Because the photograph looked too much like me.
“Milord? You have to come see this.”
“I do, do I?” I had
seen a lot that Halloween evening. Much
of it, I would like to un-see.
“Yes, I rather think that you do.”
Erin was using “my lord” and “rather” like some
fancy-pants English person. This, despite
the fact that Erin was from Ireland. I
suppose she was trying to stay in character; Smugglers’ Inn’s relief seating
hostess had dressed up like Mary Poppins for Halloween. It was a decent get-up, especially with her
accompanying carpetbag and umbrella. I
may have been the only one who got the reference, though; some dope later asked
if she was a Victorian prostitute.
“Be there in two minutes,” I said, not looking up from my
phone.
“We shall await your company in the bar.” Erin held her
button nose in the air and strode away from the tiny manager’s office and
through the kitchen, swinging her hips like I’m pretty sure Julie Andrews never
did.
I finished checking Facebook (hey, I’m the boss) and
fortified myself with a glass of Diet Coke before striking out for the lounge
area. I knew the kind of trouble that
awaited me. Or, I didn’t know,
but it didn’t matter. Let me explain.
But before I explain, let me say that this whole Captain
Morgan’s Halloween Bash 2015© thing was not my idea. Until now, our nod to the holiday on the 31st
of October had consisted of strewing some fake cobwebs behind the bar and
having a bag of fun-sized Snickers bars on hand for the eight or ten
trick-or-treaters whose parents were so feckless as to take their little princesses and spidermen padding around the vast Northtown Shopping Center
parking lot while nearby, kid-friendly suburban homes stood cheek to jowl
extending to the horizon. The odd Smug’s
employee might show up for his or her shift sporting plastic fangs or a rubber
fright mask, but they would never work in costume. We weren’t Taco Bell.
We weren’t The French Laundry, either. When someone from Captain Morgan’s marketing
department called and said that they had seen Smuggler’s Inn on “Ramsay’s
Kitchen Nightmares” and figured that our name made us a natural for
hosting a Halloween party featuring their rum, we didn’t say no. Selfishly, I thought we might be able to do a tie-in
with athletes from the St. Paul Winter Paralympics, Smug’s latest branding client. When I gave voice to this, I was informed
that the Captain Morgan character whom attendees of the Captain Morgan’s
Halloween Bash 2015© would be encouraged to dress up like did not have a peg
leg. (What respectable pirate captain doesn’t have a peg leg?) Our turn on
“Kitchen Nightmares” had ended with Mr. Gordon Ramsay and company fleeing the
final taping with Pongo, our dishwasher, hurling missiles at the departing crew
vehicles like an Elizabethan theater-goer chucking turnips at a particularly weak
cast of Henry VI. I didn’t know if I
wanted to put the gang through that again.
“I already did a vote,” Carol, our socialist day
manager, had informed me when I confided that I was thinking about calling the
rum people and backing out. “Everyone's down with it, even Los Illegals”.
As it had been explained to me, Smugglers' Inn was to be
one of 11 bars across the country hosting a Captain Morgan’s Halloween party
the Friday before Halloween. The whole
purpose of the event was to generate content featuring happy,
rum-soaked party-goers that would stream on the Captain Morgan's website. Carol was saying
that even those employees who had hid in the storeroom during the taping of
“Kitchen Nightmares” now wanted to be seen by tens of thousands of online voyeurs who
didn’t have a real Halloween party to go to.
“Media whores!” I
said. Out loud.
“Smile and don’t be an arse.” Erin had dropped her Mary
Poppins persona when she had grabbed me by the elbow and marched me out to face
the music in the lounge. She and I were
now facing a jumbo screen that was flipping randomly between groups of costumed
drunks and MC’s dressed like characters from a swashbuckling movie. The sound was off, or maybe the music in our
lounge was too loud, but I read supers that said Honolulu, New Orleans, San
Antonio and Plymouth.
“Where is the sea witch?” I asked Erin.
“And here he be!” shouted an amplified voice right behind
me. “Here be your captain!”
I turned around and was dazzled by a bright light. Our lounge was dark, but there was no reason
the videographer needed to blind people to tape them, I thought. No wonder people had complained.
“Happy Halloween!” I said to the silhouette of the MC. I smiled. I tried not to squint.
