Yacht Club Log:

Gino'Gino's Entry 3-22-2010

The Big Issue

If you are one of those people who gave up drinking for Lent or, God help you, are still sticking to your New Year's resolution by avoiding the temptations of the Yacht Club despite the Delicious, home-cooked, inexpensive food and excellent social opportunities to find a suitable mate, it is with mixed feelings of awe and contempt that I now offer you an opportunity to catch up on the latest hot topic of conversation at your favorite neglected public house. Actually, even if you've been around, but are a little put off by the vehemence and passion of the hot topic, and would prefer to see it sorted out while at the privacy of your own computer terminal (wink wink) I think we can help you out. I am referring, of course to . . . (prepare for your blood pressure to skyrocket) health care reform.

Because I am an ultra type-A personality (In other words a real go-getter who cannot even conceive of biting off more than I can chew) the alleged monumental scope of the topic is undaunting, so much so that I feel confident in combining it with another controversy, namely whether the clientele of the Yacht Club is more efficient at mining information than the internet. What follows is essentially an analysis of the thoroughness of the internet as an aid to understanding health care versus the efficiency of the Yacht Club. Fortunately we will not have to become bogged down in technical definitions of terms such as efficiency or analysis, since the reader may supply his or her own, as long as they are the same for both entities.

According to Yacht Club customers the health care reform can be broken down into two categories; category A which describes it as good, excellent, wonderful, beneficial, advantageous, creditable, laudable, swell, superior, and well-meaning; and category B which describes it as bad, hurtful, malignant, annoying, outrageous, depraved, abusive, oppressive, and sucky.

As you have probably gleaned by pecking through these crumbs, most Yacht Club conversations are high on passion but sorely bereft of substance and specificity. Sadly, the internet, while seeming to be an endless feast of information, is just more of the same. But it's more like this . . . " The new health care system is absolutely going to destroy the very foundations of this country" vs. "The new health care system is what this country is all about.". "It takes away our rights" vs. "It provides us with rights." "It imposes the tyranny of . . . it frees us from the tyranny of . . . .".

Notice anything missing? Substance? Specificity?

Here's what people say when I cheat and try to steer conversations in the Yacht Club:

"Now my health care coverage is going to go up!"

"Now maybe my health care coverage will stop going up!"

"We're doomed! Now we're going to be like Europe!"

"We're saved! Now we're going to be more like Europe!"

"The government is finally taking away our basic freedoms! I knew this would happen."

"The government is finally giving us our basic rights! I knew this would happen."

I really wanted to present to those of you who have been absent a while a collection of anecdotes that maybe you could piece together so you wouldn't feel you had missed anything while you were on your Lent or New Years Hiati (possibly plural of hiatus, not to be confused with that country with the earthquake.) But, as noone in the Yacht Club has anything tangible to convey, I have no choice but to step in and relate my own story. Sort of, but not much, like a Senate tie breaker.

When I quit my job at Barnes and Noble in 1995 one of the first things I did was get health insurance. (It was from a company called Continental.) It cost me $145 a month with a $1000 deductible. When I dropped it in 2005 it was $570 a month with a $10,000 deductible. I dropped it because I couldn't afford it. OF COURSE I instantly got sick and was diagnosed with something that would forever be a pre-existing condition. Was it my fault? Getting sick wasn't. Am I sorry? Yes. Is it fair that now I have to die a slow torturous death while every crack dealer in Atlanta gets treated instantly for gunshot wounds by the Grady Hospital Emergency room and then gets to live a long, sexually adventurous life in a comfortable prison where all of their medical needs will be seen to? (Ethical Gray-area alert.)

BUT . . .

Because I have an ulterior motive, (demonstrating that the Yacht Club functions as a reasonable substitute for the internet) and advance it by allowing my own anecdotal story, I am wracked with Catholic guilt about my hidden agenda, so I've decided, in order to return the Yacht Club and the internet to a level playing field, to also include a conversation I "accidentally" overheard while tending bar (which is analogous to "lurking" on the web). This will never happen again. (No matter what you think "this" is.)

Anyway, the conversation was between Jim McNamara and some liberal-leaning person in which Jim lamented that it wasn't fair that he had invested a lot of time and effort and money into making sure that he was medically covered for a variety of contingencies using rules that were already in place. I have to admit that from his perspective it isn't fair and it would be nice if he could get some reward or credit for his dogged perseverance, but probably there is no such allowance for that in the new system.

My point in bringing up his story is that there actually are people out there on both sides of the issue who understand what's going on, and to some of those people it is going to be grossly unfair that all the money and time they've spent keeping themselves insured is going to leave them in a similar position on the game board as lazy worthless losers who never even tried to take care of themselves. And the people who honestly gave it a go, but who fell behind will be there too. In fact everyone's going to be more or less tied, which is going to make it a pretty boring game.

The only comfort I can offer to the people who were previously winning is that people's health is different from other categories where being responsible and working hard are rewarded. And maybe if the government bangs on this legislation for a couple decades it will end up being pretty cool. God knows you would need one hell of a super-computer to assimilate all the wishy-washy opinions being offered in the Yacht Club, much less in newspapers, magazines, books and on TV and the internet.

So, as a conclusion of sorts, with the help of my assistant, Roy G. Biv, who moonlights as a statistician and pollster when he is not teaching physics or difracting light, I offer this handy little reference list which you can print out and carry around for when you are confused by conflicting information from different sources. They are listed here in order from least likely to be credible to most likely to be credible. (This is not a misprint, nor is it sarcasm, cynicism or irony. Least credible to most credible:

1) Actually witnessing something with your own senses. (For example looking out a window and seeing rain falling from the sky.

2) Being told something by someone you trust implicitly and who generally has a reputation for truthfulness. (Such as myself)

3) Reading something in a newspaper. (There again, periodicals generally considered reputable; ie. Wall Street Journal New York Times)

4) Seeing something on television. (Often a source of conflict which can be remedied by referring to this heirarchy. For instance, if the Weather Channel radar shows that it is raining where you are, but you look out the window and see sunshine, that means it is raining and your imperfect senses are deceiving you.)

