Drinking at work

Dear Collegues:

Every year, we strive to provide a warm, loving environment in which our executive leaders, associates, team members and employees can gather, unwind and get to know each other.

Unfortunately, we have been forced to cancel several events at our upcoming Holland & Hart, LLC Summer Gala for various reasons.

-- Sadly, the beloved 'Staff vs. Executives Mixed Martial Arts Smackdown'  was cancelled this year because the company is still reeling from several abruptly vacated executive leadership positions after last years' event. 

-- Also cancelled are the popular 'Dunk Your Manager' booth (due to a near fatal drowning incident caused by wildly thrown ball-peen hammer,)  the 'Toss your Boss' booth (multiple head injuries, multiple years) and the Supervisors vs. Subordinates Pillow Fight (sharp objects were once again found in Subordinate pillows.) 

-- We pulled from the Silent Auction the gift certificates for the Deluxe Steak Dinner due to complaints that the certificates were valid only on 'National Take Your Manager to Dinner Day.' 

-- We apologize, but for insurance reasons we will be closing the open bar to all non-management positions.

-- We will also be closing the doors to the club house bar to prevent another 'Dialog of Riot' such as happened last year when Jenkins and the ruffians from Fleet Maintenance screamed debasing sexual commentary at the executive wives' bridge club (AKA 'The C-Sweets') and threw beer steins at the group as they fled, screaming, barefoot, tear-stained, and half-dressed down the plushly carpeted ballroom stairway.
 

-- Finally, bus service from the gala leaves promptly at 6:30 p.m. to allow time to hose down the roundabout and make room for incoming executive car service later in the evening. Employees found on the grounds after the final bus has departed will be conscripted into service as sex slaves and unpaid laborers during the Annual Executive Leadership Golf Retreat this fall. 

As always, we look forward to the Summer Gala.

The Management.

The Playboy Magazine from Hell

DATELINE: Playboy magazine, Vol. 17, No 2.  February, nineteen hundred and seventy, in the Year of Duece Fuego: 

Playmate of the Month, 19-year-old Lucky Linda Forsythe, hails from the dangerous vice-presidential dueling grounds of Weehawken, NJ, a routine ferry ride from Manhattan. Forsythe plans to study social work at NYU, adopt a child, and if she's lucky, birth one of her own. The young woman enjoys nude modelling.

But that's not important.

-- Know-it-all futurist seer and Newt Gingrich hero, Alvin Toffler, foists upon the next several generations the dystopian prophesy: 'Future'.'Shock'

'Future Shock' includes:

1) An abrupt collision.

2) A menacing malady, the disease of change, chronic confusion, anxiety, hostility, physical illness, senseless violence, self-destructive apathy, painful adaptations, mass neurosis, irrationalism.

3) Culture Shock.

4) A blind fury and a bone-deep apathy, accompanied by bewilderment and distress, frustration and disorientation.

5) At least one hundred and forty-seven column-inches of supporting verbiage from his book of the same name. Toffler wore out his thesaurus writing this.

Fuck Toffler. 

But, that's also unimportant.

Blow the delicious taste and aroma of a Tipalet cigarette in her face and she'll follow you anywhere. 

OK. Now we're getting somewhere.

-- This fucking blond guy in his dock siders: sipping a Schlitz on the teak-wood deck of an aggressively tilted sailing yacht, gazing into the distance. One assumption is that he's assessing a worthy blond competitor who's also sipping a Schlitz in his dock siders aboard his aggressively tilted yacht. Both of these hapless white male fuckups are engaged in a casual, life-or-death naval battle to be the first in glory, fame and pussy.

[Who the fuck is driving the boat?]

-- Get your ass behind an A&C Grenadier. Now that's a cigar -- a cigar for a proud kind of guy who's kid just scored the winning touchdown. A guy who deserves the mild tasting unique blend of imported and choice domestic tobaccos.

-- Californian education officials ruled school science courses must include equal time to both Darwinism and the Bible. Welcome to the future. 

 'Future.Shock.'

Same as it ever was. 

