2014? Well, forage our truffles.

Waiting for the party to be over.

If the printer doing our New Year’s menu doesn’t come through, we’re forked.   If the African American and Mexican families who got into it last New Year’s Eve return for a rematch, we’re muggled.  If the Blaine PD shows up and notices that our newly-minted bar manager with the orange hair and knuckle-dragging physique matches the description of a certain feces-throwing fugitive from justice, we’re in for a spelunking.  If the party hats and favors don’t show up, it’s San Quentin date night.  If the half bottles of champagne that say “Happy New Year!” run out, if anyone in the 10 o’clock seating insists on staying until midnight, if Jorge III gets too high to come in or passes out at his Hobart DishPro Elite IV, we shall be Sky Bar’d.  If it snows, well then, we’re pretty much Frodo’d.  In our hobbit holes.

We are busboys and bartenders, waiters and waitresses, managers and dishwashers.  Among our other professional skills, we know more euphemisms for screwing and being screwed than the non-service industry world  has screws. 

Tomorrow, as you know,  is December 31^st.   Perhaps you’re unsure what (or whom) you’ll be doing on the last eve of 2013?  Not us.  We’ll be selling Bud Light to you and yours for six bucks a glass and $12 cuts of prime rib for $19.50.  What will you say to that?  If you’re smart, “Thank you.”   After all, we’ll be working like trauma surgeons to ensure that you and all your new best friends can welcome 2014 with full bellies and a minimum of inhibitions.  Given that this is the most difficult night of the year for us,  why shouldn't we be compensated?  We are hardly Communists.

You'd never get a seat in the dining room without a reservation,  but if you do find yourself in Blaine, Minnesota tomorrow at twenty to midnight, you could do worse than to elbow your way past the smokers and claustrophobes into the Smugglers’ Inn cocktail lounge, where DJ PJ will be playing disco hits from the golden era of Smugglers’ Inn, long before the place needed to do the odd brilliant ad campaign to keep it's faux nautical doors open.

And if you aren’t prepared to part with ten bucks for a hat and a noisemaker at the door, you can Winehouse yourself.