far·ra·go

The Dawn of a Great Friendship

2012-01-01T16:53:00.004-06:00

Back when I was a wee lad, a mere sophomore in high school, I thought I was pretty damn funny. Strange how little things change. But anyhoo, I found myself sitting in Sophomore English class, smack in the middle of the classroom. I was too shy to sit up front — especially since I had a huge crush on the teacher, Ms. Lloyd, and I was ever fearful of what might “pop up,” you know, being a teenage boy and all.

But I digress.

And I was too much a goody-two-shoes to sit in the back of the classroom with all the kids who were too cool to sit anywhere but in the back of the classroom.

Sophomore English was a school year divided by study tracks. One track was composition, another was Greek mythology, another was Speech, I think. There may have been others, but I don’t remember. I moved into Ms. Lloyd’s classroom mid-year as I started the composition track. I found this education style uncomfortable because, after a school quarter or so in one class, I had grown comfortable with a certain routine, certain friends, a certain class pecking order, as it were, and then we were all uprooted, shaken up and placed in a new situation to sort through all over again. Welcome in the part of my life that I’m in now, but as a painfully self-conscious teen it was very stressful.

On the first day in Ms. Lloyd’s class, during the roll-call, among the names she called out was Sam Lapin. The kid next to me raised his hand. “Here.”

My best friend, Lu, had told me about this kid, Sam Lapin, told me how funny this kid was, how clever he was. This was my best friend, telling me — pretty damn funny me — since junior high — how funny this Sam Lapin kid was. Until that day I had never met Sam Lapin, though I had seen a kid on the playground and in the halls who I thought was Sam Lapin, and I despised the very sight of the kid, not to mention the very mention of his name. And here he was, sitting right next to me in English class. Only the kid sitting next to me answering to the name Sam Lapin wasn’t Sam Lapin, or at least the kid who I had thought was Sam Lapin up to that point!

Okay, so I had to get used to a new face to associate with the name of the kid I hated for no other reason than my best friend’s accolades.

As time went on in the class, Ms. Lloyd proved to be a very good sport — if not an easy target — for my brand of humor (hence my eventual crush...plus she was nice to look at), which is very word-nerd oriented. My brand of humor relies heavily on plays on words and taking words from someone else’s mouth in their alternate contexts.

But the thing I noticed was that, at every moment I found to blurt out some wise-crack based on Ms. Lloyd’s words, Sam Lapin from right next to me, blurted out a wise-crack, too. Not only that, but he often said the same thing I did. I mean the same thing, word for word, which caused both of us to look at each other and laugh with, I’m certain, the same look of bewildermazement on our faces! And whenever we didn’t blurt out at the same time, he proved to be as pretty damn funny as my best friend, Lu, had told me he was! In turn, Sam Lapin found my solo quips to be worthy of a good laugh.

In short time I no longer bore any animosity toward this Sam Lapin, but we shared the spotlight in cracking up each other and our fellow classmates and — yes — Ms. Lloyd! One day Sam made the first effort to forge a friendship — detailed in another blog post to come — and to this day we remain good friends, despite our infrequent correspondence and even less frequent face time, as we now live in places about 600 miles apart.

But our shining moment as the comedy duo Sam & Tony came late in the school year. I’d like to think Ms. Lloyd had something to do with Sam and me winding up in her classroom for the entire rest of the school year as the English tracks changed, but it may have just been lucky coincidence.

Sam’s trademark wise-crack move was to respond whenever a teacher — after explaining a concept or procedure — would pose the open-ended question to the class, “Are there any questions?”

Every time — and I mean every time — Sam would raise his hand. And the teacher would point to him. “Sam?”

And every time Sam would ask the question, “What’s the capital of North Dakota?” It mattered not what the topic of discussion was; that was Sam’s question.

As I said, Ms. Lloyd was a loving, trusting easy target for guys like Sam and me, and every time she asked the question and Sam raised his hand, she fell for it. Every. Time. But one.

Late in the school year she finished a discussion of a topic or a set of instructions, I remember not which, and she asked the inevitable, “Are there any questions?”

Sam raised his hand.

Ms. Lloyd got this expression on her face, a sort of bemused smile-smirk, as she looked at Sam and said, “Not you, Sam--” She was on to him and she finally hadn’t taken the bait! Instinct took over, and I raised my hand as she finished telling Sam with a chuckle in her voice, “--I’m not falling for it this time!” And then she shifted her gaze to me. “Tony?”

Fighting a laugh at my own clever self and barely managing the words, I said, “What’s the capital of North Dakota?”

The whole class erupted in laughter — or at least I like to remember that they did, but they might have been so tired of our shit by that point that they didn’t bother to hear us — and Ms. Lloyd hung her head in defeat. I’m certain Sam knew what was going to come out of my mouth the moment Ms. Lloyd called on me, and his laugh was the loudest in the class.

For many years after we graduated Sam and I maintained a friendship with — and I my crush on — Ms. Lloyd, sending or bringing her a Snickers bar every year on her birthday, an inside joke the origin of which I no longer remember.

I lost contact with Ms. Lloyd only about 10 years ago, a good 20 years after my graduation from high school. A Facebook search seems to be in order.

And to the person who was that kid I thought was Sam Lapin from 7th grade into the first semester of sophomore year, whoever you are… I’m sorry for all the dirty looks and mean thoughts I sent your way.

°

Poison in a Pretty Package

2011-12-28T10:03:00.001-06:00

Prejudice is alive and well in Chicago. I was dispatched to the Mt. Prospect train station to pick up two passengers under the name Prasalli at 9:00pm. Usually, when it's a time order at a train station, the passenger is coming in on a train.

I arrived at the station around 8:55. The night after Christmas was cool, damp and rainy, with a light drizzle falling as I waited. At 9:00 nearly on the dot two young women approached from the station house and got into my cab. Since no train had pulled in yet, I verified that they were my customers.

"Hi. Did you call for a taxi?"

They were both young, probably college age, both very attractive. They both responded at once. The brunette said, "Yes."

The blond replied, "Who are you?"

"You did call for a taxi?"

Blond said, "We called one of our friends. What's your name?"

I told her my name. "I'm waiting for a customer who ordered this taxi. What's the name you gave when you called?"

Blond said, "Erin."

"Well that's not the name I have on my order."

Blond asked, "What's the name you have?"

Brunette said, "Doesn't matter. He can't take us."

"Prasalli," I replied.

The confused conversation continued, and they told me that they had a couple of taxi drivers they use regularly.

"We find the good guys we like, and we call them when we need rides so we don't get any ...weirdos. You know what I mean?"

I was pretty sure I knew what she meant.

They chatted on and told me that one of their best friends had just died, and that one of their taxi driver friends was apparently coming to get them in an unmarked green van, which Blond was uncertain about getting into. I told them that, as it was now after the scheduled time for my customers' pickup, there was a good chance they wouldn't show, and I could take the ladies to Palatine after all. Resigned to the likelihood that I wasn't available to take them to Palatine, two towns up to the northwest along the rail line, they got out.

The railroad crossing gates came down, signaling the approach of a train from Chicago. The two young women approached me again.
,
They both were under the delusion that my incoming customers were a woman, named Priscilla. Blond seemed to be in charge, or at least the stronger personality. "Where is this Priscilla going?"

"Wheeling," I replied, about a ten-minute drive north from the train station.

"Do you think maybe we could ride in your cab with them to wherever they're going, and then you could take us to Palatine?" she asked.

"That's up to my customers," I replied. "If they're cool with sharing, then I have no problem with it, but you'll have to ask them."

Moments later, train in the station, there was a knock on my driver's window. A dark-skinned man with straight hair combed and parted on one side, and sporting a mustache asked me, "Wheeling?"

"Did you call for a taxi?"

"Yes," he replied, his crisp Indian accent evident even in one brief word.

"What name did you leave on the order?"

"Prasani."

It was close enough to "Prasalli" to call it a match, so I told him and the woman who accompanied him that they could get in my car. I mentioned to them that the two young women standing now about 20 yards away from the taxi were interested in sharing a ride, though I'm not sure Mr. Prasani understood what I was saying.

I rolled down the window and called to the women. "Do you still want to share the ride?"

"No, we're good."

I find it amusing that they were willing to do just about anything to get a ride right up until they saw that their car mates were Indian, no doubt the kind of "weirdos" they were so concerned about having as their taxi driver in the random taxi lottery into which calling for a taxi enters you.

So I drove Mr. Prasani and his companion to their destination in Wheeling, all the while contemplating a return to the Mt. Prospect train station on the slim chance that those two young women would still be there. I mean, they were attractive, I am a horny middle aged man and I did want to be a hero. But the more I thought about it, the more disgusted with them I became that they had a change of heart when they saw who they thought was "Priscilla" actually was. So I said screw 'em! I am bound by the laws of this state to serve all customers, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. If those women had gotten into my otherwise available car spewing racial hatred, I would have had to take them wherever they wanted to go. However, the circumstances as they were, I was not bound in any way to head back to get them, to save them from the rain.

No, as a matter of fact that thought quite pleased me!

Magic Memory

2011-12-26T22:25:00.001-06:00

I wish I was a pure atheist, one who never knew what it's like to have felt a duty to a god or a church and their corresponding patterns of behavior. Because those things have left a mark on me, on my cerebral cortex, my instinctive brain. I often call religious indoctrination "brainwashing," and this is why; the trained instinct of belief. It's brainwashing because - despite the rational, reasoned thought that tells me there's no magical, invisible entity holding the universe in the palm of his hand, who knows my every thought and that of every other thinking being in the universe - in unguarded moments I still catch myself thinking of my mother "in heaven," or my father "looking down on me" and approving or disapproving. It's brainwashing because - despite years - decades, now - of consciously brushing off those ideas into the dust-pile of fairly tale - I still can't unthink the thoughts that swim up from the depths of my childhood indoctrination.

Yes, to be free of that ready, instinctive compulsion to regard an active, populous spirit world would be refreshing. To have never felt beholden to a god, a prophet and that guy behind the screen every Sunday would be liberating. But those childhood memories are also responsible for the warm feelings I still get at Christmas time, for the anticipation for Christmas day, when it seems as though the world goes quiet; for the warmth I feel when I hear the songs - reverent or secular (one has to admit, whether a believer or not, that the concept of the nativity of Jesus Christ has inspired some great songs!); for the comfort of the closeness of family and the anticipation of the great food and lively conversation in their proximity.

I guess it's pointless to wish for the things I'll never have, or to be what I can't be, for they're things done that can't be undone. Not without a frontal lobotomy, anyway. And, now that I think of it, I guess I've had the best of both worlds; to a kid - the kid I was - the magic, the fantasy, is real. With age, reason ruled out, and I'd hate to imagine myself a slave to that kind of doctrine, but, with a head still full of those magic moments, looking back has a magic all its own.

*

Joint Ownership

2011-12-07T22:15:00.004-06:00

I get pretty tired of the people who cry foul about how "we" are taking Christ out of Christmas. Nobody is taking Christ out of Christmas. He's right there where he has always been all along. It's the first two thirds of the damn word!

Nobody is taking Christ out of Christmas. If you haven't noticed by now, here in this melting pot society we call the United States of America, there are more religions than just the Christian ones, and more than just the Christian religions that happen to have high holy days that fall during this time of year. And you know something? Those celebrations are not called "Christmas!" The Jews have Hanukkah, for instance. The pagans — should you happen to consider paganism a religion (I don't) — hold special relevance for the winter solstice, which happens a couple days before Christmas. Every. Frikkin. Year. I'm no expert, but I'm sure there are other groups who observe something special at this time of year, too.

So when collective society at this time of year gushes with "Happy Holidays!" they ... we ... are not taking Christ out of Christmas. We're taking Christ out of Hanukkah, out of the solstice, out of the grand sauce festival of the fellowship of the flying spaghetti monster... wherever Christ is not observed or cherished or wanted. This time of year is not owned by Christians, so don't get so bent out of shape when I don't want Christ to be a part of my celebration, yet I want to honor or respect you — and everyone else who is celebrating something at this time of year — by gushing, "Happy Holidays!"

Just as you wouldn't want me to come to a Christmas party at your church and scream "Praise be to Richard Dawkins!" no Jew is going to be too crazy with you crashing his family's Hanukkah observance and shouting "Jesus is the reason for the season!"

Understand that when your local TV station runs a station ID that reads and blurts, "Happy Holidays!" you and your savior are included respectfully along with everyone else whose religion or belief system finds these days to be something special.

Celebrate Christ in your home and your church, let everyone else celebrate in their own way in their own place, and just shut up already about the generic public acknowledgment of "everyone's" reverence for this time of year!

In Bidness!

2011-11-27T13:56:00.003-06:00

Well, Stuff Enterprises, LLC, is off and running, and earning a buck. It's not any time soon on the Forbes 100 list, but I'm paying the rent...so far. I don't know that there is a businessperson anywhere who can truly say he's done it all himself, because when it comes to all the crap involved in setting up a business legally, a businessperson would just give up and hold a cup on a street corner for a daily meal.

My savior has been Chris, the accountant-cum-HR-cum-taxes whiz at my former employer. She has helped me cross the I's and dot the T's and had me sign the forms that the state and Fed need in order to properly get their claws on my earnings.

It was on her advice that I shifted my personal status from independent contractor to employee. Of Stuff Enterprises, LLC. The company I own. So, yes, I am the owner and president of the company. And I am the sole employee of the company! The reason behind this setup is to protect myself from any potential lawsuits that may arise as a result of my operation of the taxi. Should that happen, the company is the legal target, and any damages or seizure of assets is exacted upon the company, and not me, personally. As an independent contractor leasing the taxi from my company, I would still be individually liable in the event of any legal action. So I exercised my Employer Identification Number and became a job creator! Though, admittedly, the hiring process involved an unfair amount of favoritism....

As a tax deadline loomed in October, Chris called me in to finalize and sign some paperwork. And she said to bring my checkbook...which sounded ominous.

I arrived, and she explained a few things, and gave me some forms to sign, among them an IRS form authorizing the service to withdraw a fixed amount monthly as payroll tax, based on a salary that I'm paying myself.

I'M PAYING MYSELF A SALARY!

I asked her if this IRS fixed amount was the amount for which I needed to write the check, and she said that it was not, and that it was going to be withdrawn electronically from my business checking account.

She also advised me to consider changing my company from a Limited Liability Company to an S Corporation — which I did not know I was eligible to do — in an effort to save a little on taxes annually. We're going to wait on that decision until the new year.

Then she presented me with another form, and pointed to the amount on that sheet as the amount I needed to write on the check — an amount which, for this month, anyway, was anything but ominous.

"This form is the Unemployment Insurance form. As an employer, you have to provide this for your employees. As an employer, should you close the doors on Stuff Enterprises and go out of business, as an employee you can collect unemployment."

The spoon in her coffee cup rattled when my chin hit the desk. In the freaky world of entrepreneurial endeavor, I am no longer unemployed. And while I am self-employed, I am no longer self-employed.

My next question for Chris is to wonder if Stuff Enterprises, LLC, can have a summer work slowdown and subsequent layoff for, say, a month or two....

I also want to remove the name "Stuff Enterprises" from the taxi business, as I also operate — in principle, anyway — a video production company. I want Stuff Enterprises to be the parent company of the others, so I need a new name for the taxi operation. My favorite, because it actually sounds like my family name — Gasbarro — is "Casbah Row Transport Company," though I fear it may mislead one to think I'm Algerian.

Of course, I could call it "Casbah Row Airport Passengery," and go by "CRAP" for short.

OR, I could take suggestions. From you. Serious ideas accepted, too!

November's Urge ~ November Surge?

2011-11-27T11:58:00.001-06:00

This author has been very extremely remiss with this blog, and with reading others' blogs. However, judging by the number of blogs in my "Better Blogs Than Mine" that have gone dark, I am not alone in this.

I can blame any number of factors in my life right now for the word blight, but they all come back to me, eventually. The taxi job, of course, takes up a lot of my time. Where I had originally thought that I could use all of the down time in the car for writing, I soon realized that working nights — and the down time that came with it — translated to slow financial death: I wasn't making any money. So I switched to days and began to enjoy the busyness that shift brings... and my writing suffered.

I also leapt back into theatre — with a vengeance, to my exhaustion — and every last moment of potentially free time was taken up.

This past summer I purchased my own taxi with the hopes that lightening my burden of the steep weekly lease payment would also free up some of my time. Of course, I have been in hiatus from theatre work since the spring due to the impending move in the fall, so that free time was fleeting at best. But ownership of my taxi, in conjunction with my move into a lower monthly rent, has made it possible for me to function entirely without leaning on my retirement IRA for supplemental cash, as I had been doing since shortly after I lost my job in 2009...IF I work the hours of an indentured servant.

I always lament at how far behind the curve I am with movies, so I have renewed my slog through my Netflix queue, another activity that sucks my time away from writing.

And I will do no more than mention "Words With Friends."

My photo blog even died a lonely death. I would link to it, but what's the point? It hasn't seen a contribution since July, and nothing short of a monumental effort (for which I have no time, surprise, surprise!) can resuscitate it.

So I can do nothing more than promise to try (how's that for evasive?) to write more in future. Perhaps there will be a real, serious New Year's resolution involved. The shame of it is that I call myself a writer, yet every opportunity I have to write I have filled with other activities. And sorry, Tony, the discovery during "Words With Friends" that "BICE" is actually a word does not count as writing.

Expensive Lesson

2011-10-07T18:58:00.004-05:00

I smelled coolant. Then I saw just a very light puff of steam vapor coming from under the hood. My taxi was vacant, and I was right next to a Ford dealer, so I figured I would have them at least diagnose the problem and decide from there what to do.

It was Monday, after 5:00pm, and all of their mechanics had gone home for the day. I couldn't find a spot from where the vapor was escaping, and it wasn't coming out with pressure, so I chanced it on the road to the nearest Pep Boys, and was told the same thing: mechanics went home. It was too late in the day for me to go to Golf Mill Auto Center, where I have been taking the taxi for maintenance, and I was afraid I wouldn't make it the 15 miles or so to get there anyway. I was out of options, so I headed home. The steam stopped, but I still occasionally smelled coolant.

The next morning I started the taxi, drove it for a while, and checked things out. No vapor and only occasional whiffs of coolant. I made a note to myself to take it in to Golf Mill to have it looked at. Business was exceptional this week, so I continued to put it off. Then, Thursday afternoon, after taking the daytime off and planning to shift to nights for the weekend, I walked out to the car, ready to work, and saw that a large puddle of liquid had formed beneath the car and had oozed down the slight slope of the parking lot at my apartment complex. I dipped my finger in the liquid, believing it was motor oil. It didn't smell like motor oil...or anything I could identify. In a bit of a panic, I drove the car to the nearest garage, a local chain called Casey Automotive. I had taken a car to one of their other locations before; wasn't impressed with their work, and was even less impressed with their rates. But I'm even less comfortable with Pep Boys, so to Casey it was.

They told me it was a head gasket, and that it would be a minimum of $1800! I probably wouldn't get it back until Monday. It was not one of my better moments, and I did a mild internal freak-out. And I said, "Do it." I never even asked for a written estimate, nor did they offer me one! But they did give me a ride home.

Friday I went to the taxi office to take care of some other business, and I mentioned in passing to one of the guys from whom I had bought the taxi about its current status. When he asked me what they were charging, his eyeballs fell out of his head. He told me that Golf Mill would do it for way less. He even called them, and they said they could do it for around $500. Then he relayed their question: "Which side?"

I didn't have an answer, for the guy at Casey never told me. The guy at the taxi office said that for a hundred-dollar tow I could have saved a bunch of money! Part of me wishes he had never told me that, or that I had never mentioned it. Suddenly I had a headache!

After several minutes alone in my personal vehicle I became very angry, not only at the guys at Casey, but at myself for not thinking things through and at least calling Golf Mill myself to see what they would charge.

Second opinion, you fucking moron!

But my anger grew. Casey had been working on my car for about five and a half hours at this point. I felt... I knew I was being taken advantage of, knew I was being ripped off. I went back to Casey and talked to the manager(?). He took me to the car. Half the engine was sitting on the floor! I asked him on which side the head gasket leak was. He said, "It doesn't matter, we do both sides. He has both heads off, now, and it's only a half-hour more labor...."

But if they only needed to do one side, it would only be half the labor they had done, since they would only have had to remove the one head. I called Golf Mill Auto myself and told them the situation. They told me that, at this point, it would cost me less for them (Golf Mill) to put in a used engine than for Casey to do the whole job! I asked him if I should have Casey stop the work and tow it to Golf Mill. He said, "YES!"

I told the manager at Casey to stop the work and put all the parts in the trunk of the car, paid them for the labor to that point (about $600) and I called the number that Golf Mill gave me for the tow truck.

The mechanics at Golf Mill were all visibly stunned at what Casey had done to the engine. They all agreed that, even if they had to replace both head gaskets, they never would have needed to remove the front components of the engine, such as the timing chain and gears! They all looked at me with pity and, it seemed, mild disgust. What an idiot they must think I am.

So, for the labor alone, it would still cost me more, at this point, for Golf Mill to replace the gaskets and put everything back together than to just replace the engine with a used one. All told, I'll still wind up paying about $1800 for this repair. I keep trying to console myself with having denied Casey automotive the whole chunk of change they were going to charge me and instead giving it to Golf Mill, who I know aren't trying to rip me off.

So, lesson learned: don't panic. Ask questions. Trust the guys you trust, and do everything in your power to let them work on your car. Idiot.

Second lesson: Casey Automotive is a scheister operation. Tell everyone you can reach not to take their cars to them. They may repair your car, but you're paying not only too much for the work, but possibly for work you don't even need done!

Now I just want to cry!

