Let me count the ways.
No strike that from the record.
There is no way to count the ways because it sucks in so many, many ways.
I spent the worst ten years of my life in the weekend I spent in Massachusetts. It was abysmal.
I just found out that Tim emailed me but I didn't have my computer with me so I didn't get the message. If we could have met up it would definitely have mitigated this disaster but unfortunately it was not to be.
I will have many posts lamenting the torture that I had to endure but I would like to start with one of the worst.
The bar in the hotel closed at eleven. Eleven PM. You know. The hour before midnight. Not at Four in the morning. Not at Two in the morning. NOT AT FUCKIN" MIDNIGHT!!!!!!!!!!! AT ELEVEN A FUCKING CLOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I AM STUCK IN MASSACHUSETTS AND I CAN"T GET A FUCKIN" DRINK!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You see the wife and I went out to have an adventure were our late afternoon lunch turned into a safari because we were afraid to leave the restaruant but we figured we could go back to the hotel bar for a nightcap or three.
Did I mention?
THE FUCKIN" BAR CLOSED AT ELEVEN O"FUCKIN CLOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We get there in time to order a couple anyways. Now let me tell you about liberal Massachusetts. We are sitting at the bar and this black dude comes in with his white lady. She goes to sit down at a lounge table and he goes to the bar and orders three drinks. Two beers and a shot. The bar bitch goes " I can only give two drinks at a time unless there is someone with you." So he has to get his girl so he can get his drinks. He pays his money. Then an older white dude comes up and orders four drinks. And she gives them to him with no problemo! I had to laugh.
Anywho there were four weddings at this hotel. Or rather four parties of people who were going to weddings staying there. It must be the cheap place for weddings to get blocks of rooms so their cheap ass relatives from Buttfuck Oklahoma can pay for a fucking room. In a hotel with A FUCKIN" BAR THAT CLOSES AT ELEVEN O"FUCKIN CLOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These two dudes come up to order drinks. Since they were white they got to get three apiece. Somehow the conversation turns to football. And this one dick can only say that Eli Manning is a piece of shit. I pointed out to him that he seemed to have beat the Pats both times he played them. He tells me it wasn't Eli but it was his team. I said dude "He had a completely different team both times they played. Different receivers. Different running backs. Different line. Really the only thing that was the same was Eli. But he had nothing to do with it right?" But this douche couldn't see it. They wanted to talk about stats. Dan Marino's name came up. And I said like I always say "show me a guy who talks about his stats and I will show you a loser. You know. Like Ted Williams." Even the pip squeak bar bitch had to join in and tell me how Eli wasn't an "elite" player because he didn't have the stats. You think she would have thought about that because the Massholes left a $2 tip. Whatever! Even the black guy chimed in as he was getting his three drinks even though he had to bring his girl back to the bar to get them. "You can't dog Marino just because he never won a Super Bowl. I mean Doug Williams won one and you can't say he was an Elite player." I says "Well that don't count because that was affirmative action man." He laughed and I bought him and his girl a drink. The Massholes kept griping and Eli wasn't just a piece of shit but a "wicked piece of shit." I said whatever you say dudes I just want to play you guys again in the Super Bowl because I know we will win again. Cause the only thing that counts is pelts on the pony. The rest is bullshit.
Then of course it was ELEVEN O"FUCKIN CLOCK AND IT WAS LAST CALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So we had to go upstairs to our rock hard mattress and lousy air conditioning and a smoke alarm that kept flashing a light all night that made you feel like you were having a stroke!!!
This was the first night.
17 comments:
Sounds like the land of wind and ghosts would have been a better place to be.
Sorry about that, Troop.
When I read you were going to the Marriott in Woburn, my reaction was, "WTF?? He's kidding, right?"
No, you weren't.
Welcome to Long Island with early closing.
I said to my wife, "Maybe we could invite them out to one of the nice places in Andover. There'll be oodles of parents from all over for the start of school, and it could be a pretty good night for someone from New York. It's not like they'd be the only ones. And there's this bistro in Andover I've heard good things about that sounds GREAT. We could zip down to Woburn and give them a ride up here. It would be a shame if they got stuck in Woburn."
My wife said, "Of course he isn't eating and going out for drinks in Woburn. Don't be silly. He'll be in Boston or Cambridge. Nobody in their right mind stays in Woburn. Find out where they're going in Boston, and we can meet them there."
Alas! My cell phone never rang, despite the e-mail to Trooper.
More's the pity.
Should've gone to a 7-11.
24/7, right?
Slurpees!
You should have known better Troop.
Think of all the good times with you going off about Eli in downtown Boston. Did you mention the Yankees while you were there...
T
In the interest of full disclosure, Andover DOES roll up the sidewalks early, despite having two or three really good restaurants. It is a leafy exurb of Boston, that on one side is pretty New England suburbs, and on the other, hardscrabble Lawrence and the Merrimack Valley. They have early closing out in the boonies, because they don't want drunks rolling up and down, for example, Rt. 28, which can be bad enough without bars open until 2:00 AM. Welcome to the 'burbs, where bar patrons are likely to drive away instead of stagger, as they do in New York.
