A Thing or Two About Bartending

I once heard Anthony Bourdain say, in an interview, that working in the kitchen was all about avoiding a disaster. Everything you do in one way or another is preventing chaos or a disaster of some sort and he couldn't be more right. This applies to the kitchen at a restaurant, it applies to the servers out on the floor and it definitely applies to the bar. From the minute you're in to the minute you clock out your job is to ensure that your table has no complaints, the drinks are done right, the food comes out on time and when the food comes it better be correct, hot and taste great. Spoon? Fork? Refill? ….from beginning to end, avoiding disaster.

In the close to 6 years I've worked behind a bar I have seen many, many a things and I have had many a crazy nights. Sure everyone has a busy night, or a night that doesn't go as smoothly as we wish but I am taking about those really bad ones. The deep in the weeds, knee deep in shit, oh-my-god-when-will-I-get-the-fuck-out-off-here kind of nights. They are few and far between but when they come they come with a fury. Bartending is not easy, nothing in this industry is of course, but for some reason people tend to think bartending is all fun and games. It is fun to make drinks of course and it is easier for us to have off the cuff or informal conversations with our customers but the fun stops there. Everything else is a balancing act and in the end we have a job to perform just like everybody else. Good bartenders will be fully aware of this fact and live by it. The terrible ones still think they became bartenders so they can pick up chicks and will spend their whole night talking to the girl at the end of the bar while you wait for another drink for 20 or 30 minutes.

So Saturday rolls around and it was one of those nights. Busy as all hell and all at once too. The tables adjacent to the bar, the bar, the entire restaurant, everything....at once. Bartenders sometimes get put in crazy situations and that is fine because we can usually handle it. I'm pretty proud of the guys I work with because when the deck is stacked against us, no one complains no matter how screwed we are. We just get to work. So when the doors opened and drink tickets started flooding in we get to work. When the bar filled up, three people deep, we kept on working and when an adjacent cocktail area becomes our responsibility, we kept on working . It was a perfect storm. A storm that rolled into town in the blink of an eye.

In the middle of it, it is all too easy to get tunnel vision. You have a hundred things to do, twenty different people vying for your attention all at once and your mind wants to ignore every single one of them. It has happened to me and I have seen it happen to others. I have seen bartenders lose their cool, lose their focus and in this business if you can't stay focused you might as well pack up and go home because you are screwed the minute you set foot behind the bar. Focus is key. At the busiest moment, when I felt myself starting to lose control of the situation I stopped and remembered something Greg Maddux once said. When asked how he worked himself out of a jam Maddux said that his old baseball coach taught him to slow everything down. Your basic instinct is to speed up, get out of the situation as fast as possible. While this makes perfect sense it makes you less efficient and works against you. So I stopped and I slowed it down. I took a deep breath and slowed the situation down in my head...and got back to work.

I once asked a friend of mine who is a chef and has worked in some very busy kitchens why he chose to work in this industry. “Martin, I was in the Navy” he said “I used to land fighter planes on an aircraft carrier...I would miss the adrenaline rush if I ever got a desk job”. That stuck with me because in a way I too have become a victim of that addiction. Nights like Saturday will kick your ass. They will break you down, chew you up and spit you out but in the end it's a rush, the thrill of knowing you beat it. It goes farther than just counting tips at the end of the night. For us of those who take pride in it, it is a personal victory, the adrenaline rush is the trophy you get to take home.

Hi my name is Martin and I'm a Nyquil-holic!

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is copious amounts of Thera-flu, Nyquil and sleep! It's that pesky flu bug that seems to be going around lately. My co-workers have come down with it, I have come down with it (and I rarely get sick) and even my brother has come down with it. So today I get home after a really long and painful day at work, made myself some tea and crawled right into bed. Every single limb in my body hurts and feels weak, my head is burning and I've got that nagging cough. Good times all around.

I was suppose to write this last night and the idea is to have a new entry on Tuesdays but alas my health at the moment was not going to allow that. Tuesdays work for me since they are at the end of what is effectively my weekend. It seems like a good way to close out/begin the week. So there it is, expect a new entry on Tuesday nights.

