The Doorman’s Diary: 1.28-29.11

It happens rarely, but the doorman was flummoxed. I arrived at my regular time and found the guest band cooking and customers well into their drinks (?). This is a full 45 minutes before the regular 9:30pm start. The bartender signaled me to conference. I walked past the former doorman who was seated at the bar (??), and saw the club owner who was dressed like Blossom from the old TV series—hat, her long hair, and a shy “I’m not here” look on her face (???). If we were playing “What’s wrong with this picture,” I was definitely stumped. I WTFed the bartender who said, “They just started and the cover is $7 tonight, not five, and they’re only playing until 11pm.” I did what I should: adjust and adapt. I like the group—they’re young, they’re good, and they’re take on the traditionals is unique—but their geriatric timetable is confusing. I caught up with the club owner, complimented her on the teeny-bop look, and demanded a fistful of Washingtons to accommodate the odd cover. “I’m sicker than a dog…going home…good luck,” she said before taking her cute Blossom look out the door. I eased into my post and enjoyed the avant garde melodious jazz coming from the band and imagined myself in a larger city’s black laminate past—especially when they did their exquisite take on Grover Washington’s Mr. Magic. The $7 cover requires higher math skills and surgeon dexterity to extract change for the 20’s and 10’s. Even the patrons fumbled a bit, like the jazz-woman who gave me a five and two singles. When I discovered that one of her singles was a ten, I chased her down to correct her overpay. She was surprised. When did honesty become surprising? The karma of my honesty was repaid by another customer who surprised me with a $5 tip—a sweet woman, indeed.  In this what’s-wrong-with-this-picture night, there appeared to be plenty that was right.

The Doorman’s Diary: 1.15-16.11

By definition, jazz clubs should be mellow. An oasis of cool. The club was just that tonight. The tables were filling with pleasant, jazz-loving folk. However, there was a major title-run NFL game involving our team taking place, so the band was glued to a TV in the back. The band reluctantly broke from watching the game. If they were preoccupied with gridiron hope, it didn’t show in their playing. A couple from 50 miles away told me they’re celebrating their 30^th wedding anniversary this weekend and came specifically to the club just as they had two years earlier. I urged the bartender to take extra special care, since we'd like them back every year. Right after they were made to feel comfortable, a young woman with dark brown eyes entered the club. I learned she’s 27, a jazz singer, and born and raised in Puerto Rico. I suggested, if she were interested, that she tell the bandleader and that he may invite her up to sing. Which is what she did when the band was on break. I heard the bandleader asking what songs she knew. After the impromptu interview, the old pro mumbled to me that she may think she’s a jazz singer but she doesn’t know many of the old standards. “Maybe, but it wouldn’t hurt to give her a break—if she’s got stage presence and youthful confidence, she could learn any song you like and be fabulous.” I regretted saying what I did because I thought I had crossed the line. But to my relief, he did call her up and her voice was quite sweet. The game had ended in victory for our home team and the club had been filling with the post-game happy-drunk crowd (which is better than an angry / depressed, we-lost-drunk crowd). Last memory of the night: a young man wearing a team jersey doing some kind of joyous, interpretive dance to the music while weaving through the tables. I said to the club owner, while sipping my end-of-shift scotch, “He’s actually pretty good, maybe we should hire him as our official interpretive dancer.” She deadpanned, “He is very fluid but I don’t think I stock enough beer to keep him fueled.”

How Real is Real?

There is something creepy and amazing about realist painters. Anyone who can replicate down to an errant eyebrow hair the human face is totally gifted. Brooklyn artist, David Jon Kassan, uses oil paint on wood panels to capture the essence. But even the 19^th century Realist Movement wasn’t as real. How real is real? Kassan is photographic real… 3D real. His photorealist paintings remind me of Duane Hanson’s sculptures. There isn’t a visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum where I don’t say “hi” to the Janitor who reminds me that not all that is real is really real. (It’s too bad that a sign is now posted there to tell visitors the obvious: “hands off!” But clearly, good art does make us want to reach out and touch it.)

The Doorman’s Diary: 1.8-9.11

Almost from the moment I arrived at my post, the trickle of customers began. The first was a chocolate-skin beauty who tried her best to connive her way in without paying the cover. “I thought if you arrive before the music, you get in free? I came here for the singer, when does she start?” Her coy obstinate ploy was becoming irritating, so I told her to come in and have a drink and when the music starts she’ll have to pay. She sidled up to the bar, pulled out a tea packet and asked for hot water. The bartender adroitly suggested that she try across the street where they serve food then come back when the music starts. She bought it and left. The bartender growled, “she’s got money—I saw a healthy wad when she was fishing for her tea bag—make sure she pays the cover.” She returned after her tea and I gladly did. The entitlement of beauty stopped at the door. The club was filling nicely when a guy pushing an empty wheelchair clunked his way in. He was using the chair like a walker, although it appeared he could be in it. I asked for the cover and he said, ”I’m a musician.” To which I said, “Great! Then you understand how the door makes live music possible!”  He started fumbling with his chair as though leaving, so I invited him in. When he parked his wheelchair off to the side and walked unaided to the bar, I thought “what a brilliant scam.” A little later, the guest vocalist walks up to me with the miraculously recovered biped with his off-kilter grin and says, “He doesn’t need to pay, he’s on my guest list.”  I guess I was so impressed with the audacity and thoroughness of the wheelchair scam that I didn’t have the fire to tell her she doesn’t have a guest list.  He accomplished his goal of avoiding the five bucks at the door.  In hindsight, I missed a matchmaking opportunity… the tea-drinking beauty and the wheelchair scammer beast. 

