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9-14-07 Air Waitress

People can sometimes say the most insulting things without even realizing it. Take for example the chubby stewardess I drove to the airport the other morning. My God! If there was ever a candidate for spousal abuse this sorry bitch is it.

I was almost twenty minutes early when I pulled into the parking lot of the Four Points Sheraton a few minutes before 4:00 am, but the pilot and co-pilot were already outside waiting. They smoked and drank their complimentary coffee while they waited for their stewardess to show up. Already irritable because the Four Points’ shuttle van was otherwise occupied and they had to cab it to the airport, their complaints grew loud and bitter when they realized she was running late.

They finally came over to the cab when she trundled out the door. I loaded their luggage and asked if there was any more. Hers still needed to be loaded but she was nowhere in sight. Her bags were stacked by the front door but she was gone. I loaded her bags while they pissed and moaned about her running them even later than she already had. A few minutes later she emerged from the hotel with the cup of coffee she’d went back to get.

For the next few minutes she chattered on about everything under the sun: how disorganized she was this morning because of the noise in the hotel the night before and how she was going to file a complaint when she got time, how she had a blind date scheduled when they touched down that evening in Dayton, how horrid the coffee was, etc. The pilots just ignored her, responding mostly in monosyllables and noncommittal grunts.

As we pulled out of the parking lot I flipped on the meter and told them to just ignore it because the hotel had picked up the tab for them that morning. “But,” I explained, “if I don’t have it on I could get a ticket for that too if we get pulled over for anything else: a lesson I learned the hard way.”

She asked me, “Well, couldn’t you just tell them that you are giving us a ride?” She didn’t wait for me to answer before chattering right on. “No, I guess not. No one would believe that there is such a thing as a kind-hearted cabdriver. Oh, officer, I was just giving these folks a ride because...” She finished her sentence with a giggle several octaves higher than her normal speaking voice.

I replied to her, “Yeah, that would be about as believable as if I told the cop that you were a stewardess who actually had half a brain in your head, huh?”

The pilots chuckled and she inhaled sharply like I had rabbit punched her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize… I mean I didn’t mean to…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I cut her off. “When you run your mouth as much as you do, it’s kinda hard to keep track of all the shit that comes out of it. I know.”

She didn’t say another word all the way to the airport. The pilots’ mood, however, seemed much improved.

Three years ago today…
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9-08-07 Absentee

I need to apologize to my loyal reader (just the one of ya) for my absence from the website lately. Between long hours at work and obsessively preparing for the upcoming fantasy football season when at home I just haven’t had much spare time lately. Jenn is even beginning to call herself a fantasy football widow. The good news is that since this is the first week of the NFL season, I will have much more time than I have had this past month because—whether I am truly ready or not—it’s game time.

I am running three teams this year: the Pimlico Parkway Pimpslap, the Hillbilly Mudsharks, and the Tates Creek Testicles. My primary team is the Pimpslap and I am the League Manager. It took me nearly a month to assemble the players (from nearly all eras of my life: childhood, navy, college, and present day) but we finally got it done and held our draft last Sunday.

I won’t bore you by running down the players on my roster, but what I will do to fill space until I begin to write in earnest is share the mock article I wrote and posted on the our league home page yesterday to poke fun at the first of us hit with a serious injury to a key player. Enjoy, and I will return soon to give you the rundown on the craziness that has been going on at White Cab over the last month:

White Trash WR Likely Out for Season

Lexington, KY - Two days before their regular season fantasy opener, the Billsburg White Trash learned wide receiver Terry Glenn's problematic right knee will likely force him to miss the entire 2007 season, team owner/head coach/general manager/head cheerleader Daniel Renner said late Friday evening as he cabbed home from a local bar.

Renner said Glenn's knee injury is similar to that of former Cowboys center Al Johnson, who missed his entire rookie season in 2003 following microfracture surgery. "You hate to see this with one of your top players and we need all of those we can on the field," Renner said. "This really blows."

Glenn missed all of preseason after having arthroscopic knee surgery Aug. 1 to remove a tiny cyst from the back of his right kneecap. The 33-year-old receiver returned to practice Wednesday but sat out Thursday because of what the White Trash head coach described as sand in his vagina.