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

-- Letters to the editor re: Doctors and abortions, sex law revision, help for homosexuals, marijuana, birth control, the sickness of homosexuality,  sex education for the blind, sex in the great state of Sweden, the sentiment that sex education for children in the midst of 'Freudian latency' isn't a bad thing.

[is it 'sex' that sells?]

-- And now: a three hundred and seventy-five miserable god-damned column inches devoted to nine know-nothing, know-it-all pundits in a desperate intellectual cage-match to settle, once an for all, the upsides and downsides of drugs. 

Seriously could use some frontal nudity about now.

-- Some prude Asa Barber novel excerpts.  

[How much reading must a man do to view a naked woman?]

-- Biba & Barbara: co-stars in the new John Huston sexpionage thriller, 'The Kremlin Letter'

-- Lead Women Around By The Nose... and the bitches come sniffin' every time a man packs his pipe with the mysteriously aromatic blend of Flying Dutchman legendary mixture.  

[20 years later: I got bitches in the living room gettin' it on and they ain't leaving 'til six in the mornin'. I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do, too.]

Deep Breath. Long Exhale

 -- The Rebirth of Yost excerpt: '... on the Merv Griffin show, he decided to die that night and would be coming back, but as whom?' [Guinness Book of World Record holder for worst subhead ever. Congratulations.]

-- Playboy's Weekend HouseYacht Party: Paid lovers embark on boats in the Florida Keys. Hijinx and debauchery ensue, with predictable and monotonous breast-only female frontal nudity. Where's the passion, people?

That's not important either.

Nothing is important. 

This volume of this magazine... this exact number of this exact volume... is both a metaphor AND a simile of a James Joyce novel recited at length over dollar-store loudspeakers to a class of 23rd-century school children trapped in a windowless, cinder-block gymnasium while a warm spring afternoon breeze tosses golden leaves in the playground. It's as gray as a month of Mondays soaked in a week of Tuesdays, diluted in wastewater saturated with iron filings and turpentine. 

That's hyperbole. That's also fact.

Lucky Linda Forsythe is still alive today. She is a grandmother.

Her grandchildren are the peers of my children.

 

Rock and Roll Fantasy

 

Ran into Bonnie Raitt the other day at the King Soopers. She was browsing the leeks and chard. 

I tried not to gawk, but I couldn't help it and she noticed.

"Hey there," she said. 

"Hey."

"You doin' anything later?" She asked.

 Bonnie's been around quite a while, and she knows a thing or two about how to talk to a man. It was clear where she was going with this. I am not a spring chicken, but damn... she's got at least 20 years on me. 

"Uhh.. I gotta snake out my sewer line," I said, looking for something to look at other than her. "Something stuck tight in there and it's a real mess."

"Probably tampons," I added.

Bonnie raised an auburn eyebrow, flicked aside that strand of gray hair that always caught my eye.

"Ok, then. You have fun with that," she said, and turned her attention to a bunch of collard greens in her hand.

"So... whatchu making with all those veggies?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't cook," she said without looking up. "My cousin asked me to bring a side dish.'

She reached for another bunch of collards.

'I can make a guitar orgasm in front of a thousand people,' she added with a sigh, 'but I have no idea how to make a god-damned side dish.'

I tossed a plastic container of Sabra brand hummus into her cart. 

"Use that," I said, "You don't need those collards. Everyone loves hummus." 

I handed her a packet of flatbread. "That'll do the trick. Plus, you don't have to cook a thing."

She reached for the flatbread. 

Time expanded, right there in the King Soopers produce section, her and I holding a packet of flatbread between us -- just a country girl and suburban boy looking for some fun, spinning Round and Round, up and down. Bonnie's gaze shifted to my face. 

 

"You want to go back in time with me?"

Bonnie's been around quite a while. She's old enough to be my mother, but I've never been able to get her out of my mind. Since Bluebird, one thing has always been true: she does not fuck around with my heart. 

One other thing: If anyone could travel time, Bonnie Raitt could.

"How far back?"

