The Complaint Cloud

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When the complaint cloud approached our table, we didn’t need a meteorologist to tell us that conditions were ripe for a chance of complain. All we had to do was wait for the complainer to receive her food. 

“There’s something wrong,” Rosalyn said to introduce us to her complaint, and she added the international prelude to the complaint, “I don’t want to complain, but …” She probably expected us to avoid starting our meal, until we could address her complaint. We didn’t even pause. In lieu of that apparent insult, Rosalyn repeated her complaint. She wouldn’t eat. She couldn’t, because she found something wrong with her food.

Rosalyn didn’t call the server over, because some part of her enjoyed having the complaint cloud hover over us while she instructed us on the proper way to prepare an onion ring. She said she didn’t want to lord her industry knowledge over our table, the server, or restaurant, but she couldn’t help herself. It might’ve taken a server two minutes to address her concern and return with a new plate of onion rings, but Rosalyn didn’t want to explore that avenue. Rosalyn wanted to guide us on a tour of the knowledge she attained in her years in the industry. She shared a strained smile to reveal her internal struggle, but she knew too much to just eat a poorly prepared onion ring that she knows isn’t a temperature the industry requires.

Rosalyn could’ve said her onion rings were room temperature, but she knew that description carried no attention-grabbing exclamation points, so she said, “They’re ice cold!” to superlative her way to some real attention. When she finished displaying her mastery of provocative adjectives, we feared touching the onion rings the way we do dry ice, because we know the physics behind something being so cold it could burn.

To bolster her characterization, and the resultant sympathy that followed, Roslayn added that her slightly above room temperature onion rings were, “Gross!” Was it a gross exaggeration to call them gross, yes, but isn’t it always. We all do it, because no one challenges the “Gross!” assessment. Gross is also such a relative term that it’s personal, and any challenge of a personal assessment is perceived as a personal insult.

The proper reaction to the “Gross!” assessment, as illustrated by our fellow patrons across the country, is the sympathetic and empathetic crinkled nosed. The crinkled nose response is so pervasive and ubiquitous that it’s almost reflexive now. We don’t even require the “Gross” assessor to back up their assessment. They say it, and we crinkle our nose. Gross can now be used to describe everything from finding live insects in our food to tasting excrement in fresh seafood, to finding a french fry in a serving of pasta, or being served an onion ring that is somewhat less than perfect. 

My prime directive, at one point in my life, was to try to unseat the word gross from atop its perch in our lexicon. I tried to develop a campaign to limit use of the word in my social circles, to give it back some of its power. I made some strides in my battle against the ’ly words, literally and actually, so I thought I might experience some success with gross. I didn’t know what I was up against. The word is gone, it’s just gone. Overuse has diluted any power it once held, because it wields so much power, (and yes that dichotomy was intended).

When someone at our table tired of her grumblings, as a result of Rosalyn’s carefully orchestrated drama, they called our server over. It was anticlimactic when the chef quickly arrived, in a surprisingly timely fashion, with a new hot plate of onion rings. The chef informed us that the price of the onion rings would not appear on our bill. Shows over folks, time to go back to other conversations, because there’s nothing left for us to talk about in the immediate aftermath of a resolved dilemma.

“How are those onion rings?” one of the uninformed asked her.

“Eh, they’re all right.” The uncomfortable truth about those onion rings was they were not all right, and they never would be, because no onion ring can ever be all right in the complaint cloud. They’ll never be as tasty as they could be, or as hot as they should be, or as crispy and pleasing as the industry requires. “I prefer a solid crunch when I bite into an onion ring, don’t you? Yeah, no, these are not for me. This is a fine restaurant and all that, that’s known for their onion rings, but these… these just don’t meet my expectations.” Rosalyn picked the restaurant, and she selected the side item that she would eat, for which this restaurant was well-known. She knows restaurants, because she works for a competitor, and she knows what this restaurant specializes in, and she’s “always wanted to try their onion rings”. When they arrive, she takes it personal when they serve her something that is a couple of degrees below the industry standard that she knows only too well.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” is a question Rosalyn would never ask, because she knows they don’t, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t care. Plus, no one outside of the cartoon world of Gilligan’s Island or Scooby-Doo says that anymore fearing that someone might confuse them with an archetype, obnoxious rich guy. Yet, the subtext of her complaint suggested that part of her complaint was just that, an attempt to treat her like a commoner who doesn’t know the difference between gross, room temperature onion rings and the top-notch onion ones they reserve for the clientele of discerning tastes.