Baby Step or Giant Leap? (OR... Yup, This Is What I'm Doing)

2011-08-26T12:02:00.005-05:00

Above is a photo taken today of me with my taxi. Take careful note of the prior sentence. Focus specifically on the phrase "me with my taxi." My taxi. My taxi.

In an effort to reduce day-to-day expenses and increase my daily headaches, I decided to eliminate the middleman (one of them, anyway, as I'm learning) and stop paying him a lease, and have bought my own taxi.

Yes, I wrote that correctly. Bought.

Shortly after I was laid off from my salaried job I formed a limited liability company, Stuff Enterprises, as a way to protect myself from possible litigation that might arise from operating as a freelance video production god (litigation that might arise simply from use of the term "video production god," frinstance), but since no real work came from that, Stuff Enterprises, LLC, was more of a limp, lackluster company than anything else. As the idea to own a taxi came along primarily as a way to take more of the money I get from the passengers and keep it in my pocket, ownership revealed itself to me also as an avenue to greater flexibility to do the things I want to do when the opportunity arises to do them, as well as the freedom to relax just a little and not have to work so freakin hard to put a decent meal in front of me.

And so, Stuff Enterprises, LLC, is now in the transportation business. Does this make me a tycoon?

°

All You Gotta Do Is Act Naturally

2011-06-20T18:41:00.022-05:00

Click on any photo to embiggerize.

A couple of months ago, while Bleacher Bums was still in rehearsals, I stopped in at the taxi office to pay my lease, pick up my check and take care of other business. I had some little advertiser post cards with Bleacher Bums info on them, so I decided to drop them at desks in the business office there at 303 Taxi. When I set one down at the elbow of Erica, the new, young Public Relations director, she called back to me, "Hey! You're an actor?"

"Yes," I replied. "Of sorts."

"Would you like to be in a commercial for 303?"

The idea intrigued me, however, as I'm supposed to be a video production guy and not a taxi driver, the idea appealed much more to me on a different level.

"I'd rather make the commercial!" I quickly explained to her my background, and why I was interested in making her commercial.

My friend Sean — a video and filmmaker with whom I have been friends since 1989 — has been trying to find an avenue to reach local small businesses and offer to make web commercials for them. He had accepted my interest and my offer to participate in that with him if it ever came to be, and suggested that we do the first few for free to establish ourselves and build a portfolio, and create a need within other businesses for our service. And then Erica dropped out of the sky right in front of me.

She already had a pile of commercial ideas, some of them a little edgy, or perhaps even a little too risqué for local TV. Indeed, her target was the web, and specifically a 303 Taxi YouTube channel. She was very interested in what I told her about Sean and myself, but she wanted to go over the ideas in detail, and then meet Sean.

Her ideas were actually very well thought-out and very visual, which surprised me. I have worked with veterans of the video business who were not as imaginative or visually oriented as Erica.

Through many e-mail CCs and a few meetings with Erica and Sean at a local Starbucks we came up with three scripts to do first. Erica's approach is to complete three of the less edgy spots, present them to the owners of 303 (one to whom she is related, so that may be very favorable!), put them up on YouTube and watch them (with much hope) go viral. Then with ownership approval — and perhaps a budget! — we'll be able to do all of Erica's ideas, edgy and all!

We got a less than stellar response from our Craigslist casting notice, and Erica insisted that I play the role of the taxi driver in the first commercial we had lined up. After going bust on another actor for the role of the passenger, I called on Rick, an actor friend with whom I had worked on Vanishing Points, who jumped in with both feet! Another meeting, a few more e-mails, and we had set a shoot date!

This past Saturday, June 18, we all met at Sean's house, the location for our spot titled Affordable Therapy, which explores with humor the theme of taxi driver as good listener to a passenger who confides in him. Despite the weatherman's threat of rain, it was a wonderful — if a little muggy — day to shoot a commercial! Through Erica's connections within the taxi company, we borrowed another driver's brand new Scion xB to be our show car.

The 2011 Scion xB we got to use as our picture car.
Photo: Tony Gasbarro

Sean recently bought a Canon 7D DSLR camera with HD video, a camera platform that shows great promise as a filmmaker's camera which puts high-resolution, High Definition video within reach of financially strapped production companies. He's been itching to put it to serious use, and Affordable Therapy is the guinea pig in Sean's very capable hands. The camera offers little flexibility in recording audio, so we had to shoot in a bit of a new old-school way, using a separate digital audio recording, which will be married to the video during the editing process.

The Canon 7D in position. Photo: Tony Gasbarro

Another shot, another angle, here with
the LCD monitor's view in view.
Photo: Sean McMenemy

Erica operates the boom microphone and the digital recorder
while Rick emotes. Photo: Tony Gasbarro

We had a tight script, a self-confident actor and an experienced crew, along with Erica who is new to it all, handling herself quite well as Executive Producer/sound recordist for the day-long shoot in very warm, humid weather.

Sean sets up the shot with Rick in position.
Photo: Tony Gasbarro

Erica rockin' the headphones! Photo: Tony Gasbarro

Actor Rick and me. Photo: Sean McMenemy

When the spot is finished, I will follow up at this site with a link to the YouTube (or other video) site where it will reside.

°

Dogged Again.

2011-05-31T22:42:00.003-05:00

Photo via iPhone4

I don't know. Maybe I could still do a hot dog blog. The Chicagoland Dog Blog? This, by the way, is NOT a Chicago Dog (nor, in their defense there at The Mean Wiener, do they call it such). It's not a poppy seed bun, there's no celery salt, and even though the menu says I get one, there was no pickle. See, I'm all criticky already!

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The Cost of Creativity

2011-05-30T22:05:00.002-05:00

Yet another Sunday came where, while I prepared to go to work, I decided instead to take the day off. It’s one great thing about being self-employed. I don’t want to work today? I don’t work today! Of course, the down side to that is I also don’t get paid today.

The moment called for effort to be made on behalf of breakfast, so I fried up some eggs and nuked some bacon and French-pressed some coffee, and it was wonderful. And then I sat down at the computer, played on Facebook for a while, and I decided that some blogging needed to get done.

And it did.

By then it was time for lunch, and I emptied the last of a bag of Perdue Crispy Chicken Strips, which I highly recommend for flavor only, because, nutritionally, I’m sure they’re crap. As I pulled the bag out of the freezer I also decided to pull out the last of the big, thick, expensive (for my budget) rib steaks I had bought back in January. Those would make great lunch items for the coming week! I set them on paper plates to thaw on top of the stove.

I went back to the computer, played some more on Facebook, and I think I blogged some more. Then I did something I haven’t done in far too long: I uncovered the midi keyboard and plugged it in to the computer, fired up Garage Band, and started messing around.

As I’ve mentioned in this blog in the past, I like to fart around by mainly tickling the keys, and if I hear a sound that’s interesting to me, I’ll explore it. If it takes me anywhere, then I’ll record a track in Garage Band, and keep it for posterity, or better, I’ll get truly inspired and make a grand production of it.

And so it was. I heard it, and I started playing with it, and it began to grow legs! The wonderful, amazing, astonishing thing about a truly creative process, no matter how truly talented you are — and, musically, I ain’t that talented — is how time disappears from your consciousness. I think I’ve babbled about that, here, too — the Flow State.

When you’re in flow, you are completely absorbed in the project at hand. Bodily functions seem suspended, as bathroom urges, muscle stiffness from sitting nearly motionless, and eye fatigue don’t interrupt your effort. And time flies. Quickly! When I pulled out the keyboard, it was around 3:00pm. Doubtful that I would hear anything I liked from my own fingers, I figured I’d play for about an hour, and then go watch one of my Netflix selections. However, when I figured I had reached the peak of my musical ability versus the difficulty of the musical dalliance I had created, I looked at the clock: 10:38. ZOINKS! I never even had dinner!

I had a 4:00am Monday morning pickup, so I had to get to bed! I quickly put away the keyboard, shut down Garage Band, and hit the sack.

Monday morning I was up at 2:30. I showered and shaved, and I saw that I had just enough time for a bowl of cereal before I had to leave. I walked to the kitchen, turned on the light... and I was reminded of my dinner plans of the prior evening, not to mention lunches for the coming week. There on top of the stove sat two formerly beautiful rib steaks, long since thawed, and now mostly dried out, ruined, and a waste of about $15.

Who knew that individual creativity could be so damned expensive?

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Strange Days Indeed

2011-05-29T12:51:00.001-05:00

Some people have noticed that I don't blog much about the taxi job any more. It's not that I don't care to, but more that the customer stories that stood out began not to stand out so much after six or eight or twelve months. Not to mention my heavy involvement in theatrical endeavors, which took their toll on my time to write.

But some interesting things happened over a couple of days last week that I want to share. Put your tissues away; it's nothing like that.

No, wait. I make no guarantee against boredom; you might want to keep them handy.

On Wednesday morning I met with my friends for our weekly get-together that we call "Midwest Media Now!", after which I ran to the taxi office to pick up my check, so my morning was cut short from the taxi. When I got back on the road, I was a little more eager and willing to chase fares that were a little out of my usual range. As soon as I had gotten into my car at the office, I saw on the dispatch computer screen a fare sitting open in Schaumburg. From the office that's just too far away for me to chase, even on this day, so I let it be. But as I got closer to Schaumburg, the fare remained open and unclaimed. When I was about 15 minutes away, I claimed it and was on my way.

As it turned out, it was an elderly woman I had picked up several times before, usually at a Wal-Mart store south of her home, but today she was at the Target store on the corner of Meacham Road and Higgins Road on the east side of Schaumburg.

When I arrived at the store, she politely griped about how long she had waited, but I think she recognized me, so she accepted my apologies and stated her awareness that it wasn't my fault. So I dropped her off at her home, helped her with her bags, and got back in the taxi to book back in on the computer.

As I punched the buttons to tell the dispatch system that I was done with my ride and ready for the next one, I noticed that there was now a fare open in the very zone I was in, so I knew that, unless someone else grabbed it before I could punch the buttons, I would get the fare.

I got it. The pickup? At the Target on the west side of Schaumburg, at the corner of Schaumburg Road and Barrington Road! HAH! Another Target store pickup!

I arrived about 15 minutes later and drove the woman to her home in Streamwood, which wraps around the west and south borders of Schaumburg. She took me west and a little bit north. When I dropped her off and booked back in, I was offered another fare, this time in Hoffman Estates, in a zone that I know is a little further west and north of where I was at that moment. I accepted the fare: Target store, corner of Higgins Road and Illinois route 59!

Three fares in a row, each pick-up at a different Target store, the last of which brought me to just 5 blocks from my home, where I paused for lunch!

Princess
Anyone who has ever read every single one of my blog posts ... [crickets] ... may remember one of my passengers, Ricky, who was the source of an interesting ride. Well, his sister, Susie, factored in another interesting coincidence Thursday evening.

On Thursday mornings I meet with my friend Sean as we try to develop several ideas for short films or web series, and last Thursday was no different. But I also had to take the taxi in for an oil change and to get the air conditioning system recharged, which took about an hour and a half longer than the hour they told me it would take! So, with my entire morning shot to hell, I knew I had to work into the late evening in order to have a chance to make up the time and money.

Around 6:00 in the evening I had a fare which brought me into downtown Arlington Heights, so after I dropped off, I parked at the nearby Metra train station because I knew there would be an outbound from the city coming in about 15 minutes. When I arrived at the train station I was the third taxicab in the line at the curb, and the second in the electronic line behind one of my 303 Taxi colleagues. My chances of getting a passenger here were slim.

After a few minutes I saw a fare open up in zone 279 — which almost always means Woodfield Mall — in Schaumburg. At 6:00pm, due to traffic, that's a 20-minute drive from Arlington Heights. Normally I wouldn't chase this, but almost desperate to at least break even, I seriously considered it. Then I saw her: Susie, the gypsy sister of Ricky, approached the taxi line from the rear. She's no longer petite, as she has gained a considerable amount of weight since the last time I saw her, but I was certain it was her. I feared she would come straight to my taxi, for two reasons: I didn't want to have to deal with passing her to the front taxi, as the next passenger rightly belongs to him; and I really didn't want to take her, because her home is only about a mile away from the train station, a chump change ride during which, as was her usual, she would immediately get on her phone and start arguing with her husband.

To my relief, she walked past me, but we made eye contact. I waved. She went to the front taxi, my 303 colleague, who turned her away. Whether he really had a pre-arranged passenger coming on the next train or not, I'm sure that's what he told her. So Susie moved to the taxi behind him, owned by a friendly, affable Nigerian young man. Assuming that the taxi at the front of the line indeed had a prearranged passenger, I figured there would be slim chance that a second passenger from the train would seek a taxi. I asked for — and received — the fare at Woodfield Mall.

About ¼ of the way to the mall I noticed the Nigerian's taxi behind me. He pulled up next to me at a stop light. I tried to look into his rear seat area, but his tinted windows prevented me from seeing anyone there. Did he take Susie? Did I unwittingly abandon her?

The light changed and I pulled away, ahead of the Nigerian. I started to wonder if maybe my passenger waiting for me at Woodfield Mall had, as some passengers do, called two taxi companies to increase her chances of a taxi actually showing up, and taking the first one to arrive and leaving the second guy sucking wind when he gets there. Did the Nigerian get that order? I turned onto Golf Road. The Nigerian, behind me, turned as well. I reasoned that, had he same fare or not, I had to assume he did. It was a race!

True to form, I chose the wrong lane of traffic and got stuck behind some slow movers, and the Nigerian pulled past me. Ahead of me, he ducked back into my lane and signaled a left turn into the mall parking lot! I found a break in the lane to my right, zipped out from behind the slow cars in front of me, and sped to catch the Nigerian, who turned just in front of a line of oncoming cars, leaving me waiting for them to clear.

On the mall property, I once again caught up to him in a line of cars, but I made another crucial mistake. In order to get to the pickup point, outside the "fountain" entrance to Macy's, I needed to make a right turn onto the mall's Perimeter Road. I was in the left lane. The Nigerian was in the right, at the head of a long line of cars. DAMN HIM! He pulled away in the proper direction. I was forced to turn left and then quickly right into the parking lanes, and then double back across to get to the access lane to the Macy's entrance. And there sat the Nigerian, blocking my access to the pick-up/drop-off lane. And then his driver's side rear door opened up, and out came Susie!

How odd that she was headed not home, but to the very spot that my order wanted to be picked up! I waved meekly at her when she again made eye contact with me as she rounded the Nigerian's taxi to the rear and headed to the Macy's entrance, where my fare was waiting faithfully for me to take her to her home.

Just after 9:00 I was still out. The evening had been stingy, and I was just a few dollars under the break-even point for my Thursday. I was in southwest Schaumburg and had just decided to throw in the towel. I had started to pack up my laptop when two fares opened up in zone 279. At that hour the distance to the mall was not an issue, and meant about a 15-minute drive (Schaumburg is quite a sprawling suburb!). On the way there, the other zone 279 fare disappeared from the computer screen, claimed by a driver, and within five minutes of that, another open fare in zone 279 popped up.

I arrived at The Cheesecake Factory as requested by the passenger, but after the five minutes required minimum wait, no passenger had shown up. I requested a "no show" with the dispatcher and waited, nervously eyeing the zone 279 fare that was still open. If no one grabbed it while I waited, I would still get a fare out of this trip to the mall!

The "no show" was granted, and I quickly booked back in to the system. I was instantly offered the fare in 279: Woodfield Mall, Entrance near Stir Crazy restaurant. Susie. HAH! What are the odds?

I went around to Stir Crazy and within a few minutes she was in my taxi and immediately on her phone, arguing with her husband.

Sometimes life is indeed truly strange.

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Chicago Dogged

2011-05-28T16:33:00.007-05:00

Lately I've been sampling this area's offerings of the "Chicago Dog” — or rather, the Chicago-style hot dog.

Back when I was a kid — as kids are wont to do — I hated just about everything food related that wasn't done my way. And back then, a hot dog was to be served to me on a bun or nestled in a rolled up slice of white bread, and slathered in ketchup and mustard. Nothing else! I remember going somewhere with a relative, probably one of my sisters, and along the way she asked me, “Wanna get a hot dog?” Also as kids are wont to do, I was always ready for restaurant food!

“Hell yes!” Of course, had I answered her like that, I would have had my mouth washed out with soap. But you get the idea.

So we pulled in to the parking lot of a small roadside stand in Steger, Illinois. I’m pretty sure this was a small chain that existed only in the Chicago area, and perhaps only in the Chicago south suburbs, and I’m not sure exists today at all. It was Bozo Hot Dogs and, despite its Chicago connection, it had nothing to do with the Bozo the Clown television franchise. I don’t recall the chain of events, but I imagine that I was asked if I wanted everything on it and, to my sheltered mind, “everything” meant everything on it I liked, which was ketchup and mustard. Nothing else!

To my utter disgust and disappointment, I got this heaping pile of vegetables on top of a bun. I couldn’t even see the hot dog! But what I didn’t realize was that I had been handed a classic.

The quintessential Chicago Dog is a steamed — not grilled, not boiled — kosher beef frankfurter on a poppy-seed bun, topped with yellow mustard, chopped raw white onions, neon-green sweet pickle relish (sometimes called “picalilli”), a dill pickle spear, tomato slices, sport peppers and a dash of celery salt. A Chicago Dog purist will gouge out your eyes at your mere suggestion of putting ketchup on your Dog. (I don’t understand it, either.)

I vaguely remember digging the frankfurter out of that garden mess and just eating that — the bun’s flavor was "ruined" by all those juices from the tomato and the pickles...and those poppy seeds! And I remember being scolded for all the wasted food.

Until very recently, I still hadn’t cared too much for The Chicago Dog, mainly because it seemed to be so much to put in a bun. But I was in a hot dog mood one day a few weeks back, and I decided to get one “dragged through the garden.” While I don’t consider The Chicago Dog to be anything special, a classic is a classic, and I, as I am wont to do these days, decided to take the “appreciation” approach: rather than concern myself with all that stuff on it, why not take it in and experience the flavor that a Chicago Dog is intended to impart?

Again, while I consider it to be nothing special, it was pretty tasty, albeit quite a handful. A few days later I realized I hadn’t shaken my hot dog jones, so I tried another Chicago Dog at a different place. Its presentation was different than the first, and certainly less fantastic than the one I remember from Bozo Hot Dog. And that reminds me... the first dog I tried didn’t have tomatoes on it. Neither did the next one.

Some weeks later I tried another one. Though I ordered a Chicago Dog, what I got was a frankfurter on a bun with no poppy seeds, relish, mustard, pickle spear, no peppers (but I ordered it that way), and no celery salt that I could discern.

More recently I attended a Chicago Cubs baseball game. After a few innings we went on a nosh run and came to a concession stand that sold "Chicago Dogs." It came with nothing. Just a frank on a bun, with some chopped onions sprinkled on it. The condiments station only offered ketchup and yellow mustard, and little individual blister packs of regular sweet relish.

And that sparked an idea. I would start a blog that would chart my sampling of as many Chicago Dogs I could find, reviewing each on its merits as well as the establishment where I purchased it. There would be photos of each dog and its culinary environs, and a shot of the restaurant exterior. I would schmooze with the management of each establishment and build a rapport, and perhaps have a hand in the improvement of The Chicago Dog across all of Chicagoland, and I would call it The Chicago Dog Blog!

But somebody already beat me to it.

But HEY! It’s a blog about places to take your pet dog! I could just call it something else! I could still inform all of Chicagoland about where to find the best Chicago Dog anywhere!

But, no.

I guess I’ll just stick to inane chatter about long-shot hopes and failed dreams.

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Bums Rush Aftermath

2011-05-28T15:32:00.009-05:00

The photographer who took our production shots made up
posters to be put up around the school. The official posters
had a black & white photo of four or five of the cast,
myself included, with the rest of the informational copy you
see here. Then he offered to make individual souvenir posters
for each of the cast memebers, and used my image
as an example. Pretty cool, no?

Back in high school I was heavily involved in theatre. I was more of a techie, then, about equal to the actor I was also, until I realized that I knew nothing about any real tech stuff, and what I did know I wasn’t really any good at. But no matter how I served on a show, the constant with each one was the withdrawal I experienced when it was over.

I’m sure it doesn’t matter which field you may be in; put together a group of people, each with a different task in an effort toward one important — at least to the group — goal, and a kinship will form. Hours each day, together, constantly honing the project from its tangled beginnings into the well-executed show/product/process/whatever you want it to be.

And then you’re done.

I remember weeks of boredom as a teenager, home on the regular school bus instead of the late activities bus; hours yet until dinner instead of a cold plate waiting for me when I got home; unfamiliar TV shows getting in the way between me and the shows I wanted to watch, all after a play — it mattered not whether it was a full length play, or a one-act, or a musical — had seen its final curtain.

And this past season, having jumped into theatre with both feet once again, doing three shows back-to-back in a span of six months, I expected that same withdrawal.

Perhaps it was an effect of being part of three different casts, or of three divergent shows; perhaps it was the effect of being exhausted after half a year of 12- to 14-hour taxi shifts followed by three- to four-hour rehearsals followed by three-hour nights of sleep, but when we took our final bows for Bleacher Bums, I experienced none of the dread of the quiet hours ahead of me. I was ready for a break!

And I thought it would eventually find me. I even scribbled some notes down, a muscle-memory exercise in post-show withdrawal, ready to convey my feelings of loneliness, of anxiety, of loss in my next far·ra·go post. But they never came.

Instead, I’ve been busier than ever in the taxi (nothing over which to get excited...my records show that May of last year boomed, too, just in time for June to bust), even stretching my days to 15 and 16 hours sometimes to squeeze in one more fare. I’ve been working through my Netflix queue. I’ve been taking in plays that some of my friends are in. In the evening the day this post was first drafted (I'm blogging again!!), I went out to see not one, but two bands that friends are playing in, at two different bars!

