That Guy

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a new camera.

I was finding myself in a pinch at work more and more for the need for a simple photo that didn't require paying a professional photographer. I needed a cheap, utilitarian point-and-shoot that I could carry around and put to use when duty called.

And besides, I think I can take a decent photo.

I was surprised to find just what a digital camera can do these days, especially one as affordable as this handy little Sony.

Face Detection? A Smile recognition function? An "easy" mode?

WTF? This thing does everything but wipe my ass... and it comes with a 96-page manual (as a pdf file of course).

I took it out to lunch one day to experiment with the settings and modes and basically just try to familiarize myself with the thing. I snapped a picture of my lunch. My co-worker looked at me as I readied the camera by my plate and said, "You're not going to be that guy."

"What guy?" I said.

"The guy who takes a picture of everything he eats," said my co-worker.

I laughed.

"Oh, that guy," I said.

That guy.

Haha.

Tales From The Catering Tent

It is the busy season for catering.

September is not only a popular time for people to get married (I work a lot of weddings) but it is also the time for the local universities to stroke their employees and for people to party in the name of Devils and Heels.

This weekend I worked a rehearsal dinner in the Pope Box at Kenan Stadium on the campus of UNC.

"This is a nice place for a party," said one guest as he approached the bar.
"Yeah, especially if you're a Tar Heel fan," I said.
He grimaced and said, "that's the thing, most of us here are Wake Forest fans."

Oh the irony.

Because you know how Wake fans can be.

I also worked two school functions recently. One was a party for new students at UNC's graduate program for pathology.

A lively bunch indeed.

Another was at the Hart House - the home for Duke's president - which was a reacharound, er, cocktail hour for tenured professors.

Then there was a series of wedding receptions, one where a drunken guy danced to the music with his toddler backpack'ed to himself. This same fellow, after his son fell asleep, took him off and laid him on a blanket under the magnolia tree behind my bar.

"Looks like yer also gonna be doing some babysitting," he said to me as he laid his kid down on the ground.

They almost left without him.

Some people shouldn't be allowed to have kids.

At another wedding, some guy showed up in a kilt and asked where he could park. My Egyptian co-worker confessed he had never seen anything like it. I told him he was probably going to play the bagpipes during the ceremony. Then the wedding party showed up and all the groomsmen wore kilts.

I told him I had never seen anything like it.

Just the other night, while moving some rental equipment (china, flatware), a few of us spotted this gigantic spider.

"Be careful," said one of my co-workers. "It could be a brown recluse". I told her I thought it was far too big to be a brown recluse. See came over to look at it as another girl took a picture of it with her phone.

"Yeah, brown recluses don't have all that fuzzy stuff on their backs," she said agreeing with me.

I moved the container that the spider had set up shop in over to some bushes and attempted to tip it so that the spider could go back to nature but the spider fell to the ground and when it hit the cement an explosion of tiny dots radiated out from the arachnoid.

"Oh my," said the girl with the phone.

"Guess she was a mama."

I immediately thought of Charlotte's Web.

A Task Of Herculean Proportions

Well maybe many tasks but starting with the show my band played last night, I will either have to work a catering gig or play with my band 11 out of the next 13 days.

That's pretty brutal if I may put it bluntly: Imagine getting up with your kids at 7:30am everyday, making them breakfast (and lunch for school), doing household chores for the next few hours while Number 2 is at playschool (and writing to meet deadlines), entertaining both kids afterschool until dinner (which I will have to make) and then head off to work some party until God knows when (or in the case of last night play in some smoky club until God knows when). Then come home and pray for a good night's sleep so you can wake up and start the whole process over again... like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

This is my life right now.

In two weeks I'm sure I'll be writing about having bronchitis or the flu or some shit.

I'm smart enough to wade through the waters with caution but being dead dog tired doesn't ward off the cooties very well.

The BHH, Merv and Me

Unless you live under a rock you probably heard that Merv Griffin passed away this week. I worked for Merv for a few years in the early '90s.

Sort of.

I was a pool boy at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills that Merv owned.

At the time, I had given up on the prospect of finding full-time employment in the film industry and had taken the age old task of working part-time shit jobs and working as a freelance journalist part-time.

I had spent the better part of two months working as a bicycle messenger in downtown Los Angeles ferrying documents back and forth between law offices and the district and superior courts. I loved being on my bike all day and loved the outcome of that: I had legs of steel and lungs the size of the Grand Canyon. But the company I worked for treated us messengers like pawns and paid a wage that was barely livable(I think I was making like $6.50 and hour - in 1993 - in LA!). So one day while waiting for a delivery I scanned the Help Wanted classifieds and saw that the Beverly Hilton was hiring for valet drivers. I had spent the better part of my college days working as a courier in DC so I knew how to drive a car. And I figured the tips would be good.

