Trinamick, who is probably the most prolific, yet always entertaining blogger to whom I pay attention, and whose blog I engourage you to read every day, recently asked her readers to share what their favorite toy was from their childhoods. I started to respond when memories of mine flooded out all over my keyboard. I have a nasty habit of blogging in peoples' comment sections, and I was well on my way to doing just that when I caught myself. So this is my post about my favorite toy(s), inspired once again by another blogger.
As many boys my age in the 1970s probably did, I owned a formidable collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox miniature cars. For anyone who might not know of these, they were cast metal cars that could fit in the palm of your hand -- or a match box, hence the name -- and were cast in the shapes of contemporary, as well as futuristic, cars of the day. Most of them had been handed down to me from my brother, the sibling next-up in the family chain. There were even a couple of Johnny Lightning cars in the box. Hot Wheels and Johnny Lightning waged commercial warfare during the late 1960s and early '70s with similar products and accessories, namely miniature likenesses of contemporary cars and flexible plastic tracks on which you could roll your car at unbelievable speeds for hours of fun! You can probably tell who won that war...who (aside from me) remembers Johnny Lightning?
While they were fun (for hours?), I usually grew tired quickly of the silly plastic tracks. I couldn't have put my finger on it then, but today I think using those tracks limited my imagination.
In warm weather I used to lie out by this big tree right next to the street in front of the house where I lived and play with my cars for hours. There were a number of bare patches of loose, dusty dirt in the grass around the base of this tree, and, using the long side of a popsicle stick, I would scrape a path along the bare patches through the tufts of grass all the way from the tree to the sidewalk. This scraped path became a country dirt "road" on which my cars could drive, meandering their way to the sidewalk, which was the "main highway." The area right near the tree was the "town," and the loose, dusty dirt patches were where the homes, businesses and the police and fire stations were. The tires of the toy cars made their own little "ruts" in the dust, which I found to be the neatest part of the whole thing.
Now you may think this is all neat and cute (unless you hate me, and you're wishing a car would have veered from the street and squished my little head before I had a chance to spawn), but I attribute this little bit of my past to my interest and attempts to be a writer. In the time since my days of "playing cars," I've noticed other little kids playing with their cars, and they all seem to do the same thing: they run the car of choice over various surfaces, making their own vocal car sound effects - tires screeching, engines racing, police siren sounds... I did all these things as well, but I also created elaborate scenes with imagined characters who engaged in dialogue and experienced conflict and resolution, though I didn't know the words for those things at the time. I had a miniature fire truck, police car (Ford LTD), two ambulances -- one British (Matchbox) and one "tricked out" (Hot Wheels) (when the British ambulance was dispatched to a crash scene, it always raced there with the classic English Hi-Lo siren blaring!), and one red Ford LTD station wagon that was always the coroner's wagon. Why? I don't know. The other cars were just what the regular townfolk drove around, making their ruts in the dust as they went about their business. And these characters interacted. Some disliked each other, some conflicted, some were in love, and others just didn't care about anyone else.
And I think that's where it started, though I didn't know anything had started until I put a few things together in my head a few years ago. Ever since I started playing with my cars there in the dirt, I quite often imagined scenarios around situations I was in or thought I might find myself in. I think we all think about what we would say if a certain situation presented itself. But I imagined whole conversations around what I would say to somebody in response to one thing, and then what they might say to that, then what would I say, and then what they might come back with, and so on.
I did this right on up through junior high and high school, and even through my stint in the Air Force, sometimes speaking the words of my dialogues out loud, just to occupy the time spent on a lonely guard post through the night.
Then I finished my four years of service and went to university. I was not required to declare a minor, but if I had, it would have been English. And so it was that English was my secondary focus, my undeclared minor, and, wishing to avoid the boring mechanics classes, I opted for writing classes. Late one spring, at registration for the fall semester, I rather haphazardly registered for a beginner's creative writing class. It was open and I got a slot. It was a few weeks later when, bored, I actually read the class description. I broke out in a cold sweat: I couldn't possibly write a short story, let alone TWO, in one semester! I have no freakin' ideas! What could I possibly write about?
Then one evening I caught the PBS documentary show "P.O.V." and its topic was cryogenic freezing. Aside from the nut jobs these people interviewed on camera, there was one supporter who said something like, "Wouldn't it be great if, when we lost a loved one to some nasty, incurable disease today, we could freeze them until a cure for their illness was found, unfreeze them a few years later, cure them of their disease, and have them back with us?"
And I thought, "Sure. That'd be great. But what if the cure isn't found for like ninety years, and th..." And WHAMMO! I had my first idea for a short story! First it was just a vague idea. I made a first attempt at writing, and writing was slow. But then a new idea hit me, and then another, and another. The next thing I knew, 6 hours had passed in the computer lab, it was going on 1:00am, my bladder was full and my joints were screaming, and I had about 75% of the story written! I had my first "flow" experience, where you become so consumed in the task at hand, so intensely concentrated, that almost everything else around you and within you is tuned out. Oddly enough that story was titled "Ice Age," though it has nothing to do with prehistoric animals or an acorn-deranged squirrel.
Next I drew upon experience, taking the legend of a haunted site at an Air Force base where I had been stationed and turning it into a first-person narrative. There were a couple other, less memorable stories written over two semesters of creative writing classes. And then I was done. No more classes. No more writing. I had faced the challenge of writing for a grade, and I had done well. I really enjoyed writing, but I felt limited by the fact that I couldn't come up with ideas to write. My nascent writing career had already peaked before I was graduated.
