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Spring Break: Day Seven: "They Fucked With the Wrong Mexican!"

April 6, 2007 11:42 PM

oday was our last day in beautiful Marco Island, Florida. We weren't sad, I don't think. We're ready to go back--even if we don't want to. The entire trip to this point went very smoothly without any incident. It makes sense, then, that today was marked by not one but two debacles, although I may be alone in thinking that the second thing counts as a "debacle."

The day started quietly enough; we woke up, cooked some burgers, and hung around the pool. Yvette and Lindsay wanted to go to the beach, but none of the rest of us did; we were all of the opinion that one day's worth of sunburn was sufficient. So we just kicked it here at the house. Purple Hays, Vice, and I went on a mission to get both tickets to a movie for later and a gift store with kitschy shit. We succeeded on both counts: I bought my mom an incredibly cheesy picture frame that she'll probably hate, and I got a few other things, too.

In any event, we had reservations at this restaurant called Blu Fusion for 5 o'clock. By the time the three of us got back to the house, it was pretty much time to go. So we loaded into the T&C and went to the restaurant. We chose the restaurant based on a few different criteria: First, it was within our price range. Because the whole trip has been pretty cheap for all of us, we were able to still go to a pretty pricey place, but we couldn't afford the ridiculously expensive places around here. Second, it was easy to find. We discovered that it was right next to the grocery store we'd been going to the whole week. Finally, they serve surf and turf dinners, and were willing to accomodate Vice's request for a surf and surf dinner.

We got to the restaurant. We were the only people there at first, although a few more people came in while we were eating. We noticed that the people didn't split checks, but we asked if we could get it done, anyway, and the lady said that she'd be able to charge a set amount to each card. We ordered our food, and it showed up not too long afterwards. And it was pretty damn good. My steak and lobster were excellent, and I think most people liked their food. Then we all payed, each of us putting our order on a different credit card. Now, I know that's a huge pain in the ass for the waitress, but she said she could do it and we took her at her word. And then the plane crashed into the mountain.

Because there were nine people in our party, the restaurant added a 20 percent gratuity to our total. Now, that's outrageous enough--where the fuck do they get off automatically adding 20 percent? I'd never seen anything higher than 18 percent as an automatic tip, and even that's borderline unacceptable. In any event, the waitress told us to write down how much we each wanted to put on our card, and we did, basing our figure on the total price of our food plus tax plus the 20 percent tip. When we were done, we made sure that we were covering the whole bill, and we definitely were.

Then the woman took all our cards and ran them all, and came back some ten minutes later. We got our individual credit slips and realized that they had taken the number we had written down and added another 20 percent on top of the 20 percent we had already accounted for! We were kinda pissed, and asked that they please remedy the situation by refunding that charge and recharging us the amounts we had indicated. The waitress responded by telling us that the charges wouldn't go through until the transaction was "closed," and that they wouldn't close the transaction. This, the waitress assured us, would result in the erroneous charges disappearing. Forty-five minutes later, the situation was barely taken care of, and, while we had paid the restaurant, none of us were convinced that our accounts wouldn't be in a state of flux. So we came back to the house so PH, who uses Bank of America and, therefore, has instantaneous online access to her account activity, could check to see what Blu Fusion had done to our bank balances. To our shock and horror, we found that they had charged us not once, not twice, but three fucking times.

We were pissed, but we didn't have time to deal with it just then because we had to get on the road so that we'd make our movie on time. All week, every member of Team Spring Break 2007--except for me--has been pissed/pumped about seeing Grindhouse. Rotten Tomatoes is giving it a 91 percent freshness rating as of this writing. I cannot explain how unexcited I was for the movie. Still, everyone else wanted to see it, and I wasn't about to make a big deal out of it.

This post has gotten extremely long, so I'll just say this about Grindhouse: it was about what I was expecting, and I was expecting it to suck. The Robert Rodriguez portion of the film, entitled Planet Terror, was kind of decent. It was funny, action-packed, and entertaining. The Quentin Tarantino portion of the film, Death Proof, was craptastic. It was long, bloated, and boring. It was essentially an opportunity for Mr. Tarantino to masturbate himself. The best part of the whole movie, by far, was the opening mock movie trailer, which promoted a film called Machete. It was hilarious.

Everyone else seemed to like the film, but I thought it was pretty bad, and I don't think I'd see it again, and I wouldn't recommend it.

But it doesn't matter--it was worth every second of Grindhouse to hang out with my best friends for the last week. Thanks, guys, for making this the best spring break ever.



3 Comments


jbob said:

You never take me on spring break. Wah. Wah. Wah.

Two comments:

1. 20% is the new 15%. Or at least my waiter friends tell me that.

2. What? You don't like watching Mr. Tarantino masturbate himself?

April 7, 2007 7:44 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

Jbob,
It might be a lot easier to invite you on spring break if I knew who you were.

There's no reason for the percentage of a tip to increase--that's why it's a percentage.

I've enjoyed all of the Tarantino movies I've seen, except Grindhouse. I think it was crap.

April 9, 2007 11:14 AM



Utah said:

Don't forget to talk about that giant asshole who thought he owned the airport line.

April 9, 2007 2:47 PM



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