The “All Entries” link should be working now. So go forth and waste lots of time reading my nuggets if hilarity from the past. Now. Click it. Seriously. Don’t make me mad.

For the past three months, my life has revolved around a project I have been working on at work. Doug (my boss) and I were charged with the design and production of a big crazy booth to improve our presence at tradeshows. Doug has been doing tradeshows for twenty years, so he knows all about what features were needed, and someone told someone else that I am capable of doing anything. Good team. So after months of waking up in the middle of the night panicking about some small detail that may have been overlooked, I capped it off last week with an inhuman 90 hour workweek to make sure everything was ready to rock. We left for San Fran (at 6 am on Saturday, no less) to debut what would either turn out to be a home run in the eyes of the head honcho or a perfect excuse to update our resumes and find a new job that didn’t involve tradeshow booths in any capacity.

Here is what I learned-
All Labor at the Mosconi Center is unionized to the hilt and policed by a skinny, slightly crazy fellow who yells at any non-union person who touches a tool or even looks like they are going to do work that can be done by union guys. “Aaghh. Hey, you guys got enough non-union hands holding that sign? If you want it hung, you can hire a guy at the freeman’s desk up front. Blahhh!”

Union labor costs $175 per hour per person.

That price goes to $195 per person on weekends.

You have no choice in the matter. We had to hire five of them for about eight hours on Saturday. Holy budget constraints, Fatman.

The gay population in San Francisco is not reflected in the ranks of its union workers.

The kneecap breaking threat is real. It was alluded to when I was caught standing on a chair rented from the convention center and therefore belonging to the union guys. They didn’t appreciate my mentioning that I am a self-taught interpretive dancer, nor did they enjoy how the chair was used in my rendition of “The Angry Daffodil”.

Interpretive dancing will save your kneecaps.

True to stereotype, they like to tell dirty jokes, speak gruffly, eat their lunch out of mailbox shaped containers, and take a fifteen minute break every two hours whether they need it or not.

Untrue to stereotype, they are the hardest working bunch of people I have ever seen. If they weren’t on a break, they were turning wrenches and swinging hammers, and they knew how to solve a problem.

So we got the booth up, wired it for sound, and then tried to appear energetic for the coming three days of tradeshow.

It was a pretty huge success. Our CEO even said “Hey, we don’t look like a highschool science project anymore.” More like a motivated college architecture student with lots of money, I suppose, but it drew a crowd.

While in the area, I met up with a lost soul who thinks I am funny (or at least thought I was before meeting me) and we went and got some drinks one night on the wharf. The super cool trendy restaurant was closed, so we went to Bubba Gump Shrimp Place. Yes, it was one of those wonderfully tacky theme restaurants. The next night I went to a really nice Greek place called Kakari where I was made fun of for having eaten at the Gump place. I guess it’s a matter of taste, so I’ll lay the differences out for you and let you decide which one kicks more ass.

At the Gump Shrimp Dump you walk in and are assailed by lines from the movie “Forrest Gump” written on the walls, a bunch of hyperactive teenage waiters, and all the merchandise you can eat. At Kakari, you are asked to sit quietly and wait to be seated. Or you can go to the bar for a $12 glass of beer. You can’t see the bar because of all of the beautiful rich people who are more important than you are, but the hostess said it was there, and she was hot, so I believed her.

The wine at Kakari was about $50 a bottle, and you couldn’t even screw the top back on. At Gump, I bought a $5 glass of beer that should have had a diving board attached to it, and I GOT TO KEEP THE PLASTIC MUG WITH THE CARTOON SHRIMP ON IT. Kakari threatened to kick me out when they found all of their glasses in my bag.

None of the waiters sang happy birthday at the fancy place. At Gump, they stood on the tables and clapped and screamed and threw shit at you, making you feel loved. I bet if you had your party at Kakari they’d bring you some sort of calamari pudding with a fancy tofu candle in it and make you use a napkin. Screw that.

The prawns at Kakari are completely without funny little hats when they bring them to your table. It was not a mistake. I asked.

They also left the eyeballs in them. I hate avoiding eye contact with my food.
During dinner at the Gump place, the waitress came by and asked us trivia questions about the movie. I had completely forgotten that Captain Ron threw his ice cream into a bedpan. I only guessed it because it’s what I would have done if a retard offered me ice cream after having my legs blown off. The only bit of trivia the Greek place could offer was to tell me that my wine tasted like turpentine because they seal the cask with Pine resin instead of cork. Why? Because in 1000 B.C. when they made $50 wine, no one had invented corks yet. And it’s always better to do things the old way. That’s why we all use stone axes to kill our own food, and I heated my hotel room by burning buffalo fat in a pit. Oh, wait…
Dinner at Gump? $80. Dinner at Fancypants hall of baklava? $230. Not being able to buy a tee shirt with a hilarious picture of a dancing olive on it? Annoying.

Actually I liked the Greek place. At the risk of garnering a stupid classification like “foodie”, I have to say that I am a fan of the nice restaurants, and I enjoyed the piney taste of a good glass of Rizzazzo or whatever it was called. If you are ever in San Francisco, go to Kakari and get the Lemon Grilled Octopus. They also serve you olives the size of human testicles. You will thank me.

At the time this is being typed, I am 37,000 feet over Oklahoma. Tired to the core, and enjoying the high that lingers after hard work pays off. I have to say honestly that I have the greatest boss in the universe, and he doesn’t even read this thing, so I’m speaking from the heart. The guy should write a book on how not to suck as a manager.

Looking around the plane for something symbolic of how we feel right now, Doug snapped the following picture. They didn’t even flinch when the flash went off. If it weren’t for the sounds of their snores, we would have grabbed the first-aid kit.

You said it, Enid. Life is good.

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