Like Winning the Lottery!

Usually things go "okay." It's not perfect; some things don't work as you'd like them, but it works out in the end. Of course, there are those hell days where if it can break, fail, show up late, be the wrong color, weight, style or flavor, it will.

As shoots go, I can say this most recent — my first gig as a freelancer since I was released from permanent employment — would go in that "okay" category, but perilously close to the "hell" category.

I don't wish to dwell there. For as bad as some parts were, the client asked me to see the project through its minimal edit the next day, which was an unexpected second day of work, and at a producer's rate, for which I bill $250 more per day!

No, the part upon which I wish to dwell came after I was finished with the shoot.

Because the client couldn't get either a reasonably timed flight or a reasonably priced flight to get me back home from Boston Thursday, I was stuck there for the night. I had contacted Mr. Schprock a day before my trip to see if he might want to get together, but he had unalterable plans (I'm guessing Thursday is sex night in the Schprock abode). Dee J Wave, my friend from Flashback Alternatives had commented that she lived only three hours away, but I would never ask her to travel six hours just to hang with me for two.

As I rode in the cab in a downtown section of the city, I contemplated my options for the evening. I was booked in the near vicinity of the airport at a Comfort Inn & Suites, which, often enough, are roadside motels with the slimmest of amenities, so it was a 50-50 chance that there would be a restaurant in the hotel. I considered just dumping off at the hotel the gear I was carrying and returning to the city for a meal and a stroll. I even considered another option as we drove past a strip club, but that would have just proved frustrating in the long run.

At one point, where the traffic seemed the thickest my cab crawled through, I saw a man standing in the street waving a triangular orange flag and pointing at a space between buildings. It reminded me of the scenes around Wrigley Field in Chicago on a Cubs home game day where guys hawk parking spaces near the venue where they will park your car for a steep fee, and where they'll park your car so tightly into their lot that you can't hope to leave until the last guy parked chooses to leave. The thought ran through my head, "We must be near Fenway Park. There's probably a Red Sox game tonight."

And then the thought hit me: "THERE'S PROBABLY A RED SOX GAME TONIGHT!" Suddenly a night baseball game seemed like an excellent idea! I checked my watch and it was only around 4:30. I guessed the game would start around 7:00. When I got to the hotel (where there does happen to be a restaurant on the premises!) I did dump the gear in storage, and I asked a young guy behind the counter about a game that night.

"You got tickets?!" he asked me incredulously.

"No," was my reply. "I'll see what they have at the gate."

He went online and checked, and indeed the Red Sox were playing at home that night. But, he told me, the Sox were playing the Toronto Blue Jays, and "those games are usually sold out." He also had told me of the plethora of places around Fenway Park where I could get a bite to eat. I figured I could head down to Fenway, see if I could get a ticket and, if I couldn't, then I would eat at one of the dozens of places I was told are there.

The guy was incredibly helpful. He pulled out a map of the Boston transit system, the "T," and showed me which train line to take, and which train terminuses I had to look for, where to switch lines, and the best place to get off the train for Fenway.

I left the hotel at 5:30, on the Comfort Inn & Suites complementary airport shuttle. I asked the bus driver about how to get back to the hotel after the Red Sox game.

"You got tickets?!" he asked me incredulously. Damn! Are Red Sox tickets that difficult to come by?

The shuttle took me to the "T" Blue Line Airport Station. A train came within a minute or two, and I rode it past four stops to Government Center, where I switched to the Green Line, where another train arrived within seconds of when I did. The trains on this line are more like big trolley cars, and they were packed with people, most of who were headed for the game, too. The throng on the train could have been a warning for me that my chances were slim for getting a ticket.

From the Green Line stop at Kenmore I walked with the throng headed for the game. People were boisterous, but they were very nice. No one talked to me, nor did anyone bother me. The crowd dispersed into the larger throng surrounding Fenway Park, and I located the "Game Day Tickets" booths. They were cordoned off with metal barricades manned by Fenway security staff. This could have been another omen.

I walked up to one of the security guys and asked, gesturing to the barricades, "So does this mean the game is completely sold out?"