Roslayn made her complaint cloud personal, and she concluded this dramatic portrayal of her virtuosity by saying, “I will eat them,” when the server returned to see if the second plate of onion rings met her expectations. She was kind enough and virtuous enough to suffer through those onion rings, so we wouldn’t view her as a complainer after she spent the last couple minutes doing nothing but complaining.

Praised be the all mighty, now will you climb down and speak to the peasants, as you said you would when you invited us to try to enjoy an evening out with you?

***

Complaining is what we do. It’s what I do. We even complain about complainers. “I don’t want to hang out with him anymore, because all he does is complain,” we complain. I complain all the time. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m doing in this article. I’m complaining about complainers who complain too much. We complain about family, friends, politics, religion, our place of employment, and the people who walk extra slow through cross walks. Complaining is just kind of what we do when we’re in groups, but we shroud most of our complaints in humor. Complaining is fun and illustrative. It defines our character, and it can provide for some provocative, engaging conversations. When we invite friends and family for a night out, however, most of us try to keep those complaints in check. We know the looks, the eye rolls, and the physical discomfort some display when we complain too much about our relatively comfortable lives. We also know some of our complaints can bring an evening to a crashing halt.

Some of us don’t complain when we probably should, because we don’t want to bring unnecessary attention to ourselves. Is this submissive? Perhaps, but how brash are you? We know that they “Don’t want to get you started, because you have so many opinions to challenge the status quo that you’ll shake up and shatter their whole world,” but are your complaints really that substantive, or do you just enjoy lofting yourself up into the complaint cloud for the impressions it accrues?

“I don’t care. I’m paying for these goods and services,” complainers say to justify their complaints, “and the least they should do is try to provide me what I’m paying my hard-earned dollars for, and some of the times they don’t.” They also say such things about air travel, “You’re flying in their aircraft, and the airline should do everything they do to accommodate you and assure your comfort and feelings of security.” It’s all true of course, and it’s actually a good rationale to expect as much from our fellow man as we expect from ourselves, especially when we’re paying them, but as Malcolm Gladwell once wrote, there is a tipping point.

The tipping point arrives when everyone you know, knows that you’re going to complain about something, anything, just to complain. We know that it doesn’t really matter what you’re complaining about as long as you’re complaining about something. The meal they set before you could pass every stringent code restaurants have for quality food, and you will find something, because you’re not some stooge who’s going to eat anything just ‘cuz. We could try to dig into their past to figure out what drives them to do this, but it all boils down to one incontrovertible fact that some people just love to complain. Most of us go along to get along, and others debate, argue, and fight because it provides grist for their mill. They might not consider themselves complainers, and they might even say they hate people who complain all the time, but if the people intimate enough to know them know that the minute they sit down for a meal that a complaint cloud will darken their table one minute after that server puts food before them, it might be time to reevaluate that perception. When it happens once or twice, it’s annoying. When it happens so often that the people at your table dread this moment, it should be obvious that your greater complaint is not with the goods and services others work so hard to provide, but with the way your life panned out. 

Guy no Logical Gibberish III

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Most of us have been reading for so long that we fail to appreciate what a complicated exercise it is. Those of us who read every day are shocked when we read that literacy rates are not 100% across the board in the United States. The U.S. literacy rate matches the world literacy rate at 86%, but with as much as the U.S. taxpayer pays on education, the U.S. citizen should be angrier that it’s not higher. As low as it is, it’s double the literacy rate when JFK was the president, when it was 42%, and that more than tripled the literacy rate of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood in 1820, when only 12% of the world was literate. Our eyes glaze over when we hear that Lincoln was self-taught, as self-taught has taken many meanings over the years. The bar of our current definition of self-taught now is much higher than it was in Lincoln’s day. Lincoln’s formal schooling, he once said, wouldn’t have amounted to a full year. He had too much work to do as a child.    

