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Oregon Daily Emerald Thursday, December 2, 2004 “1 gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.. ” Russell Baker | Journalist ■ In my opinion RYAN MURPHEY MR. SOPHISTICATION Stop being thrifty and have some empathy The last of the out-of-town relatives have gone home, the house is clean and the cook ing is finished. All of the leftovers have been used up, but post-holiday exhaustion and tryptophan-induced stupors have left many less than enthusiastic about preparing their own meals. Thanksgiving fallout is driving people out to restaurants in droves. For those in the food service industry, this is good and bad news. The good news is that more customers means more money. The bad news is more customers. The traditional job of a restaurant em ployee is to meet the customer’s needs, and the traditional job of the customer is to give the server money. Over the course of a meal, the server takes drink orders, clears plates and makes sure that every thing gets to the table as quickly as possi ble. Meanwhile, the busser cleans tables, sets tables, makes sure that waters are full and that the server and the customer are both happy. During this time, the cus tomer relaxes and enjoys the meal while the server provides the same care for five other tables at once and the busser covers the whole dining room. In a perfect world, this exchange would play out smoothly, ending with a satisfied cus tomer and a 15 percent or better tip. How ever, this is the real world. Restaurant em ployees are not always perfect and customers (especially those who have never worked in a restaurant) are rarely understanding. In many cases, customers feel the need to act in a manner that violates the customer/server relationship. It is impor tant that customers who choose to behave rudely understand that restaurant employ ees’ servile occupations also give them great power. After all, they are the ones who han dle the food between the kitchen and the table. Those who wish to avoid secret ingre dients may want to consider the following advice on customer etiquette. One piece of advice that should go with out saying is that never, under any circum stances, attempt to get your server’s atten tion with hand gestures or by addressing them as “Hey! ” This is true in every setting from the finest restaurant in Manhattan all the way down to an A&W in the middle of nowhere. It makes the person being ad dressed feel cheap, not to mention homici dal. Anyone who does this should be slapped immediately. Another reliable way to increase the chances of getting food with a dash of bodily fluids is to show up looking for a table two minutes before the restaurant closes. What people who have never worked in a restau rant before do not realize is that the person who is closing the restaurant has about an hour of work to do that can’t be started until the dining room is empty. If it’s a busy night, there are exceptions, but people who walk in to find a nearly empty dining room and MURPHEY, page 8 ■ Book reviews Behrendt and Tuccillo's candid book answers tough questions about relationships with humor and adince look Men's provocative thoughts on sex and women thoroughly exposed in Kelman's 'Girls' BY NAIASI1A CHILINGER1AN SENIOR PULSE REPORTER He doesn’t call when he says he will. You’re in a serious relation ship, but he doesn’t want to mar ry you. You’ve been dating for a while when he disappears into thin air. There is one simple reason for all these situations according to former “Sex and the City” consultant Greg Behrendt: “He’s just not that into you.” “He’s Just Not That Into You,” co-au thored by Behrendt and former “Sex and the City” executive story editor Liz Tliccil lo, is a blunt, honest guide to understand ing some of the most common problems women run into with men. Behrendt says that he “knows that guy you’re dating” — the one who is too busy with his career, just went through an awful breakup, has trust issues, etc. — and convinces you to can him, pronto. Each chapter outlines a common, unfortunate guy-girl situation, such as the ones with the guy who has a fear of intimacy, the man who cheats on you once and the dude who’s married. Advice is laid out in a question-and-an swer format, and chapters are complete with examples of “the way it should be” and workbook exercises. Familiarity and humor are the driving forces in this advice book. I recognized so many of the scenarios it was creepy. “He doesn’t really call me when he says he’s going to. In fact, he doesn’t really call me much at all.” Behrendt’s response? “They say that they don’t have even a mo ment in their insanely busy day to pick up the phone. It was just that crazy. Bullshit.” Behrendt’s no-non sense advice makes you think that the stuff you’re used to putting up with in relationships Hicks' new collection sheds light on his 'satirical world view' BY RYAN NYBURG PULSE EDITOR Sometimes it seems as if there are no interesting stand-up comedians any more and the form has regressed back to the days before Lenny Bruce when comedians told jokes about their mothers-in-law and the uncleanliness of French men. Since the 1980s, stand-up has become nothing more than a farm club for the future stars of crappy sitcoms, with fewer and fewer relevant performers every year. The new collection of the works of the late Bill Hicks, “Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines,” brings this dire situation to light. With a long career in stand-up but a rel atively short time spent in the national spotlight, Hicks ap peared to most