Wish You Were Here, Part 1

A story about a cancelled trip and a glutton’s weekend…

Two things you need to know:

1. My best friend was coming to Kansas City for a weekend and my plan was to take him to all my favorite bars and restaurants and show him a great time.

2. My best friend got sick three days before he was supposed to show up in KC and texted me that he got RSV which is either a virus or 3/4s of  a response to an invitation and either way he cancelled his trip.

Wait, I miscounted and turns out there are three things you need to know and here’s the third one:

3. I offered to pay for his hotel because he’s put me up in his house so many times, but I used one of those fly-by-night Expedia-Priceline-Possibly-Russian-Mob-Front-Business deals to get a good hotel rate and had to pay up front and my money was non-refundable.

OK, actually, now that I think about it there may be four things you need to know and I’m going to quit counting them because it’s starting to sound like that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when Michael Palin explains how to use a Holy Hand Grenade and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, here it is:

I hope you watched the video because it makes me laugh every time and points out that the Bible would be a lot more readable if Mickey Spillane wrote it:

“Delilah came into the room with a pair of 38s…she also carried a gun.”

In any case, I paid for three nights in a hotel (neither two, nor four, five being right out) maybe 10 minutes from my house and since my money was non-refundable, decided to go stay in the hotel myself.

Just in case you hadn’t thought about it…

Hotels are great and if I was stinking rich I’d live in one because you can puke on the curtains or hold mud-wrestling tournaments in your bed or make guacamole in the bath tub and someone else has to deal with it and if you totally fuck up your room you can either ask for a new one or take the next logical step and form a rock band.

But then I thought what in the world would I do for three days in a hotel all by myself?

Then being a genius/slash/glutton decided I was going to all the restaurants and bars I planned to visit with my friend because I was looking forward to all that great drinking and eating and I’d take pictures and write this story so he’d know what he missed and hopefully be envious and maybe learn an obvious lesson like:

STOP BREATHING AROUND OTHER PEOPLE!!!

And away we go…

FRIDAY

OK, so first up I get an email Friday morning from the hotel that offers “Contactless Arrival” so I don’t have to deal with any of those disgusting germ-laden Front Desk Humans.

And for that to happen all I have to do is download the hotel app which would probably require me to give them a bunch of information like my phone number, distinguishing birthmarks and a urine sample so they can then sell that information to other businesses and after doing that I’d get a “digital key” on my phone so I’d never have to talk to a hotel employee and I used the word “probably” at the beginning of this paragraph because I didn’t do any of that.

Businesses have figured out that if they can get their customers to check out their own groceries or book their own plane flights or check into hotels without help, then those money-grubbing businesses can fire the people who used to do all that stuff for us.

Which might be OK if they lowered their prices as a result, but you know they’re just going to take the money they saved and give it to their CEO so he can buy yet another island or have his genitals gold-plated or build a rocket shaped like a dick and yes, I’ve used that image before, but it’s currently my favorite example of the kind of thing people with way too much money get up to.

No idea how those Employee-Discarding Businesses think they’ll stay in business once everyone in America loses their jobs because who will have money to buy their products, but businesses tend to be poor long-term thinkers because they’re totally focused on the next quarter’s numbers and can’t think ahead four quarters from now and if you need a Real Life example how about the newspaper industry that thought it was a great idea to give their product away for free on the internet?

A decision they’ve been trying to walk back for the past decade and as you may have already noticed moving backwards isn’t the most efficient way to get anywhere unless you’re an NFL cornerback.

BTW: Turns out some major retailers are now trying to walk their “self-checkout kiosks” plan back because some people are failing to scan all their items and walking out with free shit and shoplifting has doubled and who could have possibly seen that coming?

Anyway…

So instead of all that phone crap I talk to an actual front-desk human and probably contract RSVP in the process and will soon develop a cough and a fever and start writing party invitations, but as long as I don’t get sick until after 11 AM Monday, which is the hotel check out time, I’m all set.

But before I get all the way to Monday I have to get through Friday and my first stop was…

The Drum Room, 1329 Baltimore

The Drum Room is the cocktail lounge in the President Hotel which is one of those great old places that have been preserved and make you think Benny Goodman or Glen Miller or Frank Sinatra or Patsy Cline or Pretty Boy Floyd are going to walk through the door any minute and it turns out four-of-five of them did. (Pretty Boy got shot to death seven years before the Drum Room opened so he missed out on a pretty cool cocktail lounge.)

The Drum Room names some of their drinks after presidents and what you’re looking at is a Truman-hattan which uses Old Grandad whiskey, sweet vermouth and Jerry Thomas bitters and an internet search failed to reveal what Jerry was so bitter about:

Three of those and you’re ready to threaten a music critic, integrate the armed services and drop an atomic bomb on whatever city pissed you off lately.

Next up, dinner…

Garozzo’s Ristorante, 526 Harrison

As comedian George Miller once observed: “The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.”

And the trouble with Garozzo’s is everything’s great so you want an appetizer and a salad and a main course and dessert and then maybe an espresso afterwards and they offer all that, but have neglected to include a wheelbarrow option on their menu so some overworked busboy can cart your fat ass back to your car and wedge you behind the wheel for the drive home. Unfortunately you’ll have to do that all by yourself, but no pain, no gain which is a totally appropriate saying because you’re going to weigh 15 more pounds than you did when the evening started.

This is Chicken Spiedini Samantha which is roasted chicken in Alfredo sauce with artichoke hearts:

As Rosanne Barr once observed before she stopped being funny and started being a national pain in the ass: people who say they’d rather have sex than eat have never had really good food.

Another BTW:

I told the Drum Room bartender and Garozzo’s waitress about my weekend and how I was Spite Eating to piss off my absent friend and they both thought that was a great idea and took pictures of me drinking and stuffing my face which I immediately sent to my possibly former friend and he called me immediately and accused me of “rubbing it in.”

Good to know the effort’s not wasted.

Next: BBQ, Bisque and a Bob Hope Dancer