While working on a film earlier this year, I spent two months living in downtown San Francisco. With my car sitting dormant back in Los Angeles, a paltry per diem of $60 and a nightly penchant for getting blindingly drunk with my coworkers, I quickly became a user, and before long a fully-green, civic-minded, tree-hugging advocate, of public transportation. San Francisco's BART/Muni system has its problems, but it is relatively cheap (and a downright bargain compared to shelling out for cabs or parking), gets you where you need to be with a healthy, but not onerous, amount of walking and proves you can survive in a West Coast city without your own wheels.

Yet its efficiency is marred by a glaring, under-reported fact: San Francisco's mass transit system, like that of Los Angeles, London and many other cities, is not aimed at visitors. It is for the locals. And that means navigating an often obtusely difficult and unwelcoming puzzle of regulations, ticket vending machines, city geography and coin hoarding in order to use the system effectively. It isn't just that it's difficult to learn the ins and outs, it's that the difficulties are intentional. One gets the unavoidable feeling that the designers of the system are, as the English say, taking the piss.

Welcome!

My very first ride on the Muni subway brought down the hammer of bureaucracy and showcased publicly funded customer service in all of its odiferous splendor. Trying to get from Union Square to Civic Center Station, only two short stops away, I accidentally put a BART ticket into the Muni turnstile. As the ticket disappeared awkwardly and irretrievably into the slot, a middle-aged dragon lady arose from within the glass booth thirty feet away and bellowed at me through her squawk hole.

"Did you just put a BART ticket in there?!" Her contempt was so deep, so palpable her rage, it was as though I had launched a specific assault on her person with venal and malicious intent. I had no choice but to instantly fall into apologetic, plaintive culpability.

"Here's a hint. If it says BART, it's for BART. If it says Muni, it's for Muni!" The fire from her throat nearly melted the defenseless microphone.

"I'm terribly sorry. It's my first time riding your system. I don't know the difference between the two." She glared at me, not because I was some stupid yahoo tourist, which I was, but because I wouldn't return even the slightest whiff of hostility--a phenomenon she clearly wasn't used to. She huffed a bit, looked down at her computer, then complained some more.

"Oh, and the BART ticket cost more. You've gone and wasted fifty cents. Oh! Just..Just go on through." She buzzed me through the gate without looking up. Score one for being nice.

I figured out the system relatively quickly, it is, after all, public transportation. But even after several rides there was always a groan that escaped my mouth at the most egregious junctures of ridiculousness. Here's how a ride on the Muni subway from my hotel at Union Square to points elsewhere would work.

Step 1. While still at hotel, in fact, at every restaurant, liquor store and cashpoint of any kind: collect quarters! You'll need six of them for subway or bus. On the subway, they don't give change and they don't take bills. If you have six quarters skip to step 5.

Step 2. Walk down the non-functioning escalator of the Powell St. station. Avoid countless individuals aggressively asking for spare change. Very few of them are able to break a twenty.

Step 3. Even though you are going to ride the Muni system, go directly to the BART ticket machine to get the required six quarters. There is no sign telling you to do this. You just have to know.

Step 4. Magically know that you have to hit Button "H", which says "make change". DO NOT put your two perfectly crisp, flat dollar bills (the only kind it will accept) in the machine BEFORE hitting Button H, as this will stop the whole transaction and cause deserved consternation from the line of antsy passengers already forming behind you.

Step 5. Take quarters from machine and proceed to the Muni side of station. Turnstiles await you. There is a slot for your quarters. Sometimes the slot is inexplicably sealed shut. If not, drop them in slowly, one at a time. Anything else brings a stalled transaction and wrath of said dragon lady.

Sound confusing? Try doing it after a round of Absinthe shooters with a bunch of twenty-two year-olds. Seriously, when did that paint thinner become legal again?

Others have tried to decipher the Muni system as well.

The whole quarter rigmarole can be avoided by purchasing a Fast Pass. This highly losable slip of paper costs $45 and is good for all public transportation within the city (no outlying areas), including the cable cars, but even the rules for buying this liberating little card are hindering and seemingly random. It is only good for that calendar month and can only be purchased from an official kiosk or Walgreens* starting the last five days of the previous month and up to the "first few days" (according to the website) of the month in which it is valid. Cash only. The pass itself is your receipt. Much like owning the Oyster card in London, however, nothing made me feel more like a knowing resident or saved more time than possessing one of those multi-colored bad boys.

