Friday night I went down to universal for orientation. It was the most brain numbing six hours of drivel I have ever encountered. When I first walked into the conference room where the orientation was, I sat in the front row. As the room finally filled up I found myself to be the only one in the front row. Figures. We had a guy give the orientation to us, an exact clone of the one I had heard last time I was there. It was given by a guy who reminded me greatly to John Glover of such fame as 'smallville' and 'gremlins 2'. Except he sported a haircut like Malcom McDowel in 'Star trek generations'.
Anyways, he happily gave his speech as he had a hundred times before. I know this because at one point he imitated tripping by smacking his foot on the side of the wall. The spot where he hit it was peeling paint and showing sheet board and was surrounded by a halo of countless sneaker scuff marks.
He gave speeches, we filled paperwork, we saw slides, we saw a video on 'safety man' which was a green spandex and goatee-clad superhero that warned you of the dangers of acetone. This was actually showed to us as an (attempted) amusing game-show clip. I would have preferred a printed piece of paper. We also bounced a balloon around as a show of teamwork and I signed a paper saying I would not sexually harass anyone.
At one point they were telling us about our horror night roles and how to avoid drunks and idiots. One large girl with glasses stood up and loudly announced 'I got hit last year' and grinned to show a smile that was devoid of a few critical teeth. I honestly do not know if she lost her teeth from being punched, or if they happened to be missing to begin with. Remember, this job pays $7.25 a hour. It's not exactly the cream of the crop they are reeling in here.
Indecently, it turns out I will be in the 'Psychoscarpy' house. I have a feeling I will be in a clown suit. I wonder if my parents are proud.
When it was time to go my eyes were wide open and my brain was numb. Thankfully I had some friends that were going to meet me downtown and I could drown out the whole orientation experience with a few rum and cokes.
I got down town, parked in a urine-smelling parking garage and promptly went to the wrong bar. I was supposed to go to 'The Social' but I ended up in the bar next to it. There was supposed to be a band, and I wandered around trying to figure out where a stage was in there. A trip though a back door by the bathroom led me into the 'eye spy' bar, which briefly disoriented me. I sipped my rum and coke out of a Dixie cup and suspiciously peered around me, wondering where they would fit a band in there. I asked some random guy who was walking by, who turned out to be quite drunk, and he ended up engaging me in a long conversation about absolutely nothing. Finally I wandered out and found the proper entrance to the bar next door. The entrance had thrown me off because the doors were boarded over with plywood and thus I thought they were non functional.
The social is one of those bars downtown that reminds me of the age of Orlando. If peered at the right angle, it takes on a distinct barn-like appearance, revealing the more industrial uses it had been used as in decades gone past. Some of the walls are ancient bricks, rounded from age and crumbling. The ceiling is wooden and slopes up like a barn roof. Regardless it has a nice atmosphere, even if there is not enough seating to suit my taste. A space that big needs a few couches tossed about.
I watched a band that some folks I had met up with knew. I liked them well enough. You can't go wrong with bongo's. Actually, I had really liked the first song they played and if anyone has an MP3 of it, I would like a copy. (HINT: MATT)
One thirty in the morning rolled around and I was growing bored. I bid my farewells and went outside and visited the hotdog man. I got a sausage with mustard that came on a rather stale bun. I would be annoyed, but it was a street side hot dog man. What do you expect? I devoured it, watching the drunk nightlife wander past me. I took the urine-smelling elevators up to the urine-smelling parking lot and got my car and puttered out of downtown Orlando.
It was approaching two in the morning and I was wide-awake and more than a little buzzed. What to do? On the way home I passed a nudie bar. I have not been in one in over a decade. I figured it would give me amusing blog material. That and it was almost closing time. I have never actually been in a nudie bar when they were closing.
