So, as you’ve already heard from Hoffa, I just got back from celebrating my 30th birthday in Vegas. The lady friend completely blew my mind, as everything was a complete surprise. But instead of just talking about how awesome the vacation was, let me go into specifics:
Day One: March 11th- We checked in early and when we got to the room, we had a message from room service. They had a gift for us. I thought it was going to be champagne or something, but it was much better. Cutty had called ahead and sent something up. A gentleman showed up, handed me a card and asked "Are you ready to party, sir?" To which I replied "As a matter of fact, I am." Here’s the spread:
At night we went my personal Mecca, Casa Fuente. Casa Fuente is the only US Cigar Shop dedicated purely to Fuente Fuente Cigars. They sell the Casa Fuente here and only here, and I had to get it, and it was amazing. At night, we went to see Penn and Teller. We sat in the 5th row, and it was awesome. My favorite trick:
Day Two: March 12th- We got up early and went to the Boneyard, otherwise known as the sign museum. All the busted signs from old Vegas were there. A few choice selections:
We then went to Old Vegas and checked out the cheesiest of all. It’s like a wax museum of what used to pass for casinos and strip joints.
Day Three: March 13th- This was super surprise day. Randi (the lady friend) was just wasting time until the surprise came, so we went to the shops at Caesar’s to get some lunch. On our way to grab some food, I ran into one of my oldest friends, Charlie Hustle himself, the man, the myth, the legend, Pete F-ing Rose:
We talked some baseball, and he was full-on pissed off about the Mets and their managerial decisions over the last few years. Dude dropped about 15 F bombs in the space of 5 minutes. Talking baseball with Pete Rose was pretty close to the coolest thing I could think of……or so I thought.
I was beaming like a school girl that just saw Johnny Bravo, and Randi was in full deception mode. While I was walking around with my Pete Rose signed baseball, she asked me to stop in Kahunaville, the restaurant inside our hotel. About a minute later I saw……….
Jimmy Fing Hoffa.
Seriously.
Randi had been planning for months and got Hoffa and his bride-to-be to come out to meet us in Vegas. Well played. Well Played. I honestly was more surprised to see Hoffa and Mrs. Hoffa than I was to see the all-time hits leader. I couldn’t belive it.
After a few drinks and lunch, the four of us hit the strip and played the ultimate Vegas game: collecting the collectible hooker trading cards. We probably had 500 each, and quit playing when we had no room in our pockets to take any more. While walking, we had a couple hundred drinks, then hit the rollercoaster at New York New York.
Hoffa and the wife hit the hay early, and Randi’s two friends from Arizona showed up to join the revelry. We returned to Old Vegas, and I learned that her friend’s boyfriend was a dick with ears. We walked for nearly half an hour just so they could find the best deal on a hot dog. I’m not joking. We’ll come back to this.
Day Four: March 14th- This was another big surprise, as we went to Mesa, Bobby Flay’s incredible restaurant. I was blown away, but Dick With Ears kept complaining the entire time. I mean, it’s an expensive place, and he was holding a mini-protest by having a Miller Lite while we were having wine. He couldn’t stop complaining about the prices, although he wasn’t going to spend a dime.
After dinner we went to another casino, and shithead disappeared. We wanted to leave and we couldn’t find him anywhere. We called him multiple times, and he never answered. After scouring the place and trying to contact him for nearly an hour, his girlfriend (Randi’s friend) was crying, and we promised to stay with her until he showed up.
When he finally showed, I lost it. She asked where he’d been, to which he replied "I don’t give a fuck about these people, I was having fun." I called him out and confronted him a bit, which led to a very awkward situation, and we called it a night.
Day Five, March 15th- Somehow the Hoffa family misread their flight info and completely missed their flight. They had to sit around at the airport for about 10 hours just to get on a standby flight. We were pretty spent by this point, so we went back to Casa Fuente so I could select the perfect cigar for the last one of my 20s. At midnight, Randi brought up three ho-hos with candles in them, and we toasted the end of my 20s and the beginning of my 30s.
