A Little Visit To Anna's

There's a chances some of you may not know Eric.

Eric is identified on my phone as "Jukebox Hero." This is partly because I have other Erics on my phone list & an appellative ID becomes necessary, & partly because Eric can do Foreigner like no other in our bar. He's also my indispensable source of "Cara Mia," but Jay & The Americans is just too long & frankly "Cara Mia" would make me think of Gomez & Morticia. By the way, his pitch is better than that linked video.

(Pictured above, Anna's veteran & Guinness drinker Porter doing sound, & Peter Bond of Hat Makes The Man, Spiny Norman, & Island Guitars fame.)

Eric, however, does not sing in his band, named Stone Jones (uh oh) for lead singer Rob Jones; he plays bass while childhood friend Rob plays guitar & sings. They were playing "Cat Scratch Fever" as Terrence & I approached the building, & that was pretty much the only song I recognized; Stone Jones is a mostly originals act. Fun times!

My Favorite Cheese.

Hurray for 2am grocery shopping.

The green Cracker Barrel cheese, in a jumbo size no less, sat there on the Hawaii Kai Safeway shelf like Wilson Flannery, that blue-eyed sweetie who gave me his milk carton seedling at the end of the school day in 1st grade at Case Elementary, the closest thing to a long-stemmed rose I would ever receive for many years. Only Wilson would be 37 years old now. I might not recognize him.

That Cracker Barrel looked just the same, though. A little stouter; 20 oz instead of the usual 10 oz, but join the club, eh?

During college days this was my absolute favorite cheese. A block of Cracker Barrel Vermont Sharp White Cheddar & a fresh baguette from the Patisserie; this is what I sat down to at lunch time. At Silke's house we would boil pasta & mulch the entire 10 ounces on the jumbo grater. And in my sunlit dorm room, I would read my Oscar Wilde (I did read some of the assignments, you know) with a plate containing 2 slices of Healthnut bread & a third of a block of cheese. Or a plateful of the best crackers ever, Stoned Wheat Thins.

The red & yellow Cracker Barrels were found on most dairy shelves, but the green one could only be gotten at Star Kahala, & sometimes Times Kahala.

And then it disappeared. I'd look in vain at every cheese display at ever grocery store I went to, without hope. Red & yellow, no green. I visited the Kraft website to find that no one in Hawaii sold it. Until now. God bless you, Hawaii Kai Safeway.

My week just got brighter.

Adventures In Bartending: May 2008

Ok, so I know I'm not the friendliest bartender but I strive to do my job. With the regulars, it's no problem. Non-regulars, however, have wandered in to our bar & I've stood at attention behind the bar, frozen, as I waited for them to make eye contact with me so I can get their drink order.

Half the time, I'm ignored. I can see that they've seen me, but they spend several minutes looking around, at anything but me, or they engage their friends in conversation, or they avoid my gaze & duck to one of the 5 tables in our tiny place, where they sit & look around for a waittress, causing me to have to come out from behind the bar & corner them so I can get a DAMN DRINK ORDER.

Often I say with a crisp smile, "I was going to send the waittress over, but there is none."

One evening, my bar owner/bartender/alcoholic friend Bryan was sitting on my bar as I failed to make eye contact with a couple of fools who had walked in & were scrupulously looking everywhere but in my direction - left, right, at the ceiling & the floor. I looked at Bryan & said, "Maybe they don't want a drink."

"You're intimidating them," he replied, in a You Moron tone.

Psh.

Last week the bartender from the yuppypond restaurant next door poked her head in our empty, Thin Lizzy-playing bar (it was still early; 9:30ish) to warn us that she was sending over some "ladies." Any time a warning like that is needed is a red flag. "Don't worry, they've already had a lot of drinks & they won't stay long," she said with a big smile. If I had had a shotgun in my hands she would have been dead.

A few minutes later we were invaded by a dance-stepping, whooping group of The Golden Girls Gone Wild. They completely ignored me as I stood there, like a soldier, filing past me & alighting at a table. Then they sat there, looking expectantly around for a waittress. I put on my best neutral smile & trudged to the table. "Hi," I said. "Can I get you anything?"

The middle one asked if we had any "after dinner" drinks. For a moment I had too many thoughts in my head to say anything --- why would we have an after-dinner drink menu when we don't serve dinner, didn't they just have dinner at a Suck Your Dick eatery with a liquor license that would surely have a gorgeous laminated Cocktails For Idiots menu, certainly with all the different liquor in our establishment we could probably whip up some kind of drink for someone to imbibe after they had eaten dinner --- but only the 1st one came out.

Heh. I know, I should have used the 3rd one. The after dinner drinker ordered a "Kahlua. With ice" & I flew away to make their drinks. A little while later, 2 more of them showed up, & when I approached the table, the Kahlua lady asked if she could have some milk with her Kahlua.

