DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

So we’re finally seated at a neat restaurant on Lake Tahoe’s western shore, suggested to us specifically because it has great service. And we sat there, enjoying the views of the lake, and enjoying what appeared to be pretty great service: the waiter was cheerful, attentive, and exuded a sort of buoyant energy. No plastic smile, no robotic recitation of the day’s specials… he acted like a real person, and we appreciated the effort.

We placed our orders, basked in the glow of our impending meal — which by all indications would be excellent — and I idly noticed that a party of five was being seated at the next table. I’ll spare you the suspense: the party included Mickey Hart (drummer for the Grateful Dead), with three women and a young girl. Hart carried the girl in on his shoulders. I didn’t recognize him consciously, although he triggered something below that threshhold. My subconscious sat up, alert, and began looking around. Hey, that’s Mickey Hart! it said.

Someone from the kitchen brought out our food. One order was wrong, and although we told the server about it, she disappeared to the other side of the restaurant rather than returning to the kitchen as we might have expected. So we attempted to flag down our waiter, who surely would be able to fix the situation easily… except that we were unable to get his attention for five-plus minutes, as he was hovering at low altitude over Mickey Hart’s table — only ten feet away from, but several classes of service above ours.

Again, I didn’t consciously realize it was Hart at the time, to the continued aggravation of my subconscious, which had known all along and attempted repeatedly and with increasing intensity to let me know. When the little girl began drumming on the table with her chopsticks, one of the women in Hart’s group remarked with some amusement, “I wonder where she got that.” From her uncle Mickey, the rock star! shouted my subconscious without any notable reaction from me, except that my right eye began to twitch.

I started to watch their table closely. Our waiter had become Hart’s personal servant for the evening. I’d see the waiter bring out a dish, exchange a few words with Hart, return to the kitchen, and reappear moments later with another dish. Back and forth he’d go, every eighth trip making a quick circuit to check on all his customers who didn’t happen to be celebrities.

As our good service progressed quickly through “bad service” to a total lack of service, our mood soured. What had we done to deserve this, I wondered. What had the guy at the guy at the next table done to have a waiter installed at his elbow for the duration his meal? He played drums in the best-known jam band on the planet for 30 years! shouted my subconscious, to no avail. My head began to throb, a deep tribal sort of pounding, which was probably appropriate considering the source of my pain. My subconscious was playing a Mickey Hart tabla solo on my brainstem.

Our waiter made a few more appearances, for the sake of appearances. We tipped him a flat 10%, still felt bitter about it, and complained to the hostess on the way out. I said to her, “is that the waiter’s family, or the owner of the restaurant?” as I pointed at Hart’s table. I was trying to inquire gently as to why our waiter might have abandoned us midway through our meal. My subconscious was doing cartwheels with a megaphone at this point. It had its own jam band in full swing, a New Orleans second line band wailing away on a groovy brass rendition of Franklin’s Tower.

The hostess played dumb, which if I wasn’t feeling charitible, I’d fashion into a joke about how perhaps she wasn’t acting… Anyway after two failed deflections she let on that she thought that guest might be the Grateful Dead’s drummer — at which point my subconscious poked me in the eyeball with a timbale stick and collapsed into a heap upon my medulla.

Mickey Hart. Of course. As a matter of fact I thought I’d seen him at breakfast the other day… (That is a Sonoma County joke — I actually didn’t see Mickey Hart at breakfast, but he does live a few miles from here.)

Anyway, Mickey, if you read this: no hard feelings. It wasn’t your fault our waiter was trying to impress you. I just hope you tipped him better than we did.

The New York Times Magazine website hosts a series of interesting How-To articles. Some are practical, like How to Multitask. Some are fanciful but potentially still useful, or at least instructional, like How to Catch a Fugitive or Harvest a Live Organ. Some are tongue-in-cheek, such as How to Back-Flip a Motorcycle, which has only been done once, and not by anyone who reads the NYT Magazine.

But some are beyond fancy, beyond tongue-in-cheek; they’re works of fiction. I can tell because the tasks described therein are, how-to manual or not, completely impossible: How to Salvage a NASDAQ Portfolio and the related How to Run a Successful Silicon Valley Business.

The Chron published some satirical bumper sticker slogans to celebrate governor Gray Davis’ handling of the energy crisis. Here are my favorites:

• Ich bin ein bulb-dimmer
• Power to some of the people
• Carpe Nocturna

See the link above for the rest of the list.

Bernd Steidl is the best guitar player you never heard of. He released a single album (on Shrapnel, which might tell you something) during Mike Varney’s tenure (which might tell you the same thing), featuring Atma Anur on drums (which might tell you the same thing a third time).

The album, Psycho Acoustic Overture, came out in 1992. If you enjoy virtuoso performances on guitar, harp, and drums, in a symphonic, neo-classical context, check it out. Steidl is a shredder, but he does it on a nylon-string acoustic guitar. He is amazing.

Yesterday I made a happy discovery: Steidl has a new website, and he released a new album in January. Here’s a review. Here are the samples. Now get clicking, before he takes another 9 years off.

San Francisco’s Exploratorium will host a webcast of Thursday’s total solar eclipse. Tune in at 5:30 AM PDT. Totality begins at 6:11 AM.