As much as I like the new REM album, it reminds too much of March 2011. But April has arrived, and I always listen to Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables in April. It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done. And I know it may be cliché, but fresh new stuff does always seem to happen in April, and for some reason I always end up being glad to say good-bye to March. I don’t know if you can tell from the flavor of those last few sentences, but I took my first peek at Facebook the other day. The real Facebook, not my silly, pseudo-facebook page on the fridge door of The Yacht Club, which is really just a novelty tourist attraction that no one would ever construe as a serious information source about my life.

This is not an exact quote, but the very first facebook page entry I ever read went about like this:

Well, it’s April, and I’m glad. Had a bowl of cornflakes with a banana for breakfast. Decided to break out my white, canvas Keds and walk to Starbucks. I think it must have rained last night.

Wow! Seriously?! Thanks for satisfying my fetishes, but. . . .

“Well, what did you think Facebook was?”

“Something different. A regime-changer. A government-toppler.”

So, anyway, I’ve decided to take a shot at doing Facebook properly by telling you about my day, which day was Thursday, March 31st, 2011. It went like this:

I woke up again because I had to go to the bathroom. It had been raining for five days, so I couldn’t tell the time, but it seemed like night. I never put my glasses on, but I don’t specifically remember seeing a blob of red light where my clock radio sits on my night table. I peed and returned to bed and instantly fell back asleep during which sleep I may have heard sirens. The next time I woke up it was clearly daytime, as I could see. What I saw was that I had no electricity, so I donned my glasses and then spent around a half hour forgetting that I had no power. I flipped various light switches fifty times, tried to turn on my computer, my TV, my stereo, my Zebulon X3000 mind-reading device. Nothing would work, and it was still cloudy and too dark to read, and my house was getting really cold really fast (while the interior of my refrigerator warmed up nicely). I decided to take a little walk since it was still three hours until noon at which time I was to meet my co-worker, Danni, in L5P so that I could use her PC to pay my traffic tickets. (I’m assuming that you would already know that my tickets were for running a stop sign and not wearing my seat belt because I certainly would have already ranted and raved about what a lying piece of . . . well, anyway, that whole story would already have been on my Facebook page, I guess. Hmm . . . actually, I wonder how long posts stay on your F.B. page, and how lengthy can they be and all. Hmph.)

So I put on my black, suede Osiris tennis shoes, with the logo of Venus and the crescent moon, and set out to walk around the block. I was halfway through my Ulysses-esque odyssey when a very pretty, young, perky woman accosted me. The clock on my cell phone said 10 AM. She asked me if I lived in this neighborhood and when I admitted I did she asked me if I “knew what happened.” When I admitted I did not she proceeded to tell me that earlier that morning two men had been involved in a high-speed automobile chase with the police and that they had lost control of their vehicle and that they had crashed into a telephone pole right around the corner and that 600 people were without power and was I one of them and would I mind being interviewed on channel 2 Action News! “Hmm,” I said (and now I realize I should have said “huh”) and so I was whisked around the corner to the scene of the disastrophe and I was given a little more information by the perky young woman such as that one of the suspects had to be extricated from the demolished escape-vehicle by the jaws of life and but the other suspect had somehow managed to flee on foot (He had his seatbelt on I’m thinking) but was almost immediately apprehended with the aid of K-9 police dogs in the yard of my next door neighbor, which is pretty much where the perky young woman first accosted me. I said my witty little thing about my house getting colder and colder while my refrigerator warmed up nicely and the perky young woman got a sort of puppyish thrill thinking about how great of an interviewee I was going to be. I felt pretty dang good about myself.

So, she asked me what I was doing when the incident occurred and I said I was just getting ready to go to bed and so when the power went out I just went ahead and hit the hay. She looked very crestfallen and said falteringly that, but the accident had happened at 5:30 AM, and instead of being all suave and cool and saying something like that that was what time I went to bed because I was a bartender or something endearing, I got kind of defensive and offended and said “Well my power went out at around midnight and it must have been something else beside the high-speed chase incident that caused my power to go out, when in fact I don’t remember the power going out at all and I totally felt betrayed and ambushed by her harsh interviewing tactics. We parted formally and politely, but both of us felt that our date had been ruined by an unfortunate misunderstanding and we were embarrassed that it had to happen in front of the friendly, pudgy cameraman who was less sexually attractive to the perky young woman than I was, but who got to leave with her in the Channel 2 Action News van.

