Issue Three

“Drew Carey’s girlfriend got a job at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” I tell Kim even though she never watches Drew Carey.

“She did?”

“Yeah, and she acts like it’s a big career and she can’t have Drew’s baby.”

Kim breaks into the Cleveland Rocks song from the show.

All the little chicks with the crimson lips say Cleveland Rocks. Cleveland Rocks. Cleveland Rocks.

“I thought you didn’t watch the show,” I say accusingly.

“I don’t.” She lies.

It’s an easy road trip. Three hours west on the 90 and you’re in a city that looks like Buffalo. Maybe better than Buffalo. Let’s say it’s like Buffalo looking into a mirror and imagining how she’d look if someone paid attention to her.

“I like Cleveland,” Kim says as if someone just accused her of not.

“Me, too. I just can’t get over how much it looks like Buffalo.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is impressive glass, cement, chrome and escalators to six floors that records the history of rock and roll. At the entrance, I fill out an application for a credit card but I give them a fake phone number, fake yearly gross and fake job. I get a free hat for doing that.

 Rock and roll is not something that can be truly contained, but the museum gives it their best shot. The clothes on the rail-thin mannequins looked dusty and ill fitting. I found it hard to believe Madonna wore that red pant suit so saggy or the leather suit that Britney Spears wore hung so poorly. We spent three and a half hours in the building and the best parts were the movies. I think that’s the only way you can capture rock and roll…play it to a movie. I don’t care what kind of paper Billy Joel wrote Piano Man on and it’s cute that Springsteen wrote out Tenth Avenue Freeze with a chill drawing around the title. For me, it was the movies that captured the spirit of rock and roll. The best ones were the clips from past inductions, the introductory 24-minute movie and the John Lennon movie. The 40-minute movie of all the inductees was also good and I wished someone would put those songs on a CD. I looked for it in the overpriced gift shop, knowing that every CD was upped in price by at least three bucks. I’m not sure I would have paid for it anyway.

Our hotel in Cleveland said it was in the Hall of Fame corridor but I don’t believe there is such a hallway. We had to drive a half hour to get to the museum. And the Explorer wouldn’t fit under the underpass into Tower City parking. The vehicle was just too massive. We held up traffic for about ten minutes at the ramp entrance, as I tried to negotiate the low iron bar. But I found four bucks in the ramp which made it worthwhile.

When you travel as we do, we never expect a nice hotel. What we do expect is people who know how to direct us to the local hot spots. The hotel clerk, named Shane-a, who worked in every known hotel position from maid and desk clerk to “the-one-who-brings-the-extra-cot,” didn’t know a thing about Cleveland. When we commented on her long hours, she said they were short staffed. When we asked her where the Flats were, she said, “I wouldn’t go there.” When we asked why, she looked at Nikki and Sam (both 11 years old) with eyes that my mother used when I was chewing with my mouth open.

“Excuse me,” Kim insisted, “we’d like to go to the Flats.” Kim then turned to me and muttered, “Get her, with earrings stuck all over her body and her skirt up her butt, worrying about our kids?”

Later, I told Kim that she had a point.

“Well, get her! Working in that stiff hotel-did you see the business card fishbowl?”

The business card fishbowl is, as we all know, one of those bowls where you can drop your business card in for a chance to win free stuff. There is usually a monthly drawing for the winner. In this case, the winner would receive a free night at that hotel.

“It was ###@%%** empty!” Kim, who never swears, said. “Either no one ever stays there or even the business people don’t ever want to come back.”

We fixed the empty bowl situation when Shane-a wasn’t looking. I put at least two cards in the bowl from every job I ever had in my whole life. Kim did the same even though she’s pretty much had the same job for about 10 years.

At the Flats we wandered into a place that looked interesting. It was on the water and had an outdoor patio.

“What do you want?” sneered the bartender wearing dark sunglasses in the dark bar.

“Uh…one Labatts and two P-p-pepsi’s,” I stuttered, caught off guard at how unfriendly the Clevelanders were being. After all, I was a tourist. I had money to burn and important business cards to dispense.

He pulled out a bottle of Labatts so large it would not fit in my 12 slot wine rack.

“Think you can handle this?” he said with an obscene look. Meanwhile, the gentleman standing next to me was being harassed by another bartender for not being able to make up his mind.

“Finally!” the other bartender yelled and rang a bell from behind the bar. “The man has made up his mind.”

The man and I exchanged glances. I was wondering what he was going to do about the rude treatment he was receiving. He seemed to be taking it all in stride. I raised my eyebrows-as if to give him reassurance that he wasn’t alone in this mean madness. As I planned my letter to the Greater Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, where I would tell them I was from out of town and that people should be friendlier, I felt a hard thrust in my hand. It was the bartender giving me change for the twenty dollar bill I had given him. He had put the money in my hand the way a person puts a bit in a stubborn horse’s mouth: jamming it tightly between my half closed fingers. The paper money was crumpled, crushed beyond recognition, and when I relaxed my hand the coins fell all over the bar and onto the floor.

Believe it or not, I pulled a single dollar from the mess and left it as a tip. I was, after all, the bigger person.

As I walked toward the outside, I noticed a sign on the wall: “Eat more bad food.” Stopping to fix my money I noticed an empty matchbook. Inside the cover it read, “If you can read this, you’ve had too many cigarettes or had to clear the air in the john!”

“Kim!” I said. “I think we’re in a mean bar.”

“You’re telling me? The waitress is a bitch! She finally came to the table and asked if we wanted anything. When I told her we were getting it ourselves, you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said, ‘Good!’ She actually said ‘good!’ This place is terrible.”

“No,” I tried to explain, “this is one of those places where they’re supposed to be mean. I’ve heard of them. My friend went in one with her kids and they told her she should have gone to Chucky Cheese!”

“I’m going to ask.” Kim said in her familiar indignant tone. “Miss…oh miss,” she called. The waitress scowled and sauntered over.

“Is this a mean place?” Kim asked.

“Yes. Yes, this is a mean place,” she said crossly.

Sam and Nikki giggled. Kim and I planned on lines we would use when we got our jobs here after we moved to Cleveland. The place was called Dick’s Last Resort. Further reading the matchbook, we discovered that Dick is a jerk and a tight wad.

Back at the hotel, Shane-a, the multi-tasked hotel girl, feeling sorry for the kids who had to travel with ‘us,’ invited us to the free continental breakfast the next morning. Apparently she thought morning donuts would make up for an evening at the Flats.

When we arrived for our free breakfast, we found Shane-a was also the waitress running around filling the corn flake bin for a bunch of bare footed obese guests still in their pajamas. When Kim commented on their choice of dress for breakfast, Shane-a said, “There is no dress code here.”

She then asked us where and how the Flats were, because she had never been there. Cheerfully we gave her directions and told her we ended up at Mean Dick’s, the place that treats you really nasty.

“Oh, no!” she said, looking at Sam and Nikki with pity. “I won’t go there! I think it’s offensive.”

Kim mumbled something about how she found barefoot obese people eating all the corn flakes really offensive. Kim then whispered to me that Shane-a was wearing the same mid-riff blouse she had on the day before-the one that showed the earring in her bellybutton.

“Are those still called earrings even though they’re not in the ear?” Kim asked innocently. I began to think that perhaps Kim could easily get a job at Mean Dick’s Last Resort.

Editor’s note: The credit card application completed by Daryl was denied due to lack of sufficient income. They did not ask for the hat to be returned. Despite filling the fishbowl, Daryl and Kim did not win a free stay.