Shortly after graduation at the end of 1990 thoughts were swirling around in my head, and I hit on this idea for a short story. I will not share it here for paranoid fear of somebody else taking it, but it was one of those flow moments: the ideas came hard and fast, so fast I couldn't keep them straight. The longer I thought about it, the more ideas that came. Finally I had to sit down and organize the thoughts into a rough outline, otherwise I feared the idea would slip away. The more I scribbled, the more ideas hit. Before too long I realized that, even with concise, efficient writing (as I'm not prone to do, in case you hadn't noticed), if it ever was written, this little idea was going to be a novel.
Due to various reasons, such as creative burnout from my job, lack of funds for a computer (I won't write with anything else), and then a serious case of writer's block, it was more than ten years before I sat down and earnestly started chipping away, first at connecting the story's beginning elements with its end elements - I had the two and needed to connect the dots across the middle - in a clear and concise treatment, and then at the actual narrative. I'm several chapters into it now, and I feel with a couple of other writing projects I've generated for myself, and the musical goofing around I've been doing, I've kick-started the next creative surge that may take me much deeper into the novel than I am at the moment.
In other words, I feel like I'm being eaten up by the urge to write. It took starting to write this novel for me to realize that I've been "writing" all my life, with the little scenarios in my head for every little event that might happen. If I could think my way through a career change to one where I could make my living by writing in a creative way, I would do it. I've told people for the past 15 years that I couldn't imagine myself being in any field other than the one I'm in right now, but a career as a writer is the one alternative in which I could see myself.
I feel that perhaps I have unfairly teased my reader (I had a handful of readers when I started writing this post. I'm fairly sure I've bored most of them off by this point) by mentioning this great novel which I will not mention. I will dig out the old stories from my creative writing classes mentioned above, dust them off and transcribe them from hardcopy for posting here. This will take a while since the format and media on which they were written - both hardware and software - are long since obsolete.
Keep your eyes peeled, if you're at all interested, for some original short stories.
Looking for suggestions: should I post them as blog entries, or would you rather they be downloadable from links?
dassall
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
I'm Like Homer...Only Not the Iliad Guy
| You Are Homer Simpson |
 You're just an ordinary, all-American working Joe... With a special fondness for pork rinds and donuts. You will be remembered for: your little "isms" and philosophies on life Your life philosophy: "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel." |
Got this from Irb and Sideshow Bob. I'm Homer!! I'M HOMER!! Only, I don't know if that's a good thing.... If I had come up as Ned Flanders I think I would have killed myself.
But my all-time favorite Homer quote is, "OPERATOR!! Give me the number to 9-1-1!" And my second favorite is "Alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Farting Musical Notes
I am not a musician. I can’t read a note of music, nor can I play a musical instrument. However, as one may recall, I do have a love of the keyboard, and I have a long history of farting around with them.
Last summer Mrs. Farrago and I upgraded our computers, and I came into possession of my first brand new computer in the 21st century, an Apple G5 iMac. While farting around with it (What? There’s a manual?) I discovered this little program that came with the purchase, called “Garage Band.” I read in the help menus that one so inclined could attach a MIDI keyboard to the computer and use that to pump sounds out of the computer. Ahh, wouldn’t that be nice? I had my old Casio keyboard down in the basement, the one I’d had since I bought the demo model in 1993. It had MIDI capability, but it was the size of a surfboard, so it wouldn’t fit in the tight confines of my home office. So I was content to use the QWERTY keyboard mapped as a musical instrument, which the app calls “musical typing.” Okay, “content” doesn’t fit as well as “tolerant.” Okay, so I never messed with it after the novelty wore off.
Then, one day shortly after my 41st birthday, and immediately after a routine dental appointment, I moseyed through the Michigan Avenue Apple store, where my eyes were grabbed by the flash of a dreamy sight: an iMac, open to “Garage band,” with a musical keyboard attached! The keyboard was marked at only $100, so I used my birthday money and I bought one! (Yes, I had ‘birthday money.’ Shut up.)
Then I gave away my Casio keyboard as a wonderful gift (same link as above...). And after that I propped my new MIDI keyboard, unopened, against the wall next to my desk, waiting for the day I cleaned off my desk and made room for the keyboard. That was in October. Finally, just a couple of weeks ago I finally cleared some space for the keyboard, and I finally was able to play with it.
I have a small repertoire of tunes I play. None of them are very sophisticated, but I like to play them over and over because they’re original, and they’re mine. I occasionally create something new, just hitting some keys and, if I hear something interesting, I explore it. But the problem has often been that I would find a cool sound, play it for a day, and then, since I can’t write music, I would forget it. Well, with “Garage Band” I can record whatever I create into a timeline. Then I can create a second track and record an accompaniment to the first. I can layer sounds and instruments. And then I can look at what I’ve created as notes on a musical staff!! I think I can even print it out as sheet music, but I’ve never explored that possibility.
So, just farting around with the keyboard and “Garage Band,” I hit on a sound and I played with it. About twenty minutes later I had created three tracks with three different instrument voices in a somewhat dark and foreboding tune, and I was giggling like a schoolgirl over what I had created. I called Mrs. Farrago in to let her listen to it. She smiled at me, more amused at the giddy grin on my face than the musical sludge I had just produced. She offered her opinion – unsolicited as it was – and from her words came the title of the song.