Those of us who read something every single day assume that human beings have been reading for as long as human beings have been on the earth. When we hear that some famous historical figures were either illiterate, or barely literate, it’s noteworthy to us. “They accomplished that with little to no education?” When we learn that Abraham Lincoln was mostly self-taught, after reading his speeches, we think, “What a teacher!”

Books are such an unlimited commodity today that we take them for granted, but as far back as Abraham Lincoln’s day, the future president and others walked miles to borrow a good book. They didn’t have many books, newspapers and pamphlets were a limited commodity, and they didn’t have the internet of course. They appreciated the limited commodity of books, and they loved to use their brains for the complicated past time of reading.

If we take this one-step further, how complicated is it for the average citizen to write a book? For most of my life, our lives we’ve heard how difficult it is. “I wrote a couple novels in my spare time,” Actor George Kennedy once said. “It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

Kurt Vonnegut counters, “Writing allows a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anyone can do it. All it takes is time.”

***

Planning to go to an Easter Egg hunt, Nephew #5 was in the basement with a stick practicing fencing techniques on a wall. He was two-years-old, but he apparently watched enough video to know lunge techniques and some counter attacks. Sister-in-law #3 said his facial expressions were so intense, he looked angry.

“What’s the stick for?” she asked.

“My nana said we’re hunting the Easter Bunny,” he said, “and my mom won’t let me bring a gun.”

While still two-year-olds, nephew #5 had a real phone that was not plugged in. He picked up the phone and said, “Maury, my girlfriend and my wife keep arguing, and I can’t take it anymore.”   

***

My first nickname for a woman I knew was “unfair”. I considered it unfair that she should have all of the characteristics boys like. Most of us have an abundance of one characteristic and a deficit of the others. My guess is that anyone else who saw considered it just as unfair that God decided to be so stingy with all of our superficial characteristics while giving her everything. Those who believe our characteristics are solely genetic and a result of everything our forebears passed down, have to wonder how all of the optimum characteristics filtered down to her. My guess is that her relatives, or those who didn’t have all of the optimum family characteristics passed down to them, hold a lifelong grudge against her. When her relatives, and anyone else who sees her walk down our employer’s hallway, see her, they know how unfair life can be. I developed another nickname for her, through the years. I called her “The Godfather”. Every time we went to a bar together, guys would come up to her and whisper in her ear. We sat at these bars together, in a group, for about 90 minutes on average, and it never failed. Some guy, from some part of the bar, would walk up and whisper something in her ear. One night, in particular, four different guys whispered things in her ear. She told us she knew two of them, and two she didn’t. What were they whispering? She didn’t cite the Southern Italian code of silence and the code of honor that forbids telling outsiders anything that is discussed, but she wouldn’t break their trust and tell us what these guys were whispering to her.

***

An eight-year-old boy asked me if I wanted to hear examples of the extent of his knowledge of swear words. I asked him why he was so fascinated with swear words. He didn’t know, of course, as he never dissected it. My guess is that it’s independent knowledge he has attained outside the home, and the psychology of it fascinates him. He knows it’s taboo and that fascinates him.

***

Some people complain that other people, mostly men, waste huge chunks of the precious time they have left on earth watching NFL games. Watching the NFL is a complete waste of time in the sense that we get little to anything out of it, but it’s no more a waste of life than watching any other TV show. I found an even greater waste of time, paying attention to mock drafts.   

True NFL fans are almost as concerned with next year as they are this year. As such, they waste huge chunks of their precious time left on earth reading Mock NFL Draft experts guess what college player NFL teams will select in the upcoming draft. The NFL Mock Draft industry is now a multi-million dollar business built almost single-handedly by a guy named Mel Kiper, a man some claim “built an empire out of nothing.”

