Clancy and I spent the New Years at a music show in Surfenberg, the beach and resort town where we first met. The band we saw was a Delosa act that went national a while back. This is the first time I have seen them since they hit the big time (which was about when I left for Deseret). It was at the point where it was too crowded to be enjoyed on a regular basis, but not bad for a once-in-a-while thing and it provided for interesting people-watching.

What we find interesting about today’s fashion (for females, anyway) is how it often seems geared to accentuate imperfection. Some of the spaghetti top dealiebobbers make any girl with any pudge at all look practically pregnant! I’m not even sure what, besides that, may be the point. In fact, part of me wonders if that is the point. I wonder if they’re out there so that those girls with “perfect” figures can wear something that those without “perfect” figures shouldn’t.

I mean seriously. Since attractiveness at cattle-calls is a zero-sum game, if something makes everyone look better it makes no one look better. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the toothpick-figured tastemakers wanted something that the human-figured commoners couldn’t emulate.

One of the more humorous things of living out here is that you run across articles like this one, which looks at the alarming number of restaurants offering alcohol with food. Twenty-six in a town with a population of roughly 60k and nine private club liquor licenses.

Deseret limits the proof of alcohol, making the beer out here weaker than beer elsewhere. The exception is for private clubs, which require membership. The aforementioned Deseret town has a whopping nine clubs.

On the Shoshona side of the Deseret/Shoshona border, is Buchanan. By most accounts, Buke is the liquor capital of the country. Unsurprising since it’s the closest out-of-state location for a majority of the state. U of Deseret, Deseret A&M, and Beck State U, the biggest universities in the state totalling over 70k students, are all within a couple hours drive. As is Gazalem, the state’s capital and largest city.

Simon and I actually talked about Buchanan last night. Apparently his fiance Paige has a shirt that says “Buchanan, Shoshona. Whirl in, stumble out.”

Deseret, on the other hand, has its homegrown beer, Polygamy Porter (motto: “Why have just one?”).

Clancy and I were having dinner at Pizza Hut the other day and the day before at Perkins’s Restaurant and Bakery.

• there was a party going on while we were there. Not sure what they were celebrating, but they had a cake. The problem? They had no way to light the candles. They went around from table to table asking if anyone had a light, but no one had so much as a match. Only in Deseret…
• My ability to tune people out surpasses Clancy’s. There was a couple of college students (I’m guessing?) sitting at the table beside us. They were quite gregarious and one suspects that they were either drunk or something else. When we left, Clancy listed off the things about their life that she really didn’t need to hear. I, meanwhile, was able to tune them out almost entirely. One wonders if there is an evolutionary reason for men to be able to tune out women, put in place for the propagation of the species…
• I watched our waitress stand there for over five minutes without a thing to do while my full Mountain Dew glass sat there on the fountain, failing to quench my thirst. That’s one of the most frustrating things in restaurants. You ever stand at a fast food place, looking at every component of your order sitting there in the chute with all that’s required for your culinary pleasure is someone to put it together? I hate that!
• While we were eating, I felt a bulge underneath the sleeve of the sweatshirt I was wearing. I reached in and pulled out one of Clancy’s socks. No idea how it got in there. In the past I’ve found a pair of underwear on my calf and a sock on my hamstring. No idea on those, either, but what do you do when you’re at work and you have an extra pair of underwear on your possession? I threw it out.
• Pizza Hut should have never changed their logo. Their old one was the bomb, but their new one is sloppy. I feel the same way about the WW(F) wrestling logos. The old looked like a real league sports steal. The new one looks like a kid playing with crayons.
• When Clancy and I ate at Perkins we each independently decided that we would forego a main dish in favor of an appetizer and a couple of sides. When the waitress took the order to the back, we heard the cook exclaim “What the heck kind of order is this?”
• The service at Perkins was notable primarily because it wasn’t dreadful. It’s interesting how there can be two restaurants, both that probably pay their waitstaff about the same, and yet one ranges from decent to good and the other from awful to decent. Maybe I should write about HR cultures at some point.
• I’m one of those take-your-hat-off-when-you’re-eating kind of people. It’s sad to me when a father walks in with his two daughters and he wears his hat. No manners, I tell you.

This has all the trappings of a sitcom plot:

Two men who sued more than a half-dozen strip clubs because of extra fees charged for lap dances got some good news from a Houston appeals court.

But that could be bad news for other lap-dance fans, who may want their appreciation for that art form kept confidential. {…}

A lawyer for Meekey and Fulmer said the lawsuit may be made a class-action.

That could mean notifying a lot of other men who used credit cards to pay for lap dances in recent years.

And that might not go over very well in some households.