Day Six: March 16th- My birthday. At this point it was actually painful to drink and gamble. We tried to have a good time, but since we had to check out of our room by noon, we were without a country and just walked around until we couldn’t take it anymore. We went to the airport early and called it a vacation.
I know this isn’t a sentimental blog, but I do want to thank Randi for putting together a trip of a lifetime. I also want to thank Cutty for the sweet, sweet Crown. I want to thank the Hoffa family for coming to Vegas to celebrate my birthday. I have incredible friends, and this was the best birthday ever. Thanks, guys. It meant the world.
Well, I wasn’t lying Fredders, when I said that Barry and his girlfriend, Randi were off to Vegas for his birthday this last weekend. They did take off, actually mid week last week, and spent 6 nights in Las Vegas, living it up and winning big. They took in the sights, saw some shows, and generally had themselves a good time.
What I didn’t tell you then, because it might have given away the secret, because Barry will read his own blog, like you do…is that me and my fiancee came out there to join him on Friday night. Arranged by Barry’s girlfriend, it was part of the surprise aspect of his birthday.
We both took last friday off, and flew into Vegas, checked into Treasure Island, and ordered a drink at Kahunaville, the “island theme” bar over there. We texted Randi to let her know we were there, and she used some pretext or other to drag Barry away from Caesar’s Palace, back to TI and…
…SURPRISE!
Bam! We gasted his flabber, and he was lessened in speech…it was great seeing him like “What the…??” We took the opportunity to have many beers, a trend that would repeat itself over the course of the weekend.
We took it on the hoof, and went touring around the Strip area, first checking out the Eiffel tower, which actually did look pretty impressive, despite the fact that it’s something like 1/4 of the scale, 1/4 of “really fucking big” is still kinda cool!
Of course, they sell some pretty ludicrous drinks there, and for some reason, they have some really ludicrous little cars. And to our delight, we are free to walk around the streets with the one and gawk at the other.
Of course, a giant plastic tower of slush and booze is fine for the girls, but Barry Freed and Jimmy Hoffa are made of sterner stuff than that, and as such, require sterner booze. After drinking freely from it, many decisions, including various photographs of the man-portable JD bottle seemed like a good idea…at the time.
After a day of boozing and wandering about the city, having flown all morning, both me and my girlfriend were somewhat tuckered, so we called it early, and let Barry and Randi continue the evening with another couple, one of Randi’s girlfriends, Kari, and her boyfriend, who we’ll call “Prince Toolshed”.
The next day, we (the two cool couples) had plans to meet up with Kari and Prince Toolshed for lunch, but unbeknownst to us (and presumably knownst to them) Prince Toolshed had to go to a timeshare sales pitch because not only is Prince Toolshed too cheap to stay on the strip, he would rather spend four hours listening to some asshole sell him property than spring for Motel 6. (P.S. they live within driving distance, and didn’t even pay for airfare.)
So forget meeting them for lunch. Randi and my fiancee took off for some shopping whilst Barry and I checked out “Old Vegas”. Fitzgerald’s Casino, which proudly advertises a “Master Kazooist” was our first stop, after purchasing a couple of plastic bottles of beer to stroll about with. Sadly the Master Kazooist himself was not in residence. But no matter, Fitzgerald’s is one of those old-timey casinos, where the hookers are as leathery as the barstools, and here, cheaper than almost anywhere else in Vegas, you can do the the three most important things there are to do: drink, smoke and gamble.
After drilling through a ridiculously large bucket of nickels trying to win a convertible Saturn, we found a few more cool spots, such as:
The largest pint of beer in the US:
Or how about something everyone needs more of, and something Vegas has an unlimited supply of?
Right, cigars.
Dinner that night was at the incomparable Mesa Grill, a restaurant that isn’t decadent, so much as it is just a real dining experience. I honestly cannot say that I’ve ever had a better steak than Bobby Flay’s dry rubbed rib-eye. That guy knows his meat. And Randi…Randi knows how to be a classy babe. That’s all I’ll say about that.