5) Perfect tie between seeing something on the internet and being told something by someone in the Yacht Club.

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Gino'Gino's Entry 3-22-2010

It was a daunting and melancholy task to read this year's fiction contest submissions, the topic being what it was. Of the six hundred submissions however, only a handful were over eleven words long, and half of those were disqualified for plagiarism. Fortunately the judges all have degrees in literature, and the attempts to pass off War and Peace, Moby Dick, and Ulysses, were detected, though we were still impressed that someone took the time to write them out by hand. The winning story, as you will see, adds a bit of science fiction flare to the possibility of a world without the Yacht Club, as well as a poignant familiarity with the bar's customer's and staff. It's almost as if it were written by someone who works there. . . .

The Day The Yacht Club Was Gone

[this is Scary -WitchDoctor-ED]

By Narcissus Hughes

The handsome, intelligent, well built bartender with the excellent sense of humor arrived at the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club at 9:30 am as he did every Saturday morning to make sure the bar was ready to open at noon; to put the boat in the water between regattas, or the car on the track between races as he liked to think. It took quite a beating on Friday nights and another on Saturdays, so it is only fair to add wisdom to his catalogue of virtues. He stood with his sensuous mouth half open, a mouth so many beautiful, nubile, wealthy women wanted to kiss. His right hand was raised a little higher than his waist and forward about ten inches holding a key which should have been about to enter a keyhole and unlock the door of the bar. But the keyhole wasn't in the door. In fact there was no door. Nor was there a wall. The Euclid Avenue Yacht Club was gone.

Although he was famous throughout the city of Atlanta for his unshakable cool and grace under pressure, Xeno, the bartender, moved back from the non-door and let loose a stream of obscenities and curses directed mostly at poor old God (who may or may not have been blameless). Only five minutes away from his first cup of coffee after a long, hard Friday-night of drinking! Also it seemed pretty certain he was out of a job, not, oddly, due to any gross negligence on his part; it was just unlikely anyone would pay him to stand in a deserted alley. But the worst part of this already terrible, terrible moment was the realization he would have to call the owners and, if he figured out how, the police.

He took a deep breath and stepped backwards ten paces into the middle of Euclid Avenue, surveying the city block, but nothing looked out of place except that the Yacht Club was completely gone.

Xeno took his cell phone from his pocket, conjured the owner's number, then closed the phone and returned to the sidewalk as a two-ton liquor-delivery truck hurtled past. When the dust settled he realized with a sudden clarity that time was not of the essence. It wasn't as if a smash n' grab had occured and every second the Yacht Club's brand new flat -screen HD TVs or the (empty) cash register were getting farther and farther away. He rationalized thusly: The owners really loved the bar . . . there was nothing they could do about its disappearance . . . they would find out soon enough anyway . . . they deserved a couple more hours (at the most) to live in blissful unawareness on this exceptionally beautiful spring day. Nor did it really seem like a job especially suited for the Atlanta Police Department, despite their diverse areas of expertise and special training. Also, having had no coffee he was in no mood to be ridiculed.

For an eternal two minutes Xeno stood paralyzed, waffling between the two plans he had devised, one being do nothing, the second being gather as much help around himself as possible. Jack Bauer wasn't in his cell phone directory so he decided to just go through it alphabetically, keenly aware that noone whose number he had was specifically trained for situations of this nature, but surely their combined brain power and talents were at least comparable to anything he would be able to scare up on the hated internet, the virtues and capabilities of which so many otherwise respectable and intelligent people droned on and on about ad nauseum. Anyway he started with Allen and Amanda. After hanging up with Jim McNamara, who was on his way, angry and armed to the teeth, a car drove up and skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. Randall Bailey jumped out, leaving the engine running and the door wide opened. As if this were a pre-arranged cue, Allen came running up, followed by Crazy Mike and Chicken Boy. Donald rode up on a bicycle with a case of cold Budweiser in the large basket between his handlebars. Jeffrey the Tiny Monkey arrived in his cruiser and started handing around Dixie Riddle Cups full of Tito's vodka. New Zealand Lindsay Long and Celia "seal yer eyes" Rice, on their way to open up Rag-O-Rama, an outlet for feminine hygeine products down the street, did double takes when they saw the empty space where the Yacht Club used to be. Catching sight of Xeno, about whom they had both been plagued by sexual fantasies since their early teens, they drew up rein and joined the crowd. Within a half hour lawn chairs, blankets and beach umbrellas appeared along with pinic baskets laden with fish, loaves of bread and bottles of water and wine. Ross and Roy scribbled out physics equations on legal pads. Colleen elbowed adoring young women aside and presented herself before Xeno to ask, "Wasn't it just last week we were watching that report on the Gamma Ray Burst?"

* * * * * * * * * * *

"Cool! I'll turn it on!" Xeno said into the phone and then hung up. "Roy! That was Meredith. Turn on CNN! Do you still have the clicker?"

"I don't know," Roy said looking at the remote control in his hand.

"She said a Gamma Ray Burst was about to hit the moon!" Xeno yelled down the busy bar. "Handle it!"

"Gamma rays?" Roy asked, pointing and pushing tiny buttons.

"Holy shit! That's right! I forgot," Ross said, snatching the remote away from Roy. "Remember that Neutron Star going super about seven years ago?"

"Oh yeah," Roy said.

"Well, It was eight light years away."

"So, in a year we'll be able to see it?" Jim McNamara asked.

"Maybe right now," Ross said, looking up at a super-serious Wolf Blitzer reporting from the Situation Room. "Some idiot calculated that a Gamma Ray Burst could pass between the moon and Mars."

"Gamma Ray Burst On Moon Imminent," The closed captioning said. "Live Footage From International Space Station."

"This is going to be just like that tsunami hitting Hawaii," Roy groaned.

"Or not hitting it," Xeno said. I wonder where that thing did hit. . . ."

"Dart of intense gamma radiation to hit moon at 4pm".

"A dart!" Donald exclaimed. He had been making his way to the bar from the dart board trying to watch the tv at the same time and was amazed when Xeno put a beer into his hand without him asking. "If only I could play darts the way you tend bar," Donald said.

