The Snacks are Often Candy ©2017 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Do you work with an attractive young waitress named Julie G? I do. All that needs to be told today is that Julie's real nice and she brings snacks to work. 

     Julie always offers to share. The snacks are often candy, which I always decline—that shit's hella bad for you—but sometimes I'll sample her crackers or pretzels. The other night. I believe it was a Tuesday, Julie and I were the only waitpersons scheduled. We arrived at the same time. Julie broke out a bag of chips and asked if I'd like some. The chips were a kind I'd never heard of, Lay's® Kettle Cooked. I poured myself a modest handful and shoved them into my piehole. They were good!

      Julie ate a chip. "Yuck!" she exclaimed as a grimace crossed her pretty face, The chips were salted with a flavor called "Geektown Gyro™". I wasn't knocked out by that particular flavoring either—I mostly enjoyed the texture and crunchiness—but it wasn't offputting. Julie really hated it, though.

     Our three rezzies (seven total covers) all showed, along with a like number of walk-ins. Neither of us had to work all that hard and we each walked with well over a hundred bucks. We clocked out a little after 10:00 and prepared to walk to the parking lot together. "Hey. You want these chips? I didn't like them," said Julie.

     "Sure, thanks," said I and we walked into the night.

     It was kind of chilly out, and inside my whip too until the heat kicked in, so I put on my coat. It's real nice, an MLB officially-licensed Saint Louis Cardinals one. It was given to me by a now-former girlfriend who cruelly dumped me when I was diagnosed with commitmentphobia. On the way home I didn't buckle my seat belt (#FuckDonnyT-Rump!) but I did rock my Cards gear and started thinking about dinner. Since I already had chips, I decided on hummus. To get to a store that carried it and was still open, I detoured down a nice, quiet residential street.

     I was pretty close to the 24-hour Foodtown® when a siren blared and some blue lights flashed behind me. I wasn't speeding and I was totally sober. I have a valid driving license, car insurance, good tags and my registration, so I wasn't too worried (even though you never know how shit's gonna go down in these instances!). But I was, technically, in violation of America's oppressive seat belt laws. "Damn! That fascist pig has really good  eyesight," I thought to myself, bitterly.

     But seat belts weren't mentioned. Unbeknownst to me, I had a brake light out. I promised to fix it tomorrow and was permitted to leave, unticketed. I buckled up and headed to Foodtown, still clad in my bright red Saint Louis Cardinals merch.

     I was rung up by Msericka, a good-looking young white woman. She complimented my jacket and my choice of team to like. I think I was the only customer in there, so we had time to chat a minute. It turns out that Msericka's biological father was from Saint Louis and she'd inherited her fandom (and I guess not much else) from him.

     I left with my Supremely Spicy hummus by Sabra® product in a pretty good mood. I just met a cutie who liked my favorite team and had daddy issues!

     The radio was tuned to the "Everything that Rocks!" station and Led Zeppelin came on. I cranked it. I must of been pretty exhilarated because heading home, via the same quiet street I'd just gotten pulled over on, I forgot to buckle up.

     How was your night?

It Might as Well be Hockey ©2014 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     Well, it's been a minnit since a new episode of my struggling internet column has dropped. But check this out: Tonight I went to work, I waited on some people. Most of them were pretty cool, nobody was an outright A-hole or anything. We had some business but nothing crazy. I made adequate money for my efforts. I got cut at a decent hour and went home. Except for the getting cut and leaving at a time that I liked, it was a pretty average shift.
      And that's the way it's been lately. The only thing that's changed since I last checked in with y'all is that I quit my day job and have picked up some lunches at what has heretofore been my evening job. I'm just kind of bored and burned out with it all. I don't seem to have the energy and enthusiasm I had last summer and I want it back! On the for-real, that got a little out of hand last year; I want a slightly more mellow version of what I had in 2013. Oh well, keep eating right and exercising!
I'm not quite ready to give up on These American Servers™  (or being one of them) just yet. Since I don't really have anything restaurant-related that I can even pretend might be interesting, I'm going to go off-topic. The first one's about politics and the second concerns sports. Stick around and pretend to enjoy!

      If you keep up with politics, you might be aware that there was a little bit of a contretemps about who was going to be the Republican nominee for United States senate from Mississippi this year. Like in a lot of southern jurisdictions, a candidate in the Magnolia State has to get at least one vote more than 50% from those who deigned to participate to be declared the winner. If no one scores that objective,the top two finishers face off in another contest, with all the other challengers eliminated.
     The incumbent, Thad Cochran, came in second, but the challenger, Tyler Pastornicky, didn't quite manage to hit that magic 50%, because another, minor candidate was in the mix and he got about three per cent to fuck things up for Tyler. So incumbent Cochran reached out to eligible voters who are traditionally more Democratic to help him out in the runoff. He also got popular Mississippi guy, former New York Jets QB Brett Farve, to do a campaign commercial. Apparently, the strategy worked, because Senator Thad won the runoff.
     If I'd been able to vote in that contest, I'd of been like, "Fuck that!" Why should I vote for some reprehensible right-winger and help him out? He'd have to promise a lot more than that he'd (probably) be only slightly better than his opponent. But now that Mr. Pastornicky and his minions are acting like such petulant little bitches about the results—kind of like George Bush Jr back in November of 2000—I'm glad things worked out the way they did. The senator will PROBABLY prevail in the general election (c'mon, it's Mississippi) but might be inclined to be (very) slightly less douchey, feeling that he might owe his newest supporters a little something. And if the Pastornicky contingent stays home in droves during that election, the (most likely extremely) conservative Democrat, Travis Childers, might actually get a narrow victory. If that shut the Republicans out of a majority in the United States senate, that'd be awesome.

     I really like baseball. It's my favorite spectator sport. But I really, really hate the new (this is its third season) ordeal where there are two wildcard teams. Major League Baseball has three divisions per conference. so three teams finish in first place. The two best teams that didn't finish first face off in a one-game, winner-take-all playoff for the right to play the best of the first-place finishers in a best-of-five series for the right to go to the conference championship. To me, this is some bovine cabins. One of the things that made baseball great was that the playoff teams deserved to be playoff teams. This new format is so bad, it might as well be hockey. It didn't happen because it was a good thing for the sport, it happened in the hope of some more dumb shit to put on cable TV and maybe increase the chance of selling a few more September tickets in Kansas City and Pittsburgh, There's a good chance my favorite team, the Saint Louis Cardinals, might benefit from this new ordeal, and it's pretty sweet to have your team in the post-season  every year, but I still don't like it. This diluted bullshit is seriously taking away my enjoyment of the regular season. How about you?
     Speaking of baseball, great former Cards manager Tony LaRussa retired after the 2011 season wherein his squad won their most recent world championship. According to ESPN, TLR has unretired and taken an office job with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Phoenix team's not very good. If they don't turn things around real soon, I believe Tony will take over as field manager for them, at least on a temporary basis, either this year or next. You read it here first!