After dinner, we had to hit O’Shea’s, the casino known for being a “bros and hos” kind of place. I mean, they have beer pong and strip poker, for pity’s sake. It was pretty twentysomething, but like one person who recommended it told me, “if you can’t have fun at O’Shea’s, you’re dead” which means that Prince Toolshed is no longer among the living, awwwww. Dude looked miserable. He didn’t even get to see this gem:
All I can say is “thank god for blurriness.”
So we hit Harrah’s, and lost Prince Toolshed somehow. After we spent about a half hour searching in vain for him, he strolled up looking like a total dick, and basically says “Who cares?” I’ve never seen Barry want to strangle someone so hardcore. I had put the guy on mute since that afternoon, but even that crossed my radar as being about as worthless as it gets.
So we ended our evening at the TI lounge, putting drinks where they belong.
We could not have had more fun, despite Prince Toolshed’s efforts. Barry, when he emerges from his cocoon, will have more to add about his experience - but till then Fredders, wish him the happiest of 30ths! Because he is now among our ranks….
Well, folks, Barry has left town for Vegas with his girlfriend to celebrate his birthday, leaving me here to update the blog. Jerk. So since he’s skipped town, I was going to try to write something that he’d never let me post about while he was here, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I decided to tell you guys how much I hate U2.
Last night they held their “secret” (and by “secret” I mean “only the dead are not aware this is happening”) concert at the Somerville Theater, in what is already the most dipshit of traffic areas in Boston, Davis Square, made quadruply so by the legions of drooling maniacs hoping to catch even the glimpsiest of glimpses of Bono, The Ledge and The Two Other Guys. Listen, folks - U2 was a shitty garage band when they made “The Joshua Tree” and, in the intervening years, nothing has changed except their concert ticket prices. You know all that echo-ey effect on the guitar on every song on that album? That’s called “digital delay”, an effect The Egg would like you to think he invented, but has long been used to make a boring, shitty guitar player sound boring and shitty with delay.
So many people, including my fiancee, have drank the kool-aid over the years. U2’s latest offering, “No Line On The Horizon” is a desiccated corpse of an album, the lead single of which, “Put On Your Shoes” or some nonsense, was so mind-erasingly bad, I had to give the album a listen to see what other fecal gems could be found therein. After i sprinkled janitor’s powder on the mess I made of my floor, I went to write a few words about how much this album sucked, but then found that Andrew “Garbage Day” Miller of SomethingAwful had beaten me to it, and did it better than I would have anyway.
This, of course, got me thinking about other musicians who have outlived their usefulness and are now simply leeching off the lowing herds who don’t know any better.
- The Rolling Stones: at this point they just look brittle.
- Paul McCartney: making a career out of wearing one-half of the “wonder twin powers” ring.
- Springsteen: I never bought him, and now I almost wish I did so that I could return him and complain.
- Dave Matthews: music for douchebags
- The Police: I honestly have much love for these guys, but really. You are that chick at the party.
I don’t pretend to have magical powers that tell me when a band has crossed the line, but sometimes you just know.
So T.O. is now in the AFC East…as a Buffalo Bill. Say it with me: Terrell Owens is now a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills. You can’t make this stuff up. Terrell Owens, the most “you-don’t-throw-da-ball-to-me-enough”, complainy-pants receiver in the NFL is now getting passes thrown to him by Trent Edwards. Or maybe J.P. Losman. Who else thinks this is going to be, like, the most beautiful train wreck ever? I can’t decide if there’s even a chance that this will pay off for the Bills. Everyone knows T.O. is a toxic locker-room douchebag, but is that stuff going to fly in the land of frozen boogers and “Bring Back Jim Kelly” signs?