The guy replied, "I dunno. You can go ask at the window." He told me it was okay to go around the barricade.

At the window the playful woman looked up single seat availabilities and told me there was a seat available in Section 25. A seating diagram taped to the ticket window showed the section to be about 50 to 100 rows back from the third base line, starting about ten feet down the line from home plate.

"Cool! How much?"

Fifty dollas was the price. That's not a typo, by the way.... I asked if there were any less expensive seats, and she said there were not.

Then she said there was also some singles available in Section 93, which the diagram showed to be an upper deck seat down the first base line and in right field beyond first base.

She said, "Let me check the seats." After a mere second or two she practically shouted, "OOH! You gotta take the seat in Section 25. It's row one! The guy in front of you, in the last row of the section in front of you, paid 90 dollas for his seat. It's a great seat!"

I complimented her salesmanship and dropped my debit card into the tray. I wandered into the bowels of the stadium and got my bearings somewhat. I was quite hungry, so before I even checked out my seat, I went on the hunt for food. A few minutes later, with a beer in one hand and an Italian sausage in the other, I went to my seat.


The pre-game goings on going on...

And what a grand seat it was! I was close enough to read the names on the players' jerseys, but not close enough to smell them. At 6:30 it was still an absolutely gorgeous day. The sun was still high enough in the sky to alight on the grass on the field, but the shadows grew longer by the minute. There were some festivities on the field, with some honored kids bestowed with the opportunity to pose for photos with The Big Green Monster character, a really great sounding high school(?) female quartet singing the Canadian national anthem, an equally talented Latina singing the US National Anthem, and a couple different people out to toss the ceremonial first pitch.


PLAY BALL!


The Big Green Monster!

The game commenced, and the first inning ended with a Red Sox run on the scoreboard. There was one home run in the game, many great plays, and the Toronto Blue Jays out hit the Red Sox, but the Red Sox emerged victorious in the end. It wasn't until the fifth inning or so, when I looked at the American League standings board at the far left field end at the bottom of the famous Big Green Monster, that I realized why everyone was so eager to know if I had tickets. I never knew that the Toronto Blue Jays were in first place in the American League Eastern Division, and the Red Sox were in second place, just a game and a half behind them! What I also didn't know was that this game was the final in the series in which the Red Sox had already taken two games. If you were a Red Sox fan, this was the. game. to attend!

What a perfect night! There was at least one ticket to be had; the people in the seats all around me were civil at worst, friendly at best; the weather could not have been any better — the temperature was perfect; the food and drink were tasty (I also had a big slice of pizza and another beer in the 6th inning!); the view was spectacular; I was in the second greatest ballpark in the nation (sorry, Beantown...nothing will surpass Wrigley Field in my heart!); and the home team won.

To borrow from Marc Cohn's great song "Walking In Memphis," had anyone asked me that evening if I was a Red Sox fan, my reply would have been, "I am tonight!"

It was a perfect brew of circumstances: time on my hands, a legendary baseball park in the vicinity, an unbelievably gorgeous day and evening, and the well-timed thought to give it a go and take the chance that I could get a ticket. I think Murphy was asleep that night and was unable to enforce his law.

Well, Murphy is Irish. Maybe he's a Boston Red Sox fan.




End note: The next morning I did get the chance to meet up with Mr. Schprock for breakfast, and I told him about the baseball game.

"You got tickets?!" he asked me incredulously.

I guess I'm a lucky, lucky man!




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How Could I Be So Busy? I'm Unemployed!

Holy Crime and Punishment! I have been terribly lacking in the blog department, both the writing of and the reading of! For this I apologize, and I encourage you to go peruse my Facebook page and scroll back among my status updates to see where my head — and my creative energy — has been all this time. Of course, due to some reluctance on my part about putting my name out there on everything, I purposely omit the link to my Facebook page in hopes that you who don't already know it will be resourceful and dig it up on your own.

But on to the news...

