The Best Was Yet Last Night

In reviewing Tuesday night's NBC special "Tony Bennett: An American Classic," The Hollywood Reporter quipped: "Bottom Line: The best thing of its sort that you will ever see." And I have to agree. The birthday salute to the 80-year-old "grand old man of pop" was an hour of breeze, on-the-spot and dead-right orchestrations, cool dancing... and an hour too short. My favorite parts: the sixties television studio variety show re-creation (for the song "The Best Is Yet To Come"), and the duet "Just In Time." It was all perfect - and totally devoid of pretension. Just how perfect it was became immensely clear during the Target commercials, which were exceedingly ugly - black and white plus glaring red, featuring all of the singers in the special as if they were photographed by bad pararazzi. Hopefully, NBC will show this again, soon.

Living in DC
I was in Cosi recently, around 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon. I don't frequent the place much, since I take my lunch to work, but I do know they get the customers in and out quickly...if you happen to get there at noon. I had just gotten my Turkey Light with Carrots instead of Chips and went to pay for it. I stood there, in front of the cash register, while four employees behind the counter not only ignored me, they looked at me a couple of times AND THEN went on to ignore me some more. It was like I was traveling at light speed, and the employees were standing still.

A woman walked up beside me, holding a salad, ready to pay. Now there were two of us in the holding pattern.
"This must mean our food is free," said the woman to me.
"I was just thinking the same thing," I said.

Since I had just come from the gym and was hungry and cranky, I took it upon myself to get some service.

I said, in my loudest, reach-to-the-back-of-the-theater voice (trained through singing, radio announcing, and being generally obnoxious):

"HEY, IS THE FOOD HERE FREE THIS AFTERNOON OR DO WE HAVE TO PAY FOR IT?"

My words echoed off the hard tile surfaces.
An employee looked at me.
"I'm sorry sir, but she's counting out the register and leaving and I'm just now coming on."
"So does that mean," I asked, "we have to pay for the food?"
"I said I'm sorry sir, but she's counting out and I'm coming on."
"But does that mean we have to pay?"
Finally, another employee advanced to the cash register.
"May I help you?" he asked.
The woman with the salad looked at me.
"Thank you for doing that," she said.