This is a last-ditch effort, by a team that has already been the #1 laughingstock of the NFL, (I’d say that was Detroit, but you don’t laugh at the retarded kid) to revitalize their franchise and stave off the jackals who want to drag the Bills’ frozen corpse to Toronto. Hell, T.O. doesn’t even know where Buffalo is. I wish I could say I was surprised.
Apparently the Jets passed on T.O., which I guess makes sense. Kellen Clemens throwing downfield? Sure. Let’s spend millions on making a guy just run up and down the field while the zipperhead under center gets sacked 6 times a game.
The Dolphins are fielding Chad Pennington again this year. Pardon me if that doesn’t exactly cause tremors of fear to pass through the ranks.
Call me a cynic, but for now, anyway, it doesn’t look like the division is stacking much up against New England. Who by the way signed Shawn Springs. He may be in his last couple of years as a great starter, but New England has proven its ability to squeeze every last drop of playability out of a guy, and most people think Springs has a good amount left in the tank. Fred Taylor? That remains to be seen, but it should be interesting nonetheless.
- Daylight savings time arrives in Boston, just in time for one final snowstorm! As the sneaker factory powers up for another week of soul-crushing misery, let’s offer a quick recap of some of the weekend’s inconsequentia, just in case you weren’t around.
- Grapefruit league baseball has been underway for a few days now, offering us a kind of baseball methodone in preparation for the opening of the real season. I love seeing some of these kids, who will probably never play in the bigs, give it their all. Hell, some of them are hitting better than the guys who’re going to start. Also, seeing Papelbon pitch in the 4th inning is just…weird. Julio Lugo looks like he wants to beat you up in an alley and take your liver. Ortiz is off clowning around with the WBC, which I am convinced is conducted solely for tradition’s sake. I tried to watch the PR-DR game, specifically for Papi and Mr. Relevant himself, Pedro Martinez, but found that I was being distracted by shiny things.
- I was home feeling ill most of this weekend, having finally succumbed to the germs of doom that pass around my office like a hand towel at a Tim Lincecum press conference. We have one of those itinerant “sad old ladies” who shows up practically bleeding out of her eyes, so that everyone will say JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU LOOK LIKE AN HR GIGER PAINTING GET AWAY FROM ME which is about all anyone says to her all year. Because nobody is interested in show poodles. I’m pretty sure she managed to spread her plague filth onto me. Hooray.
Anyway, while I was trying to enjoy The Running Man on cable at 11:45 a.m. on Sunday, wearing PJs and drinking Theraflu, the fire alarm goes off. Not the smoke detector in our condo, nor the CO2 alarm…but the fire alarm for the whole complex. Great. Every safety film I’ve ever watched goes flashing through my head - grab your keys and wallet and bolt. DON’T CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES YOU WILL BURN UP.
Ehhhh. I don’t smell any smoke. I put on shorts and shoes, and made sure to turn off the stove and the tv, got my cell phone, locked the door and went outside. It was like a junior high fire drill.
Everyone milling around, looking uncomfortable, a few disinterested firemen lazily checking things, then driving away without saying anything, with the alarm still ringing. The condo guy had to crawl out from whatever cave he’d been hiding in and shut the damn thing down. Of course, by that time, I’d already gone to the bar, having been told both by the Gods and by Barry, that it was the right thing to do.
The soon-to-be-Mrs. H and I struggled for a good portion of the weekend with the concept of “Her mom’s paying for the wedding and she’s going to get her way”. We were lucky enough to get the venue we wanted, the caterers and the music, but we’ve decided, after much sturm und drang, that we’re going to not pick the Battle of the Invitation. We wanted a “green” invitation: either paperless invitations, or at least tree-free paper, something like that. Mom, however, is not having any of it. Traditional, twelve-pieces-of-paper-in-the-envelope, tissue paper, raised lettering, stamped return envelope, an extra non-renewable shrub enclosed which ignites itself in a celebratory burst of flame. The usual.
