F#CK Brunch

    Brunch. Just saying the word, even thinking it, pisses me off. I've been a server in New York City for nearly five years now. Serving is what pays my bills when acting isn't. As I approach year five here in the Empire State, I grow more and more confident that my time as a server is coming to an end. That I've made it over some sort of proverbial hump and soon acting and writing will be my sole means of income. Like my teacher the late great Michael Collins used to say, "If you move to a major city to be an actor and give it less than five years, you're kidding yourself." It wasn't until the beginning of year four that I really began to understand what he was talking about.
    So for every minute in this city that I've spent on the stage or in front of a camera, I've spent at least a hundred more in a restaurant. The service industry is a part of me. There's no way around it. And while with every passing minute I grow more and more tired of it and just mustering the breath to explain to some asshole what Grana Padano is, I realized how thankful I am for all my time in the restaurant business. It's taught me lessons I'll carry with me for ever as well as changed the way I look at human beings in general. You gain insight into your fellow man like no other profession does. It's mostly because people, especially hungry people, are terrible. When you really want to see the worst in people, like the third or fourth level of hell kind of worst in people, you work a brunch.


     "Instead of England's early Sunday dinner, a postchurch ordeal of heavy meats and savory pies, why not a new meal, served around noon, that starts with tea or coffee, marmalade and other breakfast fixtures before moving along to the heavier fare? By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday-night carousers. It would promote human happiness in other ways as well. Brunch is cheerful, sociable and inciting. It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week."

- Guy Beringer, "Brunch: A Plea," Hunter's Weekly, 1895

     Written by Guy Beringer in 1895, this article is credited with introducing the notion of brunch to the world. If I could only borrow the flying DeLorean from Doc Brown I would head back to 1895 and pick up Mr. Beringer so I could bring him back here to 2012. I'd take him to a busy Manhattan restaurant at 2pm on a Sunday so he could walk in and have his ears split by the sound of a table of ten sorority girls screaming and laughing as they wave their arms at their server like they're drowning and request another Bloody Mary. I'd take him along to to tables of hungover parents who got hammered the night before cause they hired a sitter sothat today they can bury their face in the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times while their horrible children run around the restaurant unsupervised and weave between food runners who do all they can to not drop a scalding hot plate of food on a the kid's stupid screaming heads. I'd have him take a moment to sit with the jerkoffs who work in finance and fist pound each other while they yell about whatever broad they managed to drag back to their Upper East Side apartment and pound away on before sending her on the walk of shame to eventually meet up with her friends that morning over bottomless Mimosas and Eggs Benedict while swapping stories of blowing a guy who is now listed in her phone as Jeff Captain and Coke because all she remembers about the gentleman she just blew was that his name is Jeff and he likes Captain and Cokes.

    Now, I'm sure this isn't what Guy had in mind when he came up with this crazy demon hybrid meal. It was probably more about a group of chaps and birds with bad teeth sitting around the garden nursing a hangover from one too many Guinness. That I understand. I love sitting around the apartment the morning after a party and piecing the prior evening with my buddies before we order a pizza or hit the bodega for breakfast sandwiches. Maybe it was simply about sleeping in. It sounds to me like the original idea of Brunch was simply a way to stay in the sack for a few more hours after a Saturday night bender. THAT is something I can understand and totally get behind. I myself am a heavy boozer and avid lazy Sunday enthusiast. I love rolling out of bed at noon and taking a bong rip before I spend the day on the couch watching The Shawshank Redemption on TNT and ordering up some won-ton soup. Maybe brunch wasn't a bad idea. Maybe we just polluted it like everything else in the world until it's become a shitty ugly version of what it was meant to be.

      Sunday Brunch is by far the worst shift to work in a restaurant no matter what your position there might be. First, brunch shifts are traditionally given to new people in the restaurant who are often shaky and unsure of themselves on the floor. Second, everyone is hungover. Badly, hungover. If you're a server and you worked on Saturday night then you took all that money you made and gave it right to the bartender at the local spot around the corner from where you work. If you're a kitchen person you probably got your ass kicked on the line the night before and in order to relax you jumped out of your chef whites and onto a bar stool the second the kitchen was closed and your station was broken down. If employees who are working brunch and managed to have the previous night off, they are I promise you not the person you want taking care of you simply because either a) they didn't work Saturday night because they're new and not very good at their job yet or b) they too got hammered because they had a whole Saturday night off or c) both.

     Besides the sub-par staffing issues that take place on a Sunday morning there's the problem with the product. Unlimited mimosas and Bloody Marys? Is that why you came? Let me break your heart for a second. Free drinks are more often than not gross concoctions with little to no booze made by a bartender who could give a fuck less about the drinks because they're free. What about the food? I don't even need to say anything because Anthony Bourdain said it best in Kitchen Confidential.

"Brunch menus are an open invitation to the cost-conscious chef, a dumping ground for the odd bits left over from Friday and Saturday nights. How about hollandaise sauce? Not for me. Bacteria love hollandaise. And nobody I know has ever made hollandaise to order. And how long has that Canadian bacon been festering in the walk-in? Remember, brunch is only served once a week - on the weekends. Cooks hate brunch. Brunch is punishment block for the B-Team cooks, or where the farm team of recent dishwashers learn their chops."