Still Waters
Not much has been happening in the ol' World O' Farrago since I was given the ol' heave-ho by my former employer. Really, there are no hard feelings there. If it were some trumped-up accusation of wrongdoing or malfeasance on my part to bring on the boot, I would be disgruntled. If there had been some wrongdoing or malfeasance on my part — which would have indicated a certain level of disgruntlednessment — then I would likely still carry it with me. But, no. I was quite contentedly gruntled. It's just that the economy hit our clients who began cutting things out of their convention budgets... things like videos ... which are essential things if a videographer is going to keep his job...which this one did not.

And so here I sit, fully 5 weeks-and-change later, still jobless. I have been busy, nonetheless, with looking for gigs, trying to set up an online business, trying to get my actor's résumé together, and entertaining friends' offers to take me to lunch! The last on that list hasn't happened for a while, now, but it was nice while it lasted.

I have a head shot, now, for my actor's resume...



My (now very) good friend, Bob the Photographer, took this and many other shots, at no charge, nor expectation of any compensation, but I have yet at this moment to contact any agencies to see if they think I'm pretty enough to live.


Stirring the Waters
As dull as life has been since April, the past week has been equally opposite. On Friday Maggie, someone who has reinvented her online self (not to mention her real self!) since I visited on her turf last year, pulled into town to spend a couple evenings hanging around and sight-seeing and chatting. I like to talk, but I think I have found my equal — if not superior — in the gab department!!

There had been a loose plan from just about the moment she arrived to head downtown to Navy Pier or Chinatown for the afternoon. Unfortunately the weather had cooperated with Maggie less and less the further west she traveled, to the point that she reported seeing exotic animals lined up by twos along the Kennedy expressway! So, instead of Chicago we hit Schaumburg, the site of IKEA in the Chicago northwest suburbs! We browsed, observed a veritable surfeit of cheap French Press style coffee makers...they were stuck everywhere they could fit them, in all departments, on all floors. I was tempted to buy one just because I was certain that if I didn't, I sure as hell would need one later. As it goes, I already have a French Press coffee maker and, unfortunately, I paid about eight dollars more for it at Tar-zhay.

From IKEA, after our feet were tired from the wandering among the approximately 7.3 billion French Press coffee makers, and from posing the fairly hideous IKEA stuffed animals in obscene positions (well, I was, anyway), we departed IKEA for a local grocery store for some meat and produce. I guess I should rephrase... we went to a produce store for some meat and groceries. The produce section of this store has more fruits and vegetables on offer than some small Central American countries! I suppose I should have expected such a thing when I first entered the place, named Valli Produce, but Holy Crybabies! Maggie said she couldn't focus on the salad fixins she wanted to pick up because she was overwhelmed! But she got over it, we got all the things we needed, and we headed back to my place.

Maggie wanted to contribute to our meal by purchasing the ingredients for, and by making the salad. She done good, because here it is five days since she made the salad, and I'm still eating it!! Thanks, Maggie! I'm dreaming in color, now...it's GREEN!

We grilled steaks and potatoes, noshed on salad (which was superb, by the way), and we each fought to jibber-jabber more than the other, covering topics from religion, to theater, to music, to sex, my fetish for slim women, travel, the pope, and the life of an electron in the variegated constructs of quantum physics.

Okay. I'm kidding. We didn't really discuss the pope.

At two o'clock in the morning we looked at the clock and realized it was two o'clock in the morning, and we crashed, looking forward to Saturday.


Shine A Town... With Your Very Own Shy Knees
Morning dawned bright but grey. At least I think it was grey then. I wasn't up until way past dawn. I made a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, but I offended Maggie's coffee sensibilities with my Italian Roast from my French Press served in American mugs made in China. I guess I've just gotten so used to strong coffee that I had forgotten that the spoon isn't supposed to stick straight out of the coffee without touching the sides of the mug.

We got a later start than we had wanted, but we were eventually on our way. We drove down to the edge of the city, hopped on a public transit train, were evicted from the train due to track work and herded onto a shuttle bus, driven downtown, herded back onto the train on the other side of the construction, down two stops, strolled briefly from one train station to another, boarded yet another train to go two stops south to Chinatown.