"You'd be the best dart player in Atlanta," Tommy and [Chantelle-ED-
WD] said in unison.

"Savage celestial shot targets Earth's solar system."

"Is that the thing that's supposed to create a black hole?" Crazy Mike asked, gesturing for another gin and tonic.

"No," Xeno said, serving it up. "The black hole thing is in Switzerland."

"No!" Rich screamed, feeling no pain. "That's the particle accelerator! I'm an engineer!"

"Choo choo!" Xeno said, placing a bottle of Pilsner Urquel in front of Rich.

"Xeno! Attend me!" Jim McNamara said, having finished his beer almost a nanosecond ago. "I'm also an engineer, Rich. And the only black hole around here is between your ears!"

"Choo choo!" Xeno reiterated, placing a can of Schlitz in front of Jim.

"Barfight!" Army Michael yelled, deflating the lethal situation.

"Quiet! Quiet!" Allen shouted. "I think the moon is breaking up."

"I'm having deja vu," Roy and Xeno said together.

"Gamma Ray Burst energy could exceed output of our own sun over its entire 10 billion year life."

"That's a booty of energy," Randal said.

"Too bad we can't harness it," D&D Bill said.

"Tightly focused beam to come from Sagittarius constellation like deadly archer's arrow."
[we are all dead now - ED-WD]

"What would happen if that beam destroyed the moon?" Dr. "Diver Down" Chad asked as he finished putting a couple stitches in Mike Bogan's foot.

"It would be even worse than if it destroyed the Yacht Club," Bogan said.

"Shut up, Mike," said Kim Novak.

"Aren't you guys supposed to be in Iowa?" Chef Jon asked.

"There was too high . . . too high of a chance the Gamma Ray Burst could hit us there," Bogan said.

"We came back for the end of the world . . . or the moon, or whatever," Kim said.

"Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) strike on moon could affect earth"

"What's everybody watching on the boob tube?" asked Marty the Plumber as he arrived with Chicken boy in tow.

"There's a special news report on the effects of the Yacht Club getting hit by the Gamma Ray Burst," Xeno said, setting out beers and shots.

"No there isn't!" Roy said, his physicist sensibilities aghast at this untruth.

"Mankind would have to struggle to adapt and survive."

"See?" Xeno said.

"I'd have to say Xeno's right on this one," Marty the Plumber said.

"The proof is in the pudding," Xeno said.

"We would have to grapple with a radically altered environment."

"My God! Xeno's lie has become the truth!" Leonard said.

"Yikes." Roy said amidst a chorus of dismay as several people raised their drinks to toast.

"Let me get another Guinness before the Yacht Club gets zapped," Sioux Ellen said.

"Maybe you should all get another drink while you still can," Xeno said, starting her Guinness.

"On the house?" Guatemala Mark suggested.

"Nope. And now that I know I have a finite supply of product I think it only fair that be tipped in advance."

"That's going too far," One-eyed Bob said.

"Not to mention that it's pure evil," Leonard sighed. Grudgingly everyone checked their drink levels and ordered more, even several people who still had plenty. As Xeno busied himself filling orders, several more patrons entered the bar and each received an update on how the news was preparing the world for the possibility of the Yacht Club being Gamma Rayed. Even Roy joined in, adding an almost scary level of credibility to the explanations.

"Crabs would be disoriented."

Everyone toasted.

"Sloths would find it increadingly difficult to mate."

Xeno, swept up in the apocalyptic atmosphere, poured a shot of Coke into a Jagermeister cup for himself.

"Everything would be a mess."

"Yay!" everyone cheered raising their drinks again.

"It would be like a giant roller derby."

"Yay!"

"The world would be much more hoatile than it is."

"Yay!"

"Boo!"

"Shorter life spans."

"Boo!"

"Human beings could evolve into monsters like something straight out of a science fiction film"

"Boo!"

"It could conceivably be an extinction event."

* * * * * * * * * * *

The police arrived about an hour after New Zealand and Seal yer eyes tried to rip Xeno's pants off. They promptly cordoned off the alley where the Yacht Club had been the day before with yellow police tape while E.T. looking men in HAZMET suits meandered around picking up rocks with tongs like the kind Yacht Club bartenders used to place wedges of fruit on the rims of glasses. They also scooped various quantities of sand and dust into tiny zip-loc baggies, for which there is no bar-life analogy. The scientists and cops eventually crowded the regular customers out right about the time the Yacht Club would have opened for business. Across the street, Xeno fashioned a crude megaphone from a rolled-up Creative Loafing and addressed the crowd.

"Everybody! At the count of three close your eyes and pretend this didn't happen!" Xeno, bless his heart, was overly fond of children's fantasy movies such as Matilda and School of Rock in which this technique would have set the world right. "One . . . two . . . three!" Sadly, the Yacht Club was still gone when the crowd opened their eyes. "OK!" Xeno cried desperately through his Loaf, "Evidently someone peeked, so we have to try it again." A massive groan went up from the crowd, and there was murmuring that this plan might not work.

"I want a Yacht Dog!" D&D Bill yelled.

"A Sizzlin' Steak!" Randall screamed.

"My second Rumplemintz!" from McNamara.

"Galley Burger!"

"Hippy's homemade pies!"

"I miss the bell!"

"The Window Table!"

"Curling!"

"My dear, dear friends," Xeno pleaded.

"Chilimac!"

"We'll have to watch horrible flat-screen TVs!"

"What about Halloween?"

"Where are we supposed to go?"

"What are we supposed to do?"

"Why, God, why?"

* * * * *

On a cold, windy, overcast winter day . . . January 11th, 2012 to be exact, three gray figures made their way through the ruined wreck of a slum, formerly a thriving, eclectic neighborhood known as Little Five Points. Where once a colorful assortment of urban campers bartered spontaneous poetry in exchange for a cheap meal . . . where wealthy, rebellious suburban teens had pilgrimaged to find sacred, rare parts for their custom skateboards . . . now only a handful of shadowy outcasts peered furtively from broken windows like feral cats waiting for unwary prey to cross their path.