I called in work late the next day and then went to the hotel and filled out application before arriving at work several hours late. The next day I got a call saying that while I wasn't qualified to be a valet because I didn't have experience with models like Bentleys and Rolls Royces. No shit! But the girl in HR did say, "we are looking for a pool attendant."

A couple of weeks later I found myself poolside at the Beverly Hilton passing out towels to guests and cleaning the Olympci size pool in the mornings.

This was the hotel that had the storied Trader Vic's.

This was the hotel that held the Golden Globe Awards.

This was the hotel that Heidi Fleiss got busted running her prostitution ring in.

There we a lot of odd happenings going on around that place and many stories - too many to delve into at this moment.

But I will tell the Christmas Tree story...

One year during Christmas, there was a celebrity tree auction held in the hotel of the lobby. Essentially, this meant that famous people sent their assistants over to one of the several ballrooms designated for tree decoration to do their work. For two weeks the hotel ballrooms were filled with queeny bitches and uptight wenches all trying to "outdo" each other with their fashion sense.

Rosanne was currently bitch of all bitches at this time so she had her personal assistant cover her tree in black roses.

Whoopi Goldberg was currently in some Star Trek movie so hers was appropriately themed.

We pool boys were called in to help move the trees to the lobby since we were under the guidance of the Maintenance Dept. A few assistants made the blunder of not considering the fact that the doorway out of the ballroom was 8 feet so their 10 foot trees had to be leaned through resulting in ornaments and decorations taking the plunge.

One tree in particular caused us a great problem: it was Bob Hope's tree and it was decorated like Carmen Miranda and had all this fruit on top of it thus making it top heavy.

So me and my co-worker very carefully guided this tree down the hall into the lobby where our boss, Rick, Merv Griffin, and a photographer from somewhere were discussing placement of the said trees.

We stood and waited as they labored over something truly not worthy of laboring over and at some moment in the conversation I saw my co-worker place his leg on the dolly. Then in the kind of slow motion you only see in movies, we all watched helplessly as the Bob Hope tree started to slowly fall. I glanced at the faces around me, then back at the tree, then back at the faces.

Everything not only appeared to be happening in slow motion but in total silence as well. A silence broken by the loud pop of ceramic bulbs exploding on impact.

I laughed. Not a giggle laugh. But a hardy bellow and then immediately had to cup my mouth, turn my back and try not to let them see my shoulders shaking.

"Well don't just stand there boys!" screamed Rick. "Clean that up!"

The damage was too hard to overcome and Bob's tree ended up nestled in a corner because that was the only way it could stand up. We wondered how much it went for in the auction.

It was truly one of the funniest and most surreal moments of my life.

Currently On Tap...

 

A few months back one of my catering gigs had me slinging food in the VIP tent at the World Beer Festival in Raleigh. As part of the VIP ticket, customers where treated to "exclusive" beers which weren't being tasted by the public in the two makeshift beer halls.

I had the smart sense to pull a double that day, working both the afternoon and evening sessions. This allowed for a one hour break in between to rest - and well - sample a few beers. I chatted up one of the volunteers who man'ed one of the beer stations asking him about the beer he was serving. This in turn led to a conversation with one of the master brewers who insisted I stop by his tent at some point.

"They can't fire you for drinking beer at a beer festival can they?" he said.

I told them that they could.

"Well that's not right man!" he said.

On the other hand, it's not unusual when working in fine dining that one has to sample or taste what you are serving. A lot of times tending bar, obscure wines will be served and you at least need to take a swallow just to be able to aptly describe said beverage to your guests.

So with an hour to kill and an empty VIP tent, I sampled a beer or two. I noticed Atlanta's Sweetwater Brewing's 420 Ale which I've had in the past and had half a glass. They don't distribute it around here but I did score a six pack in western NC when we rented a cabin in the mountains last spring.

The other beer I tried was from Bell's Brewery and it was called Two Hearted Ale.

It was yummy. Very yummy.

So the following week at band practice I told my fellow beer geek bandmates about the beer and how I met the publisher of All About Beer magazine at the beer fest and he told me about some other noteworthy brews to try which of course I couldn't remember nor did I have the chance. Practice was a good one and we felt we'd accomplished a great deal in a short period of time so we called practice and went to the local bar... which turned out to have Two Hearted Ale on tap!

Which was not only awesome news but also meant the beer was being distributed locally.

I've since found a few places that carrying it but it's not cheap. It $8.99 a six pack but well worth every penny. I don't get to drink it as often as I'd like because of that but then again if you drank good beer all the time it wouldn't be that special when you did have it right?

But I do plan on taking at least a 12 pack to the beach when we go next week.

That Old Cliche

 

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Here is a picture of my 4-year-old doing "work" on a dead lap top.