It reminds me of an incident many moons ago regarding the Skycap Inn.

My girlfriend Julie and I were sexually active at the time. Though we were consenting adults, we lacked a location once her parents nixed her bedroom at their house.

So one time we decided to get a hotel. Now women have this strange thing about wanting a hotel room they’re staying at not to be “dingy”, “dirty”, or “disgusting,” so we ended up staying at a pretty nice hotel near the airport named The Skycap Inn.

I paid cash for the room, but they still wanted a credit card in case of damage. I gave it to them without thinking about it.

Six months later I got a call from Mom. “Do you know anything about the Skycap Inn?”

“Not sure. Why?”

“Did you?”

I thought about denying it, but she wouldn’t pick that particular hotel out of thin air if she didn’t already know something. “Yeah. My friends and I needed a room to shoot a scene for a little film we’re making.”

I don’t know if she ever bought it, but I think she did. She didn’t challenge me on it. A few weeks later she felt comfortable enough to tell the story to some friends from church. I think it was one of those “we don’t want to know” things where she wanted to believe my story.

It turns out that they sent a “Did you like your service?” questionnaire and they’d taken the address off the deposit credit card.

In the end it was very good that I (half) came clean about getting the room there. Not only did I get away with it, but her first thought was that William Truman was my father: Bill Truman.

When the subject last came up, Mom and I wondered aloud how many cheating spouses had been busted by Skycap’s Quality Assurance team.

Becky tells an interesting I-met-a-celebrity story. The only celebrity I’ve ever met (outside of a convention of place you’re supposed to meet celebrities) was Sherman Howard, the actor for Lex Luthor in the old Superboy TV series (at least I think it was Howard, it might have been the other Lex Luthor from the first season).

Our conversation consisted of him saying “Excuse me” and me saying “sorry” and getting out of the way of the door to the beachside condominium we were each staying at.

But my middle brother’s ex-girlfriend’s mother has a much more interesting story, which I will recount to the best of my abilities. I have no verification that this is true, but she not an inveterate storyteller like my mother and I are, so it holds a bit more credibility. And, whether true or not, it’s amusing, which is what counts.

Mrs. Douglas was in a casino/hotel elevator in Las Vegas when it stopped and three black men – two very large ones – entered. One of the men said “Hit the floor.”

She dropped to the floor. One of the men clarified “The ground floor, ma’am” as he pressed the Level 1 button on the elevator.

She was understandably mortified.

For the rest of the trip, the hotel restaurant and bar declined her money. Everything, they told her, was paid for. When she was checking out, she was informed by the hotel that her room had been paid for. She asked “by whom.” The attendant said that she didn’t know, but gave her an envelope.

It read: “Thanks for the biggest laugh we’ve had all month. Best, Eddie Murphy and his two bodyguards.”

You can meet some really interesting people smoking at airports. I’m told that Amtrak (which at least used to have smoking cabins) has the same benefit.

Of course, the last time that I lit up at an airport, it was a bad thing because it was at the beginning of a trip that I had designated “non-smoking” that became smoking starting with that light.

But that temptation will now start being a bit removed because lighters will be banned past the security checkpoints at airports. That leaves matches, which I suck at lightning, and apparently even those may be banned as well.

I don’t really know how to feel about this. On one hand, I want a demonstrable threat before our lives are inconvenienced by the government. I don’t mean planes have to blow up first, but I do need it explained to me what danger the lighters pose when not used in conjunction with something that isn’t already banned. I remember that Richard Reid dork tried to do something with fire (matches, I believe), but I can’t remember what.

But yeah, on the other hand, I don’t want a plane to explode (or worse yet, run in to something again) just so that I am not a little inconvenienced.

Interestingly, with the ban in place for lighters in checked luggage, if both lighters and matches are banned from carry-ons, it could make things more than just a little inconvenient for frequent fliers. Having to buy and discard lighters and matches in every town gone through.

Okay, so we’re talking about a whopping 99 cents for people like me that don’t lose lighters with startling regularity.

Yeah, we smokers can be a petty bunch.

And, of course, part of me wonders if this isn’t just another attempt to marginalize smokers. Not that there aren’t security concerns, mind you, but that possible objections were dismissed because “They’re just smokers and they should quit anyway.”

Yeah, we smokers can be a paranoid bunch.

On a last note, Apparently Texas (the source and focus of the article) has more stringent anti-smoking regulations at airports than does Deseret. As Gazelem International Airport in the state’s capital city, they have indoor smoking areas that are closed off (it’s like a fishbowl!). In Houston’s airports, they don’t allow any smoking indoors whatsoever.

Whodathunkit?