Ideal for singalongs at nursing homes, senior residences or just at your own home. Bound in a loose-leaf binder of durable vinyl, unsnaps for access to pages. (To see a photo of the book, click 
A waiter rants
Why should anyone care when a waiter rants about his job, his life and the people who invade them? If what he has to say is as well-written as Waiter Rant, everyone should care. Which is why it’s the latest addition to our blogroll.
It’s an inspired idea — a waiter tells you what he really thinks of his customers, which could include people just like you, as well as of the restaurants where he works, which could include places just like the ones you frequent, and of his life among ordinary people, which just could include you. To add to the intrigue, he steadfastly remains anonymous through what is now three years of entries.
He does tell us he is a waiter in a high-end restaurant in the New York City area. And we learn that he is a “passably handsome middle-aged guy with a gut” from his account of taking a break at a water fountain during a gym workout and beholding a young redheaded woman on an elliptical machine. His vision tunnels and his mind wanders to a poem he read in high school:
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor . . ..
“Translation? The girl’s a supreme hottie. Suddenly I’m aware of the fountain’s water dribbling against my chin. I can feel the heat of impatient people lined up behind me, eager to take a drink.”
A grammarian might quibble about his punctuation and occasional use of ‘its’ for ‘it’s,’ but even the crankiest pedant should bow to the power and agility of the anonymous waiter’s writing.
From Walt Whitman poetry to water dribbling down his chin, he moves between the heights and the dregs — the retired cop who still packs a gun but babysits a small dog with cancer, the prosperous-looking diners who are petulant about the specials, the unshaven, grumpy old man who eats alone and “reminds me of a fearful child scanning the horizon, wondering who’s going to be the next person to hurt him,” the kitchen staff whose favorite terms of affection are “pendejo” and “maricon.”
Throughout it all, the anonymous waiter moves with ease — the deceptive ease that always is a sign of well-wrought, often hard-fought, writing.
Check, please: Waiter Rant.
– Sid Leavitt
Posted in Uncategorized |