So, I present to you a Farrago original, Bad ‘80s Sci-fi Movie Theme Song. Let me know if you download it into your iPod or MP3 player. I want the royalties. (Don’t worry. I don’t sing on it.)
dassall
Last summer Mrs. Farrago and I upgraded our computers, and I came into possession of my first brand new computer in the 21st century, an Apple G5 iMac. While farting around with it (What? There’s a manual?) I discovered this little program that came with the purchase, called “Garage Band.” I read in the help menus that one so inclined could attach a MIDI keyboard to the computer and use that to pump sounds out of the computer. Ahh, wouldn’t that be nice? I had my old Casio keyboard down in the basement, the one I’d had since I bought the demo model in 1993. It had MIDI capability, but it was the size of a surfboard, so it wouldn’t fit in the tight confines of my home office. So I was content to use the QWERTY keyboard mapped as a musical instrument, which the app calls “musical typing.” Okay, “content” doesn’t fit as well as “tolerant.” Okay, so I never messed with it after the novelty wore off.
Then, one day shortly after my 41st birthday, and immediately after a routine dental appointment, I moseyed through the Michigan Avenue Apple store, where my eyes were grabbed by the flash of a dreamy sight: an iMac, open to “Garage band,” with a musical keyboard attached! The keyboard was marked at only $100, so I used my birthday money and I bought one! (Yes, I had ‘birthday money.’ Shut up.)
Then I gave away my Casio keyboard as a wonderful gift (same link as above...). And after that I propped my new MIDI keyboard, unopened, against the wall next to my desk, waiting for the day I cleaned off my desk and made room for the keyboard. That was in October. Finally, just a couple of weeks ago I finally cleared some space for the keyboard, and I finally was able to play with it.
I have a small repertoire of tunes I play. None of them are very sophisticated, but I like to play them over and over because they’re original, and they’re mine. I occasionally create something new, just hitting some keys and, if I hear something interesting, I explore it. But the problem has often been that I would find a cool sound, play it for a day, and then, since I can’t write music, I would forget it. Well, with “Garage Band” I can record whatever I create into a timeline. Then I can create a second track and record an accompaniment to the first. I can layer sounds and instruments. And then I can look at what I’ve created as notes on a musical staff!! I think I can even print it out as sheet music, but I’ve never explored that possibility.
So, just farting around with the keyboard and “Garage Band,” I hit on a sound and I played with it. About twenty minutes later I had created three tracks with three different instrument voices in a somewhat dark and foreboding tune, and I was giggling like a schoolgirl over what I had created. I called Mrs. Farrago in to let her listen to it. She smiled at me, more amused at the giddy grin on my face than the musical sludge I had just produced. She offered her opinion – unsolicited as it was – and from her words came the title of the song.
So, I present to you a Farrago original, Bad ‘80s Sci-fi Movie Theme Song. Let me know if you download it into your iPod or MP3 player. I want the royalties. (Don’t worry. I don’t sing on it.)
dassall
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Travelogue - or, How a Snowflake Can Ruin a Perfectly Good Day
When I first started looking into hotel rooms in the Biloxi-Gulfport region of coastal Mississippi, it looked grim. None of the usual chains had vacancies within 50 miles, due either to the fact that the buildings were still unrepaired of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, or to the fact that they were full of FEMA workers and displaced families. So I looked into flying into Mobile, Alabama, renting a car and driving about 60 miles to Biloxi. I booked a room at a Mobile Hampton Inn and began to peruse available flights.
My host for the shoot in the region e-mailed me and said she had found vacancies in the three casinos that had reopened in Biloxi. It would be more convenient to fly into Gulfport, and even moreso to fly out of Gulfport because the ten-minute drive would allow me more shooting time than would the one-hour drive to Mobile. So I cancelled the room in Mobile and booked into the Imperial Palace casino in Biloxi.
The morning of March 2 was grey and turning greyer as the day progressed. By the time I left the office for O'Hare airport, little snowflakes were floating about, certainly not enough to matter. I arrived at the parking lot a little after 11:00am only to find that the garage was full, so I had to park outside. The City of Chicago, in its infinite wisdom, decided long ago that it would not put the luggage cart dispenser machines out in the parking lots at O'Hare, because, as everyone knows, people who travel with lots of luggage can always check it curbside. Well, the skycaps at O'Hare will not check odd-sized, overweight or excess luggage curbside, and odd-sized, overweight and excess is what I have to carry to get all my video crap all over the country, so when I travel alone I have to take it with me to the parking garage, walk INTO the airport to the cart dispensers, walk with the cart back to my car, load the gear onto the cart and walk all the way back into the airport to "begin" my trip.
I always fly United Airlines, where I have my hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles and my Premier Executive status. It's not necessarily that they're the best airline to fly, but they're headquartered in Chicago, so they have a lot of flights every day to just about anywhere in the world you want to go... except Gulfport, Mississippi. So I had to fly, changing planes in Atlanta, on Delta Airlines, with which I have ammassed in the last five years of travel, approximately ten frequent flyer miles. To Delta I am but a mere traveler, cattle to be herded into the tiniest stalls, where a fate of slaughter to be butchered into steaks and hamburger is preferred over a cramped existence. And they cut me no breaks on overweight or excess luggage. So the Delta ticket agent frowned politely as he informed me there would be a 100 dollar charge for the TWO extra bags because, as a mere head in the herd, I am only allowed two. And oops! The light kit is fourteen pounds overweight. That'll be another 25 dollars. Actually, this is par for the course. We're used to paying the extra charges because we have to get it there, and there's no other way with the equipment choices we've made. So I paid the charges, got my boarding cards along with the notification that my flight was delayed at least thirty minutes, and was on my way. Security is always a burden because I carry a betacam camera in a Porta-Brace bag onto the plane. With the new TSA rules, I have to take the camera out of its bag (it IS a video camera, after all) and put it in a bin to run through the x-ray scanner. I also have to take my laptop out of my backpack. Once past the x-ray and the magnetometer I have to put the camera back in the bag, but that requires unpacking the rest of the stuff that I jam into the camera bag so I can fit the camera back in properly, and then repacking the other stuff.