Why is spending countless hours reading, listening, and watching what these experts think such a huge waste of time? A writer named Derek White graded Kiper, Todd McShay, Peter King, and other top experts of mock drafts in 2014, and he found that top, universally acclaimed experts picked the player an NFL team would select 4.6 times out of 56. Reading other, more recent grades for the experts, they often correctly pick an average of 6 times out of 32. This inflated score includes a heavy asterisk, as the first draft pick is often set in stone by draft day, and the next two are often so obvious that we shouldn’t give these experts any credit for stating the obvious. If these admittedly debatable points are true, then the true prognostication of NFL Draft experts begins at pick four. At that point, the top experts in this field average about 3 correct picks out of 29, or just under 10%. These experts watch countless hours of game film, they have insider access to insiders of each team, and they spend hours studying their algorithms before they sit before a massive NFL audience to reveal their findings. They know way more than we do, and they correctly pick the college prospect an NFL team will select less than 10% of the time. Do these mock draft experts take abuse for missing, yes, but before we feel sorry for them remember that they are paid fairly well to do something most of us pay to do. The question isn’t why do they do it, but why we waste such a huge chunk of our precious time left on earth watching, listening, and reading them do it? 

***

In 2015, a writer for the East Oregonian wrote that major league pitcher Pat Venditte was the majors first major league pitcher to switch hands pitching in 20 years. The writer for the EO picked up a story from the AP and wrote, “Amphibious Pitcher makes debut”. I believe the writer intended to write that Pat Venditte was the first ambidextrous pitcher in 20 years. I know Pat Venditte. I might not know him well, but he’s never been anything less than a mammalian to me.    

Some 30 years prior, while former NBA player Charles Shackleford was at North Carolina State, he told reporters, “Left hand, right hand, it doesn’t matter. I’m amphibious.”

The Unfunny Comedian II: Howie Mills

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“That bit you did about being cut from your high school gymnastics team because your testicles weren’t big enough was something son,” Howie told Barry. “Is it true?”

“No,” Barry said. He felt a warm glow for the compliment, and he considered the backstory almost as funny. “I-”

“Shht, don’t tell me the story behind it,” Howie said, cutting Barry off. “Let me live the line.”

Was that a compliment? Barry wondered, as he sat on a windowsill next to Howie, waiting for another comedian to join them. If it was, what an odd, backhanded compliment Barry thought. Let me live the line. Barry didn’t receive too many compliments, so he soaked it in for a moment.

Barry returned the compliment by reciting some of Howie’s best lines, and Howie was somewhat receptive but mostly dismissive, saying, “I’ve been doing this a long time son.” The man called Barry son from the moment the two of them met backstage when Barry was all but fawning over the man, but the manner in which he addressed Barry didn’t feel old world. As Howie continued to do it, it began to feel more and more familiar. Let me live the line might’ve meant that Howie wanted to digest it to use it in his own act, Barry supposed, as he told Howie what he was doing, going around the country, and if that’s the case then it might be the ultimate compliment. Barry flirted with the notion of coming back to Chesapeake Bay for Howie’s the next second Tuesday of the month just to see if the man lived the line well enough to develop material around it.

Howard Mills performed in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland every second Thursday of the month. Barry caught the man’s act in the brutal cold month of February. Howard Mills wasn’t hilarious, but Barry considered the man’s act original. He wanted to know more about Howard, so he sought him out after the show. Barry rarely sought out other comedians after a show. He was the newbie so he felt awkward crossing that boundary with a more veteran comedian. He often let it happen in a more organic fashion. Barry was always one of the first acts, and he would watch every one who followed him, and wait for those who gathered after the show. After the show, the performers often gathered to eat good, inexpensive food that one of them knew.

In just about every hamlet, town, and city, the comedians and other performers, loved “after the show” conversations. Most comedians romanticized comedians like Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, and Dennis Miller, and anytime those comedians gathered, they always talked about the after show conversations they had in previous eras. They would usually find some local dive someone said served something delicious. When Barry sought Howie out after the show, Barry expected the man to drop pearls of wisdom on Barry, but in that regard he was disappointed. As with most funny people Barry met, Howie was relatively quiet and somber off the stage. 

“I’ve done a number of shows now,” Barry added, as if to change the subject in his own mind while concluding the subject of their conversation, “and I’ve never seen an unsung comedian as funny as you are Mr. Mills.”

“It’s Howie, son. It’s just Howie,” he said, “and thank you. I really enjoy doing this. Preparing material for these little show keeps me on the straight and narrow.”

“What’s the straight and narrow?” Barry said. “I don’t know, but it’s better than the curvy and wide. Trust me. Been there. Done that.”