Once you're downstairs in the windowless, disorienting boarding area. There are two sets of tracks. If you look closely, buried between the advertisements are two small signs, one on each side of the concourse, that say Outbound and Inbound. You will have to know which one applies to you. (Seriously, outbound of what?) I'm staring at a Muni "map" as I write this and still can't figure out the distinction. What is obvious to the local resident is inscrutable to the first-timer. That you understand that Muni trains end (or begin) at Embarcadero station and flow to the outer areas of the city is implicit, but far from obvious. Only when placed in the more accurate and to-scale map of the city do the terms outbound and inbound make sense in context of the peninsula that is San Francisco.

Once the train pulls up, you can't see the sign anymore. And don't look for help from the train itself. The train will be marked by a letter, and not a helpful one. "J" for instance is for Church. Okay, if you happen to know Church Street, that's easy enough. But how about "N" for the Judah line, or "L" for Taraval? Taraval isn't even the terminus of that train. The last stop is the San Francisco Zoo. How about calling it the "Z" line? Perhaps that would make it too comprehensible.

BART trains are even worse. There will be only one small identifying sign on the very front of the train near the driver. It will have only the name of a town such as Richmond, Millbrae, or Dublin/Pleasanton which is the terminus of that particular line. So if you don't know in which directions these towns lie, you don't know what train is meant for you. Thus, not only do you need to know which cardinal direction you want to go (reasonable enough), you have to know which little burg lies at the end of the line, even if you are only going a few stops to say, the Mission District.

But aside from that first-timer flummox, my riding history in San Francisco was reasonably quick. I even discovered one destination, the bank where I deposited my paychecks, that was best served by taking the cable car. More about spectacle and charm than convenience, the cable cars ARE for tourists, while the bus, street car and trains are for the locals. How can you tell? Price. One way on a cable car is a whopping $5 ($11 for all day), while other modes are less that $2.

And despite the little annoyances, I grew to love taking mass transit--so much so that when I returned to Los Angeles, I was determined to keep the habit alive--come hell or Hollywood Hills.

In the next installment of The Wreckoning, I leave the sportscar in the driveway, hop on the bus or Red Line and scoff drunkenly at the letters D - U - I.

* So the story goes. The concierge at my fancy hotel ensured me that a Fast Pass was easily purchased at "any" Walgreens. Yet when I went to my local Walgreens and asked the man behind the register for one, he looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. You can also buy a Fast Pass online via credit card and have it mailed to you, but only between the 10th and 22nd of the previous month. I kid you not.

I have several friends who hold season tickets to the Lakers and every one of them now keeps only about ten games for himself, selling off the remaining thirty games at cost or, in the case of the Lakers being playoff-bound or facing a marquee opponent, for a tidy profit. When my friend Taylor used to take me to Lakers games, back in the Shaq glory days, we had a deal. In return for his extra floor seat, I would handle the driving and cover the food and drinks. Unfortunately for me, Taylor drinks like a soccer hooligan--one of the reasons we are friends, no doubt--so the bill for getting enough alcohol to get us both drunk and to wash down two orders of garlic fries would top out at around $100. I'm not sure how we arrived at this arrangement, but over time, the chance to go to a "free" Lakers game got too expensive. Once or twice, we stopped off at the liquor store on the way to the game and picked up a bottle of whiskey, but clandestinely spiking up our five-dollar Pepsis between our ankles amid the glare of the floor lights and the roving eye of the JumboTron proved more hassle than it was worth.

The only way to really motivate a Laker fan....free shit.

But on this night I smuggled in no outside treats. I was at the mercy of what the Staples Center had to offer. It was several minutes into the first quarter when Jacob emerged from his internal weed trance with an observation.

"There are a lot of strippers here," he said flatly.

"No, those are the Laker Girls."

At the first timeout or thereabouts, the lovely Laker Girls are sprung from their cages and flitter onto the court for the first of many high-energy routines carefully and lustfully crafted to keep us from having to stare at a staid clutch of very tall men in warm-ups huddled around another very tall man with a clipboard.

