I forgot to mention a pretty funny thing that happened on New Year's Eve: the folks who put on the Ascend parties always do this thing where, just before midnight, they stop the music for 15 or 20 minutes and make speeches, or read poetry, or try to get people to hold hands and meditate or something. I gather this usually works out more-or-less ok for them, but on New Year's Eve, they were facing a new challenge: an audience armed with kazoos. So like half of their ritual was them exhorting the audience to quiet down and go OMMMMMM along with them, in the face of kazoos and other holiday noisemakers. There was even a guy cheering the idea of quietness: any time they said "quiet!" he'd go, "Woohoo! Quiet! Yay quiet!"

The first few weeks of this year have been all about the injuries. It seems like half our staff have managed to badly damage themselves one way or another. Tori's hopping around in a leg brace after smashing her knee while hopping over the bar at a private party. John and Big Dave both screwed up their knees playing paintball. Denise hurt her knee when some idiot customer tried to jump over the velvet rope, fell, and whacked her in the leg with a stanchion on the way down. Stephen cracked a rib, and he can't remember how. And the best one is that Ben broke his clavicle and needed stitches on his ankle... by wrecking one of Barry's scooters while taking it out for a test drive!

Be nice to our staff. They risk life and limb for you!

People are always complimenting us on our bathrooms, and how clean we keep them, but I don't think anyone could understand the kind of challenges we face in that department. For example: last week, Casey was in the women's room re-stocking it with towels and toilet paper. There was no line, but all of the stalls were occupied. So she finished what she was doing, turned around, and what did she see just inside the bathroom door, but a woman squatting down and peeing right on the floor!

	Casey:		Now that. Is nasty.
	Slob:		Well you serve alcohol!
	Casey:		There's a stall open already! What the fuck is wrong with you!
	Slob:		But I had to go right now!

And the same night, they caught some guy peeing in a trashcan on the balcony, right out in the open.

Not quite as bad, but far more inexplicable, is that someone walked off with all of the olives. You know that tray of garnishes that the bartenders use while making drinks, the one that most people seem to regard as the complimentary salad bar? Someone took the whole tub of olives.

Bad customer! No martini for you!

We got some lights that we use to shine LAST CALL on the edge of the balcony on either side of the dance floor, and man, that was one of the best investments we've made to date: those lights paid for themselves in ten minutes! And also made the bartenders' jobs more pleasant, since they reduced the number of arguments they have with customers about what time it is.

I know I've said this before, but I really can't emphasize it enough: don't argue with the bartender. They don't care what time your watch says. The bar is closed when they say it's closed. If the bartender tells you "no more alcohol" there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that you can say that will win that argument, so don't even bother having it. You just look like a jerk!

And in neighboring club news:

The sale of Paradise Lounge has finally gone through, and it's been closed for a few weeks. They've begun gutting it: the stage is gone already. Apparently the new owners expect their remodel to only take a few months. Even after having read my saga here, I'm told...

The Transmission Theater, next door to Paradise (which, you will recall, had a brief stint as dot-bomb office space) has reopened; they're calling it "Studio Z" now. (Of course, we all know that it's full name will forever be "Studio Z, you know, Transmission," just like the full name of VSF is still "VSF, you know, The Oasis.")

Now if only we could have 20 Tank and Wa-Ha-Ka back...