The three figures stopped in front of the dark facade of buildings where the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club used to be. Appraising the faded tattered police tape which flapped ineffectually in the eddies of unnatural dust devils, the three stooped beneath it and made their way to the heart of the haunted vacancy. Tiny tornados darted hither and thither creating a distinctly vacuous and obscene atmosphere.

"According to my calculations," Ross said, "it's less than a millimeter in diameter."

"Listen," Roy said, gesturing with his hands as if he were trying to demonstrate how big a fish he'd just caught was. "It will still gobble up at least a thousand atoms in the first year . . . and then it will double every year! You have no idea how much it's going to consume!"

"Two thousand atoms the second year?" Xeno offered. "Four thousand the third?"

"The difference between the Yacht Club and a tiny black hole really depends on perspective," Ross said.

"We need an irony snob."

"Maybe if we could divert enough energy from that transformer that powers the American Apparel sign we could create enough seismic torque to leverage the Yacht Club out of the tiny black hole," Xeno said. The look of disgust he received from Roy was priceless.

"Wait," Ross said, looking at the power lines and scribbling in his legal pad. That actually might work."

"Really?" Xeno said.

"Of course not!" Ross said and smacked him in the head. "This isn't Space 1999, its suck-ass real life and there's no Yacht Club!."

"This totally blows."

That The Yacht Club had become a black hole was an irony not lost on its previous customers, many of whom still felt inexplicably drawn to that twilight alleyway. During sad times they came to forget, happy times to celebrate and share. And sometimes they would congrgegate in groups of three or four, sitting crosslegged in the dirt of that filthy alley and reflect on what a bitch it was to try and fill an empty place in your soul with a black hole.

THE END

Ginos's Entry 3-11-2010

BIRD POOP
How the Yacht Club is LIke Bird Poop, and Why That's a Beautiful Thing

Yay! On Monday, March 8th we opened up the big window in the "new room" (more on room monikers in the future) for the first time in 2010. I don't think I'm alone in hating my toilet seat freezing my buns, and I know I have plenty of company celebrating the cessation of hostilities the weather instigated keeping us penned up indoors all winter. Anyway, earlier that afternoon my friend Kimmie, while surveying a pristine slice of Georgia wilderness which I call my back yard, commented on how fortunate I was to have won the bird-poop lottery. She explained that birds consume a variety of vegetation and that frequently seeds of various plants will pass undigested through their bodies and eventually plummet to earth wrapped in neat little white packets of fertilizer. Evidently the seeds I randomly drew this year were largely those of aesthetically pleasing flowers, Crocuses of a half dozen vivid colors among others. Turns out that what appears to be a load of shit when splattered on your lawn furniture or car often contains something beautiful and interesting if it can just end up in a place that will nourish it.

I realize this is a crappy analogy, but I see a strikingly similar phenomenon on a daily basis at the Yacht Club, where someone finds a place at the bar and invariably some turd burglar will plop down next to them and initiate a conversation. But often I have enjoy watching faces gradually change from grimaces of disgust to enthusiastic smiles of interest and even affection. Of course, as an ever-vigilant and attentive bartender I must, in a manner of speaking, referee these encounters, staying attuned at all times to tone and body language while filtering out the actual content of the conversations. (It's not just that nosy people annoy me because I was brought up to believe eavesdropping is extremely rude and a sure sign of retarded social development, but it also turns out that the human brain can only store a finite amount of information, and the brain can be very cavalier about what it purges to make room for new stuff. Frankly, the last thing I need is for my brain to become full to capacity with inane bar chitchat while my arsenal of philosophy, theology and astrophysics gets deleted.)

Last year on St. Patrick's day (ST. PATRICK'S DAY IS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17th) an attractive young woman, who was at first put off by the scruffy, malnourished-looking man who squeezed in next to her at the bar, was soon pouring her heart out into what turned out to be a quite sympathetic ear. Because there was not yet a large crowd, and the woman punctuated her narrative with frequent requests for my opinion, I was able to grasp the general gist of her tale which was this:

On a previous St. Patrick's day trip to Ireland she had hooked up with a small group of tourists who were being shown around Dublin by a man who they had to force to take a break and who was mortified when they bought him lunch (he had no money) and who, she mused, probably would have shown them around until he dropped dead had it not been for her uncommon perceptiveness, and she worried about all the not necessarily mean-spirited or selfish people, but the people who might not be uncommonly perceptive (she was finishing her third drink and was entering that phase of intoxication characterized by repetition, inappropriate enthusiasm, and slightly slurred speech but was nowhere near the phase in which one rambles on and on without ever coming up for breath, which in literature is known as fused run-on sentences, but which, as far as I know, has no analogous designation in conversation) like she was, and who might not realize that the poor chap really was incapable of saying no to any request, and lived in mortal fear of disappointing, and who probably had very few friends because he could not afford to be close to anyone who was not uncommonly perceptive and who would look out for his well being, even seemingly against his desires. She wanted to know if I, and the scruffy, malnourished-looking guy thought this was a sort-of an Irish thing.

I begged out of the discussion, pretending I was gettting a beer for someone, which they, not being regulars, fell for, and went to check on another sort of bird-poop scenario which had sprouted down the bar, this one involving a young man with his finger stuck in a James Joyce book to mark his page who was explaining to a vacant and violently unattractive woman that what he would do to get through these difficult passages was read the sentence without reading the parenthetical part in order to get the gist of the sentence, then go back and read the part in parenthesis. Otherwise, he said, he would get a headache.

The next crocuses, or "duo of disproportionate comeliness" were debating whether or not, in order to do something "good" you had to do anything at all. Their point of contention centered around the woman's evidently extensive empirical research into the effects of laying around in bed all day. Such supine study, she claimed, had led her to work out the startling calculation that 99% of the calls she recieved since she got a cell phone were from people asking her if she would do them a favor. Needless to say she had long since stopped answering her phone, not, she wanted to make clear, because she was above doing favors for her aquaintences, but because she was moving from her bed into a new area of study in which she was categorizing the content of messages left with her answering service. She would not in any way acknowledge the call of anyone who didn't leave a message. Additionally, what had once been just a vague, undefined irritation with people whose message consisted merely of "call me" was now crystalizing into a realization that these "call me" people were playing some sort of guilt/power game which betrayed their lack of trust in you as they jockeyed for a psychological advantage as if it were higher ground in a mortar exchange.