audiences fully formed. With his razor-sharp wit and clear view of reality, he cre ated some of the most astute so cial commentary of the late 1980s and early ‘90s. He died of cancer in February 1994, cutting short a career that seemed des tined for great things. “Love All the People” outlines Hicks’ philosophy and provides in sight into his satirical world view. might be a waste of energy. “He’s & I* Just Not That Into You” asserts that women are goddesses worthy of un conditional romance and anything less should be disregarded. Due to the book’s comical language and recognizable sto ries, this argument is, for the most part, convincing. Even if you don’t accept the advice that any doubt in a romance must lead to “bye-bye,” you’re guaranteed to laugh. Workbook exercises include coloring in a red flag to remind yourself that a man who doesn’t want to have sex with you is not “The One.” Chapters include hilarious questions from “Nikki,” a woman who condemns Behrendt’s strict dating rules and sticks up for her emotionally un healthy love life. But the funniest part is that you’ll laugh at yourself when you re alize how common unacceptable male behavior is and how much you’ve put up with it. Although most suggestions are self-em powering, one of Behrendt’s standards is a bit controversial. He states that a woman shouldn't date a man who does n’t ask her out first, stating, “Do you really have time for a guy who’s so afraid of you that he’s not even capable of inviting you for coffee?” While his advice might seem ridiculous to some (What if he’s just too snyf j, lucciilo provides a A self-de scribed “misan thropic humanist,” Hicks took aim at igno rance, blandness and hypocrisy wnerever ne saw it. i ne door is chock full of Hicks’ barbed in sights as he discusses the war on drugs, television (“Lucifer’s dream box”), the Kennedy assas sination and the first President Bush. (“People ask me where I stand politically. It’s not that I disagree with Bush’s economic policy or his foreign policy, but that I believe he is a child of Sa tan here to destroy the planet Earth. Yeah, I’m a little to the left on that one.”) “Love” contains just about everything a die-hard Hicks fan would need of the man’s writing, but that is the problem. This is essentially a book for die-hards and even on that level it won’t fully satisfy. The transcripts are for acts that have been released on CD, meaning all of the per formances contain material most fans are already familiar with. Ana since the performances only cover a peri od of a few years, material is of ten repeated. This means readers have to trudge through up to three or four variations on the same comedic riff. The tran scripts also suffer from the sim ple fact that you are reading them rather than hearing them. Because Hicks’ delivery was just as important as the material it self, much of the humor fails to come through. Looking through the material collected for the work, it also be comes apparent that the subtitle is misleading. The letters and lyrics make up only a few pages of the actual text. Of these, only a couple of the letters in which Hicks defends himself against Christians offended by his mate rial are of any interest. And BY DAHVI FISCHER PULSE REPORTER If I were to assume that all men thought the way the fictional men did in Nic Kelman’s “Girls,” I would probably as sume that wealthy middle-aged men want nothing more than to undress and sexually ex perience young, barely-of-age women. In his 214-page book, Kelman uses ambigu ous male characters to take a sexually detailed look at what really turns a man on and what really keeps him going during those difficult, lonely or sexually frustrating moments. The book consists of a generous-sized selection of mini stories detailing the provocative thoughts that race through a man’s mind at any time, I any place and at any age. Kelman includes stories of a man who can’t fight the temptation of a good underaged hooker, a man who gets turned on by watch ing his girlfriend fornicate with another man, a man who is in a foreign country and man ages to run into a former sex partner and, my personal favorite, a married man who is hav ing a secret love affair with the young daugh ter of his close friend. While the stories are certainly not boring and give the mind quite a bit to ponder, many of them are strange, far-fetched and g anouv.. l \ia\ai tionally, many of the famous quotes placed between each story tended to not make sense or have any relevance to the theme of the book. On the flip side, however, “Girls” is enter taining, easy to GIRLS, page 11 f because only Hicks’ re sponses are published, the ar guments lack context. A big chunk of the book is made up of magazine articles, some dating back to Hicks’ sen ior year of high school, when he was one of the youngest per formers on the Texas stand-up scene. A few of these hold pass ing interest, but in general they provide little that is new and less that is worth republishing. An original script for Hicks’ planned-but-aborted BBC series is worth a look, but overall the book seems to lack relevant ma terial with which its intended au dience is not already familiar. What the book does offer is a chance to view Hicks’ work as a whole. Through this, his views on life and existence are given a well rounded presentation. Though cynical and as bitter as three-day-old coffee, his outlook in the end is a hopeful one. One might even come out of it believ ing that it is possible for a stand up comedian to be a relevant cul tural figure with something important to say. ryannyburg@dailyemerald.com
