I’m madder than a showgirl with a broken high-heel over the fact that no matter how hard you try, you can’t get nothing right these days despite all the high-tech technology we have to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes we made in the past!
Look, you all know the ol’Screecher carries around six cellphones to make sure I don’t miss any important information from all my minions out there filling me full of all the necessary particulars to screech the good screech, but apparently my lovely wife Sharon didn’t get the message that if you don’t listen to the messages on your cellphone, you don’t get the message.
Now, I know exactly what you are thinking: “Carmine, we know you are going somewhere with this, but we’ve got a limited amount of time — with ‘Dancing with the Stars’ coming on and all — so why don’t you just make your point?”
To this, my answer is, well, it’s not that simple. So don’t make me digress.
It all started when me and the missus took another one of our classic trips to Atlantic City, and quickly learned that the aforementioned “Dancing with the Stars” was going to have a show there live and in-person and on stage.
Of course we had to go, me being a dance instructor and it being mine and your’s very favorite show, but we didn’t have any tickets to the sold-out extravaganza!
Well, when our hostess found out our wishes, she immediately comped our room for two nights (which is pretty standard for big-spenders like us) and put us on the waiting list for tickets, in case they got a cancelation.
We headed up to our large room without waiting and tried calming down for a couple of hours and decided to have lunch on the dining room floor hoping for a glimpse of the dancers.
We opted for Gallagher’s. Sharon started with her usual: bread, butter and Pepsi for starters. I ordered a glass of water with slices of lemon and I immediately got to thinking: Isn’t it amazing how ordinary water ordered anywhere else but New York City tastes putrid? We New Yorkers don’t realize how blessed we are with our delicious H2O! And it’s free, but you have to ask for it. That’s this week’s Screecher pro tip!
We asked our own smiling garçon for suggestions, and he urged us to enjoy the exquisite black bean chili con carnem — but with filet mignon, topped with cheese and onions.
Of course, I yelled, “No onions” so loud it echoed throughout the gigantic room as much as those onions would repeat on me, shocking several seniors who immediately clicked their Medical Alerts.
Then I asked if I could get their Caesars salad without anchovies and, of course, no onions. For a main course, I opted for the hamburger special rare and with no onions.
Guess what? When the food came, there was raw onions galore!
Anyways, the $8 chili was worth $80 and I should have ordered two. The $10 salad was excellent. My huge rare hamburger came complete with red onion and French fries. And after checking the rarity of the meat, I opted to have it wrapped up to take to the room.
About 10 hours later, while I was playing the triple-poker machines, I spotted our hostess, but couldn’t get her attention from my Tornado replacement. I mentioned to Sharon that I thought I saw our hostess, but she was too busy playing her favorite penny machine, going through mason jar and mason jar of pennies to no avail.
So, after almost depleting our penny supply, I left to try to get in to see the show. Without a ticket I was treated like a leper with bad breath.
I scooted from boss to boss to PR person to theater manager to no avail.
Worstest of all, our hostess couldn’t get in touch with my wife whom she deals with because she was too busy losing at her machine.
So when I finally saw my hostess outside the theater, she asked me if Sharon got her message that she had two tickets for us.
“Arrggghhh!” I wailed.
She even showed me on her cellphone “Sharon at 8.45 called and left message.”
Grabbing the tickets, I called Sharon’s number 7,000 times. When she finally answered, I can’t print the choice words I called her.
But we did enjoy the show.
Screech at you next week!