So last night my buddy from high school, Ryan, and I grabbed some coffee at the Gypsy Den, an old hang out of ours located in the Artist Village in downtown Santa Ana. Ryan and I have been going there since we where in school and its a nice place to just sit down, enjoy a cup of coffee and just clear your head. I was telling him how I've felt this enormous amount of focus in the last few months. So about 5 years back I went through something that I suppose you can say knocked me off my axis. I came out of it feeling completely different and really hating myself for it. I wasn't motivated to do anything and it was as if someone had just shut off the lights inside and closed for business. I was fully aware of this of course and became increasingly angry because of it. I didn't feel anything and it bothered me to the core. A lot of time has passed since then and through a very slow and painful process I think I have healed. So what I mean by “focus” is that I feel I have faced my demons and become stronger for it. For the first time in a very long time I feel motivated to get back out there and fight for something, to take risks, to feel passionate about something/someone. I know what I want and I am willing to be aggressive and fight for it.

Like I was telling him and it has become my battle cry the last week, that I have realized that all those things that would make me happy, all of those things I want in life, I deserve and I am no less worthy of acquiring than anyone else. That, I believe, is our biggest obstacle. Sometimes without even thinking about it we stand in our own way. We feel like we don't deserve something. Why does John Doe have a good job, a nice car, a great relationship but I don't? Sure sometimes there are things we can't control but if you find yourself in this situation you have to ask yourself if you've done everything in your power to try and achieve what you want in your life?

I for one would like to get back to writing. I would like to pick up my guitar again and jam with old friends. I would like to play sports again. I would like to have my own place. All these things are achievable and I don't see why, with a little effort and hard work, I can't achieve them.

So that is it for today. Sorry to cut it short but I am going to crawl back into bed and watch some more episodes of Dexter which thanks to my brother Jorge I am now hooked on. If you haven't checked it out do yourself a favor and watch it. It is brilliant and really well written.

The slightly too late to be considered a Thanksgiving post, post.

Last night, between drinking large amounts of Jameson Irish whiskey, laying in the bed of a moving truck and sitting on my friend Craig's couch being scolded for taking off and attempting to walk through Santa Ana at 2 in the morning, I lost my wallet. So that kind of set the mood for the entire day and instead of enjoying a day of football and loafing around I spent the entire morning retracing my steps and calling everyone who's number I had and asking them to call those who's numbers I didn't. It sucked and if you've lost something as valuable as your wallet you know how stressful it can be. To make matters worse everything was closed today so I couldn't check with the pub to see if I had left it there nor could I call my bank to cancel my card. It was a weird day that only got stranger when half way through my phone decided to, without warning, stop working.

So of course I couldn't continue my search for my wallet and finally had to come to terms with the fact that I may never find that wallet and begin the long and annoying process of replacing everything in it. Funny how things work out sometimes. Because my phone stopped working I didn't get the text from my friend Ryan who despite being in another state for the holidays had joined in, in the efforts to locate it. Ryan had located my wallet which strangely enough was bouncing around in the bed of his friends truck. Let me explain. When we left the pub last night we had all decided to head over to Craig's house which is about two or three blocks from the pub. Some walked there, some drove, my friend Alan and I got ourselves a ride...in the back of his friends truck. So there it was, imagine that, sitting in the back of someones truck. The last place you look. No, really.

So the day was saved and I am glad to say that I managed to have a great Thanksgiving with the family despite all the distractions. Dad came over and we had a big meal together. It always feels right to have the family together and if my brother goes off to the Marines soon as he plans it will probably be a while before we get together like this again. This is what I find myself thankful for this Thanksgiving. Sure finding my wallet was an added relief but what matters the most to me is having my family with me, this is what I find myself thankful for.

There is a lot I have learned over this past year, a lot of growing up I've done and if today taught me anything it is that I have changed for the best. I got past the bad stuff and enjoyed the things that mattered. All those things I can't or couldn't control? Well I worried at first of course but then realized stressing out about it didn't help me one bit in correcting the problem. I did my share of loafing around, eating large amounts of honey baked ham and spending time with the fam. Overall quite a successful day.

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.

First things first.

You may have noticed that I have changed the name of this blog. I wanted to take a moment to explain why I have done so. When I first started this blog I wasn’t completely sold on the name for it. The title was one that my friend Fabian and I had brainstormed one night and while I loved the sound of it I never really knew where I wanted to go with it nor that it represented me or my interests. Single Barrel Writings felt a little stuffy, a little pretentious even and something about it didn’t seem right. Everyone who knows me knows what a huge baseball nut I am and the other day while watching Dallas Braden pitch from the stretch the idea came to me. This isn’t going to be a sports blog as I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to go that route but I think it reflects me very well.

On we go.