At this point we actually really started to get busy, and while I was "out in the field", as we call waiting on tables, all the crocuses and bird droppings danced and swirled around as if they were playing musical stools. By the time I got back behind the bar and made sure all the body language and tones were in perfectly calibrated harmony I realized that it was time to announce The First Annual Yacht Club Fiction Writing Contest. The only rules are . . .

RULE # 1 - The title must be The Day The Yacht Club Was Gone.

RULE # 2 - It must be more than eleven words long. (Word count will be strictly enforced)

RULE # 3 - It must be presented in a tangible form. No technology must be required for me to read it.

RULE # 4 - You can't write about Star WR-104 going super nova and zapping the Yacht Club with a Gamma Ray Burst, because that's what I'm writing about.

Send submissions to 1768 Pennington Place Atlanta, GA 30316 OR hand deliver to 1136 Euclid Avenue on Monday or Thursday between 3pm and 5pm.

The prize for first place is so stupendously valuable that I dare not announce it for fear we will be innundated with submissions from fortune seekers.
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Gino's Entry 2-28-2010

PLASTIKI

I don't know if any of you folks have noticed, but it's almost spring! Having survived the coldest winter in history since the Yacht Club started keeping records last fall it's time to finish off those kegs of stout and porter and start tapping the wheat beers. And remember, you heard it here first . . . DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME begins at midnight, Sunday, March 14th. Before then we will have a full-staff meeting to decide whether to stay open late or close early that night. There is bound to be a lot of bitterness, hair-pulling and huffing and puffing, so I will try to find out the date and time of the meeting and post it so you can watch through the windows. I think that might even be a special enough occasion for me to dig out the Hooters outfit.

But spring is more than just the end of curling season here at the Yacht Club, and as our brains thaw out and we begin to ween ourselves from a seasonal diet of chili-mac and hot toddies we collectively recollect the EAYC's primary objective: TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. And if my memory serves me correctly, (shut up, Randal) it is usually during those first short-sleeve days of spring that our thoughts turn in a semi-serious way to the establishment of a secondary outpost somewhere on the face of God's green earth from which to work toward that noble goal. That's right, ladies and gentlenuns, I'm talking about opening another Yacht Club!

Mmmmmm! Just thinking about it brings the world one giant step closer to perfection! Imagine another Yacht Club at Fernandina Beach, Key West, El Paso, Nogales, Lakie Lanier, Sault Ste. Marie, Historic Williamsburg, Portland Oregon, Portland Maine, Port-Au-Prince! Why, it just occured to me that the only reason we've never followed through on opening up another location is that we can't decide on where to do it. But this year it's going to be different. A location I have had my eye on for nearly a decade has finally presented itself as logistically feasible. All we need is a crew of about thirty adventurous pioneering-types with rudimentary sailing skills, a willingness to endure a couple months of initial hardship, and a desire to make a ton of money on the new frontier serving beer. As you have probably guessed by now I plan to open the Yacht Club II on the Texas-sized island of plastic water-bottles floating leisurely around the Northern Gyre of the Pacific Ocean. I propose we name it Succor Island. It's capital can be Evian.

Unfortunately, up until this time, I have not gauged the knowledge or naivete` of the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club's staff and clientele regarding Succor Island but I suspect that if it is not already old news it will be by late summer. In March a sixty-foot yacht christened the Plastiki will set sail from San Diego on a hundred-day mission to seek out new garbage in the Pacific Ocean with the express purpose of drawing attention to the gargantuan water-borne island of plastic bottles. By carefully monitoring their findings, and planning ahead we should be ready to set sail in our own vessel directly upon their return. With a couple thousand cases of beer, a power generator, a dozen weather-proof tents and a coffee can to keep our change in we should be able to open the Yacht Club II before the winter monsoon season gets into full swing. Also, if we don't handicap ourselves by building our yacht entirely out of used water-bottles like the crew of the Plastiki did we should be able to make better time and be ready to sell beer to Japanese whalers or lost Hawaiians.

Ultimately I envision the Yacht Club II to be not merely a bar, but a multi-purpose safe haven providing a variety of services, much like the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club. We can import our entire menu of delicious food and supplement it with a variety of low-cost seafood dishes. We can cater to physicists and astromomers who will undoubtedly flock to our new location to view the heavens unimpeded by light pollution. Within a decade I imagine Succor Island will resemble Little Five Points in many ways as a shopping Mecca with the added bonus of aquatic oriented entertainments, not to mention that during its leisurely circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean it will pass within easy shuttle distance (shuttles we will provide) of Japan, Alaska, Hawaii, Polynesia, California and South America.

Please send your resume` to 1768 Pennington Place, Atlanta, GA 30316.

Gino's Entry 2-14-2010

Whenever I have an especially acute attack of megalomania, if I wish to savor it I need to be home alone with my phone turned off, otherwise, someone may ask me something like, "What is Mardi Gras?" and I'll be forced to face what an ignorant hick I actually am. In fact, just the other day I was serving beers and thinking about how wonderful and smart I was (but fortunately not voicing this opinion aloud, as we all know how tiresome those people are) when I was tasked with preparing a little write up on the Yacht Club's upcoming Mardi Gras celebration and mask contest. Before I forget and digress all over the universe, THE YACHT CLUB is having a MARDI GRAS MASK CONTEST TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16TH AT 8pm! THERE WILL BE PRIZES!

It turns out I knew exactly two things about Mardi Gras. First, it has something to do with New Orleans. Second, women recieve a string of beads for exposing their bare breasts (which I learned from borrowing Eric Kordner's Girls Gone Wild Mardi Gras 2K2). I suppose it's arguable that that's all you need to know, but it's really helpful to know when Mardi Gras actually is, and very interesting to know why it's when it is. In fact the history of the evolution of Mardi Gras from the 17th century to today is so fascinating that I have decided to spend my life studying it as soon as I win the lottery.