Oh yeah, can we talk about our latest discovery, the AMC show “Breaking Bad“? Holy shit this is good TV. (Hint: If you think “The Bachelor” is good TV, you are wrong.) One of the most innovative and difficult shows to watch I have ever seen. It made me uncomfortable to the point where I had trouble sleeping after watching 4 episodes in a row. But that’s what good TV does - it gets in your head and makes you think. I’m pissed that they kicked Season 1 off On Demand the very day we discovered it, but I’ll just Netflix it. I advise you to do the same!
Better weather ahead, Fredders. See you when the sun comes out!
I’m fairly purring right now, with nerd love. I have all I can do not to stroke it constantly, whisper to it and tell it that we’ll be together forever. Right now I even believe it - it’s so new that I’m not even remotely aware of the fact that in two years I’ll want something else. No, right now, it’s all about me and the Blackberry Curve.
Four years ago, the guitarist in Red Square told me how he would call up his cell phone company and threaten to go across the street if they didn’t cut him some kind of ridiculous deal to keep him around. Of course, it makes sense - the phone company makes waaay more dough off you paying the vig every month than they lose giving you a new handset. So I got the T-mob to just give it up to me, which is pretty sweet. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve had the same carrier for NINE YEARS. Nine years. Shit, you and I both know that we remember the days when dad had one of these
and God help you if you ever touched it.
It’s pretty sad. I’ll admit it.
Massachusetts is ready for legalized gambling. There, i’ve said it. Is there anyone who doesn’t believe that the state house is full of greedy bastards who would love nothing more than to see some casino revenues squirting into the state coffers? Nobody? Good, you’re all paying attention. The first step, Fredders, is close: privatizing the Massachusetss State Lottery. Once you’ve done that, you’ve all but poured the foundatio. Watch me solve two of the Commonwealth’s problems in one sentence: Make more money for our crumbling infrastructure and lance the infected boil that is Downtown Crossing by legalizing gambling and building a casino on top of the rubble of Filene’s.
You’re WELCOME, Mumbles. Now can we please talk about some legislature for motorcycle parking in the city? Season’s almost on us.
So as none of you may know, I’ve become a rather involved Yelper. The website where internet busybodies share their busybody opinions, disguised as hip and interesting exposes, on local businesses and merchants? That’s yelp.com. I attended my first “yelp event” this past weekend, a booze-up at a dive, which made me decide I like these folks.
The Globe has gotten into a little page three action with their photo article about the Patriots Cheerleader tryouts. Hard-hitting journalism.
The ladyboys over at apples & moustaches are rapidly approaching the point of no return on their journey into the dangerous and seductive world of “being a great big woman.” Joining the nation’s outrage about the shenanigans on “The Bachelor”? Really guys? Please go back to bashing Boston sports teams. It makes us all a lot more comfortable.
I still don’t care about college basketball.
I managed to browbeat T-Mobile into paying me to not only remain a loyal customer, but also to supply me with a new Blackberry Curve. I’m way more excited about that than I should be.
I, along with Loki and Cutty, are planning two camping trips this year, the first of which to be held in May, will be “guys only”. Barry better get his calendar out, cuz we have only one more “guys only” spot left. Just kidding, Barry. You can totally come no matter what. September we’re throwing open to the wives/girlfriends. I myself will have a wife by that time. Yowzer!
Speaking of having a wife, we also have a honeymoon destination! Mazatlan! Shit’s gonna be off the hook yo.
Back to the sneaker factory, Fredders! See you soon.
Comcast! OK, OK, I’ll admit it: writing about how much Comcast sucks is a played-out, hackneyed theme, and using a lolcats meme to usher it in is really fucking dumb, but it’s my soapbox.
About a month ago, the fiancee and I decided to upgrade our teev. We used to have two big 36-inch CRT lobstrosities when she moved into my old place in East Boston (we miss you, Jeveli’s - nobody has taken your place!) but along the way, the one that I owned died of natural causes. For the record, we got rid of it by taking it to an actual place to dispose of these things, as opposed to the usual East Boston way: put it on the curb, smash the tube open and fill it with dirty diapers.
