It’s been months since we’ve seen the Fonz. February? March? Late-Winter, early-Spring, unless I’m mistaken. He kinda took a powder, but that’s all right. These things happen. Sometimes, regulars aren’t regulars forever. They’re only regulars for a little while. They move on. Greener pastures. Bigger and better things. Truth be told, though, the Fonz was a real grumpy dick. 

Coney still comes in all the time, but Ninety Percent Don is a regular somewhere else. Out in Lake Zurich. He moved out there so he could afford a decent backyard for his Labradoodle. Can’t say I blame him much. A backyard for a dog’s a good thing.

HomoFarmer ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. He loves it here. You know, sometimes, he has Amazon packages delivered here? A small-ish pile of boxes piled near the wine cabinet just waiting for him to show up and collect them. They never hafta wait long.

Scarfy and Artboy are now only Scarfy, cause Artboy went off to college. Gene Simmons, I don’t even remember what that guy looks like anymore. That’s how long it’s been since he darkened our doorstep. (He’s called Gene Simmons cause he looks like Gene Wilder, only we couldn’t remember the name Wilder and Will, this waiter we used to have, thought we were thinking of Simmons. That’s how it stuck. Sometimes, it don’t take much.) So he’s not a regular anymore.

King Turd and Tuna Can sit at their stools all night at least twice a week. They’re both safe on our list of regulars. Gambler, too. We will always have a little Gambler in our lives.

Some Guys Have All the Luck remains a stalwart regular, but he changed his hair, got it cut, doesn't frost the tips anymore, so he doesn’t look like Rod Stewart, and so now the nickname is more puzzling than funny, so what’s the point of still calling him Some Guys Have All the Luck when he doesn’t look like Rod Stewart anymore? There is no point. Jason and Steve are putting their considerable brain power to work coming up with something new. It’ll take ‘em awhile, cause their considerable brain power is occasionally inconsiderable.

Blobby hasn’t been in for a while. But that’s okay. We know he’ll be back. He’s just trying to not drink, and for whatever reason, when Blobby comes in, he drinks to the point of he drank way too much. As does his brother, Brother of Blobby.

(Here’s the thing bout those two. They always wear sweatpants that are at least a couple sizes too tight. Like they should be extra larges but they’re mediums. And they’re fat fellas so they hafta sit with their legs splayed. Then they drink too much, get that drunken kind of sloppy, forget to go to the bathroom til almost too late and the whole situation becomes a mess.)

The All Night Marty Party is coming in tonight. Thank god I don’t work tonight. Cause when the All Night Marty Party comes in, I tend to regret it profoundly in the morning. As I’m begging Wife-asaurus to get me a big ten dollar bag of McDonald’s breakfast. (A while ago, I woke up in the hallway, half in/half out of the bathroom, using towels for a blanket and pillow. This was after a night with the All Night Marty Party. One of these days, I’ll realize my arms are too short to match the All Night Marty Party drink for drink.)

We had a regular who died last year. We didn’t know he’d died til his daughters came in the evening of his funeral. It was weird hearing bout his death in such a way, and a week or so after the fact. We made a donation to their preferred charity. But so he’s not a regular anymore, clearly. He was a good guy. Just slumped forward one day. The story goes he was gardening on a hot afternoon, asked his wife for a glass of lemonade and when she brought it out to him, he was dead as a doornail, just slumped over like he was resting against a tree.

Lifeforce I remember all too well. But she keeps to herself. She’s not as outgoing as she used to be. She sits at the far end of the bar (the one where I never stand), sips a cocktail or two, has a basket of onion rings, then calls it a night.

The Hobbits/Family Chromosome are in every damn weekend, same time same table. They’re like clockwork. They’re a family you can set your watch to.

The Bentleys too. They ain’t going anywhere.

Pocky’s having trouble making ends meet since his divorce, so he doesn’t leave home much. I saw him in line at Jewel a while back. Jewel does these idiot-proof mix and match meal deals. That’s what he was getting.

Father PeePants/The Drunken Padre has … uh … been transferred him to a parish in the south suburbs. This was done against his will and … uh … under circumstances best described as cloudy. There’s another regular that no longer is.

That’s pretty much all of ‘em. I might be missing a few, but that’s all the heavy hitters, anyway. We’ve separated the regular wheat from the irregular chaff.

But there’s a new regular. Just in the past week. See what happens? As soon as a regular is no more, a new regular takes his/her place. The new regular is pretty dang all right. She’s a sassy salty broad, all right. Her actual name’s Joanie. She’s on the … on the big side. She calls it ‘there’s more of me to love.’ (The only reason I mention this is to provide context. I never mention the fatness of whatever regulars cause it’s immaterial. Except for Blobby, which you kinda knew he was at least a little big just from the fact that no skinny guy would be called Blobby, so it’s not exactly a news flash to hear that Blobby’s an enormous tub.)

So ‘there’s more of Joanie to love,’ and she’s been coming in for the past few months, and Sunday she brought her friends in, to sit not at the bar but at an actual table. Four of them all roughly the same size as Joanie, and all we had open was the table in the far corner. It seats three comfortably, but not four. Four’s a squeeze, even for Skinny Minnies. So I showed them the table, and mentioned that if they didn’t think there’s enough room, they could sit at the bar, have a drink, and a roomier table shouldn’t be more than another ten, fifteen minutes. Joanie hollered ‘You calling us fat???’

I stammered and blushed and hemmed and hawed like I do when I’m caught off guard, which happens all the time. After like a second or two, she started laughing, and I could breathe easy again. As they were squeezing into their seats, one of them said Joanie might need the table pulled out for her so she could get her stomach in. Joanie said ‘Fuck you, Barb. At least I don’t shop at Lane Bryant.’

Wouldn’t you know it, by the time they left, she was indeed a regular, and her nickname was/is either Fuck You, Barb or Lane Bryant.

Though even with Fuck You, Barb/Lane Bryant, we’re gonna hafta replenish, one of these days. We don’t wanna become one of those places with a piss poor assemblage of regulars. We want regulars of which we can be duly proud. I’ll have Jason and Sarah and Reggie and a few others keep an eye out for potential candidates.

Not gonna be a snap, though. Can’t just point at someone who’s always here and say ‘Him!’ or … ‘Her!’ Doesn’t work that way. It takes more than just coming in here all the time to become a regular. You need to interact, you need to be sociable, and we need to like you. It also helps if you have some easily identifiable physical characteristic or (even better) flaw that we can pick on. Hair or voice or wonky eye. It really helps when nickname time comes around if you, oh I dunno, have something like a stutter or your R’s sound like W’s. Then we could call you Elmer Fudd, and if you were married, we could call your wife Bwun Hiwda.

But first and foremost, of utmost importance, we need to like you. People who come in all the time that we don’t like are not regulars. They are jerks. And more often than not, they are stupid jerks for continuing to frequent a place where they clearly are not liked. Plus they are moronic stupid jerks cause they frequent a place where they are not liked and is not that good in the first place.