He's been kind of moody lately. Mostly because since the summer began he has lost his personal time with me. When his older brother was in school, we had half days together on Monday, Thursday, Friday and all day together on Tuesdays and Wednesdays until we picked up Spencer from elementary school at 3:30pm.

Now all day everyday it's a threesome.

Of course Spencer is jazzed just to be able to hang out with me (affectionately known as Papa G) and his little bro who is now his right hand man in free play and in terrorizing me.

Spencer got some serious big boy time with Papa G the other day when he helped me deliver some stuff. One of the odd jobs that I do is deliver maps and visitor guides to the local hotels, senior centers and parks & rec offices for the Orange County Visitors Bureau. On Monday morning my wife took Cole to his annual check-up while Spencer and I made the rounds making deliveries. By the third delivery, after the third person echoed the sentiment "You got a helper today!" Spencer suggested that it might be a good idea if he got paid for his services.

I thought it was a good idea.

So we agreed on the nominal fee of $1 per deliver for him.

He helped me make 9 deliveries.

Later in the day, I heard a knock on the door and Spencer came in with two boxes on a dolly.

"Delivery for Greg Barbera," he said.

Kids, they soak up everything like a sponge.

It's Tourney Time!

Yes folks, it is officially tournament time in my neck of the woods and that is some serious shit to some people (most people!). I live in ACC country where UNC, Duke and NC State all rub elbows and shoulders with each other on a regular basis.

Now I grew up in ACC territory and lived pretty much in the shadow of the University of Maryland but I was never a Terps fan as my old man went to Villanova so the Big East took priority over the ACC in my family's household.

People often toss around the cliche that basketball is like a religion around here, but it is pretty much true - much like Sunday mornings, everything stops when there is a basketball game on in Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.

I first encountered this phenomenon when I moved to Carrboro - a small town east of Chapel Hill - from Los Angeles in 1995. Now I had been well-versed in the fact that the locals took their indie rock music scene very seriously and in the mid-'90s. The town would become a mecca for the indie scene; kids still come to worship it to this day.

But I was totally unprepared for the basketball fever.

It's an eerie feeling when you go to the grocery store in a college town and all the aisles are empty.

"What's going on today?" I asked the teller. "Carolina game," she said.

Of course I would should learn of the huge UNC/Duke rival, of the canonized State coach Jimmy V, and of how some people just purely can't get along with one another based on the color they wear.

When I worked in Raleigh at a weekly newspaper, one of my co-workers told me how in high school the teachers would just leave the ACC tournament on TVs in the classrooms all day and nobody was expected to do much of anything except for cheer on the Wolfpack. And of course it's perfectly understandable, if not downright acceptable, to play hooky from work on ACC Friday. If you are one of the unfortunate saps who has to work, everyone turns a blind eye to having the TV or radio on or obsessively looking at the sports ticker at the bottom of your computer screen.

In the 12 years that I have lived here, I have only had the opportunity to see two UNC games and one Duke game, the latter coming just last week.

I was working a Duke/Maryland pre-game party for a local catering company. We were set up in the Hall Of Fame room which is connected to Cameron Indoor Stadium where Duke plays. Cameron is legendary for many things, from its tiny size and intimate setting to giving birth to the Cameron Crazies - those over-enthusiastic fans who paint their faces, wave hands and bounce up and down for the entire duration of the game.

My co-worker had gone to Duke and was asking me if I'd ever seen a game at Cameron.

"Nope," I said. "But I've always wanted to."
"We could totally sneak in," he said. "I mean we're practically already in the building."

So he spent the better part of the two hour pre-game party schmoozing security guards with plates of food and endless sodas. But it was all for naught because when our shift wound down and the game got underway, the hostess of the party said she had two extra tickets and asked if anyone on our staff wanted to go.

An that's when it came down to me and my co-worker.

We didn't finished our breakdown until close to half time so he suggested we go over to the campus bar and pound some beers. "Sounds like a great idea," I said. At the bar he told everyone that we were going to the game and that it was going to be my first time at Cameron which was kind of like having some one who has gone to Spring Break three times nod at the fellow who was about to lose his Spring Break virginity - that look that said, "you have no idea what you are in for."

"I'm excited," I said. I never let on that I wasn't a Duke fan but then again I went in the spirit of competition not as a fan of either team. "This is just so random," I said to him.

"I was just watching this episode of Oprah about this whole positive thinking craze surrounding this movie The Secret and the book the Laws Of Attraction," I said trailing off as I looked at the big screen and half time stats.

"Dude," he said. "Never begin a conversation that starts with 'I was watching Oprah,'" he explained as he patted my shoulder.

With that, we finished our beers and watched the game.

And I have to say it was exciting; the place was filled with electricity and at only 7,000 seats it was downright intimate even though we had nosebleed seats.

Now if I could just see a Carolina/Duke game at Cameron, with Carolina winning, that would be utmost fulfilling...

Go Heels!!