The Sopranos' alternate ending

The world is still reeling from Sunday night's Sopranos season finale. If you haven't watched it yet don't read any further. Reactions across the nation run the gamut. Anger, apathy, sadness, and joy are all understandable responses based on your perspective and your cinematic taste. Apparently creator and decision maker David Chase was himself torn on the ending. Over 8 diner scenes were filmed, mostly to prevent the true outcome from being leaked to the public. But was the outcome (or lack there of) what Chase had in mind all along? Some insiders say that Chase was torn between the ending that aired last night and an alternate ending.
The alternate ending reportedly begins in the same setting. Tony sits down at the diner and flips through the juke box. Instead of picking out Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" he goes with the Phil Collins classic "In the air in the night". AJ and Carmela sit down to join him. Every time a new person enters the room Tony jolts his head up. A man reading a newspaper enters the bathroom. When the crescendo lyric 'It's all been a pack of lies' hits the air the man charges out of the bathroom brandishing a 24 inch chainsaw. Several other restaurant patrons pull out concealed chainsaws and hedge trimmers. Tony squeals "What's this all about?". The leader of the group says "We're the Hackensack crew, we run this town, and we don't appreciate you laying your fat Bergen county ass on our seats." They proceed to chop AJ and Carmela into hundreds of little pieces and dump them all in the deep frier while Tony looks on in tears. Then, at gunpoint they force Tony to eat his deep fried wife and son. Meanwhile, Meadow has been trying to parallel park her car the whole time. She finally gets it just right and walks into the diner, oblivious to the hoards of bloodstained patrons filing out the front door. Just as she walks through the door a member of the Hackensaw crew pulls an 1840's war cannon out of the closet and blasts a large hole through Meadow's stomach. Tony pleads for his life, but the merciless crew only laughs. They pick him up by his legs and dump his entire body face first into the deep frier. The screen goes black as Tony's shrieks and gargles can be heard.
Just then Tony wakes up in a pool of his own sweat. "Wow that was one F----- up dream" he says. He looks over and sees Carmela sleeping peacefully. Tony runs into AJ's room and is startled to discover that AJ is just a child. He then runs into Meadow's room to find his teenage daughter typing on the computer. He asks Meadow what's day it is. She informs him that it's May 3rd, 1999. The last 8 years have all been one long vivid dream. The screen fades to black and the credits roll as Journey plays in the background.
Insiders speculate that this ending will still be used as the opening to The Sopranos movie, should it ever be made.

The awkward game part 1

Setting: Gold Coast Australia

Primaries characters: 5 traveling America Students (Jen, Julia, Tom, Theo, Kyle)

Jen helps Julia touch up her eyeliner. The guys drink Jager from a plastic flask. Julia asks Jen if it looks skanky. "No it's cute.". The flask does one last rotation and the group is out the door.
The cavalry piles into The Rabbit's Foot. Everyone does a shot, and then another, and then another. A Justin Timberlake song plays. Theo complains. A girl dances on a bar while below her someone almost gets into a fight with a drunk Kiwi. 5 minutes later the Kiwi pukes 7 undigested screwdrivers on the pool table and gets thrown out. The party migrates to another bar, a Journey song plays, followed by a Janet Jackson song.

Some would call this a poor transition.

Everyone has 2 more shots. Theo takes Tom for 10 Australian dollars in a game of darts, and then quickly loses it to a local in a game of pool. The same Justin Timberlake song comes on and this time Theo decides he likes it. He sings along. Tom decides to make out with a woman at least 20 years older than he is. He whispers in her ear. She throws a drink in his face and walks out the door. Theo dances with Jen for 2 songs in row then goes in for the kiss. Jen turns her face laughing and tries to say "Not now" over the music. Kyle goes outside for air. 5 more girls from the program are walking in. He grabs one on the arm and takes her to the dance floor. Her name is Petra. She's Russian but lives in Northern California. Petra whispers something mildly funny in Kyle's ear. Kyle cracks a smile at her, a smile that he practices for these occasions. Kyle buys 2 shots, then Petra buys 2 more. Tom comes over and throws his arms around the 2 of them. Petra's friends leave to go back to their hotel. It's agreed that she will now travel with him for the week. The DJ decides to play a country song. This is a good enough excuse to leave. Kyle grabs Petra by the hand and takes her to the door, and then down the street. He escorts Petra to the door of the suite, and then to the top bunk........

Part 2 coming soon.

Real Bar Patrons: The Family Man

Jim, a man of about 50, sits down to dinner with his young family. His 2 children look to be between 6 and 8 years old, one boy one girl, both with blonde hair. His wife appears to be in her late thirties. I’ve served them before but on this night one of the wait staff serves them. I’m not much good with the fancier procedures. After a substantial meal the wife ushers the kids off to bed. The man sticks around and orders a sixteen dollar glass of cabernet. Walter, my manager comes in to bust my balls about some dirty dishes that aren’t really my responsibility. This is one of the rare occasions when he ever gives me flack so I don’t mind. Jim leans in a little,

What’s that guy’s fucking problem. Who is that guy?

"That’s just Walter, he’s the manager here."

What’s up his ass?