When I finished with security I arrived at the gate to discover that the flight had been further delayed, so the 1:10pm flight was now expected to take off around 2:30. The gate agent assured all of us who had to connect in Atlanta that part of this delay was the result of weather around Atlanta, so air traffic out of Atlanta was delayed as well. We were all but guaranteed to make our connections. My boredom was staved off briefly by the entertaining police "chase" covered live on CNN; a distraught, mentally imbalanced woman had stolen a police SUV -- a POLICE SUV!! -- in southern California and was almost quite literally driving around in circles as police and news helicopters followed her every move. Suddenly there was a roadblock and cops briefly swarmed her, then took her into custody. She wasn't black, and there were about fifty news choppers hovering overhead with three-foot-long zoom lenses aimed at the commotion, so the cops didn't beat her senseless...at least not while anyone was watching. With the suspect apprehended, CNN went on to the real news, and to the weather. They showed the national radar map which revealed, in bold, living color that there was not one drip of precipitation falling out of the sky within 300 miles of Atlanta, Georgia! Air Traffic Control is so full of shit! If there are too many damn planes in the sky to process to the ground in a timely manner, then fucking say so! Don't give us this "weather delay" bullshit.
As a United Airlines passenger with Premier status, I enjoy the privilege of boarding the plane in the first group after first class. This privilege always assures me space in the overhead compartment for my camera bag, as it is technically too big to be allowed as carry-on luggage. Any airline employee who balks at its size usually shuts up when they see that it's a $35,000 camera that would surely be crushed in the baggage hold if they forced me to check it. As a Delta Airlines passenger I have no such privilege, so I had to take my chances with the rest of the cattle, boarding in the LAST group, all but assured to have no overhead space. I was lucky and found space -- about ten rows forward of my seat!
The pilot informed us that, due to the weather, our plane needed to be hosed down with de-icing compound, so there would be an additional wait of up to thirty minutes! I began to worry again because I'm certain that planes delayed by "weather" in Atlanta, where the temperature was in the 60s, weren't being further delayed by de-icing procedures! We finally trundled down the runway and, as I felt the fuselage vibrate when the wheels lifted off of the concrete, I looked at my watch: 2:55.
We gated in Atanta at 5:35. Of course, I was in the back of the plane, so when the door opened to let passengers off, it was another ten minutes before I stepped into the airport building. I checked a status board and discovered that my connection to Gulfport had indeed been delayed, but it had taken off just ten minutes earlier...at 5:35... and would be landing in Gulfport in about an hour.
I was directed to the Delta Customer Service desk and informed that the next flight out to Gulfport was scheduled to leave at 8:40pm, however, that flight was full. The next flight after that to Gulfport was at 8:30 the next morning. This would not do, as the shoot was scheduled to start at 8:00am. I had to get there "tonight." The agent told me that there was a flight at 7:00 to Mobile with seats available. Okay, back to plan A... or was it plan B now? Whatever, I'll take it! I called my office and asked our travel person to reschedule my rental car for me to pick up in Mobile and drop off in Gulfport.
Of course, because of Atlanta "weather," the 7:00pm flight was delayed, too. I learned this tidbit of information when I approached the gate desk. The flight was delayed until 8:00, and the gate agents there told me that the flight was oversold, so I might NOT get a seat. Then the departure was moved back to 8:30. Then 8:45. Then 9:00. To my relief they called my name and gave me a boarding card, and I was seated. It was during the flight that I had a brief moment of panic. Luggage. I had no idea where my luggage was or where it might be headed. Did the baggage handlers get the word that I had changed destinations? Did they have time to get my bags onto this plane? Were my bags in Schenectady? OMAHA?!
I arrived in Mobile around 9:00pm (crossing into the central time zone you gain an hour back) and waited for my luggage, but it didn't come out. I found the Delta Baggage Claim office to learn where my bags were.
"My hunch," said the matron of the Mobile Airport Delta Baggage Claim office, "is they're going to Gulfport, the original destination, on the 8:40 flight. It was delayed."
Hmmm. Surprise. "Your 'hunch?' You can't tell me for certain where they are?"
"I don't know, sir. They haven't been scanned."
"What do you mean, 'They haven't been scanned?'" said I.
"All bags are scanned when they're taken off of the plane."
"So you can't tell me where my bags are?" I asked.
"Not until they're scanned, sir."
"Weren't they scanned before getting on the plane?"
"Sir," she said with a condescending smile, "if we tried to scan every bag before we put it on a plane, we'd never get anywhere."
"United Airlines scans every bag onto their planes, and then they scan again when they come off. If you're at Omaha International and your bags were erroneously sent to Schenectady, United Airlines can tell you WHERE THE FUCK YOUR BAGS ARE!" I thought. I didn't actually SAY it because I really wanted to get my bags before the month of March ended. "Oh. Okay," I said.
"So," she said, "you should try to get to the Gulfport airport as quickly as you can to see if you can get your bags when they come off the plane." And, just in case I didn't make it in time, she scheduled the baggage office there to deliver my bags to my hotel.
At 80 miles an hour, I made the drive from Mobile to Biloxi -- a drive the bag claim lady at Mobile Airport estimated at 90 minutes -- in 45. On the way I contacted my host to let her know that the shoot could be in jeopardy if Delta screwed up my baggage delivery. She got on the internet and looked up info on flights into Gulfport and determined that the flight my bags most likely were on was scheduled into Gulfport at 11:30pm. Then she suggested that I get checked into the hotel, do my own check online, and then high-tail it down to the airport to try to intercept my bags if they come off the plane.
