6/20/2003 11:14:16 AM|||Travis|||

Wow, Friday already?

Well, its all understandable because I got my first bartending job which started yesterday. What a riot. I am training now, so I am working with the expert (defined as a bartender who has worked at the place for over ten years) who attracts a local following. Most of these people are older, retired Santa Barbara folk with nothing better to do than to get shaalacked every night until we have to kick their poor old ass out of the bar.

In a strange way though it feels like a twisted sitcom, as all of these people know everything about said bartender (and I mean everything). I guess it comes with the territory- if you hang out with drunk people all day you are bound to get into some drunken philosophic conversation, drunken relationship conversation and just about every type of drunken conversation that there is to slur about. I learned more about this one guy in a night then I could have picked up over a year.

But its ultimately a sad place. Is this what happens to you at 50? Will I be coming into a bar everynight because there is nothing in my pathetic life except a single personality behind a bar?

The job is a cross between being a servent and a talk show host. There is always going to be some conversation around the bar, guided by the almighty bartender. At bigger bars the relationship isn't as tight as it is in the smaller ones. The smaller ones is where the people come to meet the other people that they know... it is their little personal circle of friends. It really is their life.

Are you superstious? (no idea how to spell that. Oh its superstitious.)

Last night I was staring into the night sky, noticing how the entire thing looks like a giant dome. As I looked up I almost started to walk away, but for some reason, I got one of those feelings. So I looked on. And thats when it came, streaking bright across the night sky with a shower of sparks as it skipped sublimed in the upper atomnessphere.

What a way to go.

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