Points in Case

---

It’s a New Year! Time to Set Another Realistic Goodreads Goal That You Somehow Won’t Meet Posted: 31 Dec 2021 10:00 AM PST It's early January. You're still feeling a little sick from the binge eating and drinking you did until 11:59 PM on December 31st, after promising you weren't going to do either in the new year. Okay, it's a few days later, and you've already had 24 donuts and a dozen mimosas. I mean, you tried. Resolutions were meant to be broken, right? The “new year, new you” can start in 360 days. One thing you will absolutely do this year, though, is follow through on your resolution to meet your Goodreads reading challenge goal. To accomplish this, you've set an underwhelming number that you could have demolished in one month's worth of Boxcar Children books when you were eight. The bar gets lower every year, and you still haven't managed to clear it. But this one. This is the year. You can feel it. It's the year you're totally… going to somehow fail in spectacular fashion yet again. When you first registered your Goodreads account after spending more time reading reviews than actually choosing a book, you had starry eyes. You imagined tackling a book a week, writing dazzlingly funny reviews that would have enough likes to validate your existence. Oh, the other users would laugh, and you'd couple your biting literary wit with deep insight into how each novel examined the human condition. Six months later, you'd tackled three books, forgotten your log-in once, and decided it was too much effort to sign into your email and reset the password. Also, one of those books you'd read was a collection of Mad Libs that someone had already filled out with black ink, but still. You had three books down, only 49 to go. You could manage that in six months, no reviews needed, with the help of a few picture book volumes. Hey, the Berenstain Bears provide meaningful insight into ursine family dynamics. Unfortunately, the Berenstain Bears prompted Google searches of “Can bears really have nightmares about space grizzlies?” That led to an internet rabbit hole about apex predators in space that meant by October, you had only managed five books. Those Google searches are time-consuming, and that was definitely what the problem was… not following a bunch of Bookstagram accounts so you could read about reading without actually reading. At this point, tackling 47 books in a little over two months was out of the question, so next year, you figured you'd go with 24. Two books a month was totally possible! Well, it would have been, except that you spent the first three months of the next year going to the bookstore whenever you had free time. It was more collecting books than actually reading. You bought about 48 books, which would surely be good motivation to read half that, right? You only had nine months left after wasting the first three, which put the total at more like three books a month. That was possible. Just read the novellas your cousin wrote and uploaded to Kindle that you'd already said you'd read. (How could you have, though, when you had so many other book titles to peruse and not ultimately purchase?) Well, that plan didn't work either, because by September, you hadn't read any of the novellas, despite giving your cousin very generic and enthusiastic praise consisting entirely of the synopsis on Amazon. Also, you had only tackled two books. To be fair, one of them was War and Peace, which you really only read because you were binge-watching Full House instead of reading, and Uncle Jesse was told it was considered one of the best novels of all time. So your second year's goal was D.O.A. The third year, you'd make it easy: twelve books. That lofty goal didn't account for the very busy time that was the second year of quarantine, though. When you're holed up at home with little hope of outside escape for nearly six months, how could you find time to read? It's not your fault, really. Everyone kept recommending shows you needed to watch on streaming services. You may not have listened to them and just watched 30 Rock all the way through another 17 times, but still. Plus, when Liz Lemon started singing about her night cheese, you decided to become a cheese connoisseur and threw yourself into investigating all the classy night cheeses you could have. It was a gouda way to spend time, am I right? Long story short, you're entering another year after failing to even come close to your reading goal. This year, your goal will be a totally reasonable six books. You can do this. Just keep your phone away from you while you read. Actually, that's a little excessive. I'm sure you won't Google anything at all.

I’m “John-At-The-Bar” and Whatever Billy Joel May Say, I Always Followed Corporate Policy Posted: 31 Dec 2021 05:00 AM PST I started tending bar in L.A. in the early 70s and I've saved up $48.17 for retirement, after health costs. I'm very interested in your entry level opportunity. You already know me, actually, as the guy who supposedly gave one Mr. William (Billy) Joel “drinks for free” at the bar where he held the functional title of “Piano Man.” (We didn't say “Piano Person/People/Persons” or “Person with Piano” back then. Sorry.) If you've heard Billy brag about this free-drink gig one or two or a trillion times, surely you've wondered: would John-at-the-Bar be a trustworthy employee? Would he adhere to the corporate handbook? Yes, yes I would, future boss who is 22. Allow me to suggest that Billy's claims might not hold up under scrutiny. First off, my name is Jonathan. No one called me John, except Billy Joel. So were we really even friends? "John, you ever been to Long Island?" "Hey John," he'd yell across the room, so everyone could hear, "what's the matter with the clothes I'm wearing?" Often there was, in fact, something the matter with the clothes he was wearing, and he made it impossible to be discreet. His pants were on backwards, or his tie was too tight, which obstructed the passage of air to his brain. That was the time he couldn't find Pennsylvania on a map from a starting point of Allentown. Around mid-Watergate, he added "at-the-Bar." "Did history start the fire, John-at-the-Bar, or was the fire burning, before the world was churning?" John-at-the-Bar. Like I was some British Barrister analyzing the Magna Carta, not a frustrated actor peeling vomit off the counter from drinks we stupidly called "loneliness" because no one knew about branding and marketing then. (You may know the drink by the current name, Sex on the Beach.) Of course I wanted to get out of that shithole. Wouldn't you? Did I tell Billy it was killing me as the smile went away from my face? I mean, quite possibly. That was before Prozac. But it doesn't prove I gave him free drinks. What's Prozac, you ask? Take micro-dosing and go back to Lexapro then another step or two back to Prozac and then back to macro-dosing, which is where we were at the time. Sorry. Dating myself again. To be clear, with the wisdom of age I also accept the possibility that I may not be a movie star, so schedule me whenever, at least for now. Unless you happen to know someone who does content for Netflix? "John-at-the-Bar, you think I could date a model? I really love models. Because they're so hot." Again, I did not get Billy drinks for free. Not once. If you hire me, I will comply with your loss prevention policy. Whatever employee discount you have is just enough to make people forget for a while they are underpaid and undervalued, but no more. You are 20 years old and a billionaire, so you can do that calculation really fast. Billy was entitled to the same 15% discount as the rest of us. And, hand to God, that's what he got. We didn't really like getting Billy too many drinks anyway. At times there were sartorial consequences. Too many, and his "New York State of Mind" would come out: maudlin, hollowed out, each to their own, almost bankrupt. We could go ahead with our own lives and leave him alone, until another question occurred to him. When Billy's ship came in, would some girl see what kind of guy he'd been? Would she be smoking hot? And a model, so everyone would know she was smoking hot? If someone promised him more than the Garden of Eden, did that mean the regular Garden of Eden, but the Eve character was really hot? And a model? One thing Billy said was dead on, though. I was quick with a joke, and still am. Knock-knocks, chickens crossing roads, people changing lightbulbs, you name it. Your customers will get a bartender pun-dit. Here's an example I'm particularly proud of, circa 1973: "Knock-knock. Who's there. Ya. Ya-who? An internet services company that will form in 20 years and make billions before being overtaken in the digital economy!" Yahoo way before your time you say? Sorry. I thought you might be 30. Didn't mean to insult you. How about this one: "A real estate novelist, a member of the armed services, and a person who should be a rising politician but for entrenched sexism and lack of access to funds and who is instead a waitress walk into a bar, and the Piano Man asks, why the Long Island face? " We're out of time? Hey, did I mention I knew Billy Joel and maybe I could get him to stop by your bar if you hire me?

You are subscribed to email updates from Points in Case. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States