I arrived at the Imperial Palace-Biloxi. If you've never been there, picture a building with all of the grandiose hoo-hah of the brightest, brashest casinos of Las Vegas...if you've ever been THERE. Now picture it all alone in the night. Now place amid hurricane ravaged desolation, and you might start to get the creepy feeling of inappropriateness I did. I pulled into the valet lane and had to shout to the valet attendant over the jazz music that blared from speakers tucked into the canopy rafters that I was only going to be a few minutes to check in, get my stuff up to my room, and then come back down to get my car. He shouted back that he would keep it close so that it could be retrieved quickly. I saw him write on the ticket "Keep close."
As I checked in the attractive, young woman at the registration counter asked me how I was doing. I gave her a very brief rundown of the lousy traveling day I had, and she turned to the other registration clerk, another attractive young lady, and said, "What can we do to make him happy?" Well, since my mind dwells in the gutter, when two young, attractive women ponder aloud such a question before me, I picture nothing short of pornographic. I was actually disappointed when she said that she would comp me an upgrade to a suite. My wife wouldn't have approved, anyway.
I went up to my room and, after trying unsuccessfully with both keycards to get the door to unlock, I realized that my room was 2910, not 2901. When I opened the door to 2910 -- on the first try -- I was astounded by the size of the room. An 'L'-shaped living area included a dining table with eight chairs, a sofa, two or three armchairs in the center, a large-screen projection TV (not widescreen or plasma, though) and a bar with stools. The bedroom was probably one-third the size of the living room, with a 'V'-shaped jacuzzi, and a shower big enough for three (damn!). The room had two bathrooms. I would guess that the whole hotel room was about 1,000 to 1,200 square feet! It was obscenely huge, and by far larger than any hotel room I've ever stayed in!
I checked the flights from Atlanta to Gulfport, and I surmised (incorrectly) that my luggage was coming in on a flight at 10:35. I checked my watch -- 10:15 -- and I quickly went downstairs and requested my car from the valet desk. I asked the boy there how long for my car, and he said, "Five to ten minutes."
I stood outside under the annoyingly loud jazz canopy. Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. They were pretty busy. At twenty minutes I was getting more perturbed with each valet customer who arrived after I did and got his or her car before I got mine. I'm a very patient person, and I'm not too eager to participate in a confrontation, and even less eager to initiate one, so it had been a full thirty minutes before I finally went back to the valet desk and said, quite loudly, "Just how long do I have to wait for my car?"
The boy -- and I mean that quite literally; he was all of 19 or 20 years old -- looked at the pegboard of keys and said, "Your car will be right down, sir."
I went back outside and watched as the cars came down in waves of twos and threes, and other people got into their cars after only a few minutes' wait, and drove off to their storm-ravaged properties elsewhere in the region. By the third wave of not my cars, fifteen more minutes had gone by. I practically stormed back in to the valet counter. "Could you please explain to me what the hell is going on with my car?" The boy -- a different one, now -- stammered about, looking at the keys on the wall, looking at my ticket.
"Uh, what kind of car is it, sir?" I told him. "What color is it?" Honestly, I wasn't sure. It was parked outside at Mobile Airport, and it was already dark outside when I picked it up. It wasn't white, it wasn't black. It was somewhere in between. Then he took his attention away from me, took the ticket of another customer and sent a porter on his way to get a car. I can't think of another, better word for "livid," but whatever it is, I was it.
"Is there a manager on duty tonight?"
The boy gestured over his shoulder, "We got two right here, sir."
"Not a valet manager. A hotel manager."
"I'll check, sir."
Fifty minutes after first requesting my car, and five minutes after asking to see the manager, each arrived at the valet area within seconds of the other. She was very apologetic and offered tme comps. I told her I was there only for the night, and I don't gamble. She asked me what room I was in, and I think when I told her I was in 2910 she must have thought "Well, there goes the suite comp idea!" Then she said she could comp me dinner. I looked at my watch and said, "I have to go to the airport to pick up my luggage. By the time I get back here it'll be midnight or later. I'm not eating at midnight!" So she comped me the buffet breakfast. Hoo boy. A free breakfast for an hour of my life taken away from me because a bunch of stupid kids lost my car. She told me to ask someone to call her when I returned so she could give me the comp slip, and to give her the opportunity to explain the reason for the delay, once she found it out for herself.
I left for the airport around 11:15pm. The signs along the interstate were helpful, and then the sign on the state road in Gulfport directed me onto the county road that leads to the airport. And then... nothing. No signs, no arrows. Nothing. I could see what looked like an airfield out in the darkness -- blue lights and flashing strobes. I followed the county road, looking for signs, but there were none. I wound up in a sleeping industrial complex and finally determined that I.was.fucking.lost.
I backtracked to the county road and, there, barely visible at the edge of my headlight beams was a sign, non-reflective, that sported a left-pointing arrow and read, "TERMINAL."
At first I thought I was at the wrong airport, as this one looked like it had been destroyed in the storm. But upon closer inspection I could see that the place was undergoing a major remodeling, and this was actually CONSTRUCTION work. I grabbed a luggage cart, offered from a dispenser in the parking lot, of all places, and went inside, hoping to find my luggage in the baggage claim area, abandoned and waiting for me. It wasn't. I went upstairs to the gate area where I found a young family, two children climbing happily on the chairs, and their parents seated in two of their own chairs, barely awake. The man looked at me.
"Is there another flight scheduled in tonight?" I asked him.
"Yup."
I looked at the flight status monitor. It showed only morning flights...for the next day.
