Very disturbing. Halloween will never be the same.

HT: Doggerel blog

Last week, Gary was pissed to come into the store to find out that our reserve Coke BiB was given to T. at the Bagel Shop down from us after he ran out. This was all good and well, but shortly after coming in, Gary’s active Coke BiB ran out, and now he had no reserve. To paraphrase his reaction: “fuckity fuck fuck.” Gary had tried borrowing one from other pizza shops, and went to Sam’s looking for one, but everyone was out or wouldn’t let theirs away.

We the pizza shop and they the bagel shop borrow items from each other fairly regularly. Yeah, we don’t all stock the same stuff — we don’t have bagel dough, and he don’t have pizza sauce, but we’ve both got uncut rolls of provolone cheese, salad dressings, and vegetables, to name a few. Borrowing is a fairly common practice between us, so the big deal wasn’t that the bagel shop had borrowed a BiB of Coke — the big deal was that whoever said “okay” hadn’t bothered to check if we were going to need it first. Gary, as mentioned above, wasn’t very happy about this.

BiB stands for “Bag in Box.” The soda for fountain machines is delivered in a thick cardboard box which contains a thick plastic bag containing the soda’s syrup. A hose is connected to a plug on the bag, and I’m not quite certain how it works after that hose is connected, except the fountain machine is plugged into a CO2 canister and has a water supply and things happen and soda comes out of the machine into your cup.

The next afternoon, a customer came into the shop for a sub and a fountain soda. I charged her for both before she confronted me and told me she’d specifically wanted a fountain coke — I offered her a can or a 20oz, but she was adament — soda in bottles and cans don’t taste the same, and she really wanted a fountain. I apologized, refunded her money for the fountain, and told her if she wanted to head down to the bagel shop, she could get a fountain coke while I finished her sub. I told her how the bagel shop had our reserve BiB.

Apparently, the way I handled it was the way everyone else handled it too, because the next day, as I was taking boxes back to the dumpster the whole strip-center (excepting 7-11) shares, T. was out behind the bagel shop, taking a long drag on a rapidly shortening cigarette.

“Hey, that was great, what you guys did to me,” he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“Huh?” I said, trying to keep all the bozes from sliding out of my arms. They were all broken down, stacked atop of each other, and difficult as hell to keep a grip on.

“I’ve had five customers come in here in the last day or so, all telling me the same story. ‘ [The Indy] says you have their coke. I think that means I should get it for free!’” He chuckled, extinguished his cigarette under his boot, than faux-threatened Gary through me. “Tell him I’ll remember this, and give you fuckers a dose of your own medicine,” he laughed as he headed back into his shop.

I repeated the story to Gary who, instead of chuckling as I had done, went off again about whoever it was who’d lent the BiB out in the first place. You would think I’d know better by now.

Harry Olivieri, co-inventor of the Philly cheesesteak and co-founder of the Pat’s King of Steaks cheesesteak emporium, has died.

This is sad. All anyone knows anymore about Philidelphia is that they’ve got great cheesesteaks. (Well, plus whatever they might’ve learned in National Treasure, which, by the way, was a horrible fucking movie).

I recently noticed that Apple Trailers has posted the trailer for Chris Nolan’s upcoming film The Prestige, starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as feuding magicians in 19th century England. I read the book by Christopher Priest only a few months ago, and I’m looking forward to this movie. Even so, I can’t help but wonder …

Nolan, shouldn’t you have been working on a Batman sequel? Huh?