"Maybe they're more like biker chicks," Jacob said, amending his earlier observation. An aggressively unglamorous image of Dikes on Bikes from the Gay Pride Parade rumbled through my brain and mercifully exited. I gazed back at the court. In their shiny black short-shorts and matching, skin-tight tops, the sirens of the Staples Center were far hotter than any woman on the back of a motorcycle ever, but I saw his point. These ladies were exceptionally tarted up this evening. I looked around at my fellow Laker fans---affluent, apathetic and popping pieces of Staples-made California rolls into the mouths of their bored children and buxom second wives. These men were used to repressing the lower classes, not having sex with them. The Laker Girls represent the unattainable, the girls from the other side of the tracks, the dirty chicks you want to fuck backstage, but can't bring home for Thanksgiving.

Curiously though, even hilariously, there is something currently taking place at Lakers games that makes these affluent, apathetic fans lose their fucking minds. It is a promotion. If the Lakers win the game, but manage to hold their opponents to less than 100 points, all fans in attendance get...are you ready?...two free tacos! Make that a coupon for two free tacos--Jack-in-the-Box tacos, no less, the ones that are smaller than a harmonica and taste like fried packets of steer gristle. When it gets towards the end of the fourth quarter and the stipulations for the giveaway look like a possibility, you'd think the Lakers were about to win the championship. LA fans, notorious for passivity, coming late and leaving early, go absolutely bonkers at the prospect of two crappy tacos dangled in their faces. Not since Derek Fisher's miracle three-pointer with .4 seconds to play have I heard rich people screaming with such enthusiasm.

Tacos, bitch!

The whole revelation depressed me and amused me at the same time. I looked at the game clock. Nearly four minutes remained in the first quarter of a tight game. My buzz was wearing off. I sucked down the last of my beer and let the foamy dregs slide back down the edge of the cup and thought about the food options available outside.

"I'm gonna get some food, what would you like?" I asked Jacob.

"I'll come with you."

We bounded down the aisle and were out at the concession stand before the horn sounded to resume the game. In the end, dinner was a couple of hot dogs.

"And maybe some peanuts," Jacob asked. The woman brought a throw pillow of unshelled peanuts to the register and Jacob shuttered. "Never mind," he said.

"What's wrong?"

"There's no where to put the shells."

"Throw'em on the floor."

Now you must understand, I have way too many Dodger games under my belt to even give a moment's pause at leaving a thick carpet of husked peanut carcasses in my wake after a game.

"If they didn't want you to throw them on the floor, they wouldn't sell them in shells," I continued.

Jacob just looked at me. He was trying his best to be one of the boys, but what I was suggesting was something straight out of a drunken pirates' den. He had to draw the line somewhere.

We sat glued in our seats for the remainder of the game, munching hot dogs and stuffing our discarded shells into the sludgy foam of an empty beer cup.

It turned out to be one of the best Laker games I've ever seen. And one of the tidiest.

I wasn't sure Jacob had enjoyed it that much, though. He cheered when everyone else did, but mostly just smiled and hunkered down in his seat, his knit ski cap pulled tightly down on his head. It wasn't until we were back at the car, having B-lined past the crowds who haven't yet learned how to negotiate their way around the new Nokia Center building next to Staples, that Jacob turned to me, true excitement in his eyes for the first time, and said, "So when are we coming back?"

Nothing whets the appetite like this color combination of iguana green and slaughterhouse red.

Last week I dragged my friend, Jacob, to his first Lakers game. I say "dragged" not because seeing the Lakers is an unpleasant affair (unless they're in one of their disjointed, sloppy-defense moods), but because, Jacob, like many of the folks your correspondent had dated since becoming single, isn't sure why watching grown men throwing any type of ball around for any reason is compelling entertainment. But having initiated many a non-believer to the grace and drama of sports through patience and expertly-scalped tickets, I had no doubt the combination of beer, Kobe and Jack Nicholson--"Oh my God, that's the back of his head!"--would make for a worthy spectacle.

We pulled into my top-secret, classified, I-refuse-to-pay-$10-ever free parking spot (again, don't ask) at exactly 7:19, which gave us eleven minutes to smoke a joint, make out, walk four blocks to the arena, negotiate security and get to our seats. My default walking speed is something akin to that of a tweaker with stolen goods in his pockets, so we made it to the main gate with three minutes to spare. The lines to get through security always look intimidating, but in truth, move quickly. This is because the obligatory metal detectors are set so forgivingly low that Robocop himself would barely earn a pat-down. My own cell phone didn't even set it off--and I was talking on it! From there it's a straight shot from getting your ticket zapped by the scanner brigade to the myriad food and beverage choices that skirt the lower level.