I have my life back!

But don’t get the wrong idea from the prior sentence. I thoroughly enjoy acting, and thoroughly enjoyed the plays I was involved with since September of 2010. This is just a clear indication that I need to find the niche into which to fall that gets me paid to perform, and paid enough that I can spend my days eating, sleeping, watching movies and interacting with friends and family between the hours spent working under the lights.

The same goes alternately for writing. And for freelance video work.

Perchance to dream.

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Family Tragedy

2011-05-22T20:37:00.004-05:00

It was a poignant moment in the flash of a few seconds as I drove on Golf Road in Rolling Meadows during rush hour Friday. A family of Canada geese not unlike the one pictured here had apparently just crossed the road. Golf Road in that area is a stretch of four-lane, divided highway with a speed limit of 45mph past an office park on one side and a forest preserve on the other.

The drama unfolded in the seconds it took me to approach and pass the geese. One of the babies had straggled or perhaps struggled at the curb and was run over by a passing car. The rest of the family was standing in the grass next to the curb. A couple of the babies stood at the edge and looked at the suddenly flattened corpse of their sibling. One adult goose pressed onward in the direction away from the road, with some of the goslings in tow. The other adult looked at the dead bird on the pavement with a sort of bewildered thrust of its head toward the flattened, lifeless form.

I didn't witness the death of the baby bird, but only this aftermath and, as I mentioned, in only a few seconds. But those few seconds are burned into my soul for the moment, and the sadness I felt for that adult goose — most likely the mother — as she looked on helplessly at one less chick in her brood.

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A Big Little Mistree

2011-05-11T19:51:00.000-05:00

Among the last of my remaining readers, does either of you know what kind of tree this is?

In the past three days I've had about five people ask me what kind of tree it is. WTF possesses them of the thought that I might know?! ... I guess it's the same thought that possesses me that you might know.

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Free Ticket

2011-05-09T19:30:00.013-05:00

A few weeks ago I received a request from the lady at the taxi company who coordinates the school driver service to pick up a kid. A good number of taxi drivers make their hay solely by driving kids to school in the morning and back home again in the afternoon as part of the service which is in place to help the schools get behaviorally challenged kids, or kids with other developmental challenges to school.

I picked up Belinda and drove her to a certain school in Schaumburg, Illinois. I had never been to this school before, so I needed to load its address into my GPS in order to find it. The GPS had me approach from the north and indicated to me that the school would be on my left. And it was. As soon as I saw the school, I began looking for the driveway entrance so I could pull in and drop her off at the curb near a door.

When I arrived at the entrance to the parking lot, I was confronted with two signs bracketing the entrance:

Click on any photo to biggysize it.

Stuck for what to do next, I sat for a moment. Then a large box truck came lumbering out of the parking lot and signaled the driver's intention to make a left turn onto the street I was on. As I was blocking his exit, and the passage of anyone who may have been behind me, I pulled over to the right. I had passed a crossing guard and a policeman who were standing beside the driveway, and I hoped to ask the policeman where I was supposed to drop off this special needs child. But, luckily for me, the policeman approached my car — and proceeded to write a ticket.

"You can't stop here." he said tersely.

I said, "I'm sorry. I was just trying--"

"I know you're sorry," he said, cutting me off, as he continued to take down my vehicle information.

He came around to the side of the car and noticed the girl in the back seat. "How old is she?"

"How the fuck would I know how old she is?!" It's what I wanted to say. My real answer was, "I don't know. I'm helping out the dispatcher by taking her here. I'm supposed to drop her at a door, but if I can't go in the parking lot, I don't know where I'm supposed to drop her off."

"You have to drop her outside the no stopping zone." He pointed ahead, and there I saw a sign made tiny by its distance from where I was illegally stopped.

"I can't just drop her off at the curb," I said. "I have to make sure she gets inside."

Then the cop showed some compassion. "I can take her in. I'm not a sworn officer. If I was a sworn officer I could cut you a break, but I can't cut you a break because I'm not a sworn officer."

Okay. I get it.

He handed me my ticket and took the frightened little girl by the hand and walked her to the school...I think. I never watched where he took her.

I fumed. I drove straight to the police station to dispute the citation, but when I got there I was told the hearing officer had just held hearings the night before, and then next hearing date was three weeks away. On May 9th. Today.

I drove back to the school and, parking outside the "No Parking, Stopping, Standing" zone, I pulled out my camera, handy for me since I've been doing Phlog, and captured the neat little trap the village of Schaumburg has set up at this particular school.

SIGNS
There are signs clearly marking the "No Parking, Stopping, Standing" zone. But they're on tall posts with a lot of inch-tall lettering on a foot-tall board that, at a distance of more than a few feet, you have to slow down just to read. And if you're trying to find the school using your GPS, and it tells you that the school is on the left side as you approach, and you're looking for the entrance to the parking lot, you're not going to see a stupid little sign to your right on a tall post with a foot-tall board with inch-high letters telling you that you can't stop in the zone.

Aside from the signs at the parking lot entrance, there's no indication of the restriction on using the parking lot to drop off or pick up children. If it's the first time you've ever come to the school, you don't know of the restriction until you're at the driveway, preparing to turn left, and then you're already stopped — INSIDE the "No Parking, Stopping, Standing" zone you don't even know you're in — while you read the signs telling you that you can't drop off kids in the parking lot.

And then, while you're stressed with a kid you have no place to drop off and a box truck waiting to get out through the entrance you're blocking, the next sign marking the other boundary of the "No Parking, Stopping, Standing" zone is far away beyond the capacity of your eyes to make out those tiny fucking letters!

Note the sign approximately 30
yards further away that you can
read clearly in comparison
to the one marking the zone
restriction in the foreground.

And that's what I told the hearing officer today, only without the profanity. Or the attitude. I gave him copies of the photos. He gave me "benefit of the doubt," and let me out of the ticket. The $40 stayed in my pocket!

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Reawakening

2011-05-08T16:15:00.002-05:00

The silence is shattered by a loud thump, a squeaky grinding of small metal gears. Hinges creak, and a needle of light pierces the darkness. Gossamer veils of dust disturbed by the currents of air rent by the swinging door swirl and dance in the light as it swings by in lazy swaths.

Footsteps further invade, reducing the silence to momentary pauses between movements, between breaths of noise. Tentative, searching, the footsteps and the swinging shaft of light work in tandem. The illuminating beam alternates between sweeping arcs and focused aim as the eyes of its holder find things of interest in its gaze.

"Here we go," a lone, lonely voice mutters, its vibrations muted by the darkness and dust. "This could be it."

The brilliant shaft lands upon a jumbled pile of words. Footsteps become determined as the intruder focuses his attention on the words.

"Uh huh!" he mutters. He trains the light on trove he has found.

The words make no sense as they are. It is just a pile of words — thoughts, mostly; unrelated ideas brought up by circumstance, by meditation, or by random chance, but left here in hopes of being used some day, if their father ever returned.

The light reflects brightly off of something at the bottom of the pile. The holder of the light trains his tool and his eyes on the glinting thing: the edge of a tray or some other sort of receptacle. A hand gently pushes the words to one side revealing a set of dust-covered letters set in place by time, by some long-forgotten promise to give these few letters meaning, to give them audience.

"YES!" the voice pants, certainty resonating. A hand reaches down. Fingers touch tentatively the dust-covered letters. Then, with the reverence of a seasoned archaeologist, the hand brushes the dust from the letters and reveals them to the light, to his eyes:

FARRAGO!

Jubilation erupts from his vocal chords. At last, at LAST!

Without warning, the room is suddenly awash with a light without source, as though this discovery had awakened Light and now Light was aware its father had returned. He takes in his surroundings. What he had remembered as a tiny closet with a few interesting artifacts is in reality a vast, cavernous warehouse full of information, of intense thought, of wild imaginings, of whim, whimsy, passion and pain, and he knows that it is his renewed task to share as much of this information as he can with the world.

"Well," he says to himself. "Time to get to work... but maybe a nap first."

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Italic

2011-01-17T13:46:00.003-06:00

When you boil it all down, I guess I’m a pretty poor excuse for an Italian. I’m only half-Italian, really, as my mother was a Euro-mutt: half German, and the other half English and Irish. The ethnicity we most identified with as a family was Italian, though, and as I look at and listen to the other Italian “kids” I know, my life was comparatively devoid of Italian customs and traditions.

I think I know the reason for this. When my father’s parents came over from Italy — on their respective boats, and about fifteen years apart by my best guess — Italians were the “dirty” immigrants washing ashore in waves and glutting the job lines, relegated to the filthiest, least glamorous, lowest-paying jobs to be had, just so they could feed their families and establish a foothold in their new world.

And I think that sensitivity was bred into my father and his siblings, because to a person, none of my uncles or my aunt seemed to be very “Italian.” I believe they each — either by instruction, or by their own initiative — abandoned their Italian identities and clung to everything “American” that they could grab. They spoke English to each other, though they all could speak in their parents’ Abruzzese dialect. They cast off most of the old customs and traditions. They adopted the American versions of their Italian names — well... all except for Uncle Guido — Maria was Mary; Giovanni was John; Francesco was Frank; there was the stalwart Guido; Remo was Ray; Giuseppe was Joe, though everyone has called him Chooch forever. My father is the mystery. The handwritten name on his birth certificate is indecipherable. It’s either Vincurzio or Vincurzino, but certainly not Vincenzo, though he was James Vincent — Jimmy to his friends and family — all his life.

Throughout my life, our “Italian-ness” was more of a distant background than a foundation. Just about the only things Italian that my family honored was that we were all baptized and raised Roman Catholic, and Italian food. At the holidays. Only. Made by my non-Italian mother!

Most of the other Italian customs and traditions I knew of were what I heard from other Italian kids at school and around the neighborhood, the right-off-the-boat (plane, really, I guess) Italian family that lived across the street and a few doors down from us and Italians whose homes I visited with my father when he dragged me along on his handyman or traveling barber errands.

There was always a smell in these homes, an aroma not of cooking, but yet the suggestion of food. I never smelled this aroma in my own home, but it seemed so pervasive to me in these other Italian homes that I identified it as the “Italian smell.”

I smelled it again today when I picked up an elderly couple in my taxi. The gentleman apparently wasn’t feeling too well, and they were on their way to the emergency room at the local hospital. The moment their garage door opened (yes, the garage), that aroma reached my nose before the sound of the woman’s voice reached my ears, and even had I not already seen their name on the dispatch order, I could have told you their ethnicity.

That aroma — which now as an adult I can identify — is anise. The couple’s name? Mattiuzzi.

With that first breath, I was once again briefly in every Italian home I have ever visited since I was a kid.

But not my own.

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Karmagical

2011-01-16T12:00:00.008-06:00

Lately I have been working straight days. Well, "day" is a relative term, as I still start at 3:30 a.m. — in darkness — and quit around 6:00 p.m. — in darkness. I still work just about every day, so, lately, on Saturdays I "sleep in" until 5:00 a.m. or so, and plan usually to work until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m.

It was a pretty sleepy Saturday morning — yesterday — as I headed out to Arlington Heights, my usual cruising grounds in the taxi. It was seven o'clock. I had just started; the cabin of the car was still cold. A zone number popped up on the dispatch computer screen indicating an open fare. It was still a good ten minutes away from me, so I left it alone, but it stayed up there. Indeed, a sleepy morning...no other taxis out yet, or they all worked overnight. So I claimed the fare.

It was just an address, with the message "church, PU main entrance." When I arrived it became clear that the church was also a part-time homeless shelter, which, I learned moments later, provides a hot evening meal, a warm place to sleep and a simple breakfast to those it shelters from the cold.

I had picked up the guy about six to eight weeks before from another church in the area. He looks to be about mid-forties to mid-fifties — the gruff, weathered skin of his face makes it difficult to judge — white, with longish, straggly hair and a light, scruffy beard, and somewhat portly, though it could just be layer upon layer of clothing to keep him warm. What had struck me then was that he wore on his feet a pair of open shoes — open like sandals, but in a shoe shape with a mouth that snugged around his ankles — over white socks. He wore the same shoes Saturday. He loaded a couple of plastic shopping bags into the trunk of my taxi, along with his backpack. He directed me to the Mt. Prospect train station, and along the way I asked him if the shelter fed him. He spoke appreciatively of the hot meal they provided the night before. I asked him about breakfast, and he said that sometimes they provide a hot meal, but it's usually bagels and pastries and coffee and juice. So I made up my mind.

When we arrived at the train station he reached into his pocket to pay the $6.00 fare. I turned to him and said, "Keep it."

Before I could say more, he looked at me with a startled expression. "Huh?"

"Keep it," I said. "Make sure you get something to eat today."

He was very grateful, repeating several times, "Thank you very much!" As he began securing his plastic bags to his bicycle, which he had left locked up at the train station, he said to me, "Thank you very much! Have a good day!"

It seemed an odd thing to say to me as, I thought, there's little that could happen to me that would make the coming day worse than the one coming to you, sir, as you tool around on your bicycle looking for places to stay warm — and alive. The thought came out of my mouth as, "You have a good day!"

And I went on about my business.

It was very quiet the rest of the morning, but then things started to pick up around eleven o'clock. By one o'clock in the afternoon it was pretty much non-stop, with very little time to nap, or play on Facebook at the newly-discovered (by me) WiFi hotspot from the Holiday Inn Express across Arlington Heights Road from one of our posts.

By four o'clock, I was contemplating calling it a day, as, for a Saturday day shift I hadn't done too badly. But I chastised myself for being lazy, and decided to stick it out for at least the twelve hours I planned to work.

A couple of fares later it was around six o'clock in the evening. Usually, when I set a quitting time, I'll start about an hour before that time, working my way west, toward my gas station of choice, near my home, with the dispatch computer still available to receive fares. I call it "trolling," as though I'm a fishing boat moving while dragging a line in the water for whatever I can catch. At 6:15, when I was about five minutes from the gas station (where I would have then booked out of the dispatch system), I received a fare to pick up not five minutes from my location, but to the south.

I picked up a guy who looked to be in his fifties, but with long hair and a kind of stoner look about him — and he reeked of reefer smoke. He had me take him to a 7-Eleven store about a mile and a half from his house where he picked up a couple bottles of wine, and then had me take him back home.

On the way back to his house I saw on the dispatch computer a fare open up in the zone where I live. I figured it was probably a local, and that would be just fine. I was ready to go home. As we approached the guy's home I notified via the dispatch computer that I was just about to clear a fare, and that I would like to take that open fare.

As soon as I dropped the stoner dude off and booked back in to the dispatch system, my computer sounded with the fare I had requested, and I accepted it. But it was not a local. It was to take 4 people from Hoffman Estates to Northbrook! Twenty-two miles!

It was a Polish family heading to some party — probably a wedding reception — and they were very nice. Not great tippers, but, what the hell! The fare came out to $62.20! The dad paid with a credit card, and told me to make the total out to $65, but I goofed on the math and the card was run for $66. I pointed out my mistake and offered to give him a dollar back out of my pocket, but he said, "No. Iss okay!" and signed the slip. My day went from a respectable gross of $168 to a quite admirable $234!

It didn't occur to me until I was all the way back home and getting gas that I had started the day by giving away a paltry six dollars to a guy I figured needed to keep it in his pocket way more than I needed to get it into mine. I had taken the last fare on a whim because it was close to home; I was otherwise just headed home.

In telling others about this, I jokingly mentioned Karma, but I don't really believe in that. Another quoted scripture to me in an attempt to explain it, but if you've read here long enough, you know I don't believe that. I could use the $6 charity/$66 fare - 666 correlation to undo her explanation — and perhaps frighten her, but I don't believe that either!

It's just a coincidence, and the rare occurrence of a Good Day for Tony!

°

Phlog — NEW, from the makers of far·ra·go

2011-01-01T15:12:00.002-06:00

It's a new project. I'd tell you about it here, but I want you to go here.

Please.

Thanks.

Where the Love-light Gleams

2010-12-24T19:46:00.003-06:00

I'll be home for Christmas;
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree.

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love-light gleams.
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.

As I have averred many times in this and other public spaces, I am atheist, but I was baptized and raised Catholic. Though I no longer care for the "reason" for the season, I have a whole childhood's worth of Christmas memories and that magical feeling brought on by the belief that a jolly, fat, bearded man in a bright red suit was going to come down our chimney — and somehow extract himself from our furnace — and spray toys all around our living room without making the slightest of sounds. As I grew older and came to my understanding of things, Christmas became, for me, all about our family being together, feasting on things we feasted on only at that time of year, and everyone staying over and awake until the wee hours, talking, snacking, joking, and playing.

At age 19 I spent my first Christmas in the United States Air Force, my first Christmas Eve away from home. I was in the third week of basic training. It was the worst night of my life to that point, and the special, "holiday liberty" call home certainly didn't make anything better.

It wasn't until much more recently — since our nation sent troops to the Middle East to fight the difficult wars of my generation — that the weight of the words to the song above hit me fully.

It takes knowing of the time that the song was originally written for one to understand why it was written, as it is told from the point of view of a soldier fighting overseas in World War II, and longing to be home among everything and everyone that made Christmas memories. At first it sounds like a promise, but we then realize it's only an ironic, lonesome, heart-felt, homesick wish. I can only imagine the tears the song evoked in the 1940s, in soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and their families back home.

It was years ago that I suddenly understood the meaning of the song, that I realized I had lived it in my own way. Now when I hear it played, I can feel the heartache of every military member, every military mom and dad and younger sibling, every child or parent far-removed from family, from home, for any reason.

Then that final line brings to me the sad reality of circumstance. And to tears.

Merry Christmas, everyone, whatever those words mean to you. May you be with everyone you wish to be with, no dreaming necessary.

°

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Ten

2010-10-31T23:59:00.003-05:00

Well, morning arrived on the day I had come to dread. I wasn’t ready to leave England, yet. I was ready for another two weeks.

Mark fixed a light breakfast and then headed out to pick up Sue from Holly’s, leaving me alone to start packing.

When I finished packing and lugged my bags down to the bottom of the stairs, I went into the living room and found Mark and Sue in front of the telly watching game 3 of the World Series!! Though the game wasn’t being broadcast live, it was a current broadcast of a recorded game! Very quickly I sat down and answered Mark’s questions for the lesson that had been denied us earlier in the week by the fluky television schedule!

All too soon, however, it was time to go. Mark helped me load my bags into the Defender, and after a long hug with Sue, we were off to London.

The ride was no different. We talked the whole way. We arrived at Heathrow too soon for our liking, and were suddenly muttering our reluctant farewells. The visit had turned out to be much more fun than I had anticipated, and I had anticipated a great, wonderful time. And now it was at its end. I did my part to keep the good-bye brief, as I’m sure I would have been in tears before much longer. I already missed those old Limeys!

The flight was on time and, after the usual hassles of air travel before ever getting on the plane, I was on the plane and heading west. One final joy of the trip was encountering the elderly(!) male flight attendant whose name on his food service smock read “Benjamin A. Dover.”

Yes, I met a real, living Ben Dover!!

I returned home much later that evening to the quiet dread of my empty, post-vacation apartment, with only memories, continued correspondences and Skype calls with Mark — and now this journal — to keep the trip alive.

It sucks to be back.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Nine

2010-10-30T23:59:00.003-05:00

Surprisingly, after the good buzz I had the night before at the Man of Ross, I felt quite well when I woke up. I hopped in the shower, got dressed, and headed downstairs where Colin and Mark were already preparing the traditional English breakfast for all of us...minus the black pudding, because Colin assumed I wouldn’t like it!

We ate up, and then we all headed down across the estate to the bank of the river. It was a pleasant walk on a beautiful, sunny morning, past a horse stable, across a lush pasture with sheep in the distance, down a rutted cart path to another meadow beside the river.

It was the walk back up that was the killer! SHEESH!

After another coffee(?) we piled into the Defender and headed to a place called Symonds Yat, a gelological formation where the river Wye, over the eons, has cut a gorge out of a hillside and created a breathtaking view of the valley below. We met an ornithology buff who appealed to both Colin and me for different reasons. Colin, an ornithology buff himself, was intrigued by this man’s — his name was Tony, by the way — interest; I was interested in talking to Tony because he was using a Canon XL-H1 HD video camera with a Canon 28-300mm zoom lens to record nesting falcons on the craggy rock wall about a half-mile away!

We stopped for a drink of water at the kiosk there, and then back into the Defender to return to Colin’s place. Once there, we had to say good-bye to Stu, who was eager to return to Bristol and, I recall, a meeting with another friend.

Very soon after, Mark and I also said our good-byes to Colin, as he was expecting another overnight guest — a birdwatching friend — very shortly.

More driving and more chatting got us home in what seemed like no time.

I don’t remember dinner that evening, though I’m sure we ate something. Then it was time for some more wine, telly and chat. Sue was still off at Holly’s, so Mark and I had the telly, the wine, and the stash of movies all to ourselves. It became somewhat of a movie marathon. I had never seen Bowfinger, so we watched that. It was as quirky as I thought any film written by Steve Martin would be. And just as clever! Then I indulged Mark by letting him expose me to Withnail & I a very British film about two out of work actors who “escape” London for a few days in the countryside. Next was About a Boy, a cute movie starring Hugh Grant as, guess what... a charming ladies’ man ...who hits on a great idea for picking up chicks: tell them he’s a single father. Awkward hilarity ensues.

