Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Coffee doesn’t communicate

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And while we're at it, how on earth did those temperance women expect men to tell one another the stinkingabsurdsadhilarioushumiliating truth when they put an end to taverns?

At Starfuckinbuck's?

Naw. I once proposed to a friend with whom I'd had a falling out that we have a heart-to-heart at a coffee shop. He really wanted to honor my request. Know how I know? He took two days before he e-mailed me back saying he just couldn't imagine having such a conversation sober. He passed my test. (And called my bluff.)

Drinking—like smoking: bad for physical health, good for communication.*

* To a point. As in bowling and drinking, the Three-And-Nine rule applies: You're at your best when you've had three, but the value begins to seep out when you've had more than nine.

I go to the graveyard, where we all must go

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It looks like the writer Christopher Hitchens is dying, and whether you like him or not—my feelings about him have vacillated horribly over the years, and I listen to him still with my head cocked hard—his last journey promises to be the most public and articulate one I can remember.

Notwithstanding our preference to talk about sex, let's get something out of this conversation about death, shall we?

We value all our customers. Even the crazy, drunk ones.

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"We were delighted to serve you during your recent stay at Microtel Inns & Suites Kansas City," begins the e-mail I got last night.

Oh shit, I'm thinking. How delighted could they have been?

I was covering the post-game party with several dozen noisy female football players in rooms and hallways until three in the morning.

So enthusiastic was my coverage that the night ended when I burst forth from the lobby elevator, roared up to the registration desk, screamed in a language of my spontaneous invention that I needed a 7:00 a.m. wake-up call, and snatched a half-dozen candy bars out of a wicker basket on the clerk's desk.

"Feedback from our valued guests is important to us."

Okay, Microtel, here's some feedback. When people are partying in your hotel at 3:00 in the morning, and they inevitably storm into your lobby and raid the clerk's wicker basket, it is candy bars that they seek.

They do not, take my word for it, appreciate discovering upon their hard-fought arrival to their room, that their six candy bars are, instead, packages of chewing gum.

Got that, Microtel?

Thanks for listening.