I skipped breakfast, thank God, because if I had to give you a lengthy description of every meal I had, I would never get to the part of my day where I got to see Danni’s unbelievably cool pad with a Taj Mahal sort-of pool with a waterfall, and I surely never would get to the part of the day where I finally, actually went to work but where, immediately Frankie and Michelle had an altercation which resulted in Frankie not being allowed into the Yacht Club anymore again and then the part of my day where I finally, actually went home from work and there was a kitten stuck in my kitchen wall that was mewling pathetically and incessantly and so I called everyone I know and had long conversations with them about what I should do, and then I was on the phone with my friend who is also an excellent customer and coincidentally my neighbor and who had also lost his electricity earlier that day, and who, since he was on his way home, was going to stop by and check out my kitten-stuck-in-the-wall situation but who was t-boned by some punk fuckhead right in front of Starbucks on Moreland and who was concerned that, even though the accident was totally not his fault, that he might still get in trouble because he had stayed at the Yacht Club maybe a little longer than he normally would because he was taking a lot of the load off of myself and my co-worker, Shane by telling the high-speed-chase/loss-of-electricity story and the Frankie story which every single person that came into the Yacht Club had to hear and which there was no possible way that Shane and I could tell them all if we were to keep up the incredibly high standard of service which Yacht Club customers have come to enjoy, and expect since Robert trained me.

Wow, I just don’t think Facebook is going to work out for me. I don’t think it was designed for people who have days like I do. I mean, I still haven’t even gotten to the part of my day after the automobile accident when the distribution of traffic citations was finally resolved and how I got my friend Ross to come over and try to help me get the mewling kitten out of my wall, and how we stayed up practically all night trying various tactics which failed and how he told me the story of how he gave Hippy the idea to open up the Yacht Club.

Maybe there will be a new thing for people who have such days by the time my technological hiatus ends, which is January 11th, 2012. Which reminds me that I would like to clear up a contest that I announced but never got around to posting the details of. But it needs to be set off with bold-faced letters thusly.

HOW TO WIN THE CONTEST

First of all, to refresh your memory, in January of 2012, or, roughly, in 280 days, I, Gino, am going to enter the Guinness book of world records by writing a sentence with the most commas in it, ever. In addition, I am going to buy a gadget, a device or some geeky technical thing. If I buy something that someone recommends to me, I am going to reward that person with a $25 gift certificate to the Yacht Club. Now, before you get too smug and self confident and lazy, and say to yourself, “Oh, I still have 280 days before I have to worry about winning this contest,” consider that I am going to award the prize to only one person, so if two people bring me a magazine article about the new 3000z mind reader, and I decide that’s the gadget for me, the prize is going to go to the person who brings the information first. So, conceivably you could find an article about a prototype of the 3000z now, bring me a copy, it will be put in Gino’s special folder and dated, and if I end up getting a 3000z, even if a million other people bring me press about it around Christmas, when it becomes available for purchase, only you will get the prize!

So, get on your bad motor scooters and ride! Ride right down to that place where you find out about all the exciting new technical gadgets that are coming out next year and win yourself twenty five dollars worth of delicious Yacht Club food and beer! The sooner the better, because I feel many exciting distractions coming on. The Inman Park Festival is right around the corner (April 29th), not to mention 4/20. Baseball season is upon us and I feel a Braves playoff run coming on under Freddie Gonzales (even Scottie is excited about baseball). Then there will be swimming at Danni’s and sunbathing and drinking and then it will be back to school before you know it and Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and the Gingerbread trailer park and new years and then BOOM! My technological hiatus will be over and you will be thinking, “Damn! Where did the time go?” The entire rest of the year will probably take less time for you than March 31st took for me. Don’t get caught with your pants down, on a scooter, in Avondale! Research your entries today! -Gino