World Cup soccer has begun and you bet I’m excited! Despite the fact that I don’t follow soccer as much as I should, I can’t help but get excited when international play rolls around. I have said it a few times on my facebook about how, when I was younger, soccer was the one thing the old man and I bonded over. Every Sunday my dad would set up shop in front of the television and it was an all day marathon of soccer. You needed to take you to the store? Well you had to wait for the game to be over and even then you had maybe 30 minutes or so before the next game started so you better know where to find what you need to grab. Needless to say we weren’t the family that went out a lot on weekends and I couldn’t understand what his fascination with soccer was all about, I didn’t understand that is until I discovered baseball.

My dad liked to talk about how his biggest dream growing up in Acapulco was to be a great soccer player. Every now and then he would share how the kids in his neighborhood where too poor to buy a soccer ball and thus had to make their own out of old rags. The fields here, he reminded us, where a godsend because in his neighborhood they had to play futbol barefoot and on gravel filled lots. When we played soccer as children he was the first one up, ready to go, all the time, on time and we hated this! We hated it at first of course because if ever we where lazy and wanted to get out of playing it was practically impossible to do this. He would wake us, feed us, help us get our uniforms together and drive out to the park. My father was there at every single one of our games (I have two younger brothers who also played soccer) and he cheered us on. My father was the Cal Ripken Jr. of soccer dads. He never missed a game.

Since we no longer live under the same roof and my father works very early in the morning, which it seems is when most games will be played, I will not be watching as many games with my old man as I would like. He still is though, just a phone call away and I am quite aware of how blessed I am for of this. Happy Fathers Day Dad!

On another note I will be the first to admit that I haven’t been very good at updating the blog this week and the truth is that I’ve got a lot going on. This week both my brothers graduate, one from junior high and the other one from high school. Wow, time does fly! It is amazing how much my brothers and I have gone through together. I remember when they where little and I walked them to and from school and now here one is a grown man and the other is entering the last four years of his childhood. I guess it goes without saying that I am extremely proud of them.

Also starting this week I have begun to work on what I call my “Better Body, Better Spirit, Better Mind” program. What is this program about? Well I will go into it further in an upcoming post but simply put it is a series of projects that I believe will bring about inner peace and happiness. Part of this program is to get back in physical shape and that has probably been the toughest part of it all. I was in pretty good shape over a year and a half ago after my attempt to do the P90X fitness program. Now let me tell you that program is hard, but it works! I was able to get through the halfway point and for some strange reason I just dropped it. It wasn’t like I couldn’t handle it anymore, for I was in great shape at the time, I just simply stopped doing it and to this day regret doing so. Now I must start from scratch, which sucks but it’s ok, I am determined to make it work this time.

Part of this program as well is to finish my creative projects such as “the” screenplay I have been working on for a while. I kind of hit a wall a few months back due in large part with not being sure where I want to take this story. It is a very delicate story based very heavily on personal experiences and I am still working on the best possible way to tell it. So in the coming days I need to set aside some time and work on a synopsis and really lay it all out and begin the delicate process of weaving this story together.

So come on, put that “comments” section to good use and tell me, in honor of the Father’s Day this week, what bonding experience with your dad stands out in your mind? or if you are working on summer projects, what are they?

MLB: The Imperfect Game.

Forgive me, but I am still angry. One day later and I am still livid. Many of you who know me know that my biggest passion is and always will be baseball. So forgive me if on the heels of one of the greatest injustices in the history of the sport, I am still a little angry.

What would have been a perfect game, the third this season and the third within the time frame of a month, quickly turned into one giant black eye for Major League Baseball. Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was one out away from one or the rarest achievements in baseball history, the perfect game. Jason Donald hit a weak grounder to first baseman Miguel Cabrera who the threw to Galarraga covering at first. Galarraga beat Donald to the bag by over a step and a half yet umpire Jim Joyce flung his arms out and called him safe. 9 innings of perfection down the tube on a blown call.

But don’t get me wrong, it is not Joyce I am upset at, no this goes deeper than that. Jim Joyce will have to live with this mistake for the rest of his life, I don’t exactly envy the man. His career, unfortunately, will be defined by such a costly error and the fact is that no ump deserves to be put in that position.