Just when we both thought we were finished, I mentioned to Mark that I thought one of the co-stars of Withnail & I had appeared in The Max Headroom Story back in the 1980s. Though he remembered Max Headroom, he had never known of a film about the “origins” of Max Headroom. Strictly only to find the actor I thought was in the movie, I found it on YouTube in four parts. Mark was thoroughly intrigued, and we wound up watching the whole thing! OOF! Was I tired! And the actor wasn't the same guy! As I was leaving the next day, we just didn’t want to stop. But fatigue won out, and we retired.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Eight

2010-10-29T23:59:00.002-05:00

In the morning, after breakfast, Mark and I loaded Tom and Mia into the Defender and headed for the (name?) Reservoir. It’s a big, somewhat oval hole in the ground surrounded by green pastures and sparse woodlands. Mark told me it was dug by hand in Victorian times, and has been used as a reservoir ever since. Anyhoo, it was a nice, leisurely walk of about an hour, though the temperature and wind combined for a bit of nip on my nose. At one point along the walk, Tom’s attention was riveted on... nothing in particular off to one side. Mark explained that on one past walk around the reservoir a couple years ago, Tom had spotted a rabbit scampering along down there, and every time since then, when they reach this spot, Tom looks for that rabbit! Dogs amaze me sometimes.

We returned to the homestead and readied ourselves for our overnight at Colin’s in Ross-On-Wye, about an hour’s drive to the southwest(?). We were both just a little nervous about meeting our mutual blogger friend, Stuart Goodall, the Ultra Toast Mosha God, with whom we had arranged to meet, finally, during my visit.

Before heading Ross-ward in earnest, we stopped at a Tesco supermarket to get a few things. I bought a jar of Picalilli and some Yorkie chocolate bars. Mark hit the ATM, and bought a few items, such as zip-close plastic bags (for my Picalilli). It was kinda fun to browse a bit and see all the different items in an English supermarket, and to notice which things were the same as in the States, which were different, and which things were entirely unheard of at home.

As had become our usual, along the route Mark and I found no topic that wasn’t worth gabbing along about until our throats were raw, and before we knew it, we were descending into the Wye valley.

Mark had received a text from Colin during the drive, advising us that he was heading off to the grocery for a few items, and what time he expected to return. When we arrived in Ross, we had about a half-hour to kill, so Mark decided to give me a tour of the area.

Ross is on the river Wye, and as such is a picturesque little town in a picturesque valley area. Mark turned down a narrow lane that, had I been on my own, I would have avoided for the assumption that it was a private road. Mark assured me that it is not private. There’s no telling how old these lanes are, as they are between ancient hedgerows that border all the farmland. The earthen part of the hedgerows rise up to almost the rooftop level of the Defender, and the dense foliage tops off a good two to three feet above, creating the perception that I was riding through a tunnel. Each road has a series of lay-bys to be used when two vehicles approach each other; one would have to pull into the lay-by in order to allow the other to pass. That’s how narrow these lanes are! Soon it was time to get to Colin’s, but Mark, having as much fun driving these lanes as I had riding, was now unsure, exactly, where we were, and more unsure of how to get us back. Then the lane we were on suddenly went private, as indicated by a couple of small signs.

The river Wye. I didn't have time to turn off the damn flash,
or get out of the Defender. But you get the idea.

The sun was getting low in the sky, presenting us with great blasts of orange and red in the western sky, but it also meant we were running out of daylight. Mark turned the unwieldy Defender around in an impressive 8-point turn on a sloping three-way intersection, and he backtracked his way out of there.

Very soon we were pulling in to Colin’s cottage complex. He lives in a former resort estate, renting a very cozy, little, two-bedroom terrace cottage. No sooner had he made me a cup of coffee and they had left me to watch Band of Brothers on DVD in the living room while they made some tea, than Stuart arrived from Bristol, about an hour’s drive further southwest(?).
For some reason, I had more confidence than Mark did that we should get along well with Stu, though I had room left in my conscience for doubt. But as soon as he walked into Colin’s cottage and we all exchanged handshakes and hellos, I was comfortable and at ease with him. Stu seemed quite at ease, too. Later, Mark and Colin confessed the same ease upon the meeting.

We chatted briefly while Colin fixed Stu a cup of (I believe) tea, and while Stu sipped his, and I finished my coffee. Then we piled into a taxi and headed into Ross proper and to the Man of Ross.

I came to understand the role of the pub while in England. Where I originally thought of it as strictly a tavern, it is most indeed not. Yes, a pub serves libations, and people frequent it to meet with friends, or for a date, but it seems many married couples stop in for a pint and to catch up on the doings of their friends. It is truly a family place, usually with a full menu available, and it’s a nice evening out. Unlike a tavern or bar, a pub actually closes somewhat early, around 11:00pm or midnight.

And so did the Man of Ross. Colin, Mark, Stu, and I took a table amid a good crowd in the rather small dining room, and Mark took our drink and dinner orders to the bar. We each partook of a pint of (Doom?) while we waited for our food to arrive. I ordered the sirloin steak from the specials menu, and I was chagrined to learn that the others all ordered the salmon. That meant only one thing: no matter how good my steak might be, I would regret not ordering the salmon.

We had a great conversation, with Stu now adding to the mix. As the youngest of our bunch, but probably the most well-traveled — or at least the most exotically traveled — Stu provided fascinating insight to our talk. He’s also a drinker to match the stamina of Mark and Colin, so they felt more at ease while they outpaced me 2 to 1!

Our food came, and where I hadn’t been sure which of the side dishes — peas, steamed mushrooms, onion rings, and chips or baked potato — listed on the specials board came with it when I placed my order, I was shocked to find that it came with all of them, and the choice of potato (I think I got the chips)! The boys got their salmon and, though it was very good, and prepared the way I prepare it, with the skin still on, and despite my embarrassment at how much food was on my plate (I looked such the American!!), I was not sorry I didn’t order the salmon. Mark let me taste his, and it was very good. But my steak, despite it being a sirloin, was very tender and tasty!

After we finished our meals, we retired to the drinkin’ side of the pub, near the bar. I bought the next round for my second pint to their third. We talked about British and American television shows, and the absurdity of censorship in the free society of the United States of America. Stu answered the challenge of a fairly attractive woman (who was there with her man) to attempt to pick up a folded (card?) from the floor without using his hands or touching the floor with anything but his feet. He came oh-so-close, but could not do it. I didn’t even imagine I could try. The woman then demonstrated, to the delight of every man in the place who had the rear view, that she could meet her own challenge!

Someone bought a round of whiskys (Jameson’s?), and I was feeling a little buzzy. Mark and I, having often discussed the sitting before a roaring fire somewhere with a glass of single malt and a cigar each and setting the world to rights, got no closer to the idyll than the Man of Ross, two fingers of Irish whisky, and these teeny, tiny little cigarillos that we had to smoke outside, because the Man of Ross is a smoke-free pub!

Someone bought a second round of whiskys, and I was feeling mighty fine. But then the proprietor of the Man of Ross started shooing people out, as he was trying to close the place. I was sort of hoping for a lock-in, which Mark had described to me at some point during the earlier days of the visit, but it did not appear to be imminent. So a taxi was called, we returned to Colin’s, had a coffee and a little more chatting, and then to bed.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Seven

2010-10-28T23:59:00.002-05:00

Sue works on Thursdays, so Mark was up with her, and to walk the dogs, and I slept in. It was planned to be a lazy day, as we were really just waiting until evening for Sue to get out of work, at which point we were all going to dinner at Las Iguanas, a “Latin American” restaurant in city centre.

When I woke up Mark made us some breakfast, which, I do believe, was what he called Gypsy Toast: slices of bread dipped in egg and pan fried, and then served with cheddar(?) cheese sandwiched between two slices of the egg-fried bread, and covered with HP brown sauce. It was very savory tasty goodness. The English — or at least mark and Sue — don’t care for sweet things in/on their bread. As Mark dipped the bread in the egg goo, I asked him it he was making what we Americans call French toast. He said that he was not, that he knows what French toast is, and that it’s not very popular in the UK. And I don’t know if there is an abundance of maple syrup in the UK, for that matter...though most of what we call maple syrup here is actually high fructose corn syrup with maple flavoring and artificial color. But I digress.

After breakfast it was my turn to teach Mark about an American pastime. We sat in front of the telly, and he maneuvered through his DVR's on-screen menus to get to the World Series game he had recorded a couple nights earlier on one of the sports channels he gets through his cable service...only, when he started it up, there was no game. Instead, the channel that listed the game in the schedule had run a highlights program about the 2006(?) World Series. Poor instructional value, that, so we fell back and punted to the American football game he had also recorded earlier in the week! To my surprise, it was an edited version of the game, where most of the stopped clock activity, and even some of the kickoffs(!), were omitted in order, it seems, to keep the action moving.

It was a challenging, fun experience trying to teach someone the game; the concept of “the downs” is really tough to one who hasn’t grown up playing and watching the game, and I think I clarified it for Mark. He seemed to enjoy the play once he understood a few of the whys, and what some of the penalties meant. Also of interest to him were the technical aspects about passes caught at the sidelines and the goal lines. His DVR’s pause function, and the video’s slo-mo replays were extremely helpful in demonstrating to Mark how the pass receiver’s feet both need to be in contact with the ground before he goes out of bounds, and how only the ball in the carrier’s possession need cross the goal line in order for a touchdown to be scored. I also learned how exhausting it can be to teach someone the game of American football! But it was fun indeed!

I think this was the day Mark made chili for lunch. It was from a can, which he had heated and poured over rice. I mention this not as a criticism, but for the surprise when I looked at the can. I don’t remember the brand name on the label, but the labeling itself looked suspiciously familiar. And then I found the Hormel logo! I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. It’s as though they own chili.

After lunch, Mark helped me with my lines for the play I’m in at Northeastern Illinois University, Around the World in Eighty Days. He helped in two ways: first in helping me with memorization, by reading my cue lines and helping when I got stuck; second, by identifying and tutoring me on certain accents I’m capable of doing. My English newspaperman is from the south country! We ran through my lines a few times and then called it quits.

I can’t remember, now, but I think this was also the day that Mark, due to the late night previous and his early wake-up with Sue, felt a pressing need for a nap. I left him to his rendezvous with his sofa, and I retired upstairs, ostensibly for a nap, but I wound up catching up on e-mail and Facebooking for about an hour.

Then we got ourselves ready to head into city centre to meet Sue at the movie theater where she works. One of Sue’s bosses is pretty cool, and he happened to be working this evening, so he let Mark park the Defender in the theater’s employee car park. Sue had just come out the door as we pulled in, so we were immediately on our way to the restaurant.

It was a new experience for me, as I had not been to city centre at night. The air was a bit crisp, but it was nice. I had on my heavy brown coat, but I had to leave it unzipped. We arrived at the restaurant court. It wasn’t a “food court” like we have at malls in the U.S.; this was an area with three or four (or five?) nice, elegant, semi-fine dining establishments. Las Iguanas sits on the second level atop the stairway. Mark and Sue had been talking all week about Las Iguanas, and on the ride over, Mark spoke of his eagerly awaited indulgence of a drink called the “mojito.” I told him that it was pretty popular in the States, but that I don’t care for minty drinks.

The exterior of Las Iguanas struck a very familiar chord with me, as it reflects the same Latin American themes as similar restaurants in the U.S. do. I was very interested in sampling Mexican food as interpreted through the English culinary palate! We stepped inside and were met with yet another very familiar American-style setting, with a hostess at a kiosk bedecked with a telephone, a computerized seating chart, and stacks of menus.

And, unfortunately, we were greeted with yet another all-too-familiar American theme: a 90-minute wait to be seated. On a Thursday?! SHEESH!

So, on a day where he had learned about the source of the American phrase “drop back and punt,” Mark looked at Sue and said, “Zorba’s?”

The Greek restaurant was a mere thirty steps away from Las Iguanas, and was almost empty. Zorba’s has a very nice, calm atmosphere, with Greek music softly seeping in through speakers all over the dining room. It was interesting to see most of the same items on the menu as in Greek restaurants at home, though the saganaki doesn’t seem to be as popular in the UK; nobody in the place ordered the flaming spectacle while we were there.

I don’t remember what Mark and Sue ordered, but I did sample what they had, and it was very good. I think Sue ordered the veggie lasagna. I ordered a very traditional Greek-style pork dish. There were lots of vegetables piled on top of the generous portion of meat. I didn’t miss Las Iguanas one bit.

We ended the evening at Zorba’s with drinks. Even though it wasn’t listed on the drinks menu, Sue and I convinced Mark to ask the bartender if he knew how to — and would — make a mojito. He knew how to, but couldn’t. He didn’t have all the ingredients. Sue ordered a big, pink, sweet, fruity concoction; Mark ordered a whisky drink, I think; and they both marveled at the number of different liquors that combine to create my Long Island iced tea. Despite all of them, I really didn’t feel anything from the drink. I had gotten fuzzier from the wine we had had on the other nights earlier in the week.

Back at home we settled in with some more wine, some more telly, and my favorite part, the conversation. Sue went to bed, leaving Mark and me to ourselves to watch No Country For Old Men. What a disturbing, unfulfilling movie. It was intense and suspenseful, but I didn’t care at all for how it ended. It really felt like they forgot to tack on an ending.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Six

2010-10-27T23:59:00.003-05:00

Today Sue was scheduled to babysit their daughter Holly’s son Ben for the day, so Mark had decided that, after breakfast, he would take me for a stroll through city centre in Birmingham.

Sue had walked over to her mum’s(?) to pick up Ben and brought him back, and we were around long enough to get to play with him a bit. He’s apparently a very energetic toddler, and I had the feeling, as Mark and I left, that Sue had been left to some sort of punishment. Torture by child.

Birmingham's city centre has changed very little, if at all, from 2005. The only difference I could see was the barricades around the fountain dubbed “The Floozy In the Jacuzzi;” She was undergoing some repairs, and the workmen were actually finishing up.

This is not "The Floozy In the Jacuzzi,"
but, apparently, Queen Vicky had quite
a set of hooters!

We walked a little bit, I took a few photos — the sky was crystal clear blue — but I had covered it in 2005 with Mark and Ashley and Ed. The circumstances did however afford Mark and me more time to just sit and chat. And watch the lovely English girls walk by. ...well, I did. Mark is a married man, and thus doesn’t do such things...though he did point out several for me to gawk at....

It's only a model....

There was a group of college-age people standing with some weird contraptions on tripods. I thought they were maybe some sort of camera, though I didn’t seriously think so. Mark thought there might be some place to eat inside the mall, so we went in.

We found a fairly large panini sandwich shop; think sandwich shop ethos with a restaurant interior. It seemed a nice place. The food was pretty good, and I fell in love with yet another beautiful Englishwoman seated a few tables away from us.

Afterward Mark and I headed to The Walkabout, an Australian — or at least Australian-themed — pub. We each had a pint of Foster’s and I tried to at once figure out what NASCAR documentary ESPN was showing on the telly hung in the corner, and explain the American fascination with NASCAR. I think I failed at both.

From The Walkabout, we headed back home. I think. On the way back through the city centre I approached the young people with the strange contraption and asked what they were doing. It turns out they were doing a study of the eye/hand correlation regarding the perception of slope. I’d explain the contraption, but it’s really not worth it.

When we arrived home, Sue was gone to return Ben to Holly. Not long after we got home, Sue arrived, and not long after that, Mark ran out to get some real fish and chips. We ate them in the living room on lap trays while watching telly. And it was good.

The rest of the night, as I recall, was spent chatting with Mark and Sue in front of the telly, sipping wine... and maybe Dura single malt Scotch (Mark and I, anyway) ...and we may have watched a movie or two. If we did, memory fails.

°
(Photos ©2010 Tony Gasbarro)

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Five

2010-10-26T23:59:00.007-05:00

My gracious hosts, Mark and Sue, at Weston-Super-Mare.

Today was an earlier wake-up than what had been the norm for the week. Actually, it was a scheduled wake-up, whereas up to that point it had been a wake-up-whenever week. The reason for getting up early was our planned day-trip to Weston-Super-Mare in the southwestern coastal area. One reason Mark and Sue wanted to take me there was that it’s a place I want to visit on my dream journey, retracing my father’s wartime footsteps through Europe. His unit arrived first in England, and one of their training stops was Weston. And I learned why the moment I stepped out of Mark’s Defender: Weston’s seashore is a vast, wide, long, smooth beach, and it looked to me very similar to the coast in the photos I’ve seen of the Normandy beachhead. Mark said that, though it looks very sedate, it’s very treacherous out in the far reaches of the beach at low tide because of quicksand.

Low tide at Weston-Super-Mare. Photo: DarkFarmOwl

The downer for the day was the rain. Thus far in autumnal England, the weather had been superb, perhaps even flawless. But, of course, the one day we planned to go out sightseeing is the day England got her typical English autumn weather. It didn’t matter a great deal, as we still walked along the beach parkway, and to the end of the pier, where we had some salt & vinegar chips (which is what we call french fries in the States).

Taking the rain as the English do: in stride. With Sue, Tom,
and Mia. Photo: DarkFarmOwl

Chowing on chips at the end of the Grand Pier in Weston.
I appear to be totally absorbed in my food.
Photo: DarkFarmOwl

The sky fell on us in a steady, miserable drizzle, and we were all in varying degrees of soaked. The dogs even seemed less than enthused. We walked back along the pier, stopped for a spot of tea, which Mark bought for the three of us, only to bring back a somewhat discouraging, though hilarious, account of the “help” not being very helpful when Mark, who only has two hands, needed to carry three very hot take-away cups of tea.

I’m not sure if it was today or earlier that I amused and infused Mark with the concept of “number three,” in reference to the evacuation of body waste. Where “number one” is going pee, and “number two” is taking a dump, I created a third term, “number three” when you have to do both number one and number two. I mean, come on! It’s the kind of simple math that I can do!

Tom the greyhound once again proved, at Weston, that he is the king of number two. No fewer than three times in less than an hour did he grace the beachfront pavement with the remnants of his most recent meal. I however, claim the title of king of number one. The sudden reintroduction of copious amounts of caffeinated products to my diet brought ceaseless amazement to Mark, whom Sue has described as a “camel.” But it may have something to do with his two humps, so I’m not entirely sure.

We left Weston and headed for Glastonbury. To my recollection, it was only about a half-hour drive from Weston, but I could be mistaken. Glastonbury is the location of an annual music festival, cleverly called The Glastonbury Music Festival, which, to my understanding, very closely resembles Woodstock, to include the dancing naked in the mud; the free sharing of venereal diseases; and the three-day, mushroom-induced blackouts. However, as this year’s festival had long since ended, we contented ourselves to a stroll through the town’s high street, where Sue bought a box of incense while Mark and I stood on the walk and ogled wom... er, the really cool old building across the street from the incense shop.

A Glastonbury street scene.

We walked a few doors down and through a funky corridor into a small courtyard area where we stopped for lunch at The Blue Note Cafe, a cool little earthy kind of place that harks of the endangered Heartland Cafe in Chicago. Mark and Sue, dedicated omnivores, both recommended the veggie burger from this place, so we ordered a round with chips and tea, and we dined out in the rainy courtyard under an overhang while the dogs gazed longingly at us, and two young women — Blue Note employees — sat on the stoop for a ciggy and snuggles with the dogs.

We returned to the car park at Glastonbury and, before we hit the road again, I had to make a “number 3” pit stop. There, in the car park, were several loos of the future. One walks in and shuts and locks the door; unbeknownst to the user, closing and locking the door starts a timer. Everything in the bathroom is automated. The toilet is a cold, one-piece, stainless steel cousin of your basic, standard prison cell toilet. There is a touch sensor on the wall beside the toilet for flushing...no moving parts. The wash basin is literally a hole in the wall, a stainless steel rectangular box into which you stick your hands. Supposedly soap dispenses onto your hands, after which a timer, which has been set for the average amount of time it takes for the average person to wash his average hands to average cleanliness, begins its timing sequence. After the average hand-washing time, the average hand-rinsing time commences, during which the average amount of water is dispensed. Next, the timer switches on the hand dryer, which blows warm air for the average amount of time it takes to dry the hands. All this takes place in the same little rectangle in the wall. No drippies on the floor. The drawback for me was that the soap never dispensed, so I had only rinsed hands. And dried. Fortunately, despite how slow I am, I was out of the restroom before the alarm sounded, a device designed to deter squatters from camping out in the bathrooms overnight.

Then we loaded up in the Defender again, and we headed to the town of Wells, the recent claim to fame of which is that the film Hot Fuzz — or at least parts of it — was shot there. The film history aside, Wells is an interesting little town. There’s a huge church there, which is apparently the home of a bishop, which, if I recall correctly, is very castle-like and surrounded by a real moat!

[It is my sincere hope that Mark will read these posts and provide the clarity that I lack.]

The (formerly Catholic) cathedral at Wells.

MOAT!

By this time in the day the rain had mostly stopped, though there were a few spots of fine mist in the air. We left Wells and rolled on to Cheddar Gorge, which is the birthplace of cheddar cheese. No, really. Being that it’s a gorge, it was nestled in a geographically interesting area, with what I would never have guessed, had I seen it in photos, would be found in England. The road wound back and forth through the gorge and climbed its way past craggy rock cliffs up to... a rather boring area up top, and pointing us in much the wrong direction. So we turned around and, my ears popping as we zig-zagged along our way, wound back down to the river and town.

Cheddar Gorge.

I would post more photos of me, but I have the same stupid
look on my face in all of them.
Photo: DarkFarmOwl

The dam at Cheddar.

But it was closed. Well, not the town, but everything in it...except the “licenced traditional” chippie...which didn’t give away free samples of cheddar cheese. As night fell, we decided against breaking and entering and theft, and we simply got back into the Defender, and we left. And I intentionally made that previous sentence rhyme.

Our day’s exploring done, we wound our way back through the countryside and, despite Mark’s valiant efforts to avoid it, through the city of Bristol.

Before we arrived home, we stopped once again at an “Off Licence” for some wine.

I can’t for the life of me remember what we did for dinner that evening. It was fairly late when we got in, though Mark’s estimate of our arrival around 8:15pm was spot on!

