[315] Screed City

[315]

02/08/2025 Saturday. Side table on top of rolling table. Room 209. Room 2 Suites. Hollywood, Florida.

As Sturgill Simpson once said, "Some days you blast off, some days you just smoke." Well, today smoked. And not really in a bad way. It was just one of those days, as the bridesmaids say. First it took us over an hour and a half just to get on the boat. They were onboarding quite a few new hires, so we had do stand in line behind workers of various nationalities wearing stickers that said where they had been and for what reason. Health screening and passport and security and such. It was a little like Ellis Island in reverse. And they could only take on five or six at a time. Before that though, the security woman couldn't read the manifest list or whatever, she didn't have her glasses and said as much, "I don't have my glasses, so I can't see shit." Scott knew his number so he told her, "VO72" or something. I was like, "Its under Gerk Gillette, jerk with a G." She didn't laugh. Then she asked for my number. I said, "80." And then she said, "Thurman?" I said, "Truman, handsome Joe Truman" And she said, "Oh, you said that last time" And I said, "It was true last time as well." No laugh. As we loaded our tools onto the x-ray conveyor I said to Scott, "Man, we've stagnated, we need new jokes." Scott, who had gone through security 57 times in the last 68 days said, "I'm sure we do, Joe."

When we finally got onto the stage though, the theater manager reminded us that we were not just hanging a new mid stage act curtain, we were also supposed to hang a Wagner drape which is a bifurcated travelling Austrian drape which is long hand for, "Move-y hang-y swingy white gossamer thingy" also known as, "A pain in the ass." We were already an hour and a half late getting to work and this was not exciting news. Well, maybe it was exciting in the true definition of the word, but it was not a welcome excitement. Luckily the drape hung from a moving truss and that meant Scott didn't need to "Stroll pipe" as the bridesmaids say. Oh, speaking of those bridesmaids, before we even went through security, Scott dropped me off at passenger entrance and went to park the rental car. The parking lot was nearly a mile away. He was going to take the shuttle back but the shuttle wasn't running so he had to walk. A twenty minute walk. I mean, it occurred to me that we should have rollerblades on these jobs. We could increase efficiency by 50%, and not only that, but when we were going through security, if we had fanny packs to carry our passports and phones and such, we would also save a good minute or two twice a day. That's a lot of time lost not working! Between security and Scott walking around like a jerk, we lost almost twenty two minutes and the day had barely even begun! And since we were making $2 a minute on this job, that's like $88 dollars down the drain! The drain! Just right down the drain!

Efficiency is a scam. I hope everyone knows this by now. It just means they are taking your money from you.

But getting us company rollerblades and fanny packs is not a scam. Especially in Florida where the only sweet breeze is swinging your hips down Miami Beach listening to David Lee Roth's cover of California Girls on cassette tape. I mean, I guess I have to paint the picture because I am a YarnSlinger, but you know, the cassette tape is in a Walkman and the Walkman is in the fanny pack and we are wearing speedos and rolling down the beach in blades, sweet, American blades that ol' Pudding Fingers would approve of. Maybe there would be little American flags flapping in the breeze?

We hung the Wagner drape and spent too much time on it. Its complicated and boring, so I won't go into details, but there is this one guy who had one idea and this other guy who had another idea and in the end the one idea was better but it was too late and therefore, none of this would have happened if Trump was president.

But we were behind schedule by this point and Scott put on his harness to "Stroll pipe". I was working on something with the Wagner when I saw some action coming from off stage right. I ignored it. A moment later I heard Scott yell from the rafters, "Stop! You can't do that!" Naturally I assumed I had got my dick stuck my the rollerblade wheels. But I had not. The ten people that were sent to help us do our two man job were dragging one of the drapes we had delivered to this boat in December on the ground in such a way that it was astonishing. Egregious. Phenomenal. Unbelievable. Astounding. Ridiculous. Profound. It was something to behold as the bridesmaids say. A real, what the fuck is going on? I mean, later I equated it to somebody needing to move a brand new car, two! brand new cars in an empty warehouse because they are "in the way" and in order to move them you scrape them against the concrete walls for no reason at all. I mean, the workers had no clue they were doing anything wrong. Somehow? The drapes had come onto the boat folded and carefully taken care of. Nicely folded and meticulous. A thing that me and Scott had done back in December. But here we were. The drapes unraveled like a dead dragon's tongue as if it was made out of velour. And these ten men, with no information aside from orders from some supervisor sometime since then, telling them to move them back stage and then, because they had done that, moved them right back onstage with the same inappropriate maneuvers. I mean, the drapes cost $25,000 a piece and they were treating them like they were an afterthought. It was unbelievable. It could not be believed. And there was nothing to do about it. What was done was done. It's what it's. I was truly astonished. Scott was too, but he was up on the truss "burning the drape."

For a while there was confusion. The men had done nothing wrong, they had just been following orders like all good workers. Giving 111%. Pulling their bootstraps up. Living the American Dream. And there was exactly nothing we could do about it. In order to mitigate the destruction I had them transfer the drape onto the Wagner drape that was lying on the stage, but by then, well, my only thought was, "I hope we don't find rips." After that, it was a true, it's what it's reality, as the bridesmaids would say. For the fifteenth time I thought that this wouldn't be happening if Trump was president. Me and Scott were getting DEI'd and I could smell the WOKE coming from all angles. I tried to call Pudding Fingers but my phone didn't have service. I almost pulled the fire alarm, hoping the police would come because they know best how to deal with DEI and WOKE, but I realized we only had two hours before they kicked us off the boat and usually a WOKE, DEI situation requires at least 11 minutes to quell the DEI and then another 12 to 24 hours to cover up the WOKE and what happened, and, frankly, we did not have that much time, so instead of blaming the men who were just told to do what they were told to do, I decided, against my better judgement, to blame the people who actually caused the atrocity to happen and oddly, the ship didn't suddenly sink into the ocean and time didn't stop and as ridiculous as everything was, none of it actually mattered and there was no amount of table pounding that was going to change any of it.

[insert stage photo]

Still, none of this would have happened if Trump was president.

[insert Sturgill Simpson Blast Off]