Though a lifelong resident of the Chicago area, this was my first time in Chinatown, and I must say I was a little disappointed. I expected a longer, larger, denser neighborhood than what is there. Maybe it used to be so, but with assimilation and maybe because of children growing up with more opportunities and leaving the area, Chinatown is perhaps suffering the consequences of progress.

We wandered up and down the one main drag, stopped into a few shops — a grocery/convenience store; a couple of pastry shops which, aside from the obviously Asian clerks, looked more Polish than Chinese; and one place on a corner, the merchandising of which we didn't get a chance to figure out because, shortly after we entered, the fire alarm sounded, and everyone in the store ran out the front door, out onto the sidewalk, around the side of the building and then back in through the rear door, at which point the fire alarm went silent. We never went back inside, but the alarm kept going off repeatedly, seeming to coincide with every time the traffic light on the corner turned red.

At one other place, a pastry shop, Maggie got a mango slushee made with real mango, and I got a Chinese coffee. I was intrigued by this until I realized that a Chinese coffee is simply coffee made and served by a Chinese person.

We briefly indulged the idea of finding Little Italy, and not entirely because I was keen on trying Italian coffee. However, it proved too far away and too daunting a public transportation adventure. And besides, we were running out of time for Navy Pier and dinner before the party.


Pier Pressure
We took a train and a bus up to Navy Pier where I gawked at the slim women walking to and fro, and Maggie gawked at the US Marines on hand to demonstrate how cool it is to be a US Marine — once you can get through that pesky 12-week boot camp — and, no doubt, to ruin any chance I might have had with any of the slim women standing around gawking at them. Barstads! Aren't they supposed to be off fighting a war, or something?

We wandered the length of the Pier, abbreviated by some sort of construction going on at the farthest point out into the lake, and we returned to the Pier entrance area, where we had dinner at Capi's Italian cafeteria. I had a side salad that could in no way even compare with Maggie's of the evening before (and several since!), and the chicken piccata, which was out of this world!


A Shared Shared Moment
After dinner we sort of moseyed along, taking a stroll to and along a very crowded Michigan Avenue until we reached Chicago Avenue, where we boarded a bus. We had only about a mile and a half to ride, but with the Saturday evening traffic, the going was slow. Maggie found an open seat on the jammed bus, but I remained standing for a couple more stops before a space opened beside her. We were in sideways-facing seats on the right side of the bus, facing in the direction of the left side. Directly to my left was one pair of forward-facing seats, occupied by a woman in the window seat, and a Hispanic-looking, 40-ish man on the aisle. Sitting there and riding along, waiting to hear the automated P.A. voice call out our stop, I started to people-watch. Shortly, several people wedged their way into place directly in front of Maggie and me, and stood there holding onto the straps above their heads. I looked up at one particularly slim, very attractive woman and made eye contact with her. What I mean is, when I looked up at her face, she was already looking at me. Somewhat surprised by this, I looked away again. Just a few seconds later, and because it was kind of a pleasant feeling the first time, I looked at the woman's face again, and she was still looking at me! I held her gaze for a couple of seconds, waiting for her to look away — or stick out her tongue at me, or mace me — and then I looked away again.

Once more, just a few seconds later, I looked at her again. She was STILL looking at me. So this time I held her gaze and smiled as smooth and cool and sexy a smile I could muster without crossing over into cheesy. Then her eyes darted over to Maggie, seated beside me to my right, and then back to me. I subtly shook my head to indicate that Maggie and I weren't "together," but as soon as I did, she looked away from me. I looked at her again a few times before we got to our stop, but she wasn't looking at me any more. If I were to wager a guess, I would say she was now avoiding my gaze. Weird! But exhilarating! I surmise that she was baiting me to see if I would "cheat" on my woman — who she thought was Maggie — and the moment I responded to her "offer" she was no longer interested because now I'm an asshole. OR, she was looking for the other two-thirds of the ingredients for making a Tony sandwich, and I simply wiggled my head the wrong way!

