This Year's Drum Circle

Manbque.

CHICAGO – The men head straight for the Wicker Park backyard carrying beer and prized cuts of raw meat.

There, in the charcoal haze of three grills crackling on a 40-degree night, they find dozens of other men just like them – wearing hooded sweatshirts, often speaking with their mouths full and not worrying about what their girlfriends or wives might say.

And there are rules, for crying out loud:

RULE: Manbque should only be held during the week. Weekends are for Coed B Ques where there is a slight chance of actually going home with a woman.


RULE: Any vegetables served at Manbque must be within the tight parameters of meat in the form of a kabob.

What you really have here is another case of beta males trying to ape alpha-male behavior.

Anthropological Notes From a Hotel, Part 1

The hotel offers a bagged breakfast for those guests who check out and depart before the regular breakfast starts at 6:30 a.m. The bag includes a bottle of water, a piece of fruit, a breakfast bar, a piece of hard candy, and a paper napkin.

We have a regular guest, a long-haul trucker, who stays a couple of times a week. He likes to avail himself of the bagged breakfast option, since he typically leaves at 4:30 a.m. Most of the time I'm back in the office doing paperwork when he departs, and he grabs two of the bags. On two different occasions, though, I've been out at the front desk when he departed, and those two occasions he only grabbed one bag.

Interesting how behavior changes when you are, or think you are, being observed, huh?