Without Glenn, the White Trash must rely on someone other than fourth-year veteran Patrick Crayton who Pimlico Parkway Pimpslap team owner Jay Atwood craftily picked up in the 14th round of our Fantasy Draft. Upon hearing of this development as he drove the cab home, Atwood said, "Damn, dude... it sure sucks to be you."

Commenting from the backseat of the same cab, New Circle Ninjas team owner Justin Kolasa said, "Hey, someone get this passed-out bitch off my lap!"

The White Trash are expected to pick up a crappy wide receiver from the waiver wire to replace Glenn, who will likely be placed on injured reserve soon.

(Actual, unbiased news of Glenn's injury can be found here.)

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8-14-07 Box of Chocolates

“My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
—Forrest Gump

Mama Gump must have been a cab driver because that little saying of hers is the main axiom of cab driving. You never know what to expect when that back door opens. Literally anything can happen. Good things, bad things. Shocking things or the mundane. Big fares or small, you never know. It’s a roll of the dice. And that is the main attraction of this business for me. There is never a dull moment and I can’t get enough of it. Of course, sometimes I run into things that make me want to scoop my eyes out with a spoon or douse myself in Febreeze and set myself on fire like a Vietnamese monk, but that’s just part of it. I mean, where else can you meet seven drunk circus midgets?

Why do I bring this up now? Let me tell you what happened Saturday night, on back-to-back fares no less. Back-to-back, mind you. One right behind the other.

I hadn’t been working that long, maybe an hour. I had just begun to cruise after dropping off my longtime regulars Carrie and Leah downtown when I caught a flag at the corner of Mill and Short. A bleary-eyed man in his mid-40s, he was completely shit-faced and carrying a small pizza box. He poured himself into the front seat beside me and slurred “Tates Creek.” I noticed that his brown canvas belt was most of the way off but didn’t think much of it: drunks get in my cab all the time in varying levels of undress. I flipped the meter on and circled back through downtown.

More concerned with watching for darting pedestrians and other cars, I didn’t pay much attention to my passenger until we had cleared downtown and were up on Old Vine heading toward Chevy Chase and the beginnings of Tates Creek. I guess I should have kept an eye on him though because when I did look over I saw that he had his pizza slice in one hand and his dick in the other, rubbing them together.

I jammed on the brakes and came to a stop in the middle of the street. “Whoa, man! What in the hell are you doing?!?”

He slurred back, “I’m eating my pizza.”

“It looks more like you are fucking your pizza!” I flipped the meter off and pointed at his door and said, “Your ride is over, dude. You gotta go.”

When he protested I got out myself and proceeded around the car. I opened his door and half-helped him along, half-pulled him out by his shirt collar. He stumbled and landed facedown on top of his pizza in a random yard, the upper part of his ass showing from his open pants.

I flipped on the inside light and checked for any mess he might have left. Luckily I had put a halt to things before he got to his exciting conclusion so there wasn’t anything more than a few loose sausages rolling around his seat and the floorboard. I picked them out with a few napkins from my glovebox and tossed them on top of him where he still lay, including the napkins.

Disgusted (but quite amused, I have to admit), I got back in the cab and headed back to downtown. Before I even finished typing the text message to tell certain folks about my pizza wanker, I got a call from John at the front desk of the Griffin Gate Marriott to come pick up some of Mr. Smith’s friends. I didn’t know who the fuck Mr. Smith was and didn’t really care. I was just glad that I now had an excuse to get the fuck away from downtown for a little while where people were obviously getting way too drunk.

When I pulled up in front of the Griffin Gate a few minutes later I found out who Mr. Smith was. It was UK’s former basketball coach Tubby Smith. He shook my hand and gave me $20 to drive his friend to their family home off Bryan's Station. Who was his friend? None other than Davey L. Whitney, legendary Alcorn State Head Coach and former Negro Leagues baseball player. In his upper 70s with sparkling mischievious eyes, Coach Whitney talked basketball and told stories all the way there.

Now that was fucking cool!

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8-05-07 Again

I don't care how long you have been waiting for a cab, nor do I care how frustrated you have become because of it, but this is just a fact: flagging a random cabbie by drunkenly flailing your arms in the air and screaming, "Hey, Asshole," is not the way to get him to stop the cab. What that will get you instead is for the cabbie to circle the block, flip you off as drives past, and not pick you up again.

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