The Doorman’s Diary: 1.7-8.11

The jazz club was closed over the holiday weekends – both Xmas and New Year’s. It’s been three weeks since the doorman’s stern and stoic face cast an appraising gaze at those entering the club. During the break I renewed my membership in the International Academy of Doormen (formerly the Royal Academy of Doormen) and mailed off the equivalent of 20 British Pounds Sterling to the London office. I also took time to relax before the crackling hearth fire with a snifter while rereading The Strict and Unwavering Code of the Professional Doorman—which the core of the slim tome was published in 1647 (out of respect and to honor the English writer Francis Meres (who had passed away that year), especially well known for his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, a commonplace book that is important as a source on the Elizabethan poets, and more particularly because it is the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare). This first night of twenty-11 was exceedingly slow. We had two pleasant couples seated at tables for the majority of the night. A young Hispanic couple joined them late in the night and I think I read the young lady’s ID from Mexico incorrectly. She was born in 1990, so unless she was born in the first seven days of this year, she was underage. (Crap! I need to be more diligent.) And then another Hispanic couple stopped in for a quick beer. The woman had long brown-black hair that reached down to her waist and her boyfriend has something to do with carpet cleaning since he got into a long discussion about dry extraction vs. wet chemicals with the club owner. I was lost in his lady’s hair and the trio’s rendition of a Freddie Hubbard song to pay close attention to his spiel, thus I have no idea which carpet cleaning method is best.

Philosophically Speaking

Philosophers deal in the world of abstractions, conundrums and polysylabics.  Case in point, explain this quote: "...the idea that epistemic facts can be analyzed without remainder - even in principle - into non-epistemic facts ... is, I believe, a radical mistake - a mistake of a piece with the so-called 'naturalistic fallacy' in ethics." Written by Wilfrid Sellars in a paper presented as part of the University of London Special Lectures on Philosophy for 1955-56. Herein lies the challenge. If a philosopher figures out the grand Rubic’s cube of life, language is inadequate to explain it… or at least explain it in terms that an average beer swilling, crotch scratching, Hallmark card giving mortal can understand. We tend to skitter along the surface of life, allowing our brains to body surf on the waves of popular culture. Enter Dr. Aaron Allen Schiller, visiting assistant prof in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Professor Schiller teaches a brilliantly conceived upper-division “Philosophy and Popular Culture” course which underscores that nothing is beyond philosophical reflection. Family Guy, Lady Gaga, vampires, Harley-Davidson, baseball, food, Harry Potter, graffiti, digital games, social networking, Batman, Bob Marley, cartoons and more are artfully crafted into final papers that weave pop culture and philosophical constructs into interesting reading. The final student papers are posted on a blog created by Doc Schiller. 

The Doorman’s Diary: 12.18-19.10

With the year fast coming to a close, the jazz club becomes a choice location for a number of home-for-the-holidays gatherings and celebrations, including a jazz singer’s long-time-a-comin’ college graduation party. The crowd was hummin’ with Christmas spirit. Even my old nemesis, the Truman-Capote-look-alike from the 11/27-28/10 night showed up hoping for entry. A couple of weeks after that eventful night, he had shown up sober and I let him in. That night he had become incessantly intimidating to the club owner with his ceaseless prattle and was shown the door. Tonight, he was again filled with more THC than TLC. One might ask, if the doorman, being filled with the spirit of the holidays, would let bygones be bygones and warmly welcome the loathsome one? Would I? Hell no. I was explaining the benefits of him going elsewhere when things escalated a bit.  He was wagging his finger in my face making a pointless point, when the drummer who was standing nearby during a band break jumped in and said, “You DO NOT shake your finger in the face of The Doorman.” How true I thought, as the “discussion” shifted to the two of them and my remembering that the drummer has a short fuse. Before I knew it, the drummer was grabbing his shirt collar and escorting him out. When the door shut behind the two of them I immediately went outside and grabbed the drummer saying, “DON’T – your hands are worth more holding sticks than broken from rearranging this sorry ass’ face.” It worked and we re-entered the club in time for the second set where we were all treated to an especially vigorous drum solo in the first song. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa!!