I’m pretty certain we watched some telly, and we might have even watched Children of Men this night instead of Monday night.

Tom

Mia

All photos by Tony Gasbarro, except where noted.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Four

2010-10-25T23:59:00.006-05:00

Years ago — I was still living in Georgia — Mark and I traded attempts at explaining our respective national pastimes to each other...to equal failure. Mark already had a passing understanding of baseball, though there were a few things he couldn’t figure out on his own. I knew absolutely nothing about Cricket, though it looked like something baseball could have come from.

After breakfast, Mark pulled out, with some measure of glee, The Ashes – 2005, a DVD record of the 2005 Cricket match between England and Australia, a huge rivalry that has raged for years, and which England won, despite a late surge by Australia.

Where a particularly grueling duel between baseball teams can seem to go on for days, a typical Cricket match does go on for days! I don’t recall how it’s all broken down, but they will play all day until sundown, and then pick up again the next day and play just as long, and then go again the next day. I think they play until someone dies of boredom, and then they call it a match.

But, seriously, with the highlights of the match to use as a guide (all the slow, boring bits were edited out, and the video showed only the scoring and the outs), Mark’s explanations gave me a much clearer understanding of the game than I ever thought I would care to have! And, even though I knew England wins it, the late surge by Australia to within 12 runs (and, believe me, that is an extremely narrow margin!) was pretty exciting!

In order that I could return the favor, Mark perused the television schedule and found a baseball game (San Francisco Giants v. Texas Rangers... WORLD SERIES!) to record later.

Mark and I later hopped into the Defender and he conducted a motor tour of Birmingham, commencing first with a crawl through Small Heath, which could also be labeled “Little India,” according to his descriptions. We made a meandering circuit, taking in the Birmingham Football Stadium, where Mark’s beloved Birmingham City Football Club (the Blues) play; Edgbaston Cricket Grounds, site of the 2005 Ashes match; the former site of the Rover Cars factory, which has since been leveled and appears to be in development of some new housing site; and Lickey Hills, which was the source of the urge within me to titter, but I contained it for fear of offending Mark, a concern I learned, through the course of the week, was entirely unnecessary. There we took a brief walk to the top of Beacon Hill, overlooking the whole of the city of Birmingham. Throughout the entire trip Mark and I talked and talked, in topics ranging from American politics, to British politics, to race relations, to cars, to women, to personal experiences falling off rocks... my throat was already sore, and I’d only been there two days!

The view of Birmingham from atop Beacon Hill.
Photo: Tony Gasbarro

After the tour we headed back home...I think. We gathered up Sue, I think, and we headed out again to visit their daughter Gemma and grandson Hayes, I think. Their son-in-law, Dave, was away at work, definitely. Gemma is pregnant with her second child, due in about 8 weeks, so she looked at once happy and uncomfortable. Hayes’s birthday was approaching, so Mark and Sue, being the proud and doting grandparents, had brought along sacks of birthday gifts for him. The boy was pleased.

After about an hour or so at Gemma’s, we headed back home. I think. More chatting ensued.

The view down Mark's street in this middle-class Birmingham
suburb. Photo: Tony Gasbarro

As night fell, Mark, Sue, and I headed over to Mark’s folks’ again and gathered up his Mum, and then we drove about a half-hour to Earlswood, and to the Red Lion pub. Mum was fun, and full of questions for me! She’s very quick-witted with a great sense of humor, and she didn’t seem as old as I expected her to be.

Dinner at the Red Lion was wonderful. I had some sort of lamb (again) stew followed by, I’m not certain, though, a slice of apple pie on a sea of custard. The custard I’m sure of, but the pie I’m not. Whatever I had, it was good.

A quick drive back and Mum was tucked away, and we headed once again to the “Off Licence” for some wine, and back home for some chat and wine, and I believe we watched Up. Mark has, as he characterizes it, “acquired” some films, and he happened to have Up in his inventory. I had strongly recommended this movie to them, and upon my arrival, they had not yet watched it.

As the film started, I noticed that all the titling was in French, to include that in the “newsreel” footage which starts the film. Knowing that Mark “found” this copy, there was no telling what language the soundtrack was going to be. Fortunately, the characters were speaking English, though; also fortunately, there were no subtitles. Fortunately for Mark and Sue, I had already seen the film twice, so in moments crucial, apparently, to French-literate viewers where writing on screen was in French, I was able to translate, such as in Ellie’s scrapbook, titled, “My Adventure Book,” the page where she has scrawled, “Stuff I’m Going To Do,” and, later, when the old man discovers that she had added stuff there, her handwriting, “Thanks for the adventures. Now go make some of your own!”

As I had warned them, they did cry, and as I had assured them, they loved the film!

Afterward, we either chatted some more and watched some telly, or Sue went to bed, and Mark and I watched Children of Men. Or that might have been Wednesday night. Children of Men is an apocalyptic story that takes place approximately 18 years after the last baby in the world has been born. Humans since then have been inexplicably incapable of procreating, and the world is in chaos. The United Kingdom has become a fascist state, and is expelling all foreigners and other immigrants, herding them into ghettos against their will. Then a woman is found who is into her third term of pregnancy. She’s in the hands of a group of freedom fighters, but the fear within the less zealous among the group is that, once the baby is born, the mother will be cast aside while the baby is used as a bargaining chip for the assured humane treatment of the immigrants. Or something like that. It was disturbing, all the same, but still a good film.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Three

2010-10-24T23:59:00.005-05:00

(As I have written this a full week after the fact, I can’t recall certain details, such as what we had for breakfast on any given day, but breakfast ranged from simple buttered toast with coffee, to toast with Marmite (think Vegemite), to Gipsy toast (slices of bread dipped in seasoned egg and grilled, with a layer of (cheddar?) cheese between them, and covered in HP Brown Sauce), which was actually quite good!)

Mark woke me up in the morning with a knock on the door and, after first asking permission to enter, brought in a cup of coffee with a small biscuit. Moments later, and dressed, I carried the cup down and joined Mark and Sue for more chat.

Later on, we loaded the dogs, rescued racing greyhounds Tom and Mia, into the Defender and headed for the Kingsbury Water Park for the dogs’ weekly Sunday walk. At the end of the walk, and about four poop-stops for Tom, we stopped at the little snack shop there and had a late breakfast of buttered toast and coffee.

Mark with Mia (the gray greyhound) and Tom (the black),
in their home.

We brought the dogs back home and chatted some more, and then we went back out (I think) to a garden store to pick up some dog food. This place was pretty huge, even by U.S. standards, and very diverse and eclectic. Not only a garden store, it was also a crafts store, clothing store (though limited to shoes and outer wear), pet supplies and fish store, snack shop, coffee shop, AND a Starbucks! Mark tossed a bag of dog food into the trolley, and then we wandered around a bit. It became annoyingly obvious here that, due to my sudden increased intake of coffee, I had to break away very often to pee. The problem is that, when I’m on the road, I like to have coffee. And Mark and Sue also make tea every day, so, in an effort to do as much as possible as the British do, I had whatever they were having when they were having it. Hence, lots of coffee and tea! And pee!

So we wandered into the snack shop area and got coffee for each of us, though not at Starbucks. We sat at a table in the seating area for a short while, chatting and sipping our coffee. From there we headed toward the checkout lines and made our way out.

Back home for a while, we readied to go out to supper at The Eastern Curry Inn, just a few “blocks” away in Sheldon. The food was very nice, though I am not at all versed in Indian cuisine. I pretty much let Mark and Sue act as my guides into the menu, and I stayed pretty conservative. The nan bread came with some sauces, one supposedly very spicy, which I did not try; one that was a minty, yogurt based thing; and another that was a sort of sour...well, I’m not sure what. The thing is, I didn’t really care for any of them. My appetizer was a few strips of chicken prepared in (Tandoori?) style. My meal was basically a mildly spiced lamb stew over steamed rice. It was very good. I sampled Mark’s dish (he and Sue each ordered the same thing as the other. It, too, was very good.)

After dinner we headed home, once again via the Off-Licence for some wine. This time we got one bottle of red and one of white. Once home we (I think) watched some telly. British television has some damn funny shows. I can’t remember the names of all of the programmes I liked, but one of them was called Q.I. One episode had Rich Hall (of Sniglets fame) on the panel; he really didn’t say a whole lot.

A fairly late night, we called it around midnight, I think.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Two

2010-10-23T23:59:00.001-05:00

On the plane, after I had settled into my seat with my feet on the bag of pillow and blanket and covered myself up under my jacket, I was awoken I-don’t-know-how-much later by the woman in the seat next to mine when she needed to get up to use the bathroom. When she returned I thought I might have to use the facilities soon myself, but I sat back down and covered up under my jacket again.

The next time I awoke, sunlight streamed into the cabin, and the flight attendants were wheeling out the breakfast service. There was less than one hour left until landing at London/Heathrow. I had slept almost the entire flight!!

The cabin crew handed out the landing cards for UK immigration, and as I filled out mine I realized that I didn’t know Mark’s address. I entertained the thought of fudging it, but I figured I could just call him when I landed...until I remembered that my phone would be useless in the UK. If I pled my case to the immigration official, I would probably be allowed to call him...and then I realized that, despite all the times I wrote down his number for others, I had never written them down for myself. Okay, so I could call directory assistance and hope to reach Sue, who could then tell me their address. But then I thought that I would probably remember the address by the time it got to that point.

When it got to that point, I still had not recalled their address. And I fudged it for the immigration agent. While standing in the immigration line, I wrote “86 Sheldon Way, Sheldon, Birmingham” as Mark’s address on the immigration form; I was WAY off! The agent asked me what sort of place the address was where I was to stay, and I told him it was my friend’s house. He asked me who my friend was, and I told him. He asked me how I knew this friend, and I told him, realizing how absurd it actually sounded. He asked how long I had known this friend, and I told him, adding that I had visited him in 2005, hoping that would make our original acquaintance sound less absurd.

The immigration agent allowed me in, though I was technically entering the country illegally!

I was early, at least according to Mark’s calculations. He estimated that immigration and bag claim would have me out the doors between 11:00 and 11:30 a.m. The flight had landed maybe only ten minutes early, but the immigration line for non-E.U. passport holders was short and quick-moving, and my bag came out quickly as well. I was standing on the curb by 10:30! I waited, wearing my agreed-upon, easily-spotted Cubs cap, until about 11:10, when I saw a black Land Rover Defender 110 enter the short-stay car park; it was the only Defender I saw in the entire time I stood out there, so I just knew it was Mark.
Or was it? I thought I recalled that he would come to the curb to look for me, so now I wasn’t sure it was him after all. There could be someone else with a Defender 110 coming to the airport, right? I didn’t want to head inside to try to find him and wind up actually missing him at the curb. What to do?

I caved to the fear and I headed inside. And I realized very quickly that I would never find him in that throng!

Meanwhile, as I found out later, Mark was himself embroiled in an ordeal. To keep it brief, he was misled by signage to a parking area for “high-sided” vehicles, only when he got to the barrier it wouldn’t let him in. He thought his Defender was over seven feet tall, but it isn’t, and the sensor that senses the height of vehicles didn’t sense his, so no entry was allowed. After dealing with a couple of parking attendants who couldn’t be bothered to actually help him, he went in search of the car park supervisor.

I left the madding crowd in the arrivals area and headed back outside. When I had earlier entered, I had noticed a door leading into a coffee shop in the arrivals area, though I walked past it. I saw it again from inside, and this time I decided to take it, as it would save me quite a few steps to get back to the curb. As I stepped outside from that doorway, I saw across the way from me, as well as across the way from where I had earlier been standing at the curb, a man who looked from a distance of about 100 yards a lot like Mark! He stepped briefly inside the valet booth there and came out again.

When I had decided to head inside to look for Mark, I had very dutifully walked to the crosswalks and made my meandering way in. Now, as this person who looked like Mark stood across from me, I made my way toward him across two lanes of traffic where there was no crosswalk. I was already criminally present in England; why fear crossing a roadway illegally?

As I crossed, the man who looked like Mark looked in my direction and set off determinedly toward me. It was Mark! We approached each other quickly, and as we closed the last few feet between us, I was without doubt he was Mark, but he glared past me as he trudged along.

“Mark?” I said as he went by.

The man turned to look at me. “OH! Christ! TONY! I’m sorry! I didn’t even see you!” He threw his arms out and hugged me. Then, as we walked back to his car, he told me about his ordeal, and why he didn’t see me from only feet away, and that, while he ventured off to find the car park supervisor, he had parked illegally. I felt right at home with a fellow criminal!

Very soon we were on the road north toward Birmingham, engaged in what would become the main activity during my visit — talking. About halfway to Birmingham we stopped for lunch at The Orange Tree, a nice pub in apparently a very posh area. The women there were very attractive and very attractively dressed. The Orange Tree became the frequent off-hand joke of where I wanted to go “tomorrow.”

When we arrived at Mark’s home, Sue came outside to greet me and welcome me inside. After a cup of tea and a brief chat, they suggested I take my things upstairs and have a quick nap, and I took them up on it.

Later, Mark knocked on the door to get me moving again, and when I got downstairs there was already-cold Domino’s pizza in the kitchen. Ordering pizza had been mentioned, and we had discussed a one-hour nap, but it would appear that Mark and Sue opted to let me sleep a little longer to catch up, and they went ahead and ate when they were ready. When I came down Sue heated up a couple slices for me, and I ate while watching some telly with them.

After dark, Mark and I headed over to his parents’ home where his brother, Colin, was visiting for the day. We went in, I was introduced to the parents, and we gathered up Colin to head over to The Griffin Inn for a couple of pints.

After only a brief stay — we were there maybe an hour — we brought Colin back to the folks’, headed to an “Off Licence” to pick up a couple bottles of wine, and then back to Mark’s where we sat to watch some telly and sip wine with Sue.

The Birmingham Sojournal - Day One

2010-10-22T23:59:00.004-05:00

To be fair and honest, I didn't journal every day. Hell, I didn't journal at all! But, as this series of posts is a relatively accurate account — written as much as nearly a month after the fact — of the daily doings during my recent trip to Birmingham, England, IT'S A FRIGGIN' JOURNAL!

22 October 2010, Friday
Things did not go as planned. I don’t know why I ever thought they would. I worked through the night in the taxi, and that was uneventful. I had a late airport run which sounded off right about the time I had planned to leave for the 303 Taxi office, scheduling me for a pickup in Arlington Heights 20 minutes later, and setting me back about a half-hour in my schedule, after going out of my way to the airport to drop off the customer, and after waiting extra time for the tardy customer to get his shit together.

At the office, I turned in the taxi and the spare key, all very quickly, and then I went outside and tried to ask the first taxi driver who came out of the office if he could drive me to the Rosemont Blue Line station. The first guy said, “Yes, of course...in five minutes...I have to find my phone.” He crawled around in his car for a few seconds.

“Dial me, please,” he asked in his heavily accented English (I think he’s Indian). I didn’t hear him at first. “Dial my phone please!”

He dictated his phone number and I dialed it. It took two tries for him to locate it at the bottom of a cloth shopping bag full of stuff as it rang, but he did find it. then he said, “I’ll be one minute,” and he went back inside the building.

Ten minutes later, and about 5 minutes too late for me to catch the 9:18 Metra train from Jefferson Park, which set my schedule back another hour, another taxi driver came out of the 303 office. He took me to the Rosemont Station for free, but asked me along the way how much I make. When I told him, he was shocked. Not in a good way. For me. I spent the rest of the day rather depressed about it.

I seized the opportunity of the nearly 90-minute wait (I missed the 9:18 by about ten minutes, exactly the amount of time that stupid “I’ll be one minute” idiot made me wait) to get breakfast at McDonald’s. Since I had the time to eat in, I got the steak, egg & cheese bagel with the round egg instead of the scrambled. Either they changed something in the ingredients, or I’m just jaded, because it has never tasted as good as it did in the first year they made them.

On the train I called 303 to order a taxi. About 20 minutes before I was due to arrive at Palatine, I got the notification text that a taxi — number 567 — had been dispatched. About five minutes before arrival, I got the callout phone call. While I was about to enter the amount of time I wanted him to wait, I received another callout phone call from 303. As it was a redundant call, I pressed “Ignore” on the phone’s screen, and finished the other call, requesting the taxi to wait five minutes.

The train arrived on time, and I walked out to taxi number 567. As I approached, the driver asked me if I was Tony. I answered him and got in. Then he told me that he waited, just in case, because he had gotten a cancellation notice! FUCK! What is it about me that, whenever I use 303 Taxi Service’s fantastic automated dispatch system, I always get fucked...or nearly so, in this particular case? So, after having a very calm, brief argument with the driver about the rate number (he was charging rate 2, I thought it was rate 1 from Palatine to Hoffman Estates; he changed it to the cheaper rate 1), he drove me home.

Being so far behind in my schedule, I began packing with the full resignation that, despite working through the night and having been thus far awake since, I would get no time to take a nap. I called Saad (303 Taxi number 530) and asked him if he could pick me up at 5:30 to take me to the airport. He said that it would be no problem.

It was a problem. At 5:30 he didn’t show. Patient as I am, I waited, and used the time to move myself outside to wait. As I got to the deck outside the “rear” door of the apartment building — at 5:40 — my phone rang; it was Saad.

He had taken a fare to the airport and was now stuck somewhere in traffic that was not moving. He said that he would make it, and that everything would be okay.

At 6:00 I called Saad back. He apologized and said that he had not moved at all from the place he was when he had called me 20 minutes earlier! AT ALL! I had thought in the earlier call that he was exaggerating when he said the traffic was “not moving,” but he wasn’t. I was a little pissed off that he had not called me again sooner when traffic still had not moved, so he said he would call one of his other friends; he said he would tell him not to charge me, and that he would pay him for my trip out of his own pocket. I was too pissed off to feel at that moment that his gesture was not necessary.

The friend he called was cab number 508, someone I’ve met before, but whose name I do not know. He showed up around 6:30, which was ten minutes past the time I was “supposed” to be at the airport (8:20pm flight). He said he would speed to the airport. And boy, did he!

Traffic was fairly light for a Friday evening, and he got me to O’Hare in about 20 minutes! I confirmed that Saad told him not to charge me for the trip, and I tried to give him a tip for taking the chances, but he refused, even telling me that I was making him feel guilty. I didn’t push it. I will insist to Saad that he let me repay him. It wasn’t his fault that he got stuck in traffic behind what was apparently a wreck involving an 18-wheeler.

Once at the airport, things finally started moving smoothly. The plane was on track to depart on time, a fact which I reported to Mark via text/e-mail.

Once in the air, and before we were even flying completely level, the flight attendants began the dinner service. I had already removed my shoes and set my feet on the bag of pillow and blanket (EXCELLENT idea!) Dinner was served and eaten, the tray was cleared, and after toying with the idea of watching a movie, I pulled my jacket over me and “reclined” my seat.

As the General Days of My Children's World Hospital Turns

2010-09-28T12:12:00.001-05:00

Reading of late about the demise of the venerable daytime drama As the World Turns, my mind is drawn to a funny memory from the early days of my broadcasting career, at the ABC affiliate WSIL-TV, in southern Illinois.

A brief education about TV stations: Master Control is the room in a TV station through which all the stuff you see on a given channel passes. There is an audio/video switchboard that controls which a/v circuit is sent to the broadcast antenna, and then out to the viewing public. And, in some capacity, there is a human watching over that switchboard.

At WSIL, Master Control was almost 100 percent manual; the Master Control Operator had to manually load all the individual local commercials into individual videotape players, and had to manually cue up all the players, and had to manually roll them when their time came to play, and had to manually switch to them with the a/v switchboard when their commercials started. The Master Control Operator also had to monitor the signal for any errors that might be coming from our station, or our antenna, or even from the network, if a network program was on the air.

When I started as the Promotions Coordinator at WSIL, I was informed that I would also be a backup Master Control Operator, to fill in for the regulars when ill or on vacation. I already had master Control experience from my days as a student Master Control Op, working at the PBS station on campus. Nevertheless, I wasn’t too happy with the specter of Master Control hanging over my head again...and it was worse at advertiser-supported, ABC affiliate WSIL; PBS doesn’t have commercials!

Early one morning I received a phone call. God-awful early. That’s never good; I feared my father had quickly followed my mother into the grave. But, fortunately, no. It was merely to inform me that Vanessa, the sign-on – to – mid-day Master Control Operator had quit, effective immediately. I had to fill in for her that day...and every day until a replacement could be found, and until that replacement could be trained. By me.

Thus began the torturous schedule of 4:00am wake-ups for 5:30am sign-ons, and harrowing mornings of lining up and running the breaks for the morning newscasts, Good Morning, America news cut-ins, Live with Regis and Kathy Lee, some other morning shows, and the dreaded afternoon Daytime Dramas. But, actually, since the daytime dramas were pre-recorded, the network provided supremely accurate break schedule information, so they were vastly easier to do than the erratic, crazy Live with Regis and Kathy Lee! That show was sometimes next to impossible to run a clean break, especially near the end, when they had to cram in all the scheduled breaks they put off at the beginning!

So, when the daytime dramas started, it was actually a time to relax! And since it was my responsibility as the on-duty Master Control Operator to monitor the signal, I had to watch. And a funny thing happens when you have to watch daytime dramas: you get sucked in. When you’re resistant to them, like I was... am ...you don’t realize you’ve been sucked in until one or both of two things happen: there is a surprise plot twist in the story (and aren’t they all?), and you hear yourself say out loud, “Oh, SHIT!” or “You BITCH;” and someone who cares about a particular show asks you what happened in today’s episode. And you can answer them. In detail.