"Oh no he’s a cool guy actually. He just gets confused some times.”

He seems like a prick square to me. A bunch of hot shot assholes run around this hotel don’t they?

“Yeah, you get a good amount of them in here.”

When I was your age, well actually more in my thirties anyway, when I was young I ran a bar in LA. We had some old pricks like that. One time some old guy mouthed off to me so I finger fucked his wife in the bathroom. The old bag, she loved it. This old geezer was drunk as hell. He didn’t know what was going on. She slipped me 100 bucks with the check.

“Are you serious?”

Oh definitely, These old broads they love to get fucked. That asshole who was in here earlier, you should fuck his wife…. I’m serious. These people aren’t real people. They got no concept of what matters. I got my wife and my kids, and 10 years ago we had to put my oldest Shaun in the ground. He was 9 years old. These people have no concept.

“I know what you mean.”

I know you do. You’re not like these jokers. Where you from?

“ah originally Connecticut, but I just moved out here from New York a few months ago.”

Connecticut is a nice place. We stayed up in Long Island back when I had a couple race horses.

“Horses eh? I love the track. I haven’t been out here yet, but it’s a good time.”

We had a good horse we used to run around down here in Del Mar. I think he got spooked here. The trainer messed his head up for a couple months. This son of a bitch was a stone cold alcoholic. I used to warn him about coming around the job sauced up, especially around the animals you know they don’t like that shit. So one time this asshole you know what he does. He gets all sauced up again, and goes to the stable one night. He’s playing around on the horse or something and he messes up his leg. This was a 200,000 dollar race horse. So what we did, we taught the fucker a lesson. The next day we dragged him out of his house and threw him into the cage and let that horse give him a couple good kicks in the ribs.

There aren't too many more words spoken between us. Jim quickly downs his last glass of the evening, signs off on the bill and goes on his way. I see that he's left a 10 dollar tip on an 18 dollar order. Truly a gentleman and a savage.

Real Bar Patrons: The Shark

A 61 year old man walks into the bar with a nice but outdated suit, and an authentic hideskin cowboy hat. I offer him a drink but he only asks for water. The gentlemen would like to know where the general manager is. I tell him I can have him paged. There is no appointment set in place so the man says he will wait.

Clayton is his name. I ask if he’s at the hotel for business or pleasure. ‘A little of both’ with a hint in his voice that he knows I’ve heard that one before. He hands me a flyer from out of his jacket. It’s very nicely designed and printed on high quality paper. There’s an overhead angle picture of a shiny silver Jet streaking through orange clouds. On the inside there’s a picture of some Enron type with his legs crossed sitting on a comfortable looking leather seat. The ficticious man is laughing with a glass of champagne in his hand.

I feign extra interest in the flyer and old Clyde goes into his pitch. “This is for the traveler who wants to travel in style and comfort. There’s no check in. No screaming babies. No wait on take off or landing. No deadlines no luggage no restrictions.” The cowboys angle is that he wants me and the others to pass these flyers around to the biggest of the bigwigs, in exchange for some potential kickback. I’m fine with it, but no F’ing way will the GM go for it. But I humor him all the same.

After awhile he starts to feel bad for only drinking water so he orders a cranberry juice. The subject matter takes an unforeseen detour to New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. Apparently, the black people of Katrina need to get their act together and stop pointing fingers. They’re blaming FEMA when they should be blaming themselves. I’m growing more and more noticeably uncomfortable with the discussion at hand. The cowboy eventually picks up on my lack of responsiveness to his rant. He stammers a bit, but then explains that his best friend in the world is a black man, and they go on with these sorts of discussions all the time.

Perhaps to extend an olive branch or maybe just to calm his nerves, Clayton decides to have a scotch after all. Fortunately, he gets off of the previous subject and gets onto the subject of sports. He likes basketball and so do I. He likes Dallas’ chances and fondly reminisces on the days of Pistol Pete. Clayton isn’t a pure athelete, so he was never much into traditional sports. As he tells it, he’s an absolute Marksmen at pool though.

“No I mean it. Way back before all this, how I made my living was playing pool. You’ve heard of hustling. My hustle was that I’d show up at a spot where I knew there was action. I’d be wearing one of those shirts with my name patched on, and I’d smear fresh car oil on my hands, like I just got off my shift at the autobody shop. Everyone thought I was some mark just trying to get my pool fix. They didn’t like it one bit when they figured out what was going on. I’ve had to fight my way out of many a jam.
In 76’ I was playing a guy for a thousand a game. I had him down 4 games so he decides to play be all or nothing. So I beat him. He’s into me for 8 grand and says he wants to play all or nothing again. He didn’t get one shot off in that game. He was good for it though. Asked me if I’d take a check and I’ll be damned if it didn’t clear. But I beat him straight up. The thing with the hustling, it makes people want to come after you. I had a guy come after me in an alley once after a game.
So we get into it for a bit, and I start wailing on him. I beat him right to death. It was me or him. I had to lay low for a real long time after that one. You bet.”

Just then the GM walked by. The cowboy hastily signed the check and walked out of the room. I quit that bar a few weeks later and never saw Clayton again.