Barney's Rules to Life

We’re going to start a new segment on the Barney Show (read, will do two of these and abruptly stop) called Barney’s Rules to Life. Now, you’re probably asking yourself why would I want advice from someone who in uncomfortable in any social situation that does not involve alcohol, can’t maintain any semblance of a relationship and works way to much for the amount of money he’s being paid? That is a very valid point. The reason is that I will not be giving advice on these subjects. What I will be talking about is the little things that I think have gotten me to this point.

Rule: In any restaurant of lesser quality than Chili’s/Applebees/etc. always order the simplest item on the menu.

I guess when I was in 10th grade or so, J-Man asked me, “How come every time we go out to dinner, you always order a cheeseburger and fries?” To this point in my life, I had never even realized I did this, it was a subconscious decision. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a philosophy around this. The basic gist of it is that if you’re eating at a dinner, you’re not working with the brightest people. Contrary to what you may think, short order cooks are not in the kitchen debating the installation of the super particle accelerator and the effects it could have on the world of physics. With this in mind, I try to keep all my orders as simple as possible. Hence the reason why I always order a cheeseburger and french fries.

This came up this weekend when I was in Texas. We had breakfast at a dinner. Knowing that not only was this a dinner, but the people working there were educated in the same school system that allowed Vince Young to graduate, I ordered accordingly: scrambled eggs with bacon and white toast. Others I was eating with decided to get fancy. One ordered a Western omelet with tomatoes instead of onions and another ordered their eggs cooked to a specific amount of runniness. Of course these two orders got fucked up. Not only that, their breakfast was delayed because I imagine the cooks couldn’t understand what the hell they wanted.

This applies to a lesser extent when going to a bar. I never order mixed drinks (with the exception of Red Bull and vodka to get me going through an extended bender). It’s always straight beer or straight liquor. Oh, your (insert randomly named drink here) isn’t made just right? Maybe you shouldn’t have ordered it from a bartender who has 17 other people waiting to order. Keep it simple and you’ll get what you want. (Note that this was a round about way to justify drinking straight Jack on the rocks for hours on end). It also applies at coffee shops. Wonder why I drink black coffee? Because ordering something else one of two things happen. Either it’s made wrong or it takes forever to get made.

This doesn’t apply when you go out to eat at higher end places because you can assume that they kind of have their shit together. But don’t go too far from what they do best (i.e. don’t order seafood at a steak restaurant)
Tune in next week when I explain how you can lose 10 pounds the Barney way