"It's not up there," said the man.
"Where is it coming from?"
"Atlanta." Bingo. The 8:40 flight I couldn't get on, the one my host said was delayed until 11:30. It was my last hope. "It's delayed until 12:11," the man said.
Fuck.
Around 12:20 the bags started rolling out into the claim area, and soon enough, to my relief, mine came out, all four of them. When I got back to the hotel I got another ticket from the valet attendant and grabbed two of the bags I needed with me in the room. I turned and walked, debating whether I should even bother with the manager and her free breakfast. I looked up and saw the hotel manager almost sprinting toward me! She handed me a slip of paper with her signature on it and shouted to me over the stupid sound system that this was the comp form I needed to show to the buffet hostess. Then she told me that earlier the valet ticket the attendants place in the windshield had blown out of my car (it was pretty breezy under that canopy) and they couldn't find it. Somebody stuck a different ticket in the car, so the ticket number on the keys didn't match that in the car. It was inexcusable that none of the valets bothered to tell me, and for that she apologized profusely. A whole hour of your life spent fuming - *poof!* Gone. Enjoy your free breakfast. Hoo boy.
So I went up to my huge suite, enjoyed a full twenty minutes of it before I went to sleep and woke up five hours later to pack everything up, eat breakfast, and check out.
The shoot in devastated Pass Christian, Mississippi, went very well, and the return trip out of Gulfport, back through Atlanta, and into Chicago went smoothly and on time, without so much as an unpleasant employee looking down her nose at me.
Why is it when it doesn't matter, nothing happens?
My host for the shoot in the region e-mailed me and said she had found vacancies in the three casinos that had reopened in Biloxi. It would be more convenient to fly into Gulfport, and even moreso to fly out of Gulfport because the ten-minute drive would allow me more shooting time than would the one-hour drive to Mobile. So I cancelled the room in Mobile and booked into the Imperial Palace casino in Biloxi.
The morning of March 2 was grey and turning greyer as the day progressed. By the time I left the office for O'Hare airport, little snowflakes were floating about, certainly not enough to matter. I arrived at the parking lot a little after 11:00am only to find that the garage was full, so I had to park outside. The City of Chicago, in its infinite wisdom, decided long ago that it would not put the luggage cart dispenser machines out in the parking lots at O'Hare, because, as everyone knows, people who travel with lots of luggage can always check it curbside. Well, the skycaps at O'Hare will not check odd-sized, overweight or excess luggage curbside, and odd-sized, overweight and excess is what I have to carry to get all my video crap all over the country, so when I travel alone I have to take it with me to the parking garage, walk INTO the airport to the cart dispensers, walk with the cart back to my car, load the gear onto the cart and walk all the way back into the airport to "begin" my trip.
I always fly United Airlines, where I have my hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles and my Premier Executive status. It's not necessarily that they're the best airline to fly, but they're headquartered in Chicago, so they have a lot of flights every day to just about anywhere in the world you want to go... except Gulfport, Mississippi. So I had to fly, changing planes in Atlanta, on Delta Airlines, with which I have ammassed in the last five years of travel, approximately ten frequent flyer miles. To Delta I am but a mere traveler, cattle to be herded into the tiniest stalls, where a fate of slaughter to be butchered into steaks and hamburger is preferred over a cramped existence. And they cut me no breaks on overweight or excess luggage. So the Delta ticket agent frowned politely as he informed me there would be a 100 dollar charge for the TWO extra bags because, as a mere head in the herd, I am only allowed two. And oops! The light kit is fourteen pounds overweight. That'll be another 25 dollars. Actually, this is par for the course. We're used to paying the extra charges because we have to get it there, and there's no other way with the equipment choices we've made. So I paid the charges, got my boarding cards along with the notification that my flight was delayed at least thirty minutes, and was on my way. Security is always a burden because I carry a betacam camera in a Porta-Brace bag onto the plane. With the new TSA rules, I have to take the camera out of its bag (it IS a video camera, after all) and put it in a bin to run through the x-ray scanner. I also have to take my laptop out of my backpack. Once past the x-ray and the magnetometer I have to put the camera back in the bag, but that requires unpacking the rest of the stuff that I jam into the camera bag so I can fit the camera back in properly, and then repacking the other stuff.
When I finished with security I arrived at the gate to discover that the flight had been further delayed, so the 1:10pm flight was now expected to take off around 2:30. The gate agent assured all of us who had to connect in Atlanta that part of this delay was the result of weather around Atlanta, so air traffic out of Atlanta was delayed as well. We were all but guaranteed to make our connections. My boredom was staved off briefly by the entertaining police "chase" covered live on CNN; a distraught, mentally imbalanced woman had stolen a police SUV -- a POLICE SUV!! -- in southern California and was almost quite literally driving around in circles as police and news helicopters followed her every move. Suddenly there was a roadblock and cops briefly swarmed her, then took her into custody. She wasn't black, and there were about fifty news choppers hovering overhead with three-foot-long zoom lenses aimed at the commotion, so the cops didn't beat her senseless...at least not while anyone was watching. With the suspect apprehended, CNN went on to the real news, and to the weather. They showed the national radar map which revealed, in bold, living color that there was not one drip of precipitation falling out of the sky within 300 miles of Atlanta, Georgia! Air Traffic Control is so full of shit! If there are too many damn planes in the sky to process to the ground in a timely manner, then fucking say so! Don't give us this "weather delay" bullshit.