The same applies to Woburn, where they don't want drunks on 128.
Anyway, it might have been a chance to hang out with prep school parents. You might have been pleasantly surprised at the ones we met from New York, who were definitely in the "smart, but regular people" category. Andover is, these days, totally need-blind and amazingly free of snotty preppies. And it would have been a chance to get acquainted with another slice of New England life, which, from what I've seen of it, totally doesn't suck.
Melrose?
Melrose??
I mean, what was this, the "Most Boring, Blah Suburbs Tour?"
You mean you couldn't find a place to do toenails in Lexington? Hell, there's a nail salon that does pedicures a block from my house in the unnamed suburb between Lexington and Concord. And it's real handy to 128 and closer to the Marriott in Woburn than bleeping Melrose.
If we'd been home, you could have come over for lunch while you waited for Lisa.
For me it would have been the height of luxury what with the 60 inch wall TV where I'd have gotten my yearly dose of HBO and been out like a light by 11 PM.
I can't believe you traveled w/o a computer, Troop.
Of course, they may not have internet access in Woburn cuz of the telephone and postal workers' unions.
Chip, Woburn is Office Park Central. Wi-fi is everywhere. Unlike Europe, the postal workers have nothing to do with it, thank God.
Verizon may have the odd strike, but you'd hardly know, and they generally paper over everything in 48 hours, max. Woburn is on the formerly famous Rt. 128, "America's Technology Highway." Nowadays, of course, you can't find a Rt. 128 sign, but it's still sufficiently techie that you're basically wired to the universe from within its precincts.
I didn't bring a computer because the room didn't have a safe.
I couldn't bring my business computers where they could get ripped off and lose all the business stuff have on it.
Only the wife has an ipad and I hate to check my emails anyway. So when I am on vacation I stay off the net.
The east coast is a very uncivilized place.
The east coast is a very uncivilized place.
I lived and worked in the outskirts of Boston for a year, and returned back to the midwest with new understanding and appreciation for the down to earth civilization and freedom of opportunity available in the section of fly over country I'd previously left. While I met and worked with some good people in my sojourn "out East", the overall pretentiousness, class consciousness, and provincial backwardness I encountered in the two restaurants where I worked and served surprised me.
One of the fun things I enjoyed was the bronzed garbage in the street by Haymarket. I found it by accident, while walking over it in 1977, before the internet was available to provide a description and explanation. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but the idea and actuality bemused me. I think it's still there. When Trooper said he was going to Boston, I looked it up and found the work is called Asaroton 1976 and artist responsible Mags Harries got the idea from Roman floor mosaics.
The Haymarket
Set in the Boston’s busy Haymarket neighborhood, Asaroton 1976 focuses interest downwards to create an intimate experience of discovery. For four days of the week the site hosts a famous open-air produce market. The embedded bronze pieces replicate the trash and debris that might normally cover the street. When the stalls and real debris of the farmer’s market cover the art, it becomes part of a living experience. On the other days of the week it is a memory of the market.
Cool stuff. Sort of like what happens with some of the TY stories and comments!
The main thing I miss about New England is the oddball common-folk foods like coffee milk (the syrup is great on choco ice cream), flat-sided hotdog buns, fried clams with the guts intact---that sort of thing, served up at one of those old-timey roadside stands that seem to have been driven out of business everywhere else. I mean, you can find good restaurants pretty much anywhere (except Woburn), but a really good clam shack is a rare and wonderful thing.
I figure that's the upside to the otherwise-annoying provincialism of the place that MamaM couldn't stand. (TTB, of course, is completely exempt from any and all disses of NEers, as he seems to be more like a midwesterner.)
Lord love a duck, the bars in Green Bay stay open later than eleven!
And in Milwaukee, of you stay at Wolski's until closing time (2 AMish, depending), you get a free bumper sticker that says "I Closed Wolski's.
Of course, they've only been in business for 100 years, so what do they know?"
Stay away from Boston.
Gee, all I got for closing the Lodge in Chicago at 5AM was very thick beer goggles. Managed to catch my dawn flight out of O"Hare, tho.
I would not have known about the flat sided hot dogs buns if it weren't for that experience! I ordered the best foot long dog ever (on one of those buns)from an old timey stand on the Cape. This following an interminable car ride on the single backed up highway leading to the bridge, where people would get frustrated and start forming third and fourth lanes on the verges. Craziness that was endured because "that's the way it is" or "that's the way it's always been.
One of the restaurants where I waitressed and made desserts was a Victorian Inn (written up in Country Inn and Backroads as divine) that had two flea infested little shitzhu dogs living under the refrigerator in the kitchen. Trayloads of dishes and French Onion soup would daily be lost to the single heavy wooden door that swung both ways between the kitchen and dining room, with no thought of a solution, because that was the way it had always been. It was a memorable year.
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