“No,” Howie said. “I appreciate the effort, but no.”   

When Angela, the other comedian Howie invited to join them, exited the bar, Howie and Barry stood up to join her at the local coffee and eggs diner. They introduced themselves, and they all complimented one another on their act, as they walked across the street to the little diner.

“If we go in there,” Howie said after Barry reached for the door for the diner, and before he could touch it. “Let’s just get coffee. I have farm fresh eggs and bacon at my house, and you’re both welcome to it.”

Angela and Barry looked at one another. Angela pumped an eyebrow at Barry, and they both looked back at Howie.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong the eggs and bacon here,” Howie said, “but they’re not farm fresh. I can’t eat anything else now.”

“I don’t need coffee,” Angela said.

“Me neither,” Barry said.

The three of them talked about their favorite bits and routines through the years, as they worked their way through the grid of Chesapeake Bay to find the paid parking lot where Howie parked his car every second Tuesday of the month. This long walk annoyed Barry, because he was freezing. It was the middle of February, and they were on an endless trek for a car. Barry decided he made a huge mistake not going to that first diner, where it was all warm and toasty. 

Howie mentioned the comedy album he cherished when he was younger. “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” he said. “I listened to that album so many times that I memorized it. I know the jokes so well that I even have the tones and pauses down. It’s the reason I do this,” he said. Howie then listed off other old-world comedians Angela and Barry knew who, he said, laid the groundwork for the comedians we all know and love. “He doesn’t get the credit nowadays, but there was a day when Newhart was the king of comedy.” He listed off other comedians who didn’t receive the credit they deserve, but Howie mostly spoke of unknown comedians who never made a dime outside Chesapeake Bay. 

“Sam Kuhnz was my favorite,” Angela said, “but he wasn’t a local. He was from Chicago.”

“Oh, that’s right. I knew that.”

“Sam Kuhnz strolled through our town and just ripped it apart,” she added. “That guy was so good that everyone who saw him saw it. Sam saw it too. He had a timeline all mapped out in his head. He thought an appearance on Letterman or Leno was just around the corner for him. He worked his routine out every night, kind of like you Barry, going to strange, small places around the country. He did that stream of consciousness style riffing, like you. He told us about how he just laid audiences out in Vegas, got a request for a return to NYC, and he just got done ripping Chicago apart. Then, he hit a delay in his timeline, a holding pattern. I don’t know what happened, and either did Sam. He rewrote all his best stuff over one hundred times, and he did a greatest hits package of his best routines. He took the bits and pieces that all worked, and he put some quality minutes together, but it just didn’t pan out over the course of two years. He got impatient and really depressed about it, and then Sam Kuhnz took his own life. I think about him almost every day. Still the saddest thing I’ve seen in comedy.”

“That’s what you need Barry. You need to ‘greatest hits’ your routine,” Howie said to Barry. “I love the riff thing. You’re trying to keep it fresh, I get it, but you need to keep notes on what works best and put together a greatest hits bit.”

“I have notes on what works and what doesn’t. I have just about every minute of every routine I’ve done written down,” Barry said. 

“There you go.”

When they finally arrived at Howie’s modified Charger, they found out why he paid to have his car parked. “It’s worth it to avoid some idiot door dinging it, keying it, or worse,” he said when Barry asked him about it. The Charger was immaculate, and Howie drove it faster than any senior citizen Barry ever met. The three of them attempted to speak, or Barry did anyway, but Angela and Howie couldn’t hear him over the sound of the Charger, and they found his attempts to speak over it hilarious.

The farm fresh eggs and bacon, and the fresh squeezed orange juice Howie didn’t mention were as advertised. “Maybe I was hungrier than I thought, but these were about the best eggs and bacon I’ve ever had. Thanks Howie!”

“You’re welcome son,” he said. “That must be Nebraska to be that grateful.”

“I’ve heard that.”

After they finished the meal, Howie said, “I’ll let you two clean up. I’m beat.” He then retired to his bedroom.

Barry laughed a little watching the man walk down the hallway.

“This is his home?” he whispered to Angela. “We don’t even know this guy, and he doesn’t know us. Isn’t he afraid we’ll steal something?”

“What’s he got to steal?” Angela said. “He’s a lonely old man.”

