Waitresses

Re "3 Waitresses Cited for Serving Alcohol," Oct. 6. I'm beginning to believe we just don't have enough crime in this county! The police must have too much time on their hands and now have to send out teenagers to local restaurants as decoys to trick busy waitresses into serving them alcohol. The Times printed a very interesting article on the front page just the day before about how minimum wage earners, such as waiters and retail clerks, are scarce and now overworked because of the labor shortage.

The gig: Mary Micucci, 63, is the owner of Along Came Mary Events, one of Hollywood's leading catering and special events businesses. Often called the "caterer to the stars," Micucci has handled more than 400 movie premieres, from "Titanic" in 1997 to "The Hangover Part III" earlier this month, as well as numerous Grammy, Emmy and Academy Awards parties. She has also catered events for numerous celebrities, including Barbra Streisand's wedding to actor James Brolin in 1998. The food business wasn't an obvious career path for Micucci, a former flight attendant who also worked as a cocktail waitress while she was a student at Cal State L.A., where she got her degree in psychology and communications.

A Superior Court judge Friday ordered a downtown Los Angeles restaurant to reinstate a waitress who successfully sued the eatery for age discrimination. Otto Rothschild's restaurant at the Music Center was ordered to rehire Lisa Marie Belanger, 51, who was awarded $596,500 in compensatory and punitive damages by a jury in December. Judge Charles E. Jones also refused to grant a retrial request by attorneys for the restaurant and its parent company, Restaurant Enterprises Group. Charles T.

A Hooters ball girl at the Phillies-Rays game on Saturday made a nice play on a sharply hit ball down the third-base line. She popped out of her chair and showed fine form when fielding the ball. Then she went to the railing and tossed the ball to a young fan in the stands. All well and good, right? One problem, though. It was a fair ball. Evidently it's not the first time it has happened. Just go to YouTube and search "Hooters ball girl" to find more evidence. The Phillies use Hooters waitresses as ball girls during spring training.

The folks who brought us "Miss Tight Jeans" were in town scouting hopefuls for the first "Prettiest Waitress in the U.S.A." pageant. Many among the 40 who showed up at the Hollywood Roosevelt weren't waitresses exactly, but waitresses waiting to be actresses. It's a problem, said Jason Mershon of "Steppin' Out Productions," creator of this contest. So are "circuit girls," who've honed a tiny talent and toned a great body and show up for Miss X, Y and Z.

In the midst of a dull shift at the Excalibur Club, Chicago waitress Colleen Gallagher's fortunes took a turn for the better when John Boc, CEO of Meridian Investments Inc., told her to give herself a $1,000 tip. Boc made the $1,000 offer after a chat with Gallagher, who told about struggling to provide for her two sons, according to an account in the Boston Herald that was confirmed by a Meridian official. After drawing tears of gratitude, Boc then pulled out a wad of credit cards.

The coffee cup must be placed upside-down with the handle squarely pointed at 4 o'clock. Don't hold the wine bottle by its neck. And the dessert spoon should be just above the place setting, as though a reminder of the sweeter dish to come. Fingernails must be clean. Pepperminty breath is just fine but no chewing gum.

Georgia Rowland isn't waiting for her agent to call or a casting director to discover her. Her day job happens to be her only job. Georgia works the morning shift at Du-par's, a breakfast hangout for the famous and the would-be famous. Over the years, waitresses have come and gone, a few deriding Du-par's as a Tinseltown detour, a place to put in some time before making the big time. But Georgia--it's what everybody calls her--has put in 20 years now and, she said, may put in 20 more.

It was for all of $20 that Kessara Pattanatanung was shot to death. Four masked robbers entered the Thai restaurant where Pattanatanung worked and shot her in the chest Friday before rifling the cash register and fleeing, Long Beach Police said. "They fired several times, demanded money and fired again," Police Detective Dennis Robbins said. "It appears shots were deliberately fired at" the waitress and cook.

It was all for $20 that Kessara Pattanatanung was gunned down. Four masked robbers entered the Thai restaurant where Pattanatanung worked and shot her in the chest Friday before fleeing with a few bills from the cash register, Long Beach Police said. "They fired several times, demanded money and fired again," Police Detective Dennis Robbins said. "It appears shots were deliberately fired at" the waitress and cook.