Well, I wont get into the details but it was sad. I really hope that was not their 'A' material. Also it seems in the decade since I have been in one of these sordid places last, crystal meth has become the preferred drug of strippers. When the dentally-challenged stripper turned her caved-in-granny-mouth to smile at me as she gyrated her ass around, I hastily pushed a couple of bills in her leg band not out of any sense of enjoyment, but I just wanted her to go away. Afterwards I sipped my beer and looked around. The patrons were more amusing to look at than the strippers. They were some real characters. If you are a writer and you want to dream up some interestingly seedy characters, go visit a strip bar.
I was there fifteen minutes when the place closed. To my annoyance a bunch of thugs did not come out with billy clubs and chased off the patrons. Instead the music went off and the lights went on and everyone filed out. It felt like when the lights go up in the movies. I peered at my cell phone clock over my five dollar Budweiser beer I had been nursing. Time to go home.
I wandered out to my car and stuck my key into a few holes in my cars dashboard until my car started. I buzzed on down 17&92. After a few minutes of driving I notice a bunch of lights in the road ahead of me. I squinted my bleary eyes and peered ahead. Oh crud. It was a DUI checkpoint.
I could not turn around. There was several motorcycle cops half hearty hiding themselves in some bushes. If I turned around, they would speed after me, pull me over, and demand to know why I had turned around. That is actually the very tactic of catching drunks in these situations. With no choice I eased my car through the obstacle course of barricades and blinky lights they had set up. There were about a dozen cop cars and cops wandering all over the streets. A couple of cars were being actively searched and once Mexican guy was blearily looking around, sitting on the sidewalk in handcuffs.
I pulled up to the check point and cheerfully called out 'Howdy officer, what do you need?' He asked for my license. I pulled it out and handed it to him and he walked to the back of my car. I briefly thought about who I would call to bail me out of the drunk tank. The cop walked back up to my window, handed back my license and said 'Thank you, have a good night'.
I blinked, stunned. Then I said cheerfully 'You too!'. And sped on my way. Farther down the road I broke out laughing and then got some taco bell. I went home and ate a couple of taco's and watched the sci-fi channel. Then I fell asleep.
The next morning I squirted some taco bell hot sauce into my scrambled eggs. Wow, do that and your whole morning will have the essence of taco bell.
2026 Update
Firing up the infernal machine for September 5th, 2006, where Ed dodges a DUI checkpoint with a cheerful howdy and a mouthful of rum.
Imagine a world where a haunted house job paid $7.25 an hour and required a signed promise not to sexually harass anyone in between balloon-toss team building and a safety video starring a man in green spandex. That was the labor pipeline of 2006. The whole evening is a museum exhibit: printed paperwork, a phone with a clock but no camera feed, a friend you could hint to for an MP3, a downtown full of boarded-over doors and crumbling brick, street hot dogs on stale buns, and a five-dollar Budweiser nursed like a gold bar. Now we get our drunks delivered by apps before they leave the house, our orientations are modules we click through under surveillance, and the closest thing to a DUI checkpoint is an insurance telematics app tattling on our cornering. Ed's reward for lucking through the checkpoint wasn't sobriety or reflection; it was Taco Bell sauce squirted into scrambled eggs as a morning personality. The infernal archives treasure this because it proves menace used to look like a cheerful man in an old car with a key that missed the ignition.
“2006 Ed, after cheerfully saying "Howdy officer" past a DUI checkpoint while still buzzed, did you actually believe you deserved that pass, or were you already composing this blog post and daring fate to give you a better ending?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I’ve been mulling that one over myself, and I figure the truth is somewhere between dumb luck and a half-formed blog post already scribbling itself behind my eyes. I didn’t deserve that pass, not one bit. I was buzzed, it was two in the morning, and my brain was still rattling around from that urine-smelling garage and the dentally-challenged stripper. When I saw those lights, my heart did a little flip, and I just went with the first thing that came out of my mouth: “Howdy officer.” I don’t know why that worked. Maybe he was tired, maybe he smelled the sausage on my breath and felt sorry for me. But yeah, part of me was already thinking, “This’ll make a heck of a story,” and daring fate to give me a better ending. It didn’t. The story just got longer. So, no, I didn’t deserve it, but I’ll take it. Take that, foul fate.