Jim showed up one morning behind my boss, Ron. I knew Jim from our days at Southern Illinois University in the Radio-TV curriculum as well as at the public TV station operated by the university. His circumstances had kept him in the area after he graduated, where he had been stuck in minimum wage jobs outside of our career field. Ron had brought Jim in to introduce him to me as Vanessa’s replacement, indicating silently that Jim had finally landed a minimum wage job within our industry. Training commenced the next day.

Having worked in Master Control at the public TV station, I was spared having to teach Jim the ethos behind the job. All that was left was the nuts and bolts of the job: turning on the transmitter, signing on the station, and familiarizing him with the beast that is Big Network television broadcast schedules.

I worked with Jim for a couple days, letting him just watch me, and involving him more and more with the routines: loading the commercial tapes on the rolling cart in the order of their scheduled airplay; marking the daily air log to show when the spots ran, and when there were errors or discrepancies; putting the air tapes away when they were finished; recording programs we were to air later in the day....

Then we switched chairs for the easier part of the day, and I let him run some breaks. More and more as the week progressed. By the end of the second week of his training, we had reversed roles, and I was watching him run the breaks and set everything else up, and helping him during the moments when he got overwhelmed.

Finally, after Ron asked me if I thought Jim was ready, Ron came in to Master Control and watched Jim work. After a couple breaks, Ron stood up, said, “Good,” smiled and walked out. I told Jim to just call me down any time he needed help or had a question. And then I asked him if he had any questions before I left him on his own. He didn’t, but he expressed concern about making it through the “stupid” daytime dramas each day without killing himself or, worse, falling asleep and missing a break.

I said, “Jim, inside of three weeks you will be so wrapped up in those stupid shows, you won’t believe it.”

Jim shot back, “Oh, HELL no! I can’t stand those things.”

I smiled at him. I said, “Okay. Whatever.”

I walked back to my desk, a seemingly alien place after a whole month in Master Control full-time, and I marked my calendar for three weeks to the day of my conversation with Jim: “Ask Jim about All My Children.”

A day before the event, I set my VCR at home to record All My Children, and that evening I watched it in order to catch up on what was happening on the show.

The next day, just as All My Children was about to end, I went in to Master Control under the pretense of checking to see if some promos had been updated. Then I asked Jim how things were going, how he liked it, and so on.

Then I “noticed” the program on the air, and I asked a pointed question, something like, “What did Erica say to so-and-so about his affair?”

Jim answered me quite readily, and with some attached emotion. So I asked a follow-up question, regarding another character, and again, with a bit of excitement, he answered me, without even a hint of curiosity about why I would ask. Then I smiled at him.

He looked at me. “What?” he asked, an uncertain smile crossing his face.

I pointed my finger at him. “Gotcha.”

He closed his eyes as the earlier moments of our conversation played back in his head. He was indeed wrapped up in the daytime dramas, and he knew I knew it.

We both had a good laugh, and I forgave him his failure, telling him I, too, had denied any possibility that I would care anything more about the soaps beyond whether or not our signal faded while they were on. But they’re irresistible; if you have them on and audible, as we were required to do, and you plop yourself down in front of them, you’re going to follow them. It’s juicy gossip of the most harmless kind, and you know everybody’s secrets, and you don’t have to worry over whom you might tell. It’s what made them so successful in the first place. It goes deep down into our collective social psyche.

The fortunate part is, once you are able to pull yourself away from them, their draw fades quickly. I was able to leave Master Control and move on with my life and my assigned duties. Jim didn’t have the luxury of training his way out of it until he was ready to move up or move on.

And, no. I don’t watch the daytime dramas any more.

°

September Breeze

2010-09-23T23:47:00.002-05:00

The wind across my nostrils
blows the fading sense of summer
the sweet and melancholy
air of moments gold and light which
keeps the night at bay.

A tickle of my mem’ry
calls the fleeting scents of summer
with resignation tender
thoughts of coming autumn tumble
‘cross the shortened day.

(I'm no poet. Please feel free to improve upon or add to it in the comments section!)

Careering

2010-09-19T23:39:00.000-05:00

When does a job become a career? I had a job for eight years, and before that I had several other jobs, doing much the same thing, for another eight years. But early in 2009 that string stopped.

And one year ago I started driving a taxi.

I never wanted to be a taxi driver. Oh, at times it seemed like it would be an interesting job, and over the past year I learned that it can be an interesting job. But it’s not the job I want to do. The unfortunate truth, however, is that my chosen career seems to have abandoned me.

I used my new unemployment last year as my opportunity to pursue some dreams: acting, writing. But this job that supposedly allows me the flexibility of schedule demands so much time in order to earn a living income that the schedule is very inflexible, lest I starve, or choose between paying the rent or the electric bill. Where I had hoped to drive the taxi to fill in when the freelance video work and the paid acting gigs left gaps, it’s quite the other way around. There have been damnably few freelance production gigs, and the acting gigs to date have been pro bono.

Of course, a few relatively minor lifestyle changes could make being a taxi driver a little more comfortable. I could move into a smaller apartment; it’s not like I spend much time in my place, now. Or I could get a roommate; I would never get to know him or her, and neither of us would ever really be a bother to the other.

But I don’t want to be a taxi driver. Yet it’s what I am. For a year, already.

And counting.

Just. Like. That.

2010-09-09T11:00:00.010-05:00

Little more than a year ago, not long after I was laid off from my job, I started meeting at a nearby Starbucks on Wednesdays with a group of people with the similar interest of video production. It is rather loosely helmed by a friend of mine, Sean, and we talk about all kinds of things, but generally about new media and content creation.

The group has never been large; there’s usually only the core group of about four or five of us, and everyone other than Sean — with whom I once worked with back in 1989 at the TV station at Southern Illinois University, and then again in 1993 at the ABC affiliate in southern Illinois, and with whom I have bumped into on and off in the intervening years — is someone I hadn’t known before I started meeting with the group.

One of the group was an older woman, Celina, who I had guessed was in her late fifties to early sixties. She was admittedly clueless about video production at all, let alone video for the digital age. While I found myself mildly annoyed that she would monopolize the day’s conversation with her efforts and questions to understand a concept of production or a trick in editing, I was also impressed at her dogged determination to learn something that was so far beyond the realm of her body of experience, as well as the many computer-age things she had incorporated into her otherwise old-fashioned world.

Celina was forever searching for client companies and organizations for which she could produce videos, and in March of this year I helped her shoot a video for the local chapter of a national sewing organization. The edit of that video became her new obsession, and the new distraction for our Wednesday morning group!

I never really knew Celina all that well. I recall from conversations that she had been an art teacher, but had retired. She and her husband, Ernie, had me over for lunch one Sunday afternoon in autumn last year, and it was a very cerebral experience in addition to the excellent chicken parmegiana that Celina made for the occasion. She wasn't a close friend, but she was a current friend, all the same.

Several weeks ago Celina went absent from our group due to a cracked rib she suffered moving a heavy item in her home, and she remained at home to recuperate. On pain medication, she didn’t want to drive under its influence.

Last week a get well card was passed around the group to send our wishes to Celina that she return to us soon. In my inimitable style, I wrote “Don’t die!” and then crossed it out as though to imply an afterthought, and then the pat, “Get well soon!” comment in its place.

The very next day the whole group and I received an e-mail from Ernie telling us that Celina had experienced a fall in their home the day before, which resulted in a severely broken arm and a broken neck. At the emergency room, tests and x-rays revealed, in addition to the broken bones, a mass in her lungs: stage 4 cancer which had metastasized and spread to her cervical spine and her brain.

There was nothing the doctors could do for her. It had already spread too far.

She opted against any life-saving measures — had there been any available to her — and chose instead comfort care, and was immediately sedated beyond coherence.

One of our group, Stephen, was able to use his status as a clergyman to visit Celina in the ICU where no one else other than family were allowed to visit. In addition to the comfort and support he provided to Ernie, he was able to give us an update on her condition. She was still heavily sedated and incoherent. As one would expect, the outlook was grim.

In reference to my suddenly callous-seeming comment on the get-well card, I had expressed the hope that the card had not yet been sent, but it had been. Stephen, in an attempt to head it off, or to head off any offense it might cause, mentioned the comment to Ernie. Stephen later reported that Ernie, in his characteristically warped good humor, said that Celina had opted not to take my advice. Regardless, I was still mortified, though relieved that he had taken it in stride.

Tuesday evening, around 11:30, I received from Ernie the message that Celina had passed away just after 8:00 that evening. “Shocked” does not even begin to describe my feelings about the whole progression.

Celina is the first friend I have lost. There have been other friends with whom I had lost touch years before and never re-established contact before their passing, and there have been friends of the family — of my siblings or of my parents — who passed away, and to whose families I came and provided support and comfort, but, until now, I had never lost a personal friend. The strange, sudden, and seemingly cruel manner in which she was taken has left me feeling quite hollow, and this bustling, noisy Starbucks today seems nonetheless quieter.

Celina was 62.

Celina Acquaro
September 25, 1948 - September 7, 2010
(photo: Sean McMenemy)

(edited to replace originally posted photo with a better one, above, and assign proper photo credit)

Sap

2010-08-26T10:25:00.004-05:00

In case you’ve been reading here less frequently than I have been contributing here at fa·ra·go, you may not know that, a couple months ago, I began working out with the P90X Program.

I started another blog to chronicle that adventure, so I won’t bore you with that here. You can go there to let me bore you with that.

Instead, I’ll bore you with more fa·ra·go-style boredom, though somewhat related to working out and physical fitness.

The other day I was mildly procrastinating the start of the day’s workout. I believe I was attending to that all-important task of lint extraction from the seams in my office chair, when the thought occurred to me, ”Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to push me to work out?” I mean, Tony Horton, the workout maven in the P90X videos — even though he’s little more to me than an animated electronic flicker on my TV screen — keeps pushing me and encouraging me and praising me for such hard work during and after each workout. I need somebody — in the flesh or in the ether — prodding me and pushing me to get out of bed, to put on my workout clothes, and to tell me that investigating my Facebook friends’ new Facebook friends is NOT a necessary demand of my time.

And, in a brief flash, my mind fell back onto my “glory” days in the U. S. Air Force. Not to basic training where PT (physical training) seemed much less about fitness than about conformity, but to the tech school I was sent to a year and a half later, “en route” to my duty station in Germany. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, was, at that time, the training center for the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM, or, affectionately, “glickem”) program.

(During Desert Storm, and again during the unnecessary Iraq War, much to do was made of the Navy’s highly accurate “Tomahawk Cruise Missile,” launched from the decks of battleships in the Persian Gulf. The “Tomahawk” is the Navy’s sea-launched version of the BGM-109 cruise missile, and the same missile that the U.S. Air Force had in its arsenal during the late 1980s and into the ‘90s, only configured to be transported around in transporter-erector-launcher trucks, highly mobile and deployed stealthily throughout the pretty forests of Europe. The Air Force canceled the GLCM program in the mid-1990s, though I believe it still maintains the air-launched version.)

Upon the first day of training, we were informed that there would be PT every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 5:30am sharp. For most of us in the program, who had been out of basic training for up to several years, this marked a drastic change to what likely most had ever known. Five-thirty?! Were these people crazy?

And sure enough, that first Wednesday the NCO squad leaders in training with the rest of us walked through the dorm banging on doors at 5:00 to get everybody up and outside for PT.

It was early October. It was Tucson, otherwise known as The Desert. It was dark. And? It was chilly outside, one of the surprises of The Desert. One of the instructors met us outside the dorms, the NCOs formed us up, and we marched to the PT field. Where basic training had us working out on asphalt or concrete PT pads, this was literally a grass field, dusty and dirty.

Still in formation, we spread out uniformly across the field with enough space between each man to allow for proper exercise form. And then we met our Tormentor.

I don’t remember the man’s name. Or his rank. As a matter of fact, I never saw the man in uniform, in the classrooms, or anywhere else any other time on base, except on the PT field. I really don’t know. He seemed kind of fat, and pretty old to me. Of course, I was 21; 35 was “old” to me. This guy was probably no more than 45 or 50. He may have even been a retiree to whom they gave the privilege to work out with us. I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned that he was only 40. But he was “old.” And he was the leader of our PT.

We still worked out with conformity, each man doing the exercises to the same count and cadence as everyone else. But the odd thing was — at least to my experience, which had been in Basic Training that the Training Instructors simply walked around us grunting recruits during PT, barking orders and watching us grunt — this old guy who nobody ever saw away from the PT field, did every rep of every exercise with us! Every push-up, every jumping jack, every sit-up, every evil stretch he made us do, he did himself, too. And? He was always ready for more! Despite his apparent girth, he was tremendously fit and strong, and he put most of us young kids to shame.

And he got me into the best shape of my life. In Montana, my duty station before I was sent to Davis-Monthan, I had ballooned from my highest, fittest, basic training weight of 165 lbs. up to my highest (at that time), fattest (at that time) weight of 177! Within a couple of weeks, I was back down to 165, but with less fat and more muscle than I had ever seen on my body since I joined the Air Force!

So I thought about that guy the other day, and I wondered — as I always wonder when I think about someone who sped past my eyes in my youth — whatever became of him. If he was as old as 50 then, he’s pushing 75 now! I wonder if he’s still alive.

Of course, this does nothing for my motivation issue today. While it was a small slice of Hell to have someone pound on my door at 5:00 in the morning three times a week, it represented no real conviction or dedication on my part to the cause of my own fitness. But, in hindsight, it was certainly convenient! And, if I recall correctly, the rude awakenings stopped when we all proved we could show up downstairs in time for the march to the field. We were not raw recruits, after all. But even at that, I had the pressure of conformity, not to mention the sounds of the other guys milling about in the hall, getting ready, to get me to haul my ass out of bed.

Oh, Motivation! How are ye disguised today?

°

A Sunday in July

2010-07-25T23:03:00.005-05:00

As is my usual excuse, I've been devoting my time to other, more time consuming tasks than writing, so far·ra·go sits on a back burner, barely simmering, with a slimy skin forming on the top....

Well, Shoot!
I worked last week in my chosen career, that of video production guy. I went to Omaha on Sunday July 11 for two nights. It was kind of weird doing that after not having done it for nearly a full year. Some things came to me like I had last done them yesterday, while others took some thought. Most frustrating was my intermittent inability to find certain non-essential-yet-still-crucial little buttons on the camera. But, in all, it was like getting on a bike again. I walked away kinda sweaty with a sore ass.

Don't go there.

P90Xtasy? Uh, no....
I've completed week number three of twelve in the P90X Extreme Home Fitness program. I'm still alive. I think my belly is slimming down a bit, but it's hard to tell. My pants are loose again. I think that's a good sign. Feel free to follow my progress, bitching, and moaning at my P90X blog, P90Xperiment

My Eye Queue
I've been squeezing in a few movies lately, chipping away slowly at my Netflix queue. Recent movies have been The Simpsons Movie, which I swear I had never seen before, but so much of it was familiar I doubt myself (but when did I see it?!); Million Dollar Baby; Ratatouille; and, just today, 3:10 to Yuma.

Million Dollar Baby
I have always taken Clint Eastwood — as a director — with a grain of salt. I come under the gun (to make a pun) with friends and film nuts alike whenever I give them my opinion of Eastwood's Unforgiven which was hailed as an instant classic in an era when the Western is all but dead. I saw it as pointless, a violent soapbox diatribe claiming to be against violence. I must be the only one.

So it was with a similar attitude that I watched my Blu-Ray player swallow the Million Dollar Baby disc. It was a likeable story about a determined young woman, played by Hillary Swank, whose dream was only to be trained as a fighter by her vision of the greatest trainer that ever lived, the old, worn-out boxing trainer portrayed by Eastwood, who thinks a woman training in his gym is bad for business. Of course, he's finally convinced, thanks to her tenacity, to take her on. Of course, he's dealing with the emotional loss of his daughter, estranged from him years ago and who refuses to communicate with him, and he feels a paternal tug toward this young woman who is otherwise alone.

So I expected a boxing movie, only with a woman in the ring kicking ass and making her way to the champeenship, which she of course wins.

Not.

This movie hits you with a surprise haymaker from your blind side, and redefines "unpredictable." I won't spoil it for anyone who has a worse record of movie-going than I do (this film was released in 2005!), But I will say that I'm not supposed to cry like that over a boxing film!

Mr. Eastwood, I bow to you and your directing prowess, and I give your film four Netflix stars. Million Dollar Baby deserves all the Academy Awards it received (Best Director, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman), and Best Actress (Swank)).

Unforgiven still blows, though. Thanks.

Ratatouille
Set aside the ridiculous proposition that a rat could be a culinary genius, communicating to an inept human the movements necessary to create impossibly delicious dishes. Okay... done?

This film was FANTASTIC! With each progression of digitally animated storytelling, Pixar Studios further hones the craft and sets the new standard for it. The detail in Ratatouille is mind-boggling, both in attention to character movement, as well as scenic background elements. There are several scenes of Paris exteriors that I had to pause the film to study, almost convinced that the background was at best a mix of actual photos/film of Paris street scenes. But no. It's all art work of unbelievable meticulousness and realism.

And the story. Aside from its preposterous premise (but how else to get the kids in the theater seats?), the story was sweet, dealing with relationships at both the human level and the rat, through conflict and motives, needs and desires. And the best part? No musical numbers! There's a good bit of slapstick — necessary for the ADHD set — and a nice balance of shtick and witty banter for the parents they dragged with them. There's also a bit of a surprise, as the usual happy ending isn't quite what you expect it to be. Great vocalizations carry the story comfortably, despite an inexplicable inconsistency of French accents (some have them, some don't; none of the rats do).

I thoroughly enjoyed Ratatouille, laughing out loud many times while watching it. If you like animated films, I highly recommend this one. If you don't like animated films, then screw you. Go watch Million Dollar Baby again.

3:10 to Yuma (spoiler alert!!)
Based on a 1957 film of the same title, and an Elmore Leonard short story, it's about a poor rancher who agrees to house a captured gang leader, and then assist with transporting him on a two-day ride to the town of Contention in order to put the prisoner on a train to Yuma.

Starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, this film is billed as a psychological drama against an Old West backdrop, but as such it falls short. This is an action-adventure film, with very little suspense or psychological intrigue, if any. If it doesn't act like a duck, don't call it a duck.

The film certainly lives up to its correctly identified genre, but that's about it. If you like shoot-em-ups with lots of exploding blood-packs and guys falling off horses, then you won't be disappointed. If you want a story that makes sense, look elsewhere. Crowe is cast as the fearsome bad guy, Ben Wade, who earns his gang's respect through terror and swift repercussions for less than exceptional work. He has made his fortune by repeatedly robbing the stagecoach that carries the railroad's payroll, haplessly guarded by Pinkerton's Security Services. Bale portrays the rancher, Dan Evans, who the land-hungry railroad agent has on the ropes by damming up a creek that would otherwise bring water to his cattle and his grassland.

Evans facilitates Wade's capture by stalling him in a saloon while the law and railroad men move in on him, and then he accepts their offer of money if he'll assist them in first housing Wade and then in transporting him to the nearest railroad town, a couple days' ride away.

Wade then commences a confusing dance of murdering some of his escorts while submitting to others. By the end, it's just Wade, Evans, Evans's son, and the weasely railroad agent waiting nervously in the town of Contention for the train to Yuma to arrive, as Wade's ruthless gang descend on the town to free him. Inexplicably, Wade assists Evans in getting him to the train through the gauntlet of lead sprayed around the town by Wade's men, despite several opportunities to either kill Evans or simply escape. And does Evans really do all this because his boy thinks he's a wuss? Apparently so. And all for naught, as Evans is finally gunned down by Wade's men just as Wade willingly gets into the cell-car of the train. And Wade's show of gratitude to his men? He kills them all. And then he gets back on the train to go to jail.

WTF?

Maybe Elmore Leonard's 4500 word short story explains it better. Maybe the original 1957 film does a better job of outlining why Wade doesn't kill Evans with the many opportunities the 2007 film offers him.

Maybe, if you've been wanting to see this film after missing its theatrical release (like I did), you'll just change your mind. The Simpsons Movie is more intellectually gratifying.

°

Random Successes

2010-07-18T20:58:00.007-05:00

I can't seem to put two thoughts together lately for a meaningful post. The taxi driving still provides fodder I think would make for great stories, but I think I'm suffering from sensory overload; they all just dissolve to a blurry background beyond the field of focus.

Instead, I'll just post pretty pictures. All mine, of course.

I finally completed a successful flip! Not 100% successful, as you can see upon close scrutiny, but the breaks "healed" almost instantaneously on the heat, and I had two "dunky" eggs for breakfast. The above photo was taken on July 6, 2010. I haven't had a successful one again since.

Crepuscular Rays. I got the term "Jacob's Ladder" from a Rush song of that name, off their Permanent Waves album. Kind of a neat song if you can find it and give it a listen (hint: YouTube). Sitting at the Arlington Heights train station, I was treated to this sight one late afternoon after a day of rain. Carrying my camera in the taxi finally paid off somewhat.

Tonight's dinner. And tomorrow's lunch. And meals for a good chunk of the week! Rubbed with olive oil, sprinkled with "Italian Seasoning," and roasted over indirect, 350° heat on my Weber gas grill, alternately turned 180° and flipped over every 15 minutes for an hour and a half, and the meat practically fell off the bone at my mere suggestion! It's the one culinary thing I'm actually good at! Can you say "Mmmmmmmmmmmm?"

°

In re: Thematic Photographic #104 - Dotty

2010-07-07T22:31:00.006-05:00

Carmi's theme this week was dotty things.

Exposed aggregate concrete • Hoffman Estates, Illinois
July 2, 2010

°

Anthem

2010-07-04T11:17:00.009-05:00

Oh! Say, can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there!

Oh! Say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

We Americans, I say with much hope, memorize the words to our national anthem, but I feel that seldom does anyone really pause to analyze the words and grasp their meaning.

