Last Chance Cafe

As much as I tell myself I don't care, I do enjoy seeing my blog mentioned elsewhere, and occasionally I'll do the 'search.' I'm using a new homepage thing called NetVibes which has a Technorati feed and I clicked on one of the blurbs, which made me go to the Technorati site and 'claim' my blog. Which in turn led me back to Obscurorant, who also happens to link me. I had completely forgotten.

So skimming the site I run across a post saying that "no DVD collection is complete without a copy of Red Dawn." Now one could argue the premise, but a little bell went off in my head, and then the post mentions Road House, which I just watched for the first time less than a week ago. Patrick Swayze drives an '84-'85 Mercedes 500 SEC in the film, which is the car that has been making my life hell for going on two years (still waiting for my update today).

I clicked the imdb page for the movie and I found Doug Toby. Hey, I worked with Doug Toby!

From his imdb thing it looks like Doug took a break between Summer Camp Nightmare in 1987 and Dragstrip Girl in 1994, which is the period in question. It was at the Sunset/ La Brea Wherehouse record store in Hollywood and he was an assistant manager. I was going through one of my do-over phases and had hired on as a minimum wage drone whose main job it was to alphabetize the returned videos. It was Zen, I tell ya' and I kicked and screamed when they told me I had to learn how to work a cash register in that new-fangled CD department. And cut my hair.

I went along-got along, made new friends, had parties at my house, hung out up in the hills with the crew and was amazed at Doug's ability to attract the prettiest girl available. Eventually I became an assistant manager myself at another store, but this is about Doug, no?

So this is also the era of the Los Angeles Riots via the Rodney King verdict and our store was on the edge of the disturbance. We were watching the news to find out the progress of the crowd when we heard sirens on Sunset and a parade of police cars whizzed back and forth in front of the store. We thought we were trapped but it was just some West Hollywood white politician leading a solidarity parade of bi-gay-transgendered constituents in support of the more pigmented partiers.

We closed the store forthwith and skedaddled. But that wasn't the end for Doug. He and a crew of three that evening watched the news as the rioters destroyed the Wherehouse store about ten miles south on La Brea and decided that wouldn't happen at our store. After all, we were a bunch of poor minimum wage earners scraping by, why should we suffer?

Next day Doug and friends came back to the store and set up shop in front by blocking the parking lot entrances and erecting a makeshift barrier to hide behind. They were armed to the teeth. (I wasn't there as they didn't let me in on the gag)

Two doors down there was a beeper shop. You remember those? Cell phones were just starting to catch on with the Hollywood set, but were still pretty expensive. All the cool kids and gang members had beepers and hung out in front of public pay phones. Remember those? After a while two cars pull up on Sunset and parked in front of the lot.

As I wasn't there the following is legend, but was described pretty much as I write it by everybody who talked about it. An Hispanic looking gentleman got out of the car, took off his shirt to show off his body art, raised his hands in the air and slowly spun 360 degrees. After showing that he was unarmed he walked toward the guys like he hadn't a care in the world.

He explained that he was just a poor gang member following orders and that he had no beef with the fellahs. In fact he respected them for taking a stand and protecting their workplace, as the corporate assholes had left them alone and helpless with the prospect of losing their jobs.

He pointed out that they didn't need any CD's or videos, but they did need beepers, which were freely available about twenty-five feet to the east. As long as Doug and crew didn't make a fuss about them helping themselves to the electronics, which were, after all in another store altogether, the Hispanic gentleman's crew wouldn't molest the magnificent four with the machine gun another gentleman in the car was in charge of operating.

With that the car door opened and a man emerged holding the meanest looking armament the fellahs had ever seen pointing in their direction. "Sure, help yourself," was the paraphrased response and the guys just following orders proceeded to smash windows and such.

Shortly afterwards Doug, or one of the guys anyway suggested to the others that it might be a good time to call it a day, and they did. The store was never touched and we all came back to work, though the Best Buy- kitty-corner across the street- made it to the national broadcasts as a rainbow coalition of black, white and indifferent helped themselves to big screen TVs, stereos and whatever else their little hearts desired while the police watched from their squad cars.

So here's to Doug Toby, bringing the lessons learned from Red Dawn where a rag-tag group cut off from their government defended their country from the invading Russians, to the real-life workplace, where a rag-tag bunch of minimum wage drones defended their place of employment while the corporate fat cats and police watched gangs and other assorted assholes attack their own city.

Doug, wherever you are I hope you've got the prettiest girl and are driving a Mercedes that actually works, and thanks to the SivlerFox for reminding me.