So when we moved to the South End, we had but one TV to haul, this 36″ Phillips loadstone with a very noisy tube. After a while, it got so annoying that we started looking at flat-screens - plasmas and LCD. Before long, it was president’s day, and I managed to convince my fiancee that we couldn’t afford NOT to buy this one enormous plasma that was on sale. Still not sure how I pulled that off.
Getting the goddamn thing home was a story in and of itself. Salient points: Best Buy sucks hairy donkey balls, and we own a Honda Civic with a CD shuttle in the trunk. I ended up renting a Honda CRV Zipcar for a couple of hours to get the freakin’ thing home.
I had called Comcast a week or so prior, which proved an exercise in futility - they basically hang up on you if they don’t have enough capacity to deal with customers who have the poor taste to call from anything other than their home phone - I ended up on the Comcast “customer service chat”.
This is where some disembodied line of text gives you answers to your questions. Seemed okay at the time, but this is pretty much what happened.
ME: so all I need to do to hook my HDTV up to HD cable is get the proper cable? I don’t need a new box or anything?
SOME SHITHEAD UP IN CHELMSFORD: that’s right, sir.
Of course, this was (a) an outright lie, (b) evidence that outsourcing your customer service to Chelmsford leads to disaster, or (c) both (a) and (b). If you chose (c)…you probably have Comcast too. When I actually called from my home phone, I got a guy who gave it to me pretty straight. You need a new box, you’re gonna pay 15 bucks a month more for it, and that’s basically the size of it.
Fuckers. Of course if we want to avoid the $99.00 “installation fee” (some chooch shows up at your house with his pants falling off and switches out your box for you) we have to take the old box to a “local customer service center”. They don’t list the phone numbers for these places, they just give you an address, which is typically bogus. These places move around all the time, presumably to avoid being found by customers, and Comcast…Comcast doesn’t update their website.
I hate this fucking company. It’s this kind of shit that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was drafted to fight, but in the interests of keeping big business happy and the customer at the correct end of the rogering pole, modern jurisprudence seems to indicate that letting Comcast fuck who they want, when they want and how they want is in the best interests of everyone.
A big Fitzie GFY to the nice folks at Comcast, ladies and gentlemen. Ah well. We still have a big-ass plasma, Netflix, and a PS3 with the Blu-Ray. Some things you just can’t fuck up!
See you next time, Fredders.
PS - the movie “Wanted” was fucking mongoloid, yo. Even in hi-def.
I’ll be turning 30 on March 16th, and the lady friend and I are headed to Vegas. Just the other day I took a look at my license and realized it is going to expire on my birthday. Uh-oh. Since we’ll be coming back here on the 16th, I’ll need to renew my license before they’ll allow me on a plane back to Boston.
And just like that, fredders, the stage is set for the lovely intergovernmental office dance that is required to do a license transaction with the RMV.
Day One- I go to the RMV web site and find the tab for "Online Transactions". Beautiful. I answer the requisite questions, fill in my license info, click submit…..then.
Error.
I get an error, so I try it again, and am actually sent to the next page, which allows me to fill in my payment information. I do that, click submit, and then…….
Error.
I send an email telling them that I’d entered my payment info and saw an error, and asked if the payment went through. My response:
The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles website has been experiencing technical difficulties. You may resubmit your transaction at any time.
MMkay. So I did just that. I entered the info, got a confirmation message and thought I was in good shape. Then I got another email:
The Requested License Renewal Transaction was not processed. Please call the RMV’s Telephone Center for more information.
Fine. I call and am on hold for 45 minutes before talking to a person. She tells me I have to pay three things before I can renew my license:
1. Somerville Parking Ticket- $75.00- This is from when the lady friend was living in Somerville. She had given me her visitor parking pass to put in my windshield, and I did. I got a ticket for parking in a resident space even though the pass was in my windshield. But what can I do? Well, I paid it immediately. This was the easiest by far.