Having been born and raised Catholic, I am intimately familiar with the season of Lent, of denying one's urges and controlling the desire for earthly pleasures which God so thoughtfully heaped upon us to demonstrate that we have free will. But somehow I missed the other half of the puzzle; the yin of hedonism to the yang of restraint and moderation. The unbridled debauch from January right up to Ash Wednesday to sort of put you in the mood to take care of yourself, as a change of pace.

Now, before I continue, I must come clean about my method of collecting information. Everything I learned about Mardi Gras in the past couple of weeks came right from the mouths of people who are either from New Orleans or who have attended many celebrations there throughout their lives. I realize that this spurious method of intelligence gathering can in no way compete with what is available "on line", so apologies in advance.

Evidently, the idea of gorging yourself and going nutso before an extended period of introspection and self-denial dates back to a million B.C. and has very obscure and convoluted origins, much like the Arab-Iseaeli conflict, so we'll just leave that to be debated by people getting their PHD in Mardi Gras and jump ahead in time to 1704 when France's King Louis XIV sent the LeMoyne brothers to defend their new territory around the mouth of the Mississippi River. There they built a fort and colony and named it Point du Mardi Gras. Imagine that!

But this is becoming much too bookish. If you want to know the history of the settling of the Louisiana Territory either look it up online, or come see me at the Yacht Club on Mondays and Thursdays from 3pm to 6pm when I hold forth on any erudite subject of your choice absolutely free. What I believe would be more apropos to this forum is a little detail on the Girls Gone Wild Mardi Gras 2k2 dvd that I borrowed from Eric Kordner and which I watched in Faylynn's bed while I was house-sitting because she was at the beach with Hippy and Dr. Chad. Also, then I could segue into an anecdote about how when Michele was hanging up the Mardi Gras decorations and advertisments for the MASK CONTEST which is TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16th at 8pm, and she was standing precariously on the rim of the bin where we keep the bottles of iced beer (which she should know better than to do, since Meredith just fell off that thing around a year ago and almost broke her neck) she pulled up the front of her shirt and flashed me and Scotty, with the clever foreknowledge that she was wearing a reddish-beige one-piece bathing suit enabling us to see only the delineation of one of her secondary sex characteristics.

Which makes me wonder if you're supposed to give up sex, or exhibitionism, or maybe masturbating for Lent. And maybe you're supposed to give up your secret life as well, and that's why you wear a mask for Mardi Gras! And that's why these secret societys like Comus, Rex and Zulu have formed Krewes and build floats! So that they can, while anonymous behind their elaborate, prize-winning masks, commit such outlandish acts of exhibitionism you'd swear you were at the Yacht Club. See how easy it is to write a Dan Brown book?

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Gino' Entry 12-25-2009:

"And that's the true meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown."

Thus ends one of the most poignant and powerful soliloquies in all of cartoondom, delivered by the precocious theologian, Linus, and really just a paraphrasing of the gospel of Luke, chapter two, verses nine through fourteen. But it's still just peanuts to us here at the Yacht Club, where, after much deliberation, we have decided, in the true spirit of Christmas, to give you what you really want. And I'm not just talking about the spirits we serve which help fend off the overwhelming futility and pointlessness of existence. No, we feel you deserve something special this Christmas, so we are going to start doling out what you really really want. Secrets. So, if you don't do so already, you may want to keep your computer opened to this page permanently and hit your "refresh" button every thirty seconds or so around the clock so that you don't miss anything.

Now, lest we be accused of cavalier negligence, we are going to start you off walking, then in the coming weeks move you up to a trot before we have you sprinting. After all, what kind of a reckless trainer would I be if I gave you all heart attacks by elaborting on the sordid, after-hour sexual gymnastics of Fay Lynn and the rest of the night crew right out of the gate? And I want your word of honor that you will not read these on-line log entries in the future if at any time you become short of breath or have trouble urinating while you sleep.

OK, now that those legal disclaimers are out of the way, here is the first "secret". (A rudimentary understanding of pig latin will be helpfull, but necessary)

There are things you can order to eat at the Yacht Club that aren't on the menu, such as POPCORN! Also you can get burritos made with either barbequed pork or barbequed beef brisket. And a really great way to fill your belly on a freezing Georgia day for less that five bucks is a bowl of Chili-Mac, which is half chili, and half mac-n-cheese. Yum yum! Good bye munchies!! (Came up with that one when Jeff Clark, Brent Hinds, Jim Stacy and I were living in a tent in my livingroom).

Now for old secret number two: The Euclid Avenue Yacht Club is owned by two people. Michel (pronounced like Michelle) Janko, and Donald Hinamon (pronounced like Hippy). I reveal this secret mainly because I am flabbergasted by how many people think I own it. Come on! Seriously?! The place would last like, two seconds if I owned it.

Secret three: That attractive young lady that often sits at the booth back by the dartboard surrounded by paperwork and calculators and tricorders. That's the general manager, Meredith. She's the member of the crew who hasn't damaged that part of the brain which allows one to perceive imminent doom. Nor has she damaged the part that enables one to do math, nor the part which dictates responsible behaviour. Come to think of it she's got a pretty good-looking brain all the way around.

Secret four: The Yacht Club has the cleanest kitchen in L5P. We scored a 96 on our last health department inspection.

Secret five: The webmaster for this site's name is Tommy, and he likes science fiction. So do I for that matter. In fact we have hundreds of thousands of science fiction novels we would be glad to swap out with you if you are interested.

Secret six: The Yacht Club was opened twenty five years ago (give or take a year) When Hippy and Don Sweet (God rest his soul) sent Michel out from Manuel's Tavern, where they all three were working, to buy a Christmas tree and she came back with an upside down tree because she was so disgusted by the overcommercialization of the holiday. When it was deemed unacceptable for Manuel's they rented a small space at 1136 Euclid Avenue and hung it from the ceiling where it immediately attracted hundreds of thirsty people who were similarly dissatisfied with the cynical, mean-spirited zeitgeist which was freezing out the true meaning of Christmas. In a scene reminiscent of a 1970's Coke commercial a crowd assembled beneath the dangling tree and sang of how Christmas was like a ladder rung situated smack dab in the middle of the most psychologically dangerous part of the year when the days are shortest and coldest. Even somebody's pet beagle sang.