“’Happy ‘alloween, mistah boss mon!” said the Captain
Morgan’s Halloween Bash 2015© MC. There
had been some debate when this woman had shown up about whether she’d been in
something—a TV show? Movie? Hip-hop video? No one could say for sure. She was early 30’s with honey blonde dreads
and sporting a gold tooth that glinted in the light. I think the tooth was real, but her
Jamaican patois was every bit as bad as Erin’s British. She was kitted out in a loose blouse with
tights and a giant belt buckle and knee-high boots--more Three Musketeers than
Pirates of the Caribbean, but as Halloween costumes go, it was miles ahead of
what the locals were wearing. I spied
the gorilla with a Hillary Clinton mask that I’d been asked to rule on
(acceptable) plus the guy in fatigues and greasepaint who had agreed to put his
realistic rubber AR-15 rifle back in the trunk of his car after first telling
me the story of the heroic army sniper whom he was honoring by getting pissy drunk
on $2 rum drinks. I also spied several
all-too familiar faces.
“Hildy!” I shouted at our cook, “Don’t you have food to
get out?”
“All out,” Hildy said.
Like that gave him an excuse to be out of his kitchen wearing a bloodstained
apron.
Two of our wait staff stepped into the lounge and walked
up to Erin, who was hovering just outside the cone of light that bouncing off
the thin spot on the top of my head. They were smiling—always a bad sign.
“Now, BOSS MON,” the MC went on. “Yah people tell me dat you been a-working
all week on your costume for ‘dis par-tay.”
“Liars!” I
said. I had a hunch where this was going
and it was not a good place.
“Now, where is dis great cos-TUME?”
“Here de cos-TUME be, mi’lady!” Erin answered. She was now Mary Poppins from Kingston,
apparently.
With my co-workers applauding, Erin walked up to me with
blue visor and an ancient hands-free headset that I think I used in the
90’s. I couldn’t believe that they were
actually doing this too me.
“Put it on and be quick about it, mon! De natives is restless.” The MC put her hand on her hip and pantomimed
lashing me with a whip. This elicited
whoops and hollers from the patrons, who had stopped trying to shout above the
music and were all turning their attention to the sweaty guy in the navy blazer
fumbling with a visor with a video camera hovering twelve inches
from his face. With a little more
effort, I got the hands-free headset on over the goofy visor-thing. I looked like…
“Mike McCoy! As I lives and breathes, ‘tis Mike McCoy, de
coach of de world famous San Diego Chargers!”
My co-workers all took out cell phones, so that they could
record my discomfort.
I shrugged my shoulders and parted my hands in a “Whadda
ya gonna do?” gesture.
I’m sure the MC was asking herself right then how she had
come to this place in her life where her job was pretending to know the coach
of a mediocre football team on Halloween night.
I mean, I am all for middle aged white guys, but we do all kind of look
alike. Yes, a couple of people had told
me that I bore a passing resemblance to the head coach of the Chargers, but I
don’t follow the game and if I did, the
Chargers? I mean, they are currently two and seven…
“Yaiiii...”
Suddenly, I was drowning.
In a glacier.
“…iiii!” I continued.
I spluttered a few choice expletives, which amused the people holding
cell phones to no end. With the
videographer’s light dazzling my eyes, I had not seen the full, 30-gallon
Gatorade Barrel as it was raised and its entire contents dumped on my
head by whom, I know not. I saw the big
screen. On it was another bar, another party. All of the costumed patrons were
laughing and pointing and holding each other up because they had just seen the
funniest thing IN THE WORLD, otherwise known as an unsuspecting man getting
doused with a massive quantity of ice water.
The location supered on screen, I noted, said “San Diego”.
So, here it is, a week and change later. I am in Macy’s, trying on suits to replace a
navy blazer that I owned and that is now ruined and I begin thinking of what
kind of devious, hopelessly weird employees that I have and I start to
laugh. And I can’t stop. I get hold of myself and the salesman who was
helping me asks what I think of the suit and I manage to say, “The goddamn
thing makes me look like Mike McCoy,” and he says, “Who?” but I can’t answer; I
am laughing again. I leave and I go to
Mens Warehouse where I manage to buy a wool blazer without embarrassing myself and
this is my life.
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