As a United Airlines passenger with Premier status, I enjoy the privilege of boarding the plane in the first group after first class. This privilege always assures me space in the overhead compartment for my camera bag, as it is technically too big to be allowed as carry-on luggage. Any airline employee who balks at its size usually shuts up when they see that it's a $35,000 camera that would surely be crushed in the baggage hold if they forced me to check it. As a Delta Airlines passenger I have no such privilege, so I had to take my chances with the rest of the cattle, boarding in the LAST group, all but assured to have no overhead space. I was lucky and found space -- about ten rows forward of my seat!
The pilot informed us that, due to the weather, our plane needed to be hosed down with de-icing compound, so there would be an additional wait of up to thirty minutes! I began to worry again because I'm certain that planes delayed by "weather" in Atlanta, where the temperature was in the 60s, weren't being further delayed by de-icing procedures! We finally trundled down the runway and, as I felt the fuselage vibrate when the wheels lifted off of the concrete, I looked at my watch: 2:55.
We gated in Atanta at 5:35. Of course, I was in the back of the plane, so when the door opened to let passengers off, it was another ten minutes before I stepped into the airport building. I checked a status board and discovered that my connection to Gulfport had indeed been delayed, but it had taken off just ten minutes earlier...at 5:35... and would be landing in Gulfport in about an hour.
I was directed to the Delta Customer Service desk and informed that the next flight out to Gulfport was scheduled to leave at 8:40pm, however, that flight was full. The next flight after that to Gulfport was at 8:30 the next morning. This would not do, as the shoot was scheduled to start at 8:00am. I had to get there "tonight." The agent told me that there was a flight at 7:00 to Mobile with seats available. Okay, back to plan A... or was it plan B now? Whatever, I'll take it! I called my office and asked our travel person to reschedule my rental car for me to pick up in Mobile and drop off in Gulfport.
Of course, because of Atlanta "weather," the 7:00pm flight was delayed, too. I learned this tidbit of information when I approached the gate desk. The flight was delayed until 8:00, and the gate agents there told me that the flight was oversold, so I might NOT get a seat. Then the departure was moved back to 8:30. Then 8:45. Then 9:00. To my relief they called my name and gave me a boarding card, and I was seated. It was during the flight that I had a brief moment of panic. Luggage. I had no idea where my luggage was or where it might be headed. Did the baggage handlers get the word that I had changed destinations? Did they have time to get my bags onto this plane? Were my bags in Schenectady? OMAHA?!
I arrived in Mobile around 9:00pm (crossing into the central time zone you gain an hour back) and waited for my luggage, but it didn't come out. I found the Delta Baggage Claim office to learn where my bags were.
"My hunch," said the matron of the Mobile Airport Delta Baggage Claim office, "is they're going to Gulfport, the original destination, on the 8:40 flight. It was delayed."
Hmmm. Surprise. "Your 'hunch?' You can't tell me for certain where they are?"
"I don't know, sir. They haven't been scanned."
"What do you mean, 'They haven't been scanned?'" said I.
"All bags are scanned when they're taken off of the plane."
"So you can't tell me where my bags are?" I asked.
"Not until they're scanned, sir."
"Weren't they scanned before getting on the plane?"
"Sir," she said with a condescending smile, "if we tried to scan every bag before we put it on a plane, we'd never get anywhere."
"United Airlines scans every bag onto their planes, and then they scan again when they come off. If you're at Omaha International and your bags were erroneously sent to Schenectady, United Airlines can tell you WHERE THE FUCK YOUR BAGS ARE!" I thought. I didn't actually SAY it because I really wanted to get my bags before the month of March ended. "Oh. Okay," I said.
"So," she said, "you should try to get to the Gulfport airport as quickly as you can to see if you can get your bags when they come off the plane." And, just in case I didn't make it in time, she scheduled the baggage office there to deliver my bags to my hotel.
At 80 miles an hour, I made the drive from Mobile to Biloxi -- a drive the bag claim lady at Mobile Airport estimated at 90 minutes -- in 45. On the way I contacted my host to let her know that the shoot could be in jeopardy if Delta screwed up my baggage delivery. She got on the internet and looked up info on flights into Gulfport and determined that the flight my bags most likely were on was scheduled into Gulfport at 11:30pm. Then she suggested that I get checked into the hotel, do my own check online, and then high-tail it down to the airport to try to intercept my bags if they come off the plane.
I arrived at the Imperial Palace-Biloxi. If you've never been there, picture a building with all of the grandiose hoo-hah of the brightest, brashest casinos of Las Vegas...if you've ever been THERE. Now picture it all alone in the night. Now place amid hurricane ravaged desolation, and you might start to get the creepy feeling of inappropriateness I did. I pulled into the valet lane and had to shout to the valet attendant over the jazz music that blared from speakers tucked into the canopy rafters that I was only going to be a few minutes to check in, get my stuff up to my room, and then come back down to get my car. He shouted back that he would keep it close so that it could be retrieved quickly. I saw him write on the ticket "Keep close."
As I checked in the attractive, young woman at the registration counter asked me how I was doing. I gave her a very brief rundown of the lousy traveling day I had, and she turned to the other registration clerk, another attractive young lady, and said, "What can we do to make him happy?" Well, since my mind dwells in the gutter, when two young, attractive women ponder aloud such a question before me, I picture nothing short of pornographic. I was actually disappointed when she said that she would comp me an upgrade to a suite. My wife wouldn't have approved, anyway.
I went up to my room and, after trying unsuccessfully with both keycards to get the door to unlock, I realized that my room was 2910, not 2901. When I opened the door to 2910 -- on the first try -- I was astounded by the size of the room. An 'L'-shaped living area included a dining table with eight chairs, a sofa, two or three armchairs in the center, a large-screen projection TV (not widescreen or plasma, though) and a bar with stools. The bedroom was probably one-third the size of the living room, with a 'V'-shaped jacuzzi, and a shower big enough for three (damn!). The room had two bathrooms. I would guess that the whole hotel room was about 1,000 to 1,200 square feet! It was obscenely huge, and by far larger than any hotel room I've ever stayed in!