2. Boston Excise Tax, 2007- $183.00- I’d have no problem paying this if I actually LIVED IN BOSTON IN 2007. I mean, that makes no sense at all. I didn’t live there. The first woman gave me the number, so I called the number for excise tax and was told that they don’t actually accept payments and that I’d have to call another number. I asked ‘why would the RMV give me this number if you don’t actually do anything?’ She replied "The RMV doesn’t have the number for the company that processes payment". I asked "Can’t you just give them the number?" Finally I was told "Sir, the RMV cannot give out outside phone numbers. Have a nice day." Click.
I called the third number and was told that my car must have been "garaged" in Boston, which makes me responsible for excise tax. I said "Garaged? What does that even mean?" I was told "Sir, a garage is a place where you keep your car when you’re not driving it." Though I wasn’t really looking for a definition in general terms, I applaud her help. Despite my protest that I never lived in Boston in 2007, she just wasn’t having it. I paid.Â
3. Revere Excise Tax 2007- So wait, I don’t get this. I got a new car in 2007, and have been paying everything on time. How could I have paid for 2008 and 2009 already without paying for 2007? I guess I just missed that?
Day Two- I head to the Collector’s Office at City Hall to find out about the excise tax I owe. After listening to a fascinating conversation about how Johnny’s Mom is in the hospital and how she can’t sell her house, the woman behind the glass finally decides to take time out of her social calendar to assist me. She tells me that I owe $282.02 for excise tax. Fine.
I take out my checkbook and she tells me that I have to use a money order. Wonderful. I head to my bank to get the cash, then hit the post office for the money order. Finally I go back to the Collector’s Office and wait another 10 minutes while the 70 year old women yap to each other about who is in the hospital, who died, etc. I was standing there by myself watching them eye me as if I was there disrupting their great grandma fun time.
I hand over the check, and life is finally good.
Day Three- I go back online to renew my license and get another error. I call again and wait 21 minutes before talking to a person. He tells me that the Somerville parking ticket was still on my record, and until I prove I’ve paid it, I cannot renew my license.
"Well," I said "I have the confirmation number right here."
"Oh, excellent. Then all you have to do is take that confirmation number with you to a branch, and you’ll be all set. I can’t do anything with that number, but if you go to a branch, they can help you." He replied.
Some Observations
Man, it must be bliss working for the government. There seem to be only 2 prerequisits for being a gvt employee
1. Complete incompetence and inability to recognize inefficiency 2. The ability to look angry and busy while not actually doing anything.
I can’t imagine working a job where doing nothing is expected, where inefficiency is rewarded, and trying is discouraged. My favorite thing is that they actually SHUT DOWN their web site a few hours each day. You can’t pay a ticket during the hours of 10am and 12:00pm. Isn’t that the entire point of having a website? It’s actually more difficult to turn the thing off for two hours than to keep it on!
The fact that my Somerville ticket is still on my record boggles my mind. The last gentleman I spoke with at the registry told me that it would take 24-48 hours for it to be removed.
If I were to design a perfectly worthless system, I don’t know if I’d be able to create something so bad that it takes two full days between payment processing and status updating. Unless there are scribes actually writing down the number of the transaction then handing that off to couriers that walk from Somerville to Boston, who then hand that number to a team of monkeys in a datacenter….unless that’s the process, I can’t see how you can possibly take that much time.
I’m not blaming the people working in the mindless beauracracy, it’s not all their fault. It’s definitely a problem of motivation. If you worked at the RMV, the Collector’s Office, etc., what motivation do you have to actually try? If you help 10 people instead of 5 per hour, what do you earn for that? The answer: nothing other than the other drones disdain for making them look bad. So it’s a why bother gig.
and God help you if you ever touched it.
I’ll be turning 30 on March 16th, and the lady friend and I are headed to Vegas. Just the other day I took a look at my license and realized it is going to expire on my birthday. Uh-oh. Since we’ll be coming back here on the 16th, I’ll need to renew my license before they’ll allow me on a plane back to Boston. 