Secret seven: (And this may be the best and most useful one of all). Little Five Points is the greatest, most eclectic neighborhood on earth. If you ever go to a concert at The Variety Playhouse, or a theatrical production at Seven Stages or Horizon Theater, come on by the Yacht before and/or after and get some good food. Both those entertainment venues sell beer and wine and their prices are reasonable and the people who work there are friendly and experienced at getting you a quick drink so you don't miss any of their shows. (Translation: They don't want you to be that asshole who interrupts everyone by trying to make it to their seat as the production is starting.) But we also don't want you to be that loser! And we're a 45 second walk away, with lots of quick tasty appetizers and meals. Don't see a great show on an empty stomach! And don't get caught up in the mass exodus out of Little Five Points drunk and crabby and hungry! Six minutes in the Yacht Club could save you six thousand dollars in traffic-frustration-induced court fees!

Secrets eight through twelve (for the twelve days of Christmas!): You can send snail mail to 1768 Pennington Place, Atlanta, GA 30316

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Gino' Entry 11-23-2009:

If you do not want to buy two lots for the upcoming gingerbread trailer park contest so you can build a "double wide", congratulations! You are the only person who didn't come up with this staggeringly brilliant, unique and original idea. As for the rest of you herd animals, here is the explanation you have so shrilly demanded, or as some would have it, the much vaunted and eagerly anticipated YACHT CLUB PHILOSOPHY ON WHY YOU CAN ONLY HAVE ONE LOT. (Although in my humble, South Carolina-education incubated opinion it's more a list of reasons than a philosophy,because if it was a philosophy, Fay Lynn would be writing this.)

1.) There are only twenty lots. Don't be a selfish pig.

2.) It's a contest with rules. Not only can you not have two lots, you also can't build your trailer out of Legos or Lincoln Logs. Nor can you build it out of play-do, bugs, glass, feces, or rocks, regardless of what you ate as an abused child. (If it was a short story writing contest would you send in a 20 thousand word essay on time travel and expect anyone to think it was better than than the entries that adhered to the guidelines? If it were a competition to see who could build a container smaller than a cubic foot in which a raw egg could survive a thirty-foot drop would you build a nine cubic-foot box with a hard boiled egg in it and demand it be dropped from five feet?

3.) The contest is to see who can build the coolest, edible trailer on a certain sized plot. Why are we even having this discussion?

4.) You're not impressing anyone by building a double wide, and you sure as hell aren't going to get any consideration for creativity or originality. (It was a dark and stormy night. . . .)

5.) There's no reason you can't build a double-wide on a single lot. There are no scale specifications or requirements. I could build an entire trailer park on a dollar bill. Surely you can build one double wide on a lot the size of a case of beer.

6.) Don Sweet wouldn't want you to have two lots.

So there you have it. I truly hope that now that your greedy, petty, megolamaniacal inclinations have been brought out into the light and put under a magnifying glass for all to see you can shake them off like a bad case of fleas and see them for the rage and powerlessness issues that they are. The best advice I can give you is buy a single lot, build the best dang edible trailer you can and win the million dollars or whatever the prize is. C'MON!
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Gino's Entry 11-11-2009:

As you can guess, when a business owner's favorite television show is Something About Earl, Karma is bound to play a major role in the collective psyche of the staff and regular patrons. I'm not talking about heavy-duty voodoo mystical nonsense or vengeful archangels smiting you dead with fiery swords, so if your cerebral development stalled out in adolescence (remember the thrill of first discovering atheism?) and you haven't yet figured out or accepted that there is more to life and human consciousness then what modern medical science has discovered so far, fear not and read on! There's no mysticism hiding here, just good-natured anecdotal musings on why we go insane with guilt when we do something we know is wrong and why we feel so wonderful and warm and fuzzy when we do something, especially in secret, that we think is right.

Not surprisingly, this train of thought was put on track by a recent incident at the Yacht Club. Our custodial engineer (who will remain anonymous at his own humble request, so let's just call him . . . Merlyn) and I arrived at the bar on a recent Saturday morning at 9:30 am, (That's right! Do you think we're like football players who just show up at game time and start playing? No, my friend. Quite a bit goes on behind the scenes in the bar business, which is why I have enough material to bring you this weekly column until at least December 12th, 2012 which is when the Mayan calendar predicts I will forget to continue writing it.) at which time he started sweeping and mopping the floor and I made coffee and began whining about how underpaid I was. "It's lucky for someone I'm honest," Merlyn said, a few minutes later, and produced a pink wallet with nothing in it but a substantial tax-return check and six hundred dollars cash. To make a long story short (ho ho ho) Merlyn reunited the cash with its rightful owner and was rewarded by her for his deed with twenty bucks, an arrangement which spawned weeks of quality, philosophical interlocution not only at the window table but along both sides of the bar as well.

My first thought, and it was in no way unique, was that the reward seemed a little weak, considering what Ms. Lucky had literally lost, not to mention that ol' Mr. Merlyn probably could have really used 600 dollars (who the hell couldn't?), but then it was brought up by various sage imbibers (who cunningly put themselves in her shoes) that maybe it was her rent money, etc. etc.). I must bring up at this point that the only person incredulous that there was even any discussion about what to do with the money was Meredith (God bless her and her heart of gold) who, come to think of it, has certainly returned well over 600 dollars worth of stuff I alone have lost over the years. And from there the conversations took an interesting and heart warming turn away from specuations on what to do with 600 dollars and veered into a veritable avalanche of anecdotes about the various items and sums people had found and returned in the Yacht Club and elsewhere over the years (Randal appearing to be the clear winner with finds of 500 and 100 dollars on separate occasions) until I began to wonder if I was the sole unobservant villain in this sea of heros who had never found and returned anything.

