Jesus... I spoke way too fucking soon. Within 4 days, it's gone to hell again.
So, last night we were hosting the 3rd annual Divine Divas benefit. This is an event that Shynea and some of her peers organize to raise money for various charitable orginizations. They can raise anywhere between fifty and seventy thousand dollars at one of these. It's a lot of stinkin' cash, made really quickly. It's a wonderful
girls only night out and the event itself, is a lot of fun, everyone dresses up in their best disco gear. This is the only fundraising event that I really enjoy doing for a variety of reasons. I don't have to set up, clean up or serve anything. I just play 3 short sets, and I get free finger foods and drinks. But mostly, it's because this event has absolutely NOTHING to do with Taytor. Shynea organizes this entire event independantly of Taytor, all he does is volunteer the venue for the evening. That's his donation. The cast does this every year for Shynea's benefit, not his. He doesn't even need to come to the event... and this time it would have been best.
Now before we get on with the story, one more thing worth noting. Delta Hotels is a platinum level sponsor for the event, they donate tens of thousands of dollars in goods and services to the event. Their servers fight over who can come to the Flaming Bird to volunteer their time to serve the food provided by the Delta.
Now that I set up the scenario, here's the cliff notes version of what happened:
Taytor was at the event as he is every year. This year though he had been drinking heavily, something that I thought was behind us. Now in all fairness to Taytor I have to say that he's has gone through some really terrible personal trauma this past week. It isn't an excuse but it helps to put things into perspective. He should have been home grieving and not out in public. Period.
He was joking with me early on in the night as to how he'd like divert one of the trays to his table so that he didn't have get up to get some food. I said to him, that if he asked one of them they might be able to help him out with that. Later on however he took the liberty of asking one of his kitchen staff to take a tray that had bee momentarily put down by the server. The kitchen help, not knowing any better, was about to bring him the tray when the server realized that her tray disappeared. She went to go recover her tray, and Taytor saw that as a direct insult to himself. He then proceeded to "explain" to her that he didn't need their fucking food, and grab the tray from her and threw it in the garbage and said that she could stick it straight up her ass... Needless to say the server left the kitchen crying. Taytor pursued her, and continued with his usual charm. Within 3 minutes there were a handful of Delta servers crying.
Taytor wasn't done yet though, he then told one of our cast members that anyone that eats the Delta's food would be fired on the spot.
[Damn I wished I had known that at the time... My countdown would be much shorter. ] He started to tear strips out of the cast member in question. He had enough and told Taytor to get out of his face (and justly so). He went on to continue his tyrade on Shynea next, explaining to her how it's "his fucking building" and on, and on... He's embarassing poor Shynea to no ends.
He then proceeds to Laydee, Shynea's daughter and our team leader. To explain that the cast was to stay away from the food. Laydee, very politely explained that this didn't really make sense. So he proceed to tell her off, in not so many words, then gathered the rest of the cast, and wanted to hold an emergency cast meeting, but Laydee and I weren't invited. Hmm... So I crashed his "meeting" just to hear what he had to say, then I walked out on him after hearing his "spin" on the events, I could believe the amount of bullshit coming out of his fucking mouth, nor was I sure of why everyone else was still in there listening to the shit. He was blocking the door, but that wasn't going to stop me, that's for damn sure. I'm pushed him aside, told him that I couldn't support any of this and that I wasn't staying to listen to it. I went back to Shynea and Laydee, and declared that this wasn't even worth fighting him over...He's just being a silly little bitch.
Meanwhile Shynea's husband is likely somewhere else in the building, trying to not to put Taytor in the hospital, at least that's what I'd be doing were I him... But I'm just speculating. I have a lot of respect for this man, to show so much patience.
While this is going on, Shynea can't do her live auction, and when items are being bid on for thousands of dollars a piece, every minute not auctioning is money lost.
Taytor wouldn't look my in the eye all night. Except to scowl me while I was on stage, when I was off though he didn't say shit to me. He realizes by now, he can't spin me.
I had to leave to go to Cougars, so I wasn't around for the end. Howver I heard that Taytor gave a big closing speech at the end of the night, thanking all of the cast for the hard work, and insisted on paying them all for their work at this benefit, for which he had nothing to do with.
My bet is that 65$ each isn't going to make us forget... we're not 3 years old...
Man, oh, man.............. How does he even sleep at night?