Yacht Club Log:

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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