And then I remembered. You may think you have caught me in a lie, knowing my aversion to the "R" word, but with God as my witness, along with my friend Tom Wall, I once found 50 dollars on the floor, long before I was demoted from customer to server, and turned it in to the bartender, Stephanie Rucker, who said, "I'll hang onto it and if nobody asks after it, you keep it." And by Jimminy, at 4am, as Tom and I were finishing our fourth pitcher of Rolling Rock and lifting up our feet so Robert could mop the floor under the table, Stephanie presented us with our tab ($24.00) and the fifty dollar bill we had found. "It's yours." we said in unison and got our first Yacht Club bell ring.

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Gino's entry 10-29-2009:

I'm sorry. And for many reasons, two of which I am going to discuss right now. The first is simple. I believe anyone who writes anything for any reason should immediately apologize for having the audacity to actually believe anyone would ever want to read something they write. Secondly, I would like to apologize to anyone who has ever come to the Yacht Club and not had as good a time "as the last time I was here." Look, although a great deal of dark magic and insomniac self-debasement go into each and every day we throw that ten-ton bullet-proof door open, the fact is, there is a lot of flat out luck riding on your day at the Yacht which we simply have no control over. The poor guy from Donald's Johnnys Inc. can't accidentally pour the entire contents of a full port-o-potty onto his head right in front of the front window for your entertainment every day. A lot of things have to come together for that to happen. Nor does the issue of Playboy with Marge Simpson come out every day. And the Falcons can't come back and score a go-ahead field goal with one second left every day. That's only on select Sundays at best. And I think we can all thank the deity(s) of our choice that it's not every day someone brings in a Hooters outfit that won't fit anyone but Gino.

Now that your mind is packed with the most horrific images conceivable, let me explain a little about how the Yacht Club crew spends every waking hour of their lives trying to make sure that you have a good time when you patronize our magical establishment. First, it is an empirically demonstrable fact that crazy people are smarter and generate more creative ideas per cubic millimeter of the cerebral cortex than sane people (Boson, Higgs, et al. The Future of Genius in Time-Juncture Cantinas and Chrono-Citadels. Houghton-Mifflin, 2012). Using this cutting edge science as a base philosophy, the Yacht Club is owned, staffed, and operated exclusively by certifiable nutters. But the fruits of those nuts are so bountiful that any exhaustive listing would exceed the scope of this log entry by hundreds of billions of terabytes. But just to give you a taste . . . we (sometimes) have Hippy's Handcrafted Pies. It has been put forth that Hippy is able to craft five or six of these legendary pies a day, and that he once spent three days in one week making them. Production is currently on hold at this time as we are working around the clock to erect a pole for you, our customers to impale your own hand-carved pumpkins upon. Any and all entrants will be rewarded with a pint of delicious draft beer. Extraordinary creativity gets you an upgrade from something that Randal or Woody would drink to something I would drink (If I wasn't a total abstainer, of course).

But let's get back to horribly disturbing images, shall we? Saturday night is the Yacht Club's 26th, 27th, 28th or 29th annual Halloween costume contest. You must register by 10:45 PM (unless you approach Hippy between 10:46pm and 10:59 pm and ask him nicely if you can please still participate.) Judging is at 11:00pm RHT (Robert Holland Time). I predict that Drew will place and that that new cute Danish girl we just hired will show. Ha ha! There is no cute new Danish girl, suckers!! (Danes appear to be highly resistant to mental illness and are therefore not often considered for employment.)

In near-future log entries look for us to concentrate more on our delicious food specials, especially those Sizzlin' Steaks, but unfortunately there is nothing even remotely horrifying about our food, and it's Halloween and well, you get the picture, maybe even the aroma ,sound, and taste as well.

Don't be an asshole!

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Gino's Entry 10-12-2009:

With the introduction of a Snallygaster egg and its subsequent hatching inside the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club myths and rumors have proliferted so copiously and contained so much conjecture, disinformation and, frankly, libel (mostly on people's wretched, pathetic, self-serving Face Book pages) that the powers that be (The Yacht Club Star Chamber if you will) have commissioned a team of intellectuals, social scholars, and trained, professional scribes to at last activate and wield this fearsome tool, THEEAYC web page.

First of all, the Snallygaster did not hatch and immediately go on a murderous rampage. It killed like . . . one person, and that person was not FayLynn. In fact all of Yacht Club's staff is accounted for, as are all of the regular customers. The only person who seems to be missing from Little Five Points (L5P henceforth) is that tremendously annoying woman who asks everyone for spare change sixty times a day and who can barely waddle down the street so weighted down is she from the coinage of suckers. Come to think of it, there ws a small fortune in nickels and dimes scattered about the partial corpse found behind the Yacht Club last week which we rounded up, rinsed off, and donated to an organization which helps impoverished children with cleft palates.

If you don't even know what a Snallygaster is, go to A' Capella Bookstore (Located on Moreland Ave. in L5P, between the liquor store and the pharmacy) and purchase the only known book on the subject. I think it's called SNALLYGASTER. If, in a week you still don't know what a Snallygaster is, I shall inform you on this web site, after I zip around the corner, buy the book, and read it myself. Also while you're there, demand to see the bookstore owner, Frank, and tell him you want to have a James Joyce reading at the Yacht Club next June 16th, complete with discounted pints of Guinness, and tasty sweet breads. Be surly, aggressive and condescending. Talk loudly on your cellphone while in the store if he tries to weasel out of the event.

In case you don't know, ie. you have somehow not noticed the veritable forrest of posters, and dismaying clutter of "table tents" broaching the subject, the Yacht Club's theme for its parade this year is the Snallygaster, and what to do about it. This contentious issue, which thankfully, at least for the time, has displaced the infinitely tiresome Republican/Democrat argument, is basically split into two camps. On the one hand are a group who would hunt down and kill the Snallygaster, as it tends to dine on people with a high blood alcohol content. Understandably, a large percentage of the Yacht Club's clientele is concerned about this. On the other hand, several organizations have popped up wanting to protect the Snallygaster, pointing out that it's a rare and endangered species, that it culls the bloated herd of humanity by preying on aggravating hustlers, and that even the slightest presence of its pheromones in the air causes nubile women to become disinterested in their ubiquitous cellphones and induces in them a desire to interact with people who are physically present.

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