A GRIM REMINDER OF DAYS GONE BY

Now that I no longer run advertising for my Korean friends, I have more or less been relieved of the trials and tribulations associated with running those ads. But not entirely. Periodically, I get phone calls making requests which I usually oblige in the interest of good karma. That doesn't mean that it ever comes back to me...but being so much more idle than I have been in the past 16 years, I generally do the favor if for no other reason than to break the monotony that semi-retirement brings.

So the other day, I got a phone call asking if I could e-mail some photos of a girl (who had moved from one house to another) to the webmaster so she could go up on the house's site. This is not an uncommon request - and one that meets with the same question from yours truly: "Why doesn't the girl have a flash drive of her own photos? Wouldn't that be the responsible thing to do?" This of course falls on dead ears as responsibility is not always in the personality makeup of a K-girl - especially one who doesn't have the wherewithal to have her own photos on file in the first place.

Getting by that hurdle, the next is to ascertain the girl's name and where she worked previously so I can rifle the files to find her images. This should be easy enough but wait! More often than not the answer will be "She worked on 46th Street," to which I respond "What was the name of the fucking joint? Don't give me a street address."

In this case, the girl's name was CICI and she worked at Fantasia and Golden Asian at some point. So I search through the archives and come up with a CICI from Fantasia - and e-mail the photos. Case closed and favor done. Not quite. The phone rings the next day: "Wrong CICI! Check Golden Asian for CICI!" So I do that but no CICI in Golden Asian - which I report back. Five minutes later the phone rings again: "Her name was Summer when she worked at Golden Asian!"

"That's great! Ya think somebody might have told me that at the outset?" I simmered but kept my cool. Remember...I'm a man in search of something to do with myself! So I go back into the Golden files and sure enough...there's SUMMER who now wants to be CICI...and I email the photos.

The next day the phone rings: "Wrong Summer!" By now this is almost getting funny the situation is so ludicrous...almost like watching a football player trip over the 5 yard line, fumble the ball, and break his arm all in a microsecond.

So I go back to the files and find a sub file named NY ASIAN VIP which is really GOLDEN ASIAN, a house which has two different names for a reason only they could tell you! And...I find yet another SUMMER in that folder! So I send those images and hope for the best. Will I get yet another phone call today saying "Wrong SUMMER again!"...or will I have finally e-mailed the correct images? Only time will tell.

Regardless, this scenario is emblematic of exactly how frustrating it can be to deal with people who aren't quite as organized or responsible as I am. But they're a lot prettier so I cut them some slack. What are ya gonna do? Fortunately, this is no longer an everyday occurrence for when it was, I had no patience for this bull shit. But now that I'm a geezer in retirement? Not so bad. There's a silver lining to every cloud! Plus, the phone girl offered "Come by anytime and I'll buy you lunch." Yum! Eggplant parmagian! The perfect substitute for no football on a Sunday afternoon. I'm in!