     Let's be honest though. The problem with brunch these days isn't the staff or the food. It can't be. Otherwise assholes wouldn't flock to it the way they do. The problem with brunch is the customers. Brunch is a license to act like a complete douche and still be considered hip. That wonderful easy goin Sunday attitude that Guy Beringer envisioned has been superseded by the constant terrible routine of sitting in a restaurant on a Sunday afternoon being a self entitled prick. A restaurant during a busy brunch is a metaphor for how shitty we've become as a people. It's parents who don't give a fuck about their kids. Rich Republicans in white pants and boat shoes who snap their fingers at you and apparently have never heard the words please and thank you. There's the finance assholes who say, "Get me a Goose and soda bro!" sitting across from the group of gay dudes who all bust out laughing when I tell one of them we can't make smoked salmon Benedict so he throws his napkin at me and goes, "Ugh, that's tragic!" I can't forget the herd of  twenty something girls dressed in tights and UGGs screaming, "BECKY! Pay attention! The guy is here. What do you want to drink? Becky!" Or the couple who takes up your table for forty five minutes before they order or even let you talk to them because they can't stop sucking face since they've been in bed all morning and should have just ordered in because they can't seem to tear themselves off one another. And the one thing that unites brunch customers beside the lack of common courtesy...the inability so simply order from the fucking menu. Every order is a special order. "Can I substitute this?"  "I don't know what those are?"  "I have a gluten allergy." "Is there dairy in that?" Every single table has something they can't eat so they decide they just want to make up their own dish comprised of ingredients scattered about the menu. WE WROTE DOWN ALL THE SHIT WE HAVE! THAT'S WHY WE GAVE YOU THE MENU! IF YOU CAN"T FIND SOMETHING YOU LIKE THEN KINDLY GO FUCK YOURSELF ON THE WAY OUT. 

     I know what you're saying gang. You've been doin this for too long Mergs. Yeah, maybe I have. Or maybe I just think we could do better. Maybe Guy Beringer was on to something. Maybe instead of blindly heading out to brunch this weekend and engaging in the same old behavior, maybe we should remember why the whole thing began. Maybe we should all be taking it a little easier. Maybe sleeping in and making breakfast at the house is a nice change of pace. Maybe gathering around a television with your friends for pizza and movies with a bong rip is something to rediscover. However, if you do feel the need to meet up friends at a restaurant somewhere, maybe you'll think twice about freaking out because you can't taste the booze in your screwdriver. Remember that at the end of the day you are a GUEST in the restaurant. That please and thank you go a long way. That this is supposed to be a relaxed, chill gathering and that getting eggs over medium when they were supposed to be over easy isn't the end of the world. That since you're a busy career mom/dad and only get a few hours a week with your kids you should actually spend it with them instead of handing them an iPad while you slug back Prosecco. Maybe if we remembered what brunch was all about in the first place, relaxing with friends and family and being grateful for each others company while simply trading stories of good times, then maybe Sunday would be a little easier for everyone. 

     

    

Blogs are for douchebags.

     Why am I doing this? That's the question I've been asking myself since Sunday afternoon when during the middle of my shift I caught myself ranting inside my own head like a maniac and I thought, "I should write a blog." That thought was quickly followed by, "I can't write a fuckin blog." So often now I'm out in the world doing my thing and then all of sudden I'll overhear someone say, "Did you read my blog?' or "He's a blogger." Then I inevitably, without even thinking about it, mumble under my breath, "Fuckin douche." Once my mumble is finished I judge that person and move on about my day. I do have friends with blogs though. Good friends with great blogs. Sometimes I get around to reading them and I almost always enjoy them when I do. So if they can do it...well you know.
     If you're reading this you probably know me and if you don't thanks for stopping by. I've been an actor for over a decade now, and sadly a server off and on for nearly as long. Sometime in the last couple years I added another title to my quiver of occupations...writer. My writing stemmed solely from the desire to create my own work. (Kevin James and Jerry Ferrara  took all the good roles for my type over the last seven years. Kidding, sorta.)  I refused for a long time to let the label of "writer" be placed upon me. It was actually my fellow artist friends, some of whom are green money paid writers, who made me get over myself and embrace the craft.  I do actually sit down to final draft on the reg and bang out a script, and as far as I can tell, I'm not totally terrible at it. I write quite often these days. It's mostly for television where I hope to be firmly planted some glorious day when all my hard work finally pays off and I never again have to ask the question, "Would you prefer bottled water or tap water?" However, until the dark gray clouds of the service industry break and the warm blanket like light of Hollywood comes pouring through my window, here I am.
    What I'm saying I guess is that I'm looking for another outlet for my writing and here it is. The Fat Kid Chronicles, like nearly every blog out there, is simply an opportunity to share a little something with ya'all. This blog will be forged the thoughts, ideas, questions, and stories, of a 30 year old fat kid form Pennsylvania grinding it out here in my adopted home. New York City.
   I promise I'll do all I can to make this not completely suck. I also promise you'll find typos and grammatical errors quite often. In spite of those my dear reader friend, I hope you enjoy yourself.