“All right, but you have to admit this is odd.”

Angela shrugged.

“Should I go remind him that he drove us over here?” Barry said. “Should we call a cab? What do we do here?” he asked with a bit of confused laughter.

“We clean up,” Angela said. She stood, walked over to the oven, and untied the apron off the handle and put it on her waist. She removed her plate and Howie’s and put them in the sink. She then moved to Barry’s plate, but he stood before she could. He grabbed the other apron on the oven handle, and he helped her wash them. 

“You do good work Barry Becker,” Angela said after he placed the final dish in the retainer to dry. When he turned to reply, she was in his comfort zone. He didn’t see that coming. He instinctually backed up a step and kicked his back heel against the oven’s aluminum bottom drawer. The hallow, aluminum clang could be heard throughout the house, Barry was quite sure. Angela didn’t laugh, and her smile was a warm one that proceeded an investigatory, small peck on Barry’s lips. Was that gratitude, Barry wondered, was that payment for a job well done? Before he could arrive at an answer, she was on him, kissing him.

The next morning, they had the more farm fresh eggs and bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice. This time Angela prepared them for Howie and Barry. They ate it on TV trays in the living room, silently watching a gymnast perform on the still rings.

“Look at the testicles on that one son,” Howie said, speaking through a mouthful of bacon.

 Son? Barry thought, Why is he still calling me son?

“That’s some huge ratings right there,” Howie said. “If you had a unit like that, you probably would’ve made the Olympic Team. Yours couldn’t even make the high school team.”

“Dad!” Barry said impulsively. The tone he used suggested he was embarrassed before Angela by his father’s comment. He figured this was some sort of improvisational act Howie was playing, and Barry didn’t mind playing along. After saying it, however, he looked over at Angela in the din of uncomfortable silence that followed. He measured her reaction, then Howie’s.

“I tried to tell you to pursue augmentation,” Howie answered, “but you had to stay natural. You think those are natural son?” he asked pointing at the gymnast on the tube.

“Barry is well-equipped to handle most situations Mr. Mills,” Angela chimed in.

“I tried to tell you to pursue the career as a jockey,” Howie said. “It’s a career more suited for a man of your … limitations, but you don’t listen to your old man. You never listen.” Howie added looked over at Barry after saying those last three words. His eyes were steely, loaded with condemnation. 

Barry laughed at that, but Angela and Howie weren’t laughing. Howie wasn’t even smiling, but Angela was. She smiled at him proudly, but offered nothing else. Howie turned back to the gymnastics broadcast, forking eggs into his mouth. Angela put a hand on Barry’s back, and she patted his back to console him, while looking at Howie with some unspoken grievance.

What is going on here, he thought, weird doesn’t even cover it. It’s an act. This whole thing is an improvisational act. Barry thought of calling this whole production out, but he didn’t know how extensive it was. He assumed Angela was the butt of the joke at first, but the climate of the room switched to the point that he thought he might be. If there is a butt, Barry thought. Is there a butt? Is this an improvised joke? Do you guys know each other? What’s going on here? Then it struck him. “Let me live the line,” Howie said back when they were sitting on the windowsill waiting for Angela. Are we living that line, the line? Am I living the line right now? I don’t get it.

“What doesn’t make sense in this life, might in another,” he thought, remembering the quote from his fellow comedian, Shell Cieslik. Whether he was ever able to make sense of this situation, he decided it would always be unreasonable. The question Barry asked himself, based on the George Bernard Shaw quote was, should I adapt myself to their unreasonable world, or should I force them to adapt to my more reasonable one, if … if all progress, as Shaw said, depends on the unreasonable man? Does the reasonable man travel around the country doing nightclubs and festivals? Is that why I was attracted to Howie? Is that why they’re attracted to me?

He thought of talking about it with them and investigating it based on the Shaw quote, when he looked at his phone.

“Holy crap! I gotta go,” he said downing the remnants of the fresh squeezed orange juice. “I’m sorry to cut this short, and thank you both for the delicious meals, but you gotta give me a ride back to my car.” As was often the case with Barry Becker, further analysis would have to wait. It was Friday, and he had to return to his hotel room, his laptop, and his job as a fraud analyst.