The bus arrived at our stop, and Maggie and I, as well as the really weird guy off his meds and being told some pretty hilarious jokes by the voices in his head, disembarked. No sooner had the doors closed again had Maggie started swearing and stomping her feet, and cursing the brevity of the bus ride. As I eagerly — and somewhat confusedly — awaited the end of her tirade, which I wasn't exactly hearing because I wanted to tell her of the experience I had just had on the bus, she went on to rant about the aforementioned Hispanic looking guy seated on the aisle just to my left who had made eye contact with her repeatedly, and then darted his eyes at me as though to ask if I was "in the picture," at which Maggie shook her head!

THESE ENCOUNTERS HAPPENED SIMULTANEOUSLY!

And then, as we left the bus, the guy had reached up and gently touched Maggie's hand and said, "Good-bye!"

I honestly don't know what either of us would have done had we connected, respectively. Well, I take that back. I know what I would've done. Maggie, being from out of town, wouldn't have known where to find me or how to get to me. Perhaps she wouldn't have cared! But would I have gone after the vague offer of a chance to pursue the idea of some nookie while hosting a friend from out of town? I'm fairly certain Maggie would have said... no, shouted, "GO!" But I would've worried about her...at least until I got eye-contact girl's shirt off....


Partay At the 'Belt' Way
Anyhoo, neither of us connected, and we went to the Chicago Karaoke Underground Party. It was a smaller turnout than times past, though no less the experience it has always been. Due to the drawn out conversation into the wee hours of the prior morning, and quite a bit of blathering throughout the day Saturday, my throat was feeling fairly raw, and my voice sounding ragged, before the first song rolled. I sounded like a poor impersonation of Paul Williams.

Maggie, who was demure and self-effacing about her singing ability, fairly well blew the room away from the moment she first opened her mouth at the mic. I don't recall which song she did first, but her rendition of "All That Jazz," from the musical Chicago, left just about everybody — men and women alike — panting. She was quite popular with everyone, certainly not shy, and quickly earned the adoration of the other guys in the room. She had already received several text messages from them before we ever got on the bus after the party.

We had left the party around 4:30am. The public transit back to my car on the edge of the city, and the ride in my car back to my apartment all totaled about an hour and, as we ascended the walk to my apartment building, I glanced to the east and said, "Heh," as it was all I could muster to draw attention to the dawn twilight at 5:30 in the fucking morning!

Saying very little, we headed to our respective beds and crashed immediately, waking about five hours later. After another hour or so of chatter, both our voices now evidencing wear and strain, Maggie determined it was time to go. She departed Chicago with promises of returning soon, and I waved her off with promises of letting her.

Woik!
Monday, while I tried to move forward on my acting career as well as my writing career (both still in "Park," at the moment) I received a text message from a former co-worker: "R U available thurs to shoot?"

A GIG!

I followed up on it all and it turns out it's not for my former employer, though I will be using some of their gear. I head to Boston early Thursday morning to shoot a skit with some executives in the afternoon, after which I'm stuck in Boston for the night due to the inequities of airline scheduling. I return home Friday morning. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get together to break bread (or maybe wind) with Mr. Schprock, of Blogger.com fame. It'll have to be an early morning affair, seeing as how my flight is at 10:25, but le restaurant du choix is downtown.

As I prepared some gear at the place of my former employment, one of my former co-workers, Producer, saw me and said, "Hey! I have to book you for a couple of shoots!" It would appear that one of my former employer's clients who are still doing shoots happened to book their shoots for when the guy upon whose shoulders the shooting now falls is already booked! DAMN THE LUCK! WOO HOO!

Geeesh! I'm tired. Thanks for reading!

BBD

Hey, all, it's Berf's Biffday. Or make that Beef's Barfday. Baff's Beefday?

Whatever! Just click on the link and drop him a note...or drop your pants. Either way, he'll probably get a big kick out of it, seeing as how he's one to flash the family jewels on occasion.



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Flight of the Conchords Review Linky-Poo

As I promised, here is the link to my first pro writing gig, my review of Flight of the Conchords Tuesday night at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago.

Read it 'n sleep!

But be sure to visit EventChaser.com to check for reviews of events and venues in your neck of the woods, and snoop around razorgator.com to see what's coming to your area and to buy tickets!