But we were pressed for time. It wasn't so much for my benefit; I wanted Jacob to have the full effect of Staples Center pageantry--from the darkened, strobe-lit introduction of, "Your Los Angeles Lakers," to standing ten men deep in the line for the urinal. Fortunately, the evening's Star Spangled Banner butcher was long-time LA Phantom and overwrought scenery-chewer Davis Gaines, who could, without breaking a sweat, unearth a staggering seven minutes out of "There once was a man from Nantucket..."

The seats I had bought from a friend were in the 200 level, which for the most part provides decent viewing of any sporting event and acceptable acoustics at concerts. The 300 level, so named because of its elevation above sea-level, sits high above three floors of skyboxes. Thus, viewing from up there is equivalent to watching a game from a seven-story window. Basketball and hockey are about as appealing as they would be watched on the screen of an iPod--well framed, but miniscule. For concerts, however, the upper section is a waste of money, unless hearing a muted version of a song that ended thirty seconds ago is your idea of a good time.

There is one and only advantage to the 300 level, the City View Grill. This outdoor patio concession area is the lone place in the building where you can purchase garlic fries--delicious, not too greasy, and when paired with a Jody Maroni sausage and a Red Hook beer, the best meal in the building. And that includes the "sumptuous spread" laid out in the suites, which I have also tried. Those buffets of chicken wings and macaroni salad manage to have that institutional feel, like you're eating in a rehab facility or a Delta Crown Room.

A seasoned Stapler knows exactly how soon to bail out of his seat before halftime in order to beat the rush, for me it is with about ninety seconds remaining in the second quarter. That's precisely enough time to catch the elevator (those giant, archaically slow escalators are strictly for the amateurs), order food and snag a choice table before the lines become impossible and the quest for seating becomes vulture-like. You also want to be done eating before the 87 remaining cigarette smokers in Los Angeles burst forth from the building and collectively exhale the purified air they've been forced to breathe for the last 24 minutes of court time. Technically outdoors, but walled on three sides, the patio gets smoky by the end of halftime, which is great news to those enjoying the other marvelous perk of the patio, the unofficial "stoners' corner", a poorly-lighted dead space wherein the medicinally-inclined can spark up a fatty, shielded behind a wall of cigarette smoke.

In Part II, I order something to eat and explain the biker chicks....Coming very soon.

Out of the tremendous respect I hold for my hundreds of thousands of readers, I am compelled to offer an explanation. The reason for the absence is twofold. Two months ago, yours truly stood helplessly by as the cloud of domestic bliss that had hung thickly about the castle for the last five years blew away in the dry, deathly heat of the Santa Ana winds, leaving in its wake only the gutting, tear-stained revelation that love is, in fact, a chainsaw.

A broken heart and a dour Scotsman...A crippling combination.

A breakup is flawless in its ability to make the stupidest, sappiest love song elicit such a dam-break of tears that even the Ice Queen receptionist at the dentist's office was so moved as to get out of her chair, come out into the waiting area and deposit into my lap a billowing mound of pink tissues. That, and I was upsetting the children.

So I'd stay home, where, under happier skies, I am an excellent and enthusiastic cook. But on many nights over the last two months, when even frying a pork chop seemed too daunting, I'd find myself sprawled across the couch, shoving down handfuls of undressed, triple-washed Ready Pac field greens straight from the bag while weeping through repeat viewings of Tell Me You Love Me.

The tears come in times like these and you learn there's not a damn thing you can do to stop them, even when you or your friends are trying to do something to cheer you up. Enough weeks have passed since Aaron's Legendary Sobbing Round of Golf for it to rightly become the punch line it deserves to be among a certain circle of my friends, but at the time, it was truly life's nadir. "Wow, that guy's game must've really hit the shitter," came a voice from one passing foursome.

But over time, the storm clouds begin to part. The sun peeks out for longer and longer. My self-worth returned. I remembered I'm a rich, white American male and that's not such a bad thing to be. I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that I'm a catch and a half. I've lost ten pounds, eight from my recently wash-boarded middle and two more from my overworked tear ducts. The crying jags have become the exception rather than the norm these days, provided I don't see any film involving a wet, injured woman in war-torn Europe or hear even a snippet from any of eleven Snow Patrol songs.