Baseball purists love to throw words at you like tradition, and human element, and are notorious for their nostalgia and hard headedness. It is the belief that if it has worked for over 100 years then why change it? It is this same flawed thinking that has put MLB in the predicament it now finds itself. For years MLB has had the technology to implement instant replay but refused citing that it would slow down the game and that the human element is what makes the game unique and exciting. Bud Selig once said,

“Yes, we had some incidents that certainly need to be looked at. So I'm not minimizing them. But do I believe in instant replay? No, I do not, ... Human error is part of our sport.”

Perhaps, more important than preserving this “human element” is preserving the integrity of the sport. I for one am tired of baseball living in a fantasy world, of pretending exist in a bubble of “1931” and refusing to live in modern times. In the year 2010 we can capture a play on video not just from multiple angles but also in super slow motion. If baseball was being asked to be the pioneer in this technology I can understand the hesitation but the sport has been around longer than basketball and football, both sports who now employ the use of instant replay.

I am not advocating the use of instant replay to review calls on balls and strikes but it baffles me how MLB thinks using replay is only appropriate on defining whether a ball is fair or foul or a homerun or not. Last night was not an insignificant game, it was a chance, a once in a lifetime chance, for a young man to enter the record books in a sport he has worked hard all his life to excel in. It was an injustice and it broke the hearts of baseball fans everywhere including the very same umpire who made that call.

They say no one is perfect but last night on that mound at Comerica Park, Armando Galarrago was perfect, his teammates behind him where perfect, Austin Jackson with his incredible over the shoulder catch was perfect. Sadly, Jim Joyce was not and the league that stands behind him failed him by not granting him the opportunity to get it right.

The Long Way Home: a tribute

I lay in bed, I close my eyes and I picture the coast. Just south of San Luis Obispo, winding down through 101, the road spits you out onto the coast. Before you an ocean so large and so blue that it knocks the air out of you, leaving you in a state of awe. We turned south, as if breaking formation, past the cliffs of Shell Beach and along the sands of Pismo. In my mind I see the coast, just like I remember seeing it from inside my 93’ Nissan Altima. Windows down and in came the wind, pirouetting through the sunroof, across my hair and face and right on down to my fingertips. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky on that day and the steady, melodic hum of the engine, its pistons firing in perfect synchronization, was the only music I needed. My dear 461 sailed through the heart of California on that day taking me home from one of our biggest adventures yet. This is how I choose to remember it.

I had driven up from Riverside County to see my Oakland Athletics play in game 3 of the 2006 American League Division Series. It was a very long and physically taxing trip which, since I only had enough money to get there and back, found me sleeping in my car not too far from the Coliseum. Normally, whenever I would drive up to the San Francisco bay area, I would usually opt for the quickest route home, that is along California’s main artery, Interstate 5. This time around however, emboldened by my team’s victory, I decided to take the long way, a more scenic route than I-5, the 101.

Further south, past Santa Barbara and Ventura we once again broke formation and followed the highway back inland. A few miles outside of Los Angeles I heard and felt a loud thump although it was unclear where it had come from. I quickly looked up to my rear-view mirror, nothing behind me, and I was absolutely positive there had been nothing in front of me. I continued on home until I got to Yorba Linda, less than a mile from the Riverside/Orange county line and no more than 3 miles from home, to fill up with gas. I went inside, paid and when I came out a large puddle was beginning to form directly underneath my car. It was transmission fluid, I knew this much. My 461 would not be bringing me home from the 800+ mile adventure we both had embarked on. Instead I got to stand there, in an empty parking lot, and watch her be hauled away on a tow truck in the opposite direction from home. I would have to complete my journey alone.

While this didn’t mark the end of our adventures it was in a way the beginning of the end. When my car came back from the shop a few days later, it was obvious the transmission had taken a hit and soon after the problems kept pilling up. My boat had sprung a leak and I was now scooping out water with a bucket, this would work for a few years but eventually it succumbed to its mechanical problems. My 461, which I named after the last three digits on its license plate, now sits in the drive way, broken and dirty, it’s best days behind it.

But this was most than just a car for me. It was a friend. It was a friend that traveled up and down the coast with me on several occasions. Whether I was headed towards love or coming back from heartache, my friend was there. It saved my life in a serious accident, it was the roof over my head when I didn’t have a place to call home and it was my companion on many adventures to the middle of nowhere. My friend did not fail me, gave me everything I ever demanded of it and was loyal till the end.

I made my car a promise after that fateful trip. I promised it that I would be its last owner, that together we would see it through till the end. As I make arrangements to retire the car for good (not making any attempt to make a single penny off of it) I am glad that I was able to keep this promise. We had a good run 461, I’m going to miss you.