Bad Valet

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

“What’s the etiquette about tipping valets?” my little brother asked quietly. I knew this one! “You give them two dollars when they bring you your car,” I told him confidently. I know everything there is to know about valet etiquette, and most kinds of etiquette. I read Miss Manners every week, in the Washington Post, the Buffalo Something or Other, and MSN’s relationship channel (just one isn’t enough!). I have even considered shelling out for her book, but there were so many to choose from, I decided not to! I no longer throw potlucks, and if anyone ever marries me, I will not even register for gifts! That is how much I love Miss Manners! As to valets? I think they are the best invention of the 16th century.

But the Dakota Lounge is surrounded by neighborhoods with permit-only parking, so eventually we’d parked ourselves in the lot, valets not in evidence at the stand, and then gone to give them our $7. Cakeyboy handed the guy a $10, and the guy looked at him, lingeringly, not moving to give him change. “So, uh, go ahead and keep that,” Cakeyboy told him after a few sheepish moments. That’s right, tip him three dollars for parking yourself. Sounds good! That plus the fake valet-only sign at the meter out front added up to VERY NOT PROPER VALET ETIQUETTE. FOR THE VALETS! Santa Monica sucks.

Things got a little better once my brother bought me a fine Chimay, and even better than that once he bought me a second. The band was fine, a poppy funk group a la Maroon 5, and I felt better and danced as my little brother’s gorgeous friend tried to get all up on me (and smell me). “You’re adorable,” I told him (because he was! Just as long as he didn’t talk), “but I have a sexy boyfriend whom I totally love!”

“There’s nothing wrong with having fun though, right?” he asked, as he placed his nose close to my smoky hair. Well, actually, yeah, there is! I started enumerating the things wrong with having fun, but he didn’t care to listen. I left the dance floor for a while to go back to the table and the sad fauxhawked sport-jacket-wearing friend my brother’s friend had brought. There he was, bein’ all sad, so I figured the best way to cheer him up would be to talk at him about something boring. I settled on healthcare reform.

Now, this was all of two weeks ago, so it was before the Town Hell zombies started looking for human brains. It was before Sarah Palin compared being offered hospice care to facing Pol Pot. (A particularly raw non sequitur; has anybody with a loved one who passed on in hospice, in the history of hospice, ever had a single bad thing to say? Or do they mostly just weep with gratitude at the gentle passing?) It was before Investors Business Daily had the misfortune to pick Stephen Hawking as its poster boy for someone who would be killed by Britain’s NHS should he have the misfortune to be British (he is) or to live in Britain (he does). Really, they should have gone with Charles Krauthammer instead.

AP Photo / Jae C. Hong

So I was going to save our fauxhawked hero from his case of the sadz by boring him out of them, as I said before. And what did he think about health care reform? (Or as the adorable LaRouchies said at the Pershing Square farmer’s market on Wednesday, “Do you want Obamacare, or do you want health care?” “Obamacare!” I answered happily, since I they didn’t offer the third choice of Britain’s NHS. You wouldn’t think they’d be surprised; they were at the farmer’s market, downtown, for sweet Jesus’s sake!) His dad’s a doctor! He’s from Minnesota! Single payer kills innovation!

“No it doesn’t!” I explained. “What about the Mayo Clinic, Mr. I’m From Minnesota and My Dad’s a Doctor? What about that? The doctors at the Mayo Clinic are all on salary! And all the real innovation’s done by the National Institutes of Health anyway, which then by law has to give out its research to the pharmaceutical companies, which then hold the patent. And the insurance companies don’t add Dollar One of value. They don’t provide treatment or medical care, they’re just middlemen paying the bills (or some of the bills, until you hit your limit or they decide the acne you didn’t report means they won’t pay for treatment for your breast cancer) at a 30 percent markup! Rent a Ralph Nader video!”

“Would you like to hear why single payer kills innovation?” he asked. “No,” I answered. “I am going to dance now.” It really wasn’t a bar-fighting kind of night.

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