February 9, 2000

I know I haven't updated in a while, but truly, I haven't had much to say. Then I was telling this story to Mary on the phone last night and I was cracking myself up, and I thought it would make a good journal entry.

Molly and I went out to dinner at Tully's on Saturday night. For those of you who don't know, Tully's is a sports-themed restaurant, and they have the best chicken fingers I have ever tasted. I picked the place, and I made a few mistakes. The biggest one was in forgetting that Syracuse University's (then) undefeated men's basketball team had a game that night, and lots of people like to go to Tully's to watch the game. So it was pretty crowded.

We arrived and gave our names to the hostess, and she gave us a balloon. The way they work the system is that you get a colorful helium balloon with a number on it. Then you go stand around and wait in the lobby area, in the game room, or in the bar area. When they have your table ready, they can easily find you due to your helium balloon. At least that's the theory.

We got a green balloon with three numbers on it: 70, 71, and 72. We were a little unsure as to why there were three different numbers, but who are we to question the Tully's seating system? We went and stood next to the change machine, as it was the only spot available. Molly was holding the balloon.

After at least twenty minutes, I was considering knawing off my own arm. But they had said the wait would be at least thirty, so I understood. A few minutes later, Molly made the tactical error of letting go of the balloon. She had looped the ribbon around a few times to create a little handle, but apparently her strategy didn't work. The balloon floated up to the ceiling and we both just stared at it. The looped ribbon meant that it wasn't hanging down in easy reach. I said, "Dude, jump up and snag it!" Molly looked at me like, "I am NOT jumping in the middle of a restaurant." I looked around for a tall person we could convince to get it for us. No one was tall enough. No one was even offering to help! They were all just staring at us.

Finally, Molly reached over and grabbed a pool cue. She managed to get it through the ribbon handle, but as she started to pull it down, the helium would drive the balloon upwards and it would slide off the end of the cue and bounce along the ceiling. This happened about three times, and at this point our little balloon was over the crowded bar area. I kept hoping someone would just reach up, grab it, and hand it back to us. I was also bent in half laughing at Molly with the pool cue. Molly said she was going to tell the hostess we lost our balloon.

She was gone for some time, so I wandered out to see what the holdup was. She had been waiting in line all that time! We got up to the desk and Molly said, "We lost our balloon. We're this party right here. [points to list of waiting parties]. It was green number 70, 71, and 72." The hostess said very bitchily, "It had three numbers?" Molly was like, "Yeah, that's what I said. But we lost it." The hostess goes, "Not to be mean, but how did you lose it?" What did she think, we fucking sold it for cash? It's a fucking helium balloon! We let it go by accident! What a tool.

Anyway, another hostess came over and gave us a new balloon. We went back and waited fora while, and finally someone found us. Upon finding us, he said, "There you are!" in a really nasty tone of voice, like we were hiding because we didn't want to be seated. We were standing in a room with about 50 other people, all waiting to be seated!

The waitress was very nice, but what was up with the bitchy host/hostess staff? I know it was busy, but that's their job! Losers.

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This is amusing to me, because I remember Tami Heim's first day on the job. I always liked Tami, and she has a great head for business, but I hope she has done her research on the web. Anyway, I'm interested to see how this shakes out.

I don't know what to make of the hacker attacks on popular websites. On the one hand, why do they do it? On the other hand, shouldn't these websites have taken measures to prevent it?

It would have been funny if Kathy Najimy was quoted as saying, "I want out of this sinking ship! This show sucks!"

Doug Hennig was creepy. Does anyone remember his Saturday morning show? Scary.