Ugh. I am full of Arby's. God...a roast chicken sandwich and a baked potato covered with so many goodies I'm not even sure there was any potato in there - just cheese and bacon and sour cream in a potato skin, the potato part no doubt cunningly removed to make curly fries...or cully fwies, as a man I once knew used to say.

See, my first two summers in college I worked at the Arby's in Conway, Arkansas. There was a colorful group of people working there, too: Betty, the geriatric, red-headed manager who (legend had it) had a ruby in her belly button.

"Salmonella!" she'd screech whenever something hadn't been cleaned to her satisfaction.

There was also David, a high school kid who attracted girls like dogshit attracts those shiny green flies; Richard, a fellow English major and married guy; Todd, a sad-faced, sly-humored philosophy major from Hendrix, and a never-ending parade of short term college kids and white trash from the semi-permanent trailer communities that surrounded that quiet little college town. It was at Arby's that I learned that I did NOT want to work in food service. There was the impetus for getting the degree, right there.

I did do some good at the time, though. While I worked at Arby's we had this sub club promotion going on, where you'd get this little card stamped four times and then you'd get a free roast beef sub. I worked up front (both because I loved customers so much and that I was totally inept at actually making the food) so I would spend those long, quiet summer evenings punching the hell out of those little sub cards and smuggling them out by the carload. Those cards kept Sonya and I fed well into the fall, and since so many college students were hungry I gave them out freely, trying to keep our friends and acquaintances fed. I fed the hungry, I did.

Let's see, what do my notes say...okay. Yesterday, through a strange combination of coincidences, I went to the Memphis Rotary Club monthly lunch. Some observations:

• I have often wondered if there is an upper limit to the number of comb-overs one room can contain. I found out yesterday that there is none. All those long strands of hair, brushed left-to-right over gleaming scamps, could have encircled the globe. Twice.
• I was happily stuffing my face when the guy at the main table said, "Doug Hominigrits will lead us in the singing. Please stand." I thought he was joking... that is, until everybody stood up and burst into America the Beautiful. I haven't performed that particular ditty since sixth grade. Inexplicable.
• The speaker showed a clip from Saturday Night Live. It was one with Phil Hartman doing his sleazy lawyer routine. It was funny, sure, but you would have thought freakin' Chris Rock was up there, they were laughin' so hard.

  Afterwards, I told the people I was there with my theory. "You know why they laughed so hard at that clip? 'Cause they've never seen Saturday Night Live before! It's on too late for that crowd."

In other news... did anyone watch Pirates of Silicon Valley the other night? Does it make me a nerd that I actually marked it on my calendar and made a point to be home Sunday night to see it? I think so. It was pretty cool, I thought. Anthony Michael Hall was Bill Gates, and Noah Wyle was all charm as the brains behind Apple. It was kind of soap opera-fied, true, but it was good tabloid fun for people who follow the computer business.

Rainy summer days are nice, you know? Maybe where you are they're common, but in Memphis a day-long drizzle is rare in the summer. I walked home at lunch and enjoyed splashing through the puddles. The crowds were much thinner on Main Street than usual, too. I wanted to come home, put on the Bauhaus t-shirt and go back down to the Map Room. There, I would sit in the window, drink espresso after espresso and read Sartre in the untranslated French.

Maybe it's best that we don't have that many rainy summer days.

Uh, Siobhan? Are you out there? If you are, Soul Coughing is coming to Memphis on July 31. That's a Saturday, so if you wanted to put it in the car and come on down we could go rock and roll. Let me know...

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