The oft-maligned choice for our national anthem is criticized for its wide vocal range that the average citizen can’t cover and for its anachronistic poetic structure. But rather than wax eloquent about the beauty and bounty of our nation, as so many nations’ anthems do; or strut with musically arrogant pride about our power and might above all others, as so many other nations’ anthems do, ours highlights a mere moment in our history that typifies our collective resolve: we always come through in the clutch.

Written as a poem by Francis Scott Key, it was adopted as our National Anthem in 1931.

Key, sent as part of a party to a flotilla of British ships off of Baltimore harbor during the war of 1812 to secure the safe return of American prisoners of war, was then detained on the ship as plans were laid to bombard Fort McHenry. The bombardment lasted through the night and was so fierce that Key could only imagine total destruction of the fort. But, through the night the light from “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof” that the American flag seen flying over the fort in “the twilight’s last gleaming” the evening before, was still there.

"Oh! Look there, in the light of the sunrise! You can see it, what we looked on so proudly last night — the brightly colored stars and stripes we saw flying over the ramparts during the battle as the sun went down!

"We could see in the red light of the rockets, and the bombs exploding around it all night, that our flag was still there!

"And now, as the battle is ended, we see that our flag still flies over the land of the free and the home of the brave!"

When I think of the song in terms of the story it tells, I’m filled with the pride Francis Scott Key must have felt that morning when he saw that flag flying “by the dawn’s early light.”

And yes, I cry.

Happy Birthday, USA!

(parts of this post lifted from a May 6, 2007 Farrago post)

The Signs, They Are A- ...Jumble?

2010-06-30T21:51:00.005-05:00

I've been regularly taking my camera out on the road with me in the taxi in hopes of finding interesting things to shoot. As luck would have it, I saw something funny that deserved to be photographed, and then Carmi unleashed his most recent theme over at Written Inc.

Signs of the Times.

Here's my contribution...about a week late. My apologies.

Practice What You Preach, o sign master!

No Small Change

2010-06-27T23:07:00.004-05:00

Yes, you're at the right blog. Well, that is, unless you landed here by accident. If you're actually here on purpose, welcome to the new and improved Farrago, now with less mystery and more... well, nothing more, really. I just changed some layout crap with Blogger's Layout Crap Changer. I hope you like it.

But there is more change in the air. Be careful...the quarters hurt most. Half-dollars cause the most damage, but who carries half-dollars any more, let alone flings them into the air?

But I digress. Where was I? Ah, yes. Change. We all change a little bit every day. Our cells regenerate themselves at a rate such that we are each really a completely different person than we were something like eight days before. Some of us endeavor never to change, but underwear has a way of falling apart if abused, and we have to put new ones on anyway. Not me. You. No. I mean, them.

I did it again. What am I getting at? What's this about change?

I've started a new blog. No, it's not a replacement of Farrago, nor will it necessarily be a permanent pastime. SHEESH! Take one look around here and you'll realize Farrago isn't even a permanent pastime of late! But my other blog is a diary of sorts, a documentary effort following my experiences with an extreme fitness regimen called P90X. I shared my weight loss and workout stories of last year here at Farrago, but I wanted a place where I could dedicate coverage to my renewed effort to lose weight (again) and achieve real fitness (once and for all).

And that place is P90Xperiment. There I'll comment about the workouts (I haven't started yet, but I hear they're intense), about how I'm feeling, aches and pains, successes, setbacks and whatever else comes to mind in the process of making myself the very picture of health, fitness, and hottitude. Of course, it will contain my usual pithy wit, replete with my wacky, inane, and — yes — moronic observations about things that don't matter to anyone. Not even me, really. But mostly, I'm sure, I'll complain about stuff like, why did I spend money on this thing, what was I thinking when I posted pictures of my fat, half-naked self on the internet despite the fact that anyone to whom I mentioned this idea said I should post before and after photos, I could really go for a jumbo hot dog right now.... No, I mean, really. I'm pretty hungry, as I spent most of the afternoon assembling a chin-up bar, taking pictures of my fat, half-naked self, and creating the new blog, that I forgot to eat dinner. HEY! I'm losing weight already!

So go read it, already. Comments are moderated to keep out cruel, obnoxious comments from strangers. Cruel, obnoxious comments from friends are ...uh ...welcome.

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Void

2010-06-20T16:05:00.003-05:00

.

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Thematic Photographic #101

2010-06-13T15:20:00.007-05:00

It's odd that I had taken the photos contained herein with a particular theme in mind, and then Carmi, over at Written, Inc., chose that same theme a couple months later.

In Thematic Photographic #101, Carmi asks his contributors to pay particular attention to the artificially lit nightscape.

And here I go...

Click on a photo to enlarge. All photos ©2010 Tony Gasbarro.

Working the night shift gives me the opportunity to see things as
relatively few people see them, such as urban or semi-urban locales
as desolate, lonely landscapes. Not to mention the freedom to stand
in the middle of a four-lane highway to take a series of shots with-
out being mowed under by a speeding Cadillac!

Nocturnal Oasis. The night surrounds a little cocoon of light and
makes it appear a lonely outpost.

A mix of both artificial light and early morning twilight as the
distant, impending sunrise illuminates the high sky above.

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Murphy's Kitchen

2010-06-06T12:40:00.004-05:00

As both my readers are aware, I am not much of a cook, so much ...ehrm... not, that I occasionally blog about my kitchen exploits here, failures as well as successes.

Due to my wacky schedule, I haven't cooked breakfast at home for quite a while. I had the same bacon sitting in my refrigerator for at least two months and, gastrically daring as I am, even that seemed too dangerous today as I contemplated my options.

After my overnight shift in the taxi, I made a morning stop to stock up on a few grocery items. In a purely impulse shopping moment, my eyes alighted on a package of "breakfast links" in the cooler beside the butcher's counter...little sausages made (I believe) right on the premises at my local mom & pop (chain) store. "Hmmm," I thought. "A nice alternative to bacon," I thought. I also had some eggs that were getting old; the sell-by date on the carton is April 15. So I bought a dozen fresh.

Once home I threw away the old bacon. I opened the old carton of eggs only to reveal that it was an entire dozen. In the interest of not wasting an entire dozen eggs, I'm just daring enough to eat those. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. What does kill me... well....

I got things going on the stove. I even opted to brew up a "pot" of French press coffee, rare for me since I gave up caffeine (again) a few weeks ago. I simmered up four breakfast links over a low-to-medium flame while the water heated up for the coffee and while I prepared the toast and cracked open the eggs (which looked and smelled just fine, by the way) and deposited them in a Pyrex measuring cup/bowl/glass-thing-with-a-handy-handle-and-pour-spout.

As the links heated up, the oils inside them began to bubble, and I noticed that the skin of one of them had expanded balloon-like, and I could actually see the oil pooling inside and boiling! No sooner had I noticed this, and thought to myself, "If that bubble bursts, oil is going to squirt out," the bubble burst and oil squirted out. And of all directions the oil could have squirted out, guess which direction it squirted...

Yes. Right. At. Me. It doused my shirt right at belly level, and now I look like some sort of greasy hillbilly with a greasy hillbilly belly. No offense to any greasy hillbillies among my readers, but I know both of you, and neither of you is a hillbilly. Well, not a greasy one, anyway....

I saw another of the links bubbling up the same way, so I rolled the bubble side to face away from me and watched it burst and douse the other sausages. Suckers!
Toast was done and buttered, I was sipping the first of the first coffee I had made at home in about two months, and the links were all but finished cooking — and squirting. It was now time for the eggs.

In the past I have waxed poetic about my attempts at The Flip, but it has become somewhat of an obsession with me to perfect the eggs-over flip without breaking the yolks, or dropping the whole heap on the floor, or the stove, or the sink...or the ceiling. Since it had been several months since I had cooked anything, I was feeling pretty rusty about the flip, which I haven't even gotten good at, yet, in the first place, even.

I poured the eggs into the pan of bubbling butter, and both the yolks slid toward one side of the pan, huddling together and elongating slightly, appearing almost as apprehensive eyes looking fearfully at me. Hey, I worked all night. I'm tired. I see what I see.

So, with sausagey hillbilly grease-stains on my shirt, I gripped the pan handle tightly, walked the bubbling, fearfully quivering eggs over to the sink, and prepared for the flip. The eggs slid easily back and forth around in the pan, looking at me now in sheer horror. And -FLIP- ...and the whole shebang went only half-way over, perpendicular to the world, and plopped into the pan, edge first, both yolks breaking as they plopped back into the butter.

DAMN.

The only thing worse would be if the damned aged things kill me after I ate them.

I seem to be fine so far.

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Idle Moments

2010-05-30T18:02:00.011-05:00

The Vanishing Points cast and crew were a playful bunch. During the run of dress rehearsals and performances at the tiny Boho Theatre and its especially cramped dressing room/makeup/backstage area (there was NO privacy! I saw the women in their underwear...and they saw me in mine, the poor things....), the director and the stage manager saw to it that our off-stage time was occupied with other pursuits so as to keep our voices from drifting out onto stage when they weren't wanted. On the first day of tech. rehearsals, the grueling sessions where the backstage crew cram into a couple of days what the actors have been drilling for weeks, we found in the dressing/makeup area a box full of magazines, puzzle- and coloring books, as well as a box each of coloring markers and Crayola crayons!

Backstage at Boho. In the left foreground are the objects of our
distraction. (Photo: Morgan Manasa)

I thought it was just silly at first, but as my boredom grew, I took a crayon in my hand and flipped through the coloring book, looking at a couple of samples that cast member Mark Penzien had already rendered. I noted that he had applied some shading to some of his works, an idea that had never crossed my mind for coloring books, as I hadn't colored in a coloring book since, maybe, age 8?

I found a picture to my liking and started filling in between the lines.

I discovered along the way that, either due to paying attention when I didn't think I was to my ex-wife's graphic art work, or something I just picked up along the way, I have sort of a knack for shading. Granted, they were just coloring book pictures, but some of them struck me as pretty darn good, if I may say so myself. And I just did.

This was the first one I did.

Since I had very small roles in the play, I had a LOT of down time....

I sorta goofed a little on this one....

I like the shading at the edges of the "fur" in this one.

I love how shading can add character to the
characters! The bug is a little crappy in
this one.

Probably my favorite of the bunch....

There are a few others, but I don't feel they're very good.

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Vanishing Points

2010-05-30T16:04:00.035-05:00

In September of 1972, Grand Island, Nebraska saw the grisly aftermath of a multiple murder in which three members of the Peak family — the parents and their 14 year old daughter — were shot to death in their home. A surviving, adult daughter was out of the home at the time, and that woman spent the ensuing years dealing with loss and guilt over the incident, and was the inspiration for a stage drama that fictionalized the events but spared none of the emotion. The resulting play is Vanishing Points by Martin Jones, a story of a young woman's journey through the tragedy and loss, and making her way back into the world.

The crime has never been solved.

The cast of Vanishing Points were:
Stacie Hauenstein (Beth)
Annie Slivinski (Carolyn/Peg)
Rick Levine (Walter/Cliff)
Victoria Bucknell (Barbara/Vicki)
Christopher Sanderson (Lenny/Caz)
Morgan Manasa (Fran)
Mark E. Penzien (Gary)
Tony Gasbarro (Policeman/Det. Sinfeld)

(click on any photo to see full size)

Working a scene with director, Dan Foss, and actors Stacie Hauen-
stein and Christopher Sanderson. (photos: Morgan Manasa)

Stage Manager Rachel Staelens
and Assistant Stage Manager
Derek Van Tassel feverishly scrib-
ble notes on everything from
actors' missed lines to light and
sound cues, to ideas on where to
go for drinks after rehearsal!!
(photo: Morgan Manasa)

Costumer Erica Hohn, left, creates
one of several "tattoos" for Vicki,
one of the characters portrayed by
Victoria Bucknell. Victoria's arm
is wrapped in cellophane, and then
covered with the altered pantyhose
she will wear onstage, upon which
the "tattoos" are drawn with indel-
ible ink. Rather ingenious, I
thought! (photo: Tony Gasbarro)

In our other rehearsal space, our
lead actress, Stacie Hauenstein,
runs a scene with Rick Levine.
(photo: Tony Gasbarro)

"Who's that comin' up the road...?"
An imagined conversation of the
victims in their last moments alive.
From left, Rick Levine, Victoria
Bucknell, Annie Slivinski.
(photo: Tony Gasbarro)

Meanwhile, Beth is getting high
and getting it on with her boy-
friend, Lenny, out in a field some-
where outside of town.... Christo-
pher Sanderson, left, and Stacie
Hauenstein. (photo: Tony Gasbarro)

Beth's dreams are haunted by her
dead parents and sister. One of
the more bizarre — and heart-
wrenching — scenes. Pictured:
Annie Slivinski.
(photo: Tony Gasbarro)

And the living begin to
haunt Beth's dreams,
too. Here, the image of
Beth's brother-in-law,
Gary, tears apart her art
work. Stacie Hauenstein,
left, and Mark Penzien.
(photo: Tony Gasbarro)

In our performance space, The
Boho Theatre at Heartland Studio,
Victoria "poses" for her chalk out-
line as the corpse of Barbara.
(photo: Morgan Manasa)

Yours truly, in his first speaking
role on stage in more than ten
years, as the asshole cop. From
left, Christopher Sanderson, Tony
Gasbarro, Stacie Hauenstein.
(photo: Morgan Manasa)

The full depth and breadth of the
audience space at Boho Theatre.
(photo: Morgan Manasa)

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Cobwebs

2010-05-30T14:49:00.001-05:00

Sunday. The day of rest.

Since I started driving the taxi, I haven't really taken many days off. Part of that was due to the fact that, at the same time I started driving the taxi, I also got a rash of roles in plays, the rehearsals for which took up a huge chunk of my time, significant in that said time was when I could be making solid change in the taxi. So I shifted my work hours to nights for a large portion of the "play" time in order to maximize my hours behind the wheel.

Autumn begat winter, and then winter gave way to spring. Lucky Stiff ended its run as the holidays began, and then, as the turkey and mimosas wore off, Vanishing Points went into rehearsals. The performance run hit its stride and the weather reluctantly warmed, and A Tale of Two Cities ground slowly into motion, opening after a somewhat harrowing rehearsal process a mere month after Vanishing Points closed.

I didn't have the creative burden some of the major characters bore on their players, but I subjected myself to a more demanding schedule, resulting in long shifts, sleeping in four-hour (or less) bursts, and by May 1, the final performance of A Tale of Two Cities, I was feeling nonetheless exhausted.

With a quarter of my day back in my hands I faced the option of taking that time to relax, or to hit the road in earnest to rake in as much money as I could.

I did both.

I shifted my working day to the early mornings and either straight through the day, or taking a break around 10:00am and heading back out around 1:00pm and finishing around 6:00, for a 12 hour day. On Friday and Saturday nights, however, I take advantage of the thriving bar scene in one of the towns in my area, starting in the late evening and working the night through, usually for a 14-hour shift each night.

Sunday is my day to transition back to the day shift, and is my day to rest. To my dismay, however, the extra sleep that day has consistently left me with a headache I can't shake until near the end of the day, just around bedtime!

And, finally, today I have taken some time to get back to blogging. Unfortunately for you, my one dear reader who hasn't yet abandoned me (which may, in fact, be only ME), my return to blogging is this creaking, rusty excuse for a post.

In the (Sun)days to come I hope to post more play photos and taxi stories. I started one and saved it somewhere, but have since been unable to find it.

I hope you're having a wonderful, reverent, peaceful Memorial Day weekend!

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Coming Up For Air (and Lucky Stiff photos!)

2010-04-28T19:24:00.019-05:00

A Tale of Two Cities is winding to a close this weekend. I've had the last four evenings free and have done an inordinate amount of nothing. Making like a vegetable can be quite fun...until the rot starts...

Anyhoo, as promised MONTHS ago, below are some shots from Lucky Stiff, with pithy, irreverent captions. Or not.

The Lucky Stiff cast: Ryan Gilbert, Kendel Lester, Lisa Cantwell, John Rodrick, Andy Berlien, Danna Marie Pantzke, Jesus Mata, Sarah Greenfield, Danny Shannon and Tony Gasbarro. All photos by David Ropinski. Click on a photo to embiggerate.

An early scene, as a commuter
(far left), after the death
scene, and before my appearance
as the corpse.

The ensemble number "It's Good
To Be Alive." I'm in the wheelchair.
From left: Danna, Danny, Farrago,
Ryan, Sarah.

A detail shot from "It's Good To
Be Alive." I'm in the wheelchair.
From left: John, Farrago, Ryan.

Another ensemble number,
"Speaking French," where I get me
some. Not a bad score for a dead
guy, huh? I'm in the wheelchair.
From left: Kendel, Ryan, Sarah,
Farrago, John, Danny, Jesus,
Danna.

Jesus Mata claims that Lucky
Stiff was his first musical ever. Re-
gardless, the man stole the show.
Here is a glimpse of his genius in
one of his many ensemble roles,
this time a much mustachioed nun.
This scene was a riot. I'm not
in the wheelchair. From left: Jesus,
Danny, Kendel, Ryan.

Shenanigans behind
my back...

The big climax. There was intrigue,
and guns, and... maid costumes!
From left: Andy, Sarah, Lisa,
Ryan, Farrago, Kendel, John.

Everybody loves Farrago. From left:
Lisa, John, Farrago, Ryan, Kendel.

Resurfacing II

2010-03-21T15:35:00.005-05:00

Ooops. Here I am again.... It is embarrassing that I find myself compelled to apologize for the dearth of posts here at FARRAGO lately. I haven't often — if at all — mentioned the other play I was cast in during the run of Lucky Stiff, a drama called Vanishing Points, but we went into rehearsals in earnest mid-January. We closed a four-week run last night. (See reviews here.) Coupled with trying to make rent each month in the taxi, I am left with little time to write.

During the run of Vanishing Points (photos to soon follow) I was also cast in a return to NEIU's stage, an April production of A Tale of Two Cities in which I will portray the evil Marquis de St. Evremonde. Busy? To say the least.

Oddly enough, there haven't been too many new stories from the back seat to share here. Either nothing much of note has been happening, or I'm just becoming desensitized to what does happen back there. Either way, I haven't been inspired much to tell any tales. Perhaps I will.

In any case, I'll probably throw a few things up here in the coming weeks, but as ATOTC gains speed before take-off, be certain I'll disappear again. I'm considering taking the summer off from my pursuit of an acting career and focusing on earning a living, paying rent, and reconnecting with my other passions and friendships. Do stay with me, if I haven't lost you already.

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The Awesome Absurd

2010-02-12T19:38:00.011-06:00

I was treated to this sight Thursday morning as I finished my shift in the taxi. The surrounding landscape is a huge pile of snow thrown to the edge of my apartment complex parking lot. Apparently this had been attached to the front bumper of my taxi the night before and probably broke off when my weight hit the seat as I got in. Then, due to an interesting coincidence of timing, clear, cold weather, and the fact that my mind was blank enough to be distracted by such things, I saw it.

Photos ©2010 Tony Gasbarro.
Click on a photo to embiggerate.

The sun was up, but barely high enough to peek over the summit of the snow mountain. The small bluff upon which the "stalagmicicle" stands is just tall enough to be illuminated by the sun around the base of the structure.

The structure itself basks in the the sun, reflecting and diffracting its light in natural perfection.

I look at these photos and can't help but think that it looks like I deliberately lit this scene, but it was just there for me to take in. A little plebeian, I know, but you take joy where you can find it.

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Why Can't America Do This Right?

2010-02-10T00:40:00.008-06:00

It's chocolate milk, people. Milk, cocoa, sugar.

Why do we always have to add crap to stuff? Who demands that the simple be made complicated?

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Kid Sniffles and the Unlucky Stiff

2010-01-14T17:33:00.003-06:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The snow came down in piles Thursday, and the cabbing was a non-stop affair. I had planned to work only until noon, but the longer I stayed logged onto the dispatch computer, the more fares came my way.

I picked up one guy at his home, and took him to his job at a hospital in Hoffman Estates. As he paid me, a man looking to be around age 30 made eye contact with me and asked, “Are you here for me?”

I shook my head. “Did you call for a cab?”

“Yeah.”

“This company?”

“I think so,” he said. “The receptionist at the E.R. called for me.”

If he had ordered from this company, I was reluctant to take him, as that would be stealing a fare from one of my company “brothers.” So I called our dispatcher, who checked for an order from that particular hospital and found none.

“Hop in,” I said to my new next fare, slightly dismayed since I was within a mile of my home and had planned to knock off for the day after the guy I dropped off at the hospital, though happy to put a few more dollars into my pocket. “Where to?”

“North Barrington.”

BONUS! That’s about a 12 mile trip across a couple different towns, so I could charge a higher rate!

He told me his address and we got underway, and began light conversation. He told me his name was Randy, and that he had spent two nights in the hospital due to what he said the doctors called alcohol poisoning, which Randy said was “Bullshit.”

With the weather falling down all around us and the traffic responding as traffic does around here, it took us nearly a half-hour to get to Miller Road, where he said he lived. Along the way Randy mentioned that so much snow had fallen, with more to come, but he hadn’t hired anyone to plow his driveway. When we finally turned on to Miller Road, Randy pointed to a street sign about 2 blocks ahead and said, “Turn in there.”

I nodded.

Then he blurted, “No, wait! It’s this one!” indicating the street which we had just passed.

I turned around in the gate area of a gated community, and he said, “I’m trying to sell my house. This economy is a bitch.” Then he warned me, “Don’t pull in the driveway or you might get stuck.”

I pulled up to his house, where the virgin snow in the driveway had been violated by one vehicle. The meter read $32.00

“Hey,” he said, “my keys and wallet are on top of my dresser in my bedroom. I’ll run in and get it, and I’ll be right back.”

