, Garth, if you try to hump my leg one more time while I’m making shots for people, I’m giving you over to the gang of drunk bikers for experimentation).

But the real drunken fun never happens early in the night, when I’ve still got the energy or the patience to deal with it.  Last night, things feel like they’re winding down.  It’s about 3 AM, the band has packed up and left, and Jason and I are making last call drinks for folks. In stumbles a couple of girls, both obliterated.  Alternating between screaming and laying on the bar, it’s apparent that these two have been hitting bottles fast and hard for some time now, and I decide without a lot of debate that they’re not getting any drinks from me.  Too much to deal with, and I’m well past exhausted with another hour or so to go.

Five minutes later, as I’m in the back bar shutting it down, I hear screaming from up front. Keep in mind that it’s been loud up there all night, so it takes me a second to process that the tone has shifted.  I get up front and out from behind the bar (Jason and Garth are in the back with Tyler and the XBox 360) and see one of the two girls being forcibly separated from one of our regulars.  There’s a lot of screaming, some flailing, and it’s clearly time for someone to go home, or at least out of the bar. So I grab her and aim for the door.

I hate having to deal with drunk women.  Guys, no problem.  If things get a little rough, so be it.  But growing up with a kid sister meant getting routine lectures on not hitting girls, and that has stuck with me to this day.  Enough that, if you’re ambitious enough, you can make it really tough for me to remove you from the bar.  Last night, good example.  This girl, whatever her problem was, was not interested in — well, reality, I think. She was screaming incoherently (although I did keep catching “motherfucker” and “let go” and “kill you”, which was enough) and alternating between twisting and writhing like a greased pig to get out of my grip and falling to the ground like an overcooked noodle.  Between this and my kid glove treatment, it took nearly two minutes to get her from the bar to the door — a trip that normally takes about ten seconds.

We finally get to the door, and I’m impressed with the fact that, aside from some embarassing (for her) moments, no one has gotten hurt.  A guy she seems to know has appeared (took you long enough, douchebag), and says that he’ll take care of her.  I remind him that she’s got to go, no more bar for her (which starts a fresh round of “kill you motherfucker”), he smiles sheepishly, and it’s done.

Oops.  It’s never that easy, is it?  She drops to the ground one more time, just as I’ve started to release my grip on her — and then pops back up, jack-in-the-box style, and wheels around and punches me in the face.

Fucking. Drunk. Women.

It’s not an issue of it hurting (it didn’t, and probably wouldn’t have even if she had been sober and actually knew what she was doing — she was way too small to be taking a swing at anyone, drunk or dusted or whatever).  It wasn’t that she was in danger of getting hit, although it was one of the rare moments when I considered dealing with my mental blocks after the fact.  I think, more than anything, it was surprise, plain and simple — to think that it was all over, done, and finished, and she decides that she needs the last word…

Guys and girls alike: drinking that much is just not worth it, on any level.  I guarantee you she’s sore from all the twisting and falling down she did in that two minute space alone.  Not a single person in there had anything nice to say about her after she left (and she was a fairly attractive young woman, I’ll add).  The only places that anything was going from there were home or jail.  What’s the point?  And yet, you see it night after night after night, morons getting so drunk that they feel the need to test out their invulnerability at every opportunity.

I will drop this hint for you: doormen and bartenders deal with you every night, and so whether they’re bigger or more trained than you or not, they’re certainly experienced enough to deal with you capably.  Oh, and we’re not drunk (at the very least, not as drunk as you), which gives us a huge edge.  And while your friends might come help you out (if they’re not busy shouting out their desire for you to tongue their asshole, as her friend was doing every five seconds to any guy with a pulse), our definitely will. And should you accidentally run into the doorframe two or three times while we’re escorting you to the sidewalk — well, you probably shouldn’t have had so much to drink that you stumble like that, yeah?