Telling Lies To Kate

Posted on November 18th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

Elena Gaillard reminds me that at one point about twenty years ago, we took my then-young niece Kate and nephew Zachary to an Off-Broadway performance of Blue Man Group, back before Blue Man Group became the thundering multi-city franchise it is today.

I think Kate was about five.

And the circumstance enabled what may be the most fiendish lie I ever told to a child.

You see, back then — and perhaps still, I don’t know — Blue Man Group ended its shows by having dispensers in the ceiling bury the audience in unspooled toilet paper. The crowds ended up dancing to a hard dance beat, beneath a layer of tons of TP.

To those in the main auditorium, the dispensers were high above their heads and easy to miss, while waiting for the show. Not for us. We sat in the balcony, where the ceiling was within easy reach for a standing adult, very visible for a confused child. The toilet paper was right over our heads, one sheet hanging.

Kate asked me why the auditorium came equipped with toilet paper rolls for every seat.

I said, “Well, think about it. If you’re in a movie theatre and have to get up to use the bathroom, you don’t disturb the actors on screen. But this is a live performance. It’s rude to walk out. So what you’re supposed to do is quietly lift your seat up, and use the toilet bowl that’s hidden beneath the cushion. Nobody will notice what you’re doing. The toilet paper is there for your convenience.”

Kate was disturbed by this. “No. That can’t be true.”

“Oh, it is,” I said, and turned to Elena. “Aren’t we sitting on padded toilet bowls?”

“Oh yes,” Elena said very seriously. “I’ve been to dozens of plays and there’s always toilet bowls where you’re sitting. At any given time, there must be half a dozen people in the audience going to the bathroom. You only know what they’re doing if you see them grabbing the toilet paper.”

I said, “Some people are probably going now.”

Kate was seriously weirded out by this, but kept picking at it logically, until we relented.

Were we bad people?

Tags: Blue Man Group, Theatre, True Stories | Category Life Wisdom, Uncategorized

An Asshole Boss Who Still Asshole Bossed When Not Asshole Boss

Posted on November 8th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

So among my many war stories of retail hell is the hellish electronics superstore I left after a year, feeling blessed to escape; I did not know that the worst days of my working life were still ahead, a thousand miles to the south.

As it happened, a week after leaving the store I had to buy some inconsequential accessory, of less than ten dollars; a blank videotape, a wire, something. And it was in this situation that I returned to my old store, after only a week, to pick up that item and wait on line to pay for it.

When I got to the register it was a cashier I knew, and as she rang up my payment she asked me how my new job was going, and I said, fine, and asked how she was doing, and she said fine.

Behind her was the glass cubicle in which the managers sat, glowering, for chances to exercise their tyrant skills.

The worst of them was on duty that day, and he stormed out, stuck his finger in his face, and said to me, “I ALWAYS HAVE TO TELL MY PAST EMPLOYEES WHEN THEY COME IN HERE THAT THIS IS NOT A SOCIAL CLUB! YOU DON’T COME IN HERE AND STAND AROUND YAKKING WITH YOUR EX-COWORKERS! YOU PAY FOR YOUR PURCHASE AND GET THE HELL OUT!”

I happened to be standing in front of a long line of customers, waiting to have their own purchases rung up, and to my eternal credit, I turned around to them and said, “Everybody, excuse me for the language you are about to hear.”

Then I turned back to him and stuck my finger in his face.

And said, “Listen. Asshole. I no longer work for you. I no longer have to listen to your idiocy or take your abuse. I no longer have a paycheck riding on kissing your ass. I’m a customer now. You have to kowtow to me. Fuck you and your family.”

A number of the customers behind me applauded.

He stormed back into his office without another word.

That was a good one.

You want another?

Three YEARS later I returned to the store to make a purchase, in my old department.

Three YEARS.

YEARS.

I hadn’t been in the store for THREE YEARS.

So I went to my old department, and asked the salesperson then on duty if he could find me something. He said yes and went off to locate it, leaving me in my old department alone.

I had not been in the store for THREE YEARS.

So I was standing in my old department, humming, and a stock guy not of exceedingly huge intelligence who was still working in the back walked up to me and handed me a clipboard, asking me to sign for a delivery.

All that time, he had failed to notice that I no longer worked there….

Tags: Assholes | Category Humor, Sneaky Metaphors, Uncategorized

The Thing I Promised Myself, With Gustav Gloom

Posted on November 6th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

I suppose it’s no great spoiler to reveal that in my Gustav Gloom series, it is Gustav who with his friend Fernie What must travel across worlds and endure great hardships to confront that ficton’s villain, Lord Obsidian.

C’mon. You can’t have read even one novel before without getting that much from book one. (Though given the age of the book’s youngest readers, reading even one novel before this one is not a given.)

But I do take pains to have several characters in the know tell him versions of the following.

There are no chosen ones. There are no great, cryptic prophecies. There are no grand heroes chosen by fate, centuries ahead of their birth, to confront the evils of their time. There are just people, trapped in history not of their making, who have to deal with such terrors when they would have been just as happy, happier, living quiet lives that never intersected such awfulness. Prophecies of chosen ones are there so that the people suffering under tyrants will sit around their whole lives under the most brutal oppression, figuring that fighting evil is the kind of thing that only one particular person is born to do, and that there’s no point in initiating that project themselves, because they’re not that one particular person and will lose, whereas that one particular person is generally promised his eventual glory by a birthmark and therefore has nothing to worry about.

Gustav Gloom is a hero, I think. So’s the book’s viewpoint character, Fernie What. But not because somebody promised their arrival centuries ago. Just because they see what has to be done and get down with it with a minimum of kvetching and whining.

This was something I always promised myself I would arrange, if I ever wrote a story in this particular genre.

I kept that promise.

Tags: Gustav Gloom, writing | Category Blog Business, Books, Fantasy, Gustav Gloom, Writing