FERRERMAN- AGAIN?

 I honestly don't remember her name, so I'll call her Sally. She didn't work with us very long and she's really only memorable for this story and one she told me about a suicide that happened by her apartment. A neighbor had hung himself outside of her window, I think from the fire escape. Her and her little girl were just going about their business in their home when they noticed the man. That had to be frightening.  I'm pretty sure that the last time I saw her was a Saturday when I came on shift to relieve her. As soon as she saw me, she ran without a word out from behind the bar, tears streaming down her face. The bar was crowded. Very unusual for a Saturday afternoon. I quickly assumed that, overwhelmed by the numbers, she had gotten deep in the weeds. It was something like that. I looked the crowd over. Parents. Kids. How bad could it have been? I found out right away. First customers I approached had their backs to me talking to some others. I asked if they we...

Back in my bartending days, I learned pretty quickly that problem drinkers always couched their drink requests saying, "Just give us one more..." This is usually about mid-stage when you have recognized the guy or guys are potentially going to be a problem for the house. It's a dance routine they've done many times with many bartenders. "Just one more..." is a drunk's con to the bartender that, they'll be gone as soon as they finish that last drink. Don't worry about them. You may think they are an asshole, but they aren't, so don't fret. They'll be gone soon. After just one more...  I Always saw it as a veiled threat because I knew the dance. I don't think it ever ended well. Even if it was early in their afternoon or evening, you couldn't cut them off at the pass just yet, even though you knew that was pretty damn inevitable. Cutting people off was always a crapshoot. No one likes to be told that they are drunk. You never kn...

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Well, no World Series for me. My feud with YouTube TV finally ended. You may recall that to quit them, I had to get a new debit card, one that they couldn't draw the monthly fee from. It was an odd but necessary measure, recommended by my bank. I don't want to get into the rigmarole of how hard YT makes it hard to quit. Suffice to say, they make it hard, so you'll give up and continue to pay $82 bucks a month. If my math is correct, if they have one million subscribers, that's $82 million a month. Would they miss my $82 dollars a month? Goddamn right they would! Don't you know rich people? What's wrong with you??!! They are greedy ass-munchers, ya know.  Anyways, I'm instead watching "Escape from Sobibor" a 1987 film about an escape from the Sobibor concentration camp in 1943, starring Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer. Obviously, any film about a concentration camp is going to be depressing, but past being prologue, we must be informed.  That is  the ke...

 Sorta watching "Manhunter" (1986) with William Petersen. I saw him once in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago. I didn't know who he was, but my friend Julie sure did. She was an actress, a Second City grad and she said, "Hello" and he said "Hello" back. She was quite smitten. "He's the best actor in Chicago!" And he had spoken to her! Julie wasn't a love interest of mine. Her lovely, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Swedish, Buddhist self-had been one of my cocktail waitresses at the restaurant where my awful first marriage finally died. I don't know why, but I never romanced most of my cocktail waitresses. We were like partners- but not in crime. The way I came up in the business, a bartender and a cocktail waitress could really burn the house down if they chose to. Friendship between straight, attractive men and women is always looked upon with suspicious eyes, especially by boyfriends. Julie's boyfriend (and Toni's husb...

A really weird thing I've noticed is the banning of certain words on YouTube- regardless of context- and seemingly enforced depending upon or what channel it is. This morning, I saw one where the guy couldn't say Israel", He called it "Is" and it showed in the text that way as well. I've also seen "death" and "suicide" bleeped out and misspelled or given the ***** treatment. This befuddles me because many videos seem to have no sanctions of those words or many others. What the fuck is the method to this madness on YouTube?  The ex-Green Beret I watch (sometimes) too often was trying to address his concern about the 22 veterans a day who commit suicide. He stated he's not allowed to say the word, and I think he substituted it with "unalive themselves". Clearly, he was speaking in the context of what a tragedy it was that there were so many suicides amongst his brothers in arms, not at all implying it was a good thing. Again- w...

 I think my only practical experience with AI is my Tiger Woods golf game. It's from 2013 so, maybe it was early AI and they've made improvements since then? It doesn't talk to me, and it certainly doesn't solve many of my problems like I understand current AI does. It should  because that's what it's supposed to do as it is called "Ask Caddie" and it's supposed to help you line up shots better. It actually is a boon on rounds where EA Sports has made the game *interesting* by introducing ridiculous wind onto random courses, but even then, you can ever completely trust it. The Ask Caddie is so bent on giving you a computerized, weird slant on even the easiest of shots, that I find myself wondering if my caddie isn't a secret drinker or high on something else.  I bought this game used and it came without an instruction manual. Not a big deal as all the various yearly editions of TW golf pretty much play the same and I've been very good at al...

I was skimming through a 2.5-hour video from Valhalla VHT, my favorite ex- Green Beret podcast. Nate puts up some pretty good stuff, particularly about the Charlie Kirk assassination debacle. It is very helpful to have available the knowledge of men who have actually killed in combat when the subject is guns and wounds and kill shots. I've dealt with hundreds of gun nuts who have thousands of hours of range time, but no practical experience. I don't care if you can make that shot  in your sleep. Good for you, dreamer. The shot not  being made at all is what I care about in this case. I am in the camp that believes that Tyler Robinson did not take that shot and that grandpa's 30.06 was not the murder weapon. I really wonder if Tyler was there at all. Really now, if he was on the roof, why? Why doesn't he resemble all the security camera photos of the suspect (him) making his way to the roof- without a rifle-  and escaping from the roof- without a rifle- and the rifle bei...

 I was last night years old when I learned that former FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, was African American. This wasn't breaking news as there was quite a bit of it on the google. I had been watching an interview with Judge Joe Brown about the MLK assassination, and the Judge threw it out there, I guess in the context of what a dick Hoover was to King and isn't it ironic. Hoover was hard on pretty much everybody from King's to Klan's to Kennedy's. Everybody but the mafia. The story there was the mob had intimate audio of Hoover and his boyfriend, as well as possible film of an encounter they had in a mob night club. I believe it was the Copacabana- the hottest spot north of Havana. That I had heard of for years. Judge Joe's mention was about Hoover passing for white, fooling most everyone but the Klan as they ran his family out of Louisiana when he was a boy. He was pretty hard on the Klan as a result of that. Secretly black and secretly gay explains a lot about...