"Oh, we don't have any," I said, truthfully. We haven't had milk for... I think not since 2002.

"You don't have any??" one of the newcomers said. "Not even any cream? So you can't make a Prince Charles??" She was outraged.

Several images of body piercing clouded my mind as I said, "No one ever orders that." We don't have coffee either, by the way.

"Well, I just did," she said archly.

Ooh, you wrinkled old self-righteous BITCH. I smiled at her snarlingly. She refused to order & advised the other lady who had come in with her not to either. I collected for the drinks that had already been served & in another minute they all stalked out like a Geriatrics Pride parade. Naturally they stiffed me. I mean, I didn't have any CREAM.

The mistake these women made was, well, coming to our place after having been wined, dined, & 69'd (gross) at the place next door, which caters to people like them. We, on the other hand, are not a "Very good Sir" kind of place. We really would rather have 5 guys in here watching our Paul Rodgers with Queen DVD than 20 dumbasses asking where the restroom is. We're not the Arcadia. We don't have FUCKING MILK.

The mistake I made was probably the dinner drink remark. You know, I know that there are people who don't know their heads from their asses when it comes to cocktails. They think that the only drinks available are those printed on the little laminated card. I have difficulty accepting that sometimes the most efficient way to serve someone their drink is to play along with their stupidity. But I have such a hard time doing it. And I'm completely unrepentant for not having milk.

My resolution for May 2008 is to be more patient with the feeble minded. I will try to control my facial expressions, especially the "You fucking retard" one. I will try to sigh more quietly or just inwardly. I will try to smile more.

I don't work again until June 1st anyway.

All My Faves

My friend Mike just told me about this. It's a page of popular website links, segregated by interest.

My goodness.

Seriously.

This stuff is THE SHIT.

I only ordered it (click on the picture to see where I ordered it from) to make a minimum, but I had no idea it was going to resolve Puppy's longstanding hairball problem.

Puppy's got long, fluffy hair. The kind of hair that, released in midair, simply hangs there. Coon heritage. As soon as it starts getting warm, Puppy's shedding... which also means that he's puking. Honeygirl, short-haired, will produce a hairball perhaps once a week, whereas Puppy can yell monsters out twice a day. One day Honeygirl let loose right between my feet as I lay sleeping (so much for that) in bed. As I staggered around removing sheets from my bed, I saw that Puppy had similarly evacuated onto my chair.

The hairballs were a problem. I fed Puppy Petromalt 4 times a week, & the only change was that his hairballs became Petromalt-colored.

I had taken to trimming Puppy's hair with scissors, since there was no way I was getting near him with a buzzer, so he would walk around covered with rat bite --- & still there would be daily hairpuke to clean up. Brushing didn't help at all either --- Puppy had more hair to remove via brush than he was willing to sit still for, & Puppy's generally a very obedient boy.

So when the Brewer's Yeart supplement arrived, I started adding the crushed tablets to both cats' meals. They didn't care for it at first, but have since become resigned.

Within a week there were no more hairballs. Puppy hasn't thrown up since. The tumbleweeds of cat hair that used to adorn every upright surface adjacent to my floor are... gone. It's like a miracle.

This has to be the best $10.99 I've spent in a long time. Turns out Brewer's Yeast is also used as a supplement among humans to aid with the uptake of B vitamins (hey!) as well as stave off mosquitoes & other parasitic bugs.

Hm. Thinking about it. If I yack up a hairball you can bet I'll be eating that stuff every day.

In other news, I got a fucking speeding ticket the other night. The cop was a real dick about it, too; it was like he was there to prove my HPD comments in the last post right. Jacob Miyashiro. When I asked another of my cop friends about him, the first thing he said was, "Yeah, that guy is a dick."

My safety check is due this month.

All's Well On May... whatever day this is.

Things seem to be going along swimmingly. Jack & Chie are inseparable, & although I have to search for my slippers every time I step out of the house, Chie's hiding places are fairly predictable so it's not too bad.

Tonight, hopefully, I am going to see Iron Man at least with my sister if not with Keola, who first proposed a movie night. Where the hell are you Keola? Problems with the Mobi, probably.

I've been having anger problems lately. We think it's the Mircette. The other evening I flipped off a cop who was following me, obviously hoping to find something he could pull me over for as I had just left a bar.

I have bad news for you, buddy. I had diet coke all night. Fuck off.

But that wasn't it; I think that was relatively appropriate. What disturbs me is that I then spent the rest of my drive home ranting furiously to myself about cops. How they're not here to help any of us & they're never around when someone actually needs help or when a crime is being committed... because they're all so busy stalking the average man waiting for him to make one mistake so they can write him a ticket. "Respect, Honor, Integrity," what is that BS? Cops are just another gang, except that they wear uniforms. Some of the most corrupt, malicious bastards I know are cops.