"I think you'd enjoy the early 70's," she said, and for the first time, she unleashed that reverb smile and those 50-watt dimples. And those caramel candy eyes.

 "Shucks," I stammered. "I'd just be a kid."

"We can work through that," she said.

 "Can I stay with you there?"

"Aw honey," she said, stifling an involuntary laugh. "Not a chance. You'll just be there for an hour, maybe two." 

 

The Perfect Night Fantasy: Country Music Fuel

 

The shift went long today, but summer nights are long, too. 

The phone rings. Brody calling.

‘Yeah?’

‘Where y'at?’

‘Driving south, Route 50’

‘Well step on it. We’re gittin' after it.’

I hang up on him and stow the phone in the seat cushion to keep it from bouncing around the cab. I’ll get there when I get there.

The dirt parking lot is full. Park the truck on the road and walk in.

These are my day clothes – a denim shirt with my name embroidered over the breast pocket. Any sign of employment is a good sign in this place.

The bouncer waves me in. He recognizes cool. Also, we were classmates at county junior college.

A stoic fucker like me walks in and hoots erupt from the bar:  high fives, and a lusty hug from Jezebel. She hugs everybody, so not a big deal. A shot of Cuervo because it’s summer.

Out of thin air, I sniff out a gaze, catch a smile. She’s mixed in with the usual crowd. Somebody’s cousin, probably.  I’ll keep an eye on her. See if this goes anywhere.

But in the meantime, there’s a line dance to join, more toasts to be raised, a fool whose money I need to take at the pool table, some business to conduct in the alley, a group of smokers in the parking lot to entertain.

And she’s still around, still looking, still smiling.

What a fun night. Even if she’s got to go back to wherever she came from, I'd be okay with it all. 

The staggers get more swagger, the voices grow louder and come from deeper in the throat. More diaphragm, more energy, more lust. Daniel’s at it again. He’s gonna get it bad one of these nights, which will be a drag because he’s a friend and I’d have to defend him.

But, it looks like he’s fading fast, so probably nothing to worry about tonight.

Back inside, there’s one more last chance.

It's the voice of Buck Owens, like a spark from a Tesla coil: ‘Together… again... My tears have stopped falling.... The long lonely nights... are now... at an end.’

A faulty speaker cone buzzes at every downbeat, but nobody complains about it anymore.

Lovers coalesce. Protons attracted to electrons, inhibitions stripped away by the high frequency wail of a Tom Brumley steel guitar riff. The good old boys and good old girls transform into spinning, entangled particles on the dance floor -- some couples tight, discrete and polite; others loose, lewd and a bit rude.

And there she is, with nothing to do but wait for me to ask.

She’s warm. She's soft. She smells like clean sheets somehow, even after five hours of drinking, smoking and dancing in the summer heat. How the hell do they do that?

Her neck, her shoulder, her lips twitch and yield to my wandering face. I haven't shaved in 14 hours, but she doesn't seem to mind one bit. Maybe she's just being polite. Her hips, the small of her back, the back pocket of her jeans fit perfectly into the palm of every one of my hands. 

Positive attracted to negative, as close as the laws of nature will allow.

The last guitar strum dissolves, and the abrupt house lights send dancers scattering like nocturnal insects. She and I both know where this is going, so we journey hand-in-hand through the dirt parking lot to my truck.

Along the way, I take a moment to prevent a violent drunk from killing his girlfriend in a boozy rage, much to the relief of the local deputy. The officer is hopelessly overworked and dangerously under-equipped to handle the kind of debauchery that lurks around here. His presence increases the risk of death and heartbreak, and he knows it.

Afterward, in my truck, she wipes a drop of blood from my brow, a minor consequence of decisive action.

I drive her into town, where I drop her off at her doorstep with a slow hug and long kiss, tip my hat and amble on. She's puzzled, perturbed, but curious. I expect she'll come calling soon enough.

Head back to the shop. Skip church and pick up another shift. I'll use the extra cash to buy the two of us some surf and turf, or maybe rent a shiny car and take a weekend trip to the hot springs.