Six years ago Keri Russell came to Sundance with a small undistributed movie about a pie-baking hobbyist working in a small-town diner. The dramedy, “Waitress,” went on to become one of the crowd-pleasers of the festival and garnered more than $19 million upon its theatrical release. Russell is back in Park City this year with another film of light whimsy. Working with first-time director Jerusha Hess, half of the writing team behind “Napoleon Dynamite” (and one of the many female filmmakers making their name in the Utah mountains this year)

Antonia Becerra, an 81-year-old Glendale resident, was close to retiring after more than 40 years as a waitress at the landmark French restaurant Taix in Los Angeles, but that all changed this year after she fell victim to a lottery scam that wiped out her life savings. Scam artists even conned Becerra into selling her car for the promise of getting a $2 million prize and a new Mercedes Benz, police say. "I sold the car and I sent them the money - I am still waiting for the package," Becerra said.

A San Bernardino County judge ordered an inquiry Thursday into allegations that a member of the jury that rejected the "Zoloft defense" of a former Westminster police detective who was convicted of rape failed to disclose that she had used the antidepressant. The defendant, Anthony Orban, claimed to have been in a drug-induced blackout caused by Zoloft when he abducted and sexually assaulted an Ontario Mills mall waitress in 2010. Orban's attorney, James Blatt of Los Angeles, told Superior Court Judge Shahla Sabet that after the verdict in late June one of the jurors contacted his office.

A former Westminster police detective may face life in prison after a San Bernardino County jury Tuesday rejected his defense that he was in an antidepressant-induced blackout, and legally insane, when he kidnapped and raped a waitress. Anthony Orban testified that he had no memory of the 2010 attack and blamed his psychotic break on a powerful dose of the popular antidepressant Zoloft, which he said had triggered hallucinations and suicidal and homicidal fantasies in the days before the abduction.

The track record of adapting hit films into TV series has been spotty at best. For every small screen success such as CBS' "MASH," there have been such turkeys as the recent NBC series "The Firm. " The stars aligned for CBS in 1976 with the sitcom "Alice," a warmly funny adaptation of Martin Scorsese's 1974 "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," for which Ellen Burstyn won the Oscar as a widower with a young son who ends up working at a greasy spoon named Mel's. Warner Archive just released the first season on DVD. Linda Lavin was perfectly cast as Alice, as were Polly Holliday and Beth Howland as waitresses Flo and Vera.

He's been a drunk guitar player in "The Wedding Singer," argued over pancakes in "Fargo" and gotten beaten up by Willie Nelson and Don Johnson in "Miami Vice" (seriously!). But it's the small things that matter with Buscemi. That's why we here at The Envelope have selected his straightforward, reasoned — but expletive-laced — take on refusing to tip a waitress as Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 heist film "Reservoir Dogs" as his best scene: "I'm very sorry the government taxes their tips.

Cora Miller was fired for a song. Her second day at a Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant turned out to be her last, she said, when she refused to sing one of the most popular tunes in the world to a lunchtime customer--"Happy Birthday." Miller is a Jehovah's Witness, and celebrating birthdays, even the birth of Christ, violates the rules of her religion. None of that seemed to matter to the manager of the Chi-Chi's restaurant in Clinton, she said. "He said, 'I can't use you,' " recalled Miller, 43.

I have often championed that underappreciated worker bee of American civilization, the waitress. I love them, whether they are old or young, beautiful or plain, sweet or sour. Beginning with the Harvey Girls, who brought good grooming, cheer and wives to the Santa Fe Trail, they helped to civilize the West that the cowboy, the prospector and the railroad hand had opened up. They are the cement of society. They bind us together.

My New American Life A Novel Francine Prose Harper: 306 pp., $25.99 Early in her writing life, Francine Prose developed an unmistakable voice: sharp, ironic, intelligent, uncompromising. Using this voice the way a miner uses a headlamp, she has crawled her way into the darkest corners of American life — suburbia, academia, post-Columbine public schools, society and culture post-9/11. Prose turns the American mind inside out, revealing all the fear, greed, paranoia, charisma and bullying within it. Her characters are often the people we read about in the news or hear about through six degrees (give or take a few)

On the official crazy-time scale of Nicolas Cage onscreen craziness, "Drive Angry" rates at least a 7, maybe an 8. Directed by Patrick Lussier from a script by Lussier and Todd Farmer, the film could easily have rated higher but the filmmakers bog down their own nutty mayhem with much exposition, which has its own level of nuttiness. Cage's character is named John Milton ? get it? Like "Paradise Lost" John Milton? ? and that is in essence what passes for deeper meaning here. Cage plays a mysterious loner who picks up a small-town waitress (Amber Heard)