who's got the bottle?

Back in the days of Planet Hollywood, where I lived for 4 years of my life, there were many traditions that, even for a young company, were followed with fanatic zeal. The stories that came out were even better.

The opening of a PH was the stuff of legend of course. Celebrities, media, PR people, gawkers...all crowded in/on/around the restaurant in a fit of frenzy. Inside were a tribe of 130 newly minted servers, kitchen dudes, bussers and the like; fresh from training, terrified that opening night was here and unwilling to truly believe that they were going to meet Bruce, Sly or Arnold and then tell their mom, sister or spouse about it. While Bruce's band played for the crowds outside, many celebrities were being escorted along the red carpet, stopping to chat with this or that reporter/photographer, acting as though they were in Cannes, an art opening or a benefit for MS, as opposed to kicking off an overblown burger palace.

Now, the management team, working 14 hour days leading up to the event, training the staff, arranging the offices, P-touching all of the shelving in storage areas, breaking out plates/forks/PH teddy bears, were ready for this night to come and go, so they could retreat to the closest watering hole for a late night of shots, storytelling and hopefully, that other "s" they had been missing for 2 months straight...isn't that why God created hostesses? :)

The celebs arrived, the staff made their rounds and all went off without a hitch. But thats not to say the start of the night went smooth...nor the hours leading up to it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger...love him, hate him, its up to you. But as a major investor in the PH empire, he was used to having things a certain way during his visits....and especially during openings. Being from Austria, Arnold had a fondness for a certain type of pear brandy found only in Europe and which had the unique quality of actually having a whole pear inside the bottle. Well, Arnold, in true Van Halen fashion (remember the brown M+M stories?) insisted on having a bottle of this brandy at the PH openings. No one ever knew if he actually drank the stuff while he was there. It was enough to say that he wanted it, and when you had a group of overworked 20-something kids running a $13M restaurant, you did what you were told.

As the bar manager, I was in charge of not only procuring the opening order of liquor for the site, but also to make sure that, come hell or high water, I had to make sure we retrieved the bottle of pear brandy from whatever opening happened before ours. No problem...right?

So I make my calls and find where the bottle was last. I call their bar manager and ask if he could package it up for me and send it FedEx. Don't worry he said....I gotcha covered. Arnold didn't even crack the bottle while he was here, he said. My ass. 2 days goes by....then 3...then my nuts are starting to tighten because, hey, I was supposed to have that shit there and it didn't look promising. Opening day arrives. No bottle. In an effort to not problem the GM with such quibbling issues such as a missing bottle of brandy that Arnold probably wouldn't touch anyways, I kept quiet. However, I thought maybe I should just go ahead and inform the poor bastard just so he can check it off the mental list, right?

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???? WE DON'T HAVE THE PEAR BRANDY BOTTLE?!!? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK??!!"

Maybe I was wrong...

"I ASKED YOU TO DO ONE THING, DAMMIT!! HOLYYYYYYYYYY SHEEEEEEEETTTT!!!!"

I should have mentioned from the start that this GM was not someone who came up from the ranks of PH. He himself was a new hire, like me, and was already on fumes, having decided to run not only a restaurant, but a merchandise store cum movie paraphenalia museum and also be the unwitting liasion for media and PR people. Running the TGI Fridays in Tulsa could NOT have prepared him for this gig.

The GM ran off to try and fix the mess I made. Instantly, word got around through the rest of the management team and I somehow developed leprosy or something because everytime I moved near one of them, they mumbled something about "supposed to be over here...or something" and slinked off. Damn...

As you guessed it by now, Arnold did not ask for a drink of the pear elixir and the night went off without a hitch. I can still see the look of abject horror in the GM's face and still hear his excoriations of my obviously stunted lineage, my assuredly tainted childhood and overall bad character. After all, he was the boss, so it must be true.