I could go on forever.

By the time I parked my car at home, I had to actually tell myself to shut the hell up & take a deep breath.

So I stopped taking the Mircette. Back to Yasmin for me. And I'd better check to see when my safety check is due.

Chie!

I made thumbnails, so you can click on them for bigger pictures.

I'd told my veterinarian that I hoped to find another dog to keep Jack company, something a little bigger & more watchdog-oriented, to help my grandparents feel like there was some purpose in having dogs (eh, they're old-fashioned.). I'd always loved the way Chows looked, but I felt absolutely comfortable with Akitas, having grown up with them. The vet assistant jotted down some numbers for me.

When I mentioned that it was just really important to me to get another dog that was intelligent & easy to get along with, the veterinarian suggested I consider Australian Shepherd dogs.

As I had in the last few months, I continued checking the Humane Society, Kijiji, Craigslist & the Honolulu Advertiser Classifieds. I called up the numbers the vet assistant had gotten out of the Ilio & threw it away after 4 out-of-services in a row. In the meantime I kept reading about various breeds at Dogluvers & Michele Welton's site. I decided I really wanted a Chow. I still want a Chow. But no Chows are to be had, apparently. There were tons of breeds I didn't want --- I guess pitbulls & chihuahuas really have a lot of sex. It's like canine dysgenics or something.

Then today (well, yesterday), the Advertiser had an ad for the very dogs my veterinarian had suggested. No, they wouldn't be my natural first choice, but then I had never even seen one of these dogs, much less met one. The breeder called me back relatively quickly, & made arrangements to meet me in Kaneohe.

I was suspicious because I would not be able to meet the parents, but I wasn't eager to drive all the way out to the breeder's home in Laie either. I called around for someone to come with me & my faithful cousin Craig agreed to come along. The breeder told me that the puppies' red merle dam had been purchased from a breeder in Kauai, & that she had her blue merle sister as well. The sire was a tri-color working dog at a ranch in Kahaluu. Although she couldn't bring the dam along, she would bring me videos of the dam playing with her pups. We agreed to meet at He'eia Elementary campus, where she had gone through obedience classes.

Short of actually getting to meet the parents, a video & the breeder's testimony would have to do. At 2 years of age, the dam was too young to exhibit any genetic fallbacks anyway outside of personality traits, & I had boned up about judging puppy temperaments. Web images of blue merles fired me up & I drove out to the meeting with some apprehension, but a lot of anticipation as well.

When I got out there (sheesh, I don't know my way around), it was already getting dark, & so we carried the 3 rambunctious (And beautiful! Fuck it, I was already sold!) puppies to the basketball court lights, where I was mobbed with puppy kisses from 2 out of the 3. I hoped to wait until they lost interest in the humans & started cavorting with eachother, but they didn't. The humans were too fun to... to kiss, I guess.

They all appeared to be in excellent health, perhaps a little rotund, & certainly friendly & happy. The one that hadn't mobbed me was already lying on her back getting a bellyrub from my cousin & had no reservations whatsoever with his excited-by-puppies son. The other 2 just continued to socialize with us, as if we shouldn't be allowed to hold a discussion with other humans.

It occurred to me that any one of these puppies would do, all being beautiful, healthy, & of obviously shining disposition. So, as 14 years ago with Puppy, I chose based on looks. I picked the one with the most striking markings, & the only blue merle with some brown markings on her face & hind legs. Puppy is actually of very similar coloring, & as a kitten he had a few stray patches of orange which I found charming (your dad was a stray orange tabby, wasn't he?).

As soon as I brought her home, Grandma was enchanted. This is an extremely good sign, because Grandma is a self-admitted animal disliker. She likes Jack but only when he is on the other side of the screen door. But she couldn't not pet the new girl. My grandfather was pleased, my cats were pissed (Puppy took a swipe at her immediately.), & Jack was ecstatic.

Initially, after some very in-depth sniffing (can't get used to that), Jack jumped around trying to get her to chase him. Bring disoriented & tired, she refused, but when he began antagonizing her, she snapped back. They tussled for awhile but eventually she was trying to climb up my leg so I took it as a sign to bring her into the house.

Jack got a meaty raw beef bone to celebrate her arrival & the cats got slivers of raw beef. My grandmother looked up Japanese girl names but couldn't choose one, so I've decided on Chie.

Chie is passed out at my feet as I type. She whines when she needs to go outside, which she has twice tonight. Once she gets her bearings & hopefully a little bigger I think she'll be quite comfortable outside with Jack.

I'm going to need another doghouse though. They're not going to both fit in there in a couple of months.