I checked the flights from Atlanta to Gulfport, and I surmised (incorrectly) that my luggage was coming in on a flight at 10:35. I checked my watch -- 10:15 -- and I quickly went downstairs and requested my car from the valet desk. I asked the boy there how long for my car, and he said, "Five to ten minutes."
I stood outside under the annoyingly loud jazz canopy. Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. They were pretty busy. At twenty minutes I was getting more perturbed with each valet customer who arrived after I did and got his or her car before I got mine. I'm a very patient person, and I'm not too eager to participate in a confrontation, and even less eager to initiate one, so it had been a full thirty minutes before I finally went back to the valet desk and said, quite loudly, "Just how long do I have to wait for my car?"
The boy -- and I mean that quite literally; he was all of 19 or 20 years old -- looked at the pegboard of keys and said, "Your car will be right down, sir."
I went back outside and watched as the cars came down in waves of twos and threes, and other people got into their cars after only a few minutes' wait, and drove off to their storm-ravaged properties elsewhere in the region. By the third wave of not my cars, fifteen more minutes had gone by. I practically stormed back in to the valet counter. "Could you please explain to me what the hell is going on with my car?" The boy -- a different one, now -- stammered about, looking at the keys on the wall, looking at my ticket.
"Uh, what kind of car is it, sir?" I told him. "What color is it?" Honestly, I wasn't sure. It was parked outside at Mobile Airport, and it was already dark outside when I picked it up. It wasn't white, it wasn't black. It was somewhere in between. Then he took his attention away from me, took the ticket of another customer and sent a porter on his way to get a car. I can't think of another, better word for "livid," but whatever it is, I was it.
"Is there a manager on duty tonight?"
The boy gestured over his shoulder, "We got two right here, sir."
"Not a valet manager. A hotel manager."
"I'll check, sir."
Fifty minutes after first requesting my car, and five minutes after asking to see the manager, each arrived at the valet area within seconds of the other. She was very apologetic and offered tme comps. I told her I was there only for the night, and I don't gamble. She asked me what room I was in, and I think when I told her I was in 2910 she must have thought "Well, there goes the suite comp idea!" Then she said she could comp me dinner. I looked at my watch and said, "I have to go to the airport to pick up my luggage. By the time I get back here it'll be midnight or later. I'm not eating at midnight!" So she comped me the buffet breakfast. Hoo boy. A free breakfast for an hour of my life taken away from me because a bunch of stupid kids lost my car. She told me to ask someone to call her when I returned so she could give me the comp slip, and to give her the opportunity to explain the reason for the delay, once she found it out for herself.
I left for the airport around 11:15pm. The signs along the interstate were helpful, and then the sign on the state road in Gulfport directed me onto the county road that leads to the airport. And then... nothing. No signs, no arrows. Nothing. I could see what looked like an airfield out in the darkness -- blue lights and flashing strobes. I followed the county road, looking for signs, but there were none. I wound up in a sleeping industrial complex and finally determined that I.was.fucking.lost.
I backtracked to the county road and, there, barely visible at the edge of my headlight beams was a sign, non-reflective, that sported a left-pointing arrow and read, "TERMINAL."
At first I thought I was at the wrong airport, as this one looked like it had been destroyed in the storm. But upon closer inspection I could see that the place was undergoing a major remodeling, and this was actually CONSTRUCTION work. I grabbed a luggage cart, offered from a dispenser in the parking lot, of all places, and went inside, hoping to find my luggage in the baggage claim area, abandoned and waiting for me. It wasn't. I went upstairs to the gate area where I found a young family, two children climbing happily on the chairs, and their parents seated in two of their own chairs, barely awake. The man looked at me.
"Is there another flight scheduled in tonight?" I asked him.
"Yup."
I looked at the flight status monitor. It showed only morning flights...for the next day.
"It's not up there," said the man.
"Where is it coming from?"
"Atlanta." Bingo. The 8:40 flight I couldn't get on, the one my host said was delayed until 11:30. It was my last hope. "It's delayed until 12:11," the man said.
Fuck.
Around 12:20 the bags started rolling out into the claim area, and soon enough, to my relief, mine came out, all four of them. When I got back to the hotel I got another ticket from the valet attendant and grabbed two of the bags I needed with me in the room. I turned and walked, debating whether I should even bother with the manager and her free breakfast. I looked up and saw the hotel manager almost sprinting toward me! She handed me a slip of paper with her signature on it and shouted to me over the stupid sound system that this was the comp form I needed to show to the buffet hostess. Then she told me that earlier the valet ticket the attendants place in the windshield had blown out of my car (it was pretty breezy under that canopy) and they couldn't find it. Somebody stuck a different ticket in the car, so the ticket number on the keys didn't match that in the car. It was inexcusable that none of the valets bothered to tell me, and for that she apologized profusely. A whole hour of your life spent fuming - *poof!* Gone. Enjoy your free breakfast. Hoo boy.
So I went up to my huge suite, enjoyed a full twenty minutes of it before I went to sleep and woke up five hours later to pack everything up, eat breakfast, and check out.
The shoot in devastated Pass Christian, Mississippi, went very well, and the return trip out of Gulfport, back through Atlanta, and into Chicago went smoothly and on time, without so much as an unpleasant employee looking down her nose at me.
Why is it when it doesn't matter, nothing happens?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)