The second reason for my absence is the writers' strike itself. Even a spend-happy mogul such as myself is keeping a tighter grip on the wallet in these uncertain times. I recently had to scale back my assistant's schedule from eighty-five hours a week to eighty hours a week. And I've forced myself, grudgingly, to switch from the 16-year-old Lagavulin to the 12-year-old Macallan as my go-to Scotch. We're all feeling the crunch, but we're in for the long haul.

In the meantime, I'm getting back out there. Now the Wreckoning becomes not only a place to sound off about the places where I eat and drink, but an examination of the children, train wrecks and emotionally-stunted monsters I bring along as my dates.

This should be fun. For you, at least. Thanks for not breaking up with me.

The Fox incarnation is sticking so much to its own narrow ideal of what works and what doesn't, that it's in danger of becoming repetitive. We're three episodes into the Fox series and have yet to get out of the state of New York. One of the dives, Dillons, is in midtown Manhattan while the other two, Peter's and The Mixing Bowl, struggle like dying fish out on Long Island.

More specific, it doesn't take Gordon (or anyone with half a brain forced to spend a week in these temples of dysfunction) long to suss out that the core and most debilitating problem with all three restaurants is a clueless, egotistical, emotionally stunted manager. Invariably, Ramsay discovers a manager who has little regard for the fact that his employer, the restaurant's owner, is about to lose the business to creditors

This man will ruin your restaurant.

These goombahs treat their bosses' restaurants like their own personal social clubs - glad-handing customers, giving away a crippling amount of free food and ensuring that their own appetites are sated before worrying about the needs of anyone else. They show up when they feel like it, take cash directly from the till or, even more offensively, from hard-working servers. The weepy manager of The Mixing Bowl, Mike, after deducting half of a server's tips to himself, has the audacity to tell her: "How much money would you be making if it weren't for me?" The answer: a hell of a lot more than she's making now, douche bag.

The American show hasn't found as many colors yet, perhaps because it is afraid to. The restaurants I've worked in over the years were seriously debilitated by things like cocaine in the stock room, employee theft and, in one case, a narcoleptic owner who was also a compulsive liar. Now that's some good TV!

For their part, the restaurant owners bear much responsibility for letting things get so bad. Consistently, they are unconfrontational, myopic and stuck in the past. Gordon tries to get them to cut the dead weight, find their balls and kick some ass. Helping those who have lost confidence in themselves has always been the real reason Kitchen Nightmares is such a great show. It's the Dr. Phil of dinner service.

There are two other unfortunate changes and one glaring omission in the American version that hurt the show noticeably. Almost always Gordon calls for a much needed face lift of the décor. In the British show, the entire staff--owners and managers on down to line cooks and busboys, closed the shop for the day, rolled up their sleeves and got busy with the paint brushes. There was something wonderfully Zen and democratic about the do-it-yourself nature of this. It was also the only way the cash-strapped BBC could make the remodeling happen. But for Fox, the staff goes home and overnight Gordon's "Design Team" (a.k.a. art department) comes in and does a whirlwind professional makeover. The results of course are that the show gets the emotional value of the staff coming in the next morning to see their place of work transformed. The tears flow like cheap champagne.

And then there are the new kitchens. If any equipment was upgraded or replaced on the BBC show, the owners paid for it...as they should. But in the American world of product placement, the gang comes into work to find a brand new, state of the art kitchen waiting for them. It's like Christmas morning forty minutes into every episode. The statement this makes about America can't be ignored. There is no sweat, no sacrifice, no agonizing penny-pinching. There is only entitlement.

The effectiveness of Gordon Ramsay's week in residence at the British restaurants is highlighted by his return a few weeks (or sometimes months) later to see if his improvements are still in play. Sometimes they are. Sometimes, the players have reverted to their former selves because people aren't always capable of change. Old habits die hard. This too is what makes the show great. The American show doesn't do this follow-up and it is a shame. Knowing that there's a good chance that all of Gordon's time, expertise and energy get slowly washed away adds an extra level of drama to the proceedings--a lot more drama than, say, the Fox solution of bringing in an angry "bill collector" (mobster) just before dinner rush to stir up problems (and incite a fist fight on the sidewalk) as the case at Peter's.

I will keep watching. The show has already been picked up for a second season. Let's hope the producers let the gloriously self-destructive act of running a restaurant implode on its own without too much meddling.

Kitchen Nightmares: Fox Network, Wednesdays at 9, or it could be 8--I'm not sure. I Tivo the fucker.