#complaintdept

Another nor’easter is waiting in the wings. This time it won’t be “just” wind and rain, it’ll be a foot of snow. Apparently winter, which has already worn out its welcome, isn’t going to go away quietly.

You’re not.

The reason is that after you spent $25 for two tickets, you somehow entered an email address of mine as the contact to send your confirmation to. My guess is that you were too busy going Weeeeee! to pay attention to what the autofill on your phone was doing and you just pressed Send. I could be wrong, though.

Being the helpful Spiral that I am *cough*, I sat online for a good twenty minutes waiting to chat with a customer service rep about this. I started out #13 in the queue and watched the number tick down. It got to 2, then 1. Then went back to 2. Changed to 1 again. And back to 2. This went on four or five times. I’ve never seen a queue do that and can only conclude that some prompt kept flashing CHOPPED LIVER when my case came up as next, and the rep kept taking other people until there was no one else left. I could be wrong about that, too.

In any event, the rep was singularly unhelpful. One of these chunks of wood who you have to be really fucking literal with.  They didn’t seem to understand why I was bothering, since the credit card number the tickets were charged to has nothing to do with me.  I said, “The person who did buy the tickets is going to be annoyed when they get to the theater and can’t get in because their confirmation number went to the wrong person.”  Reply: “Yes.”  Long stretch of dead air. Me:  “So there’s nothing you can do, then.” Another long stretch of dead air, until I finally added, “Correct?” to which they replied, “Correct.”

At which point, I just closed the window. I don’t think I was even chatting with a person, so there won’t be any hurt feelings if I just rudely vanish.

Anyway, person in North Carolina, that’s why you’re going to have trouble at the movieplex tonight.

This is an exhibit at the Guggenheim.  Apparently, you’re able to use it.  So if your idea of major jollies is droppin’ a deuce in a $1.5M gold toilet, now’s your chance. 

This is what the Guggenheim says about it in its press release:

“[It] ‘is meant to highlight what the museum describes as Americans’ increasing obsession with wealth and excess.’  Cattelan’s toilet offers a wink to the excesses of the art market, but also evokes the American dream of opportunity for all, its utility ultimately reminding us of the inescapable physical realities of our shared humanity.’”

Yeah, maybe.  But as usual, the art world, living on its own rarefied planet, has missed the other meaning here.  If the majority of Americans are obsessed with money, it’s at the personal lack of it in the face of others’ incredibly conspicuous excess.  For most of us, “...the American dream of opportunity for all” is exactly that: a dream.  Though we can visit a ridiculous caricature of it at the Guggenheim.

I keep vampire hours.  I know the rest of the world doesn’t.  I accept this.

Mostly.

9:00am somebody raps on my window (doorbells are broken), waking me up.  Like an idiot, I get out of bed and go see what it is.  It will have nothing to do with me, but I forgot this, being pretty foggy in the head.  I open the front door and this guy hands me a tall slim package weighing a couple of pounds.  I have to sign for it.  I notice that he’s wearing a teeshirt for a liquor store.  I check the delivery label and sure enough, not for me.  It’s for the landlady, who lives upstairs and (so far as I can tell) isn’t home.  I dump the package on her stairs and go back inside my own apartment.  Then I figure it out:

Wine.  I got rattled out of bed in the middle of my night for a bottle of fucking wine.  Thanks for ordering this over the internet and having it delivered, when there’s a hipster-dipster liquor store two blocks away.  Cuz you never know when you might be dying for some of the ol’ vino to pour over your cheerios.

I smell a dinner party in the near future, to which I will not be invited, but will get to listen to.