Anything’s possible. I have my health, a job, and girl who likes me.

This child has no right to to burden his little league team like he does.

My boy played today in the first game of the season.  He has plenty of work ahead of him this year:

• Batting mechanics (I'd laugh if it were someone else's kid.)
• Basic ball handling (easy popups are magnetically attracted to him, probably because his opponents have learned he can't catch them,) 
• His hustle (coach described his sprinting gait as a "slithering" motion.) 

But before we start on those skills, we need to work on his emotional game. 

Today, the boy charged the mound three times, threatened the catcher with the bat, and sparked a brawl with the first baseman that emptied both dugouts. 

He gets it from his mother, who conducts her life according to the creed, "strike first, strike low, strike hard." It's worked for her, as it's just the kind of advantage an eager young lawyer needs to scratch out her perch on the the jagged, semen-soaked cliffs at Holland & Hart International. 

But I don't think the creed serves the boy well at all. Not while he's playing outfield for the 9-year-old squad of the Englewood Alpacas. 

He's become a lightening rod on the field, attracting blows like a dusty rug -- both during and after games. And not just from opponents. Much of his sharp spirit has been directed at his teammates and even the coaches. They've dubbed him "The Himmler of Right Field" -- and I doubt the nickname's just a colorful handle in the style of "Maverick" or "Iceman." 

The foul behavior on-field is causing problems in the stands as well. Parents react with horrified shock when he throws their children to the ground, spits on them, kicks them and throws his tiny fists at their faces. I desperately want to tell them that the boy's arms are much too weak to seriously hurt their children, but I never do. Instead, I pretend he's not mine and feign horrified shock alongside. 

Unfortunately, I fear the problem won't be easy to solve, mostly because of his mother. She encourages him from the stands. Quietly, at first, but with each inning, more aggressively until by the end she's screaming foul racial slurs and throwing beer bottles at the umpire, the opposing team's batters, and the visiting team's fans. 

She's been allowed to stay only because little league fans are a meek, tolerant lot, and I also suspect they've come to appreciate the intimidating effect she has on the opposing team. That only encourages her, I'm afraid. 

What I really need is time alone with the boy to counter her negative influence and help him work through his athletic shortcomings. The boy needs to understand that he shouldn't feel threatened by what other players say. He is just a poor ball player. 

He'll never, ever be any good. It's frustrating for me, as a father, because he should know that already. 

I've told him several times.

Jefferson County School Officials: 'Bussing less important than we all thought'

Letter from Jefferson County School District Officials re: eminent mass failure of poor students.

Dear North Area Community, 

At Jeffco Public Schools, we understand bus service is a vital, critical and essential part of the educational experience.  We strive to provide this vital, critical, essential service to every student.

Having said that, we will be cancelling all bus service.

Bussing has been downgraded from the vital, critical and essential categories to the 'optional',  'nice-to-have' and 'no longer a service we provide' categories.

Due to circumstances far beyond our control, but which we long ago suspected would happen, our school system has failed to recruit, hire, or retain drivers.

Please be aware that we exerted tremendous effort to work our current drivers to exhaustion.  But alas, we failed. Some would call us failures. We don't agree.  

For starters, the bus driver shortage is puzzling in a country with so many cars, so many drivers. Just as puzzling was the slow, steady and consistent exodus from the district of the majority of our low paid, under-appreciated bus drivers. 

To counter this, we came to the difficult decision to tweak our service by suspending the following bus routes both temporarily and permanently:

-- Routes that serve the north, east, south or west areas of the school district.

-- Routes the serve the central region of the district.

-- All future bus routes that we had hoped one day to provide.

On the bright side, we will continue bus service to and from Germany, Purgatory, and the moon.

We understand this change in service directly impacts your student(s). For some, it could be one more factor in a galaxy of unfair misfortunes that have beset your student(s) and threatens their ability to graduate. We understand this will inconvenience to your student(s)'s ability to succeed in life. 

Remember that truancy and tardiness will continue to result in immediate suspension.