I’ve done this several times over the three months that I’ve been driving a taxi. Pickups from hospital emergency rooms usually don’t have any cash or their credit cards on them, and I have no choice but to trust them to get their stuff and come back. And they usually do, no worries.

He trotted toward the house, but then, instead of going to the front door, he slipped around the side of the house. Three minutes later I started to get the feeling something was wrong. Another two minutes later and I was pretty sure.

“This guy stiffed me.”

I attempted to pull into the driveway against “Randy’s” warning, but I indeed almost got stuck in the six to eight inches of fresh snow. It struck me odd — if this guy was indeed not coming back — that he would have even that level of compassion. I aborted that attempt and instead drove down the narrow lane to a home where the driveway had been cleared of the deep snow, and I turned around there.

I returned to the house and again sat in front, thinking for a moment that maybe I was being a little hasty. But I looked at the place, and at the “For Sale” sign protruding from the snow, and then I recalled the address he had told me at the beginning of the trip: 611 Miller Road, North Barrington. This house wasn’t on Miller Road, but rather a street that intersects with Miller.

Son of a bitch.

I got out of the car and walked toward the house, tracing his footsteps around the side, ducking under the boughs of a snow-laden pine tree, the needles of which shed some of their burdensome flakes down the back of my jacket collar and onto my bare neck. Around to the back of the house I saw “Randy’s” footprints in the snow leading away from the house and across a field behind the house.

Bastard.

I returned to the car and entered 611 Miller Road into my GPS unit. My hope was that he hadn’t decided to stiff me until he saw how much the ride was going to cost, or until I let him leave the car with the trust that he would return, and that he assumed I wouldn’t remember his address. The GPS indicated that the address was very close, and estimated it would take me 17 seconds to get there!

I drove to the location as indicated by the GPS. The house was at the end of a line of houses, their mailboxes standing at the side of the road with their addresses affixed to the west sides of the boxes. Six-twenty-one, 615 and... At the house on the eastern end of the line of houses, the mailbox was missing from the steel signpost that stood beside the road. Was this 611?

The driveway there had indeed been plowed, so I pulled in and got out of the car. The front walk and porch had not been cleared. I walked around to the back of the house where I saw no cars (and three closed garage doors), and several thoughts occurred to me in the moment: he may have planned this from the start, and 611 may have been a bogus address. If it was, and I went pounding on the door at this place, and the innocent dweller was confronted by an irked cab driver, it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for either of us. If it was the correct address, and “Randy” came to the door at all, it could get ugly, or even deadly. To me.

Asshole.

I returned to the cab and looked up the number to the local police. Fifteen minutes later, waiting at the same gate area where I had turned around earlier, a sheriff’s deputy arrived to take my statement. He said I would receive a call if they found the guy, or if they had any further questions.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

On another hospital emergency room pick-up I retrieved a father and son from the hospital in Arlington Heights. The father, from Argentina, spoke English with a heavy accent, which was at times difficult to decipher. Conversation, therefore, was limited. And that turned out to be very unfortunate. For me.

Though I am pretty nosy by nature, taxi company rules are explicit for drivers waving the company flag about asking personal questions. It’s none of your business. Don’t ask.

It became apparent that it was the kid, about ten years of age, who was the reason for the trip to the E.R., as I picked them up around 4:30 am, when I overheard him say to his father, “My throat still itches,” in perfect American kid English.

With snow still falling and the roads a mess, the going was slow on the approximately seven-mile trip.

[sniff!]

[sniff!]

[sniff!] [sniff!]

Whatever the kid had was running out of his nose.

A customer a few weeks ago — a family, actually — inadvertently left a box of facial tissue on the rear shelf above the back seat in my car. I thought it an adequate addition to the amenities I offer my customers, which consist mainly of... well... that box of facial tissues. Anyway, I said to the father, “There’s a box of tissues behind you, if he needs some.”

“Ten cue!” he said, and I heard him turn and take a tissue from the box. He said something to the kid, who, so it sounded, refused!

[sniff!] [sniff!]

At least one per minute, it seemed, sometimes coming in flurries of three or more in a matter of seconds.

[sniff!] [sniff!] [sniff!]

After a few minutes, “Would you care to listen to the radio?” I asked the father.

“No. Ees okay. Ten cue.”

[sniff!] [sniff!]

[sniff!]

It became absurd. Absurd situations tend to give me the giggles. It was all I could do not to bust out laughing.

[sniff!]

[sniff!]

[sniff!]

I looked at the time display on the dispatch computer screen: 4:52.

[sniff!] One. I started counting.

[sniff!] [sniff!] Two. Three.

The drive dragged on through the fairly deserted streets upon which the snow fell so hard and fast that the village plows could not keep up to clear them.

[sniff!] [sniff!] [sniff!] [sniff!] [sniff!] [sniff!]

Finally, the adult in the back seat instructed me to turn into a cul-de-sac where he pointed out his house.

[sniff!]

He handed me his credit card.

[sniff!] [sniff!]

I filled out the information [sniff!] and handed the slip for him to sign. [sniff!]

I swiped his card through the slot in the car’s computer and waited for the authorization number. [sniff!] [sniff!]

[sniff!]

“Here you are!” I turned in my seat and handed back his receipt and his credit card.

The man and his boy exited my taxi and entered the flaky white fray outside. The computer’s clock read 5:02. Exactly ten minutes. That was easily only 1/3 of the entire duration of the ride!!

I had counted sixty sniffs! I don’t know how the kid didn’t pass out from hyperventilating!

Somehow I have the feeling that, were the adult in the back seat the boy’s mother, and after his refusal to use a tissue, she would have forcefully wrapped an arm around his head, jammed a tissue in his face and yelled, “BLOW!”

Of course, my fantasies do tend toward the weird....

°

A Bit of a Problem

2010-01-06T21:52:00.003-06:00

I recently had another repeat customer of note. I’ve had several repeat customers, but few affect me on our first meeting as this woman did. And I don’t mean it as a good thing.

Very early in this stint driving a cab, I received a late night call to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. Upon arrival I went in to the ER and announced that I was the taxi driver called in. One of the ER staff called out the woman’s name — for our purposes, Lana — and my attention was diverted to the slightly mannish figure I had passed on my way in (I originally thought she was a college-aged boy!), huddled in a chair, apparently sleeping, and wrapped in a hospital blanket. She got up without a word and staggered to the taxi, where she crawled into the back seat and lay down.

I got behind the wheel and asked, “Where to?”

Lana labored to tell me her address, which I entered into my GPS unit.

Several times throughout the 10-minute trip, Lana moaned or grunted. Her manner and apparent incoherence had all the earmarks of someone coming down from alcohol intoxication. And, from the looks and sounds of it, this woman had been several stations beyond hammered. I wasn’t certain, of course, but it was a strong hunch. So strong, that I feared with every moan or grunt that she would spew her stomach contents all over the inside of my cab. I also feared that she would be unconscious by the time I got her home, and that I wouldn’t be able to get her out of my cab.

We neared the point to which the GPS was directing me, and she sat up, and blurted, “Here. This is good.”

I looked around. We were at an intersection between a couple apartment complexes and some sort of commercial buildings. Lana whipped out a credit card.

While I filled out the slip, Lana lay back down in the seat. She signed with an unintelligible scribble, and I said “Thanks.”

Lana opened the rear seat door and leaned out. She grunted in what sounded like apprehension. “Can you help me?”

“Sure,” I said, and got out and went around to help her. She was doubled over and very unsteady on her feet, and I had no confidence she would make it to her home — wherever it was. “Where are you going?”

She pointed to a building that was at least 100 yards away, and atop a hill. She grunted and a word came out. “There.”

“Okay,” I said. “Can you make it?”

“Help me.” It sounded more like a general plea than a specific request.

“Okay, let’s go.” I offered my arm.

Lana remained doubled over as we walked. Though it was late September, the night air was quite crisp and chilly, and Lana wore nothing more than a t-shirt, shorts and a pair of athletic shoes. Despite the concrete stair path about fifty yards away that led to her building’s door, Lana made a bee-line for the door up the grassy hill. We had made it about one-third of the way up when she stumbled and stopped.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Hold me.” Again, it sounded like it came from deep within her soul.

On her right side, I gripped her right wrist with my right hand and pulled, and I placed my left hand on her back and pushed.

At the door to her building I waited as she fumbled for her keys, got them in the door, and got it open. Without looking at me, she muttered, “Thank you,” and shuffled into the depths of her existence.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Two months later I received an order to pick up on the same street. When I arrived I realized the address was the same building where I had dropped off Lana that bizarre, chilly night. And sure enough, when the door opened at the top of the hill, Lana came bounding down the stairs. Looking to be around 40, with sandy blond, short-cropped hair, she was a 180-degree turn from the last time I had seen her. Aside from a somewhat vacant, lost look in her eyes, one would never suspect at her appearance that she had any dirty secrets.

She got in the back seat and dictated directions to a destination I did not know. Only a minute or two into the ride she spoke. “Have you ever picked me up before?”

Attempting to sound as neutral as possible, I answered, “Yes. I picked you up at the emergency room one night, and brought you home.”

“Yeah. I thought you looked familiar. I’d remember a handsome guy like you.”

Right. I’m sure you do, I thought.

“You helped me get to the door. I appreciate that.”

Oops!

Her directions brought us to the door of a liquor store literally only about a mile from her apartment.

“Right here,” she said. And then, almost sheepishly, “I’ve got a bit of a problem.” She paused. Did she seek comment or acknowledgment? “I’ll be just a minute, and then you can take me right back home.”

She went in to the liquor store, and, neutrality no longer needed, I shook my head.

She emerged from the store only two minutes later, empty-handed. She got in the car and said, “Okay. Take me home.”

She offered no explanation. I had an array of possible scenarios, from she’s battling demons and she won this round by resisting the desire for liquor to the liquor store clerk recognizes she has a problem, and refused to sell to her. But I’m sure it’s somewhere between those possibilities.

At the bottom of the concrete stair path she again offered her credit card as payment. It was a few minutes to fill out the slip and process the card. She spoke.

“Do you have a card or something? I need cabs every now and then.”

I handed her my card, provided by the taxi company, with my name and mobile number hand-written on the back. I told her that my schedule varies, and to try to call me at least an hour before she needs a ride, if possible, to determine if I’ll be available to pick her up.

Her credit card was approved. I handed back her card and her receipt. She opened the door and spun on the seat to get out.

“Thanks!” she said, raising my calling card in a gesture to me. Then she smiled. “You’re a cutie!” And she was gone.

In a split-second my mind visited the possibilities present in entertaining her interest. “HELL NO!” I shouted in the otherwise empty car.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Just a few nights ago, as I was outside the door of a customer awaiting pick-up, my mobile phone rang.

“[Farrago]? This is--”

“Yes?” I spoke over the voice, missing her name.

She gave the address. “I need a ride.”

“Who is this?” I asked, though I was certain I recognized the voice, perhaps instinctively.

“Oh,” came the voice on the other end. She reacted as if she had been told she had the wrong number.

“I’m with another customer right now.”

“I need you.”

“I’m not available right now,” I said.

“How long will you be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know where he wants me to take him. I’ll call you as soon as I’m done with him and see if you still need a cab.”

There came a couple of uncertain grunts from Lana, and she hung up.

The customer was a local ride, not too long, and as soon as I dropped him off I called Lana, her number saved in my mobile phone’s “Calls” list. There was no answer.

Just to be sure, I drove to Lana’s apartment building and tried to call her again, also banking on the possibility that she was waiting for me to arrive. There was still no answer, and she never came out.

It’s in our nature to recognize need in people and to want to help. Some problems are within our capacity to solve, or at least to offer possible solutions. Others are beyond our help. The taxi driver is often a confidante, sometimes a co-conspirator. There is no oath of secrecy or privacy, though it seems one is implied. Nor is there a Hippocratic oath to help those in need. The damning reality is recognizing when someone is desperately in need of help, and the chasm between ‘want’ and ‘can’ is impossible to bridge.

°

What next?

2009-12-31T17:36:00.003-06:00

This is a very recent (December 29, 2009) photo of me. If this looks weird to you, it's a mirror image, and I haven't the technology to flip it...and it is me.

So I have hair again. Almost. Not certain if the director of the upcoming play I'm in will want me to keep it, so until I know, I must keep it.

So, what next? keep growing it? Comb-over? Mullet? .... Mull-over?

°

The Gypsy Prince

2009-12-28T20:10:00.005-06:00

I knew long before I ever got behind the wheel of a taxi cab that cab drivers love — nay, prefer — long rides. They’re more money per minute.

One cool evening I sat on one of the posts in this quaint northwest suburb, and the dispatch computer in the car sounded the alarm that I had a fare. The passenger name was Susie, a name and address I had been called to only two evenings earlier.

I drove to the house and pulled into the driveway, but instead of the young Susie, out came a young man carrying a small armload of clothes. He got in, said, “Hello,” and told me where he wanted to go: “Clark & Division.”

I turned to face him, mildly incredulous. “Downtown?”

“Yes, sir.” Tee hee! He called me “sir.”

“I just want to make sure you know how much that’s going to be.” He was asking me to take him into the heart of Chicago, about 25 miles away.

“How much will it be?”

“I don’t know, exactly. I have to run the meter. It could be up to seventy-five dollars.”

“That’s fine,” he said, unblinking.

And so we went on our way.

I mentioned to him that two nights earlier I had picked up the woman Susie from the same address where I had picked him up.

“That’s my sister.” He leaned forward and offered his hand, which I took. “I’m Ricky.”

I had noticed a resemblance to his sister, not that I had gotten a great, long look at her. They bore the identical traits of an olive skin tone and strange, slightly bulging, blue-gray eyes. Where Susie is very petite, Ricky is considerably bigger, both in height and in girth.

Conversation continued, and soon he had lured me into talk about politics, a subject cab drivers from this company are instructed to avoid, even though he and I were on the same side of the political fence. I mentioned voting, and he responded that he can’t vote. I pressed him for the reason.

“I’m only sixteen.”

I had to turn around — briefly — to look at him. With his looks, demeanor, and voice, he presented himself as around 25 or so. But sixteen?

My apprehension was telegraphed by my stammering before my words could deliver the concern. “Are you going to be able to pay for this ride?”

“Oh, no worries. My mom will pay you when I get there.”

I don’t remember how we got onto the next subject, his family’s heritage, but I think I expressed my curiosity regarding his skin tone. Middle Eastern? Greek?

“We’re gypsies,” he clarified. “Have you ever seen the palm-reading places around these towns?”

“Yeah,” I lied. I’m certain I had caught a glimpse of one here or there, but I couldn’t say where one was off hand.

“My parents own those. My parents and my aunts and uncles.”

“Oh,” I nodded.

“They’re just big scams.”

I stifled a laugh. “Really?!”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s all bullshit. I mean, come on! We’re gypsies. It’s what we do.”

“So what exactly does that mean, ‘gypsy?’ I mean, I know gypsies are somewhat nomadic. What is your family’s heritage?”

“We’re gypsies. That’s it.”

“No, I mean...” What did I mean? “Do you have any relatives from ‘the old country?’”

“Yeah. My grandmother.”

“Does she speak the language of her heritage?”

“Yeah.”

“What language is that?”

“’Romanesh.’ It’s kind of a mix of many languages, just like gypsies are a mix of many cultures. We have no country of our own. Everybody hates us, even worse than Jews. We’re just a bunch of thieves.”

I thought I heard quotation marks, in his voice the voice of his critics. I feared I was touching on a sensitive subject and, perhaps, upsetting him or making him upset himself, so I tried to switch back to a safer subject — like politics — again!

It was a long ride — about 40 minutes — and a long conversation. The topic drifted here and there, but seemed to keep coming back to Ricky’s gypsy roots.

“It’s in my blood. I was scamming when I was six years old. I had a woman — the mother of a friend of mine — giving me money every day. I told her my parents were poor and couldn’t afford to give me lunch money. She gave me ten dollars every day for months. She even bought me clothes and school supplies!”

His tales started to seem rather tall, and I began to doubt whether they were exactly what he said they were, or if they were real at all. I felt my interest begin to wane as my disbelief grew, and my feedback ‘uh-hums’ and ‘uh-huhs’ started to feel forced. But he was on a roll, now, seeming to enjoy stringing me along on his tale of con artistry.

I continued to engage him in conversation, a passive spectator to the imagery he created across the air.

“...And the whole family, basically, works scams together.”

“Like what?” As if it was any of my business.

“Okay. When it all boils down, I’m a thief.”

I suddenly got a dim view of the immediate future. “Okay, now, you’re not instilling a whole lot of confidence that I’ll get paid for this ride!”

“Oh, no,” Ricky smiled. “I’m not that kind of thief. You’ll get paid. Don’t worry.”

He might as well have added, “Trust me.”

“Here’s what I do: basically I steal tons of shit, usually from stores like Best Buy; expensive shit, electronics, small packaging and all. Then we make bogus sales receipts for each one, and then we go to different stores — never the one where we stole the shit — and use the bogus sales receipts to return the merchandise for cash.”

It all sounded plausible, and like he indeed knew from experience what he was talking about. I got a slight chill that climbed up my spine with the thought of his reasons for telling me all this, and what possible consequence — should he be legit...as it were — his divulging it to me could have.

When he finished his confession I was speechless. What would I have said? “You’re a naughty boy! Stop that!”

We approached the corner of Clark and Division streets in Chicago, and he said, “When you turn onto Clark you’ll see a psychic storefront on the other side of the street. Just pull in front of it, and I’ll run in and get your money.”

I did as he asked, and when I stopped the meter it read $67.40.

He pointed a finger toward the storefront. “See that woman in the white top?”

I looked, and I saw her.

“I’m going to go in and get the money from her.” He opened the right side rear door. “Been a pleasure talking to you. I’ll be right back.” He stood erect and then paused. He bent again to poke his head in the doorway, a wry smile stretching his face. “Keep an eye on me now. I might rip you off!”

He gave voice to the exact sentiment I was hiding in my silence! I couldn’t suppress a nervous chuckle as I blurted, “You bet I will!”

He walked across the street and into the psychic’s lair. He spoke to the woman in the white top. He pointed out the window toward my taxi. She looked out at me. She didn’t appear to have been expecting to see him, and she appeared none too pleased that he asked her for money. Gypsy thief in the family business or not, he was still a teenage headache to his parents, sucking money out of their pores.

The woman in white stepped out of view. Then Ricky stepped out of view. For a minute or two. What’s my next move if they don’t come back? Do I cross the street? Do I brace for confrontation? Do I call the cops? I chuckled at myself and at the absurdity of the situation. The kid seemed so damn likable! But then, I guess that’s the way it’s played, the grease that makes the gears turn, that which makes the con man an artist.

Without much more waiting, Ricky emerged from the psychic’s shop and approached me.

“See? I told you I’d be back!” He handed me four 20-dollar bills. “Thanks again. Keep the change!” He spun back toward the store and disappeared inside.

I rather absently checked my pockets to make sure nothing was missing, and I made my way back to the northwest suburbs, thoughts of Ricky — and more questions about him than I had answers — running through my mind.

Just about every day I drive past the house where Ricky and Susie live, and each time I pass by I look at it — usually at night — and usually there’s a light on upstairs illuminating what is either an unfurnished room or a stairway foyer, and each time I wonder. What are you up to in there?

°

Freaky Weirdness

2009-12-21T11:32:00.006-06:00

I think it's safe to say that I'm not what most would describe as the typical cab driver. Number one, I am "the best cab driver EVER." Two, I hear enough horror stories from passengers about other cab drivers whose rude behavior, foul attitudes, and questionable driving skills have left them with elevated blood pressures. Unfortunately some of those other hacks drive for the same company, so I often find myself apologizing to the customer for the dud they got before. Three, I speak English.

I'm a nice guy; it even says so on my personal calling card. I don't know if so many other cab drivers from Eastern Europe, the Middle East or Africa are just plain unfriendly, or if their lack of a full grasp of English makes them reticent and therefore seemingly rude, or worse, if the language barrier has caused so much rude treatment from passengers that they no longer give a shit any more. All I know is that, as a taxi passenger I experienced such a lack of service at times that I had to shake my head. When I started driving a cab, I got it into my head that I would never treat passengers like baggage and, so far, I think — I hope — I haven't wavered from that.

Little Old Ladies and Fair Damsels
Good news: one of my passengers is in love with me. Bad news: she's 83 years old.

Early on in my cab-driving career I picked up Rose. The instructions for her fare, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are fairly particular: no phone calls, no mini-vans, "must be on time-SHE HAS TO MAKE IT TO DIALYSIS!!" The first time I picked her up — at 4:00am — she stood on her walk just outside her door and apologized for her slow speed, and commented that she had suffered a mild stroke some months before, and still had some difficulty walking, and she didn't see in the dark so well. So I walked to her and offered her my arm. Every time since then (I have missed a few, getting sent by the dispatcher on other calls before I could position myself in Rose's zone in time to get her fare from the computer) it has been the same scenario. I pull into the driveway of the house where she lives with her daughter, positioning the car where she has the least distance to walk. She is always, ALWAYS waiting at the front door for her cab and is often already making her way down the driveway by the time I get to her and offer my arm.

Few of the other cab drivers who have received the order for her fare have ever done that, but rather have just sat in their car and waited for her to get there. Others have helped her as I do, but, she says, those drivers have quit or otherwise disappeared.

Rose's is an extremely short ride; it's less than a mile from her home to the renal center where she has her dialysis done, and the fare is only $3.80. That pisses off most cab drivers. I go out of my way to make sure I get the call so that Rose is taken care of properly. She's Italian, and was delighted to learn that I am half Italian. She has promised to portion off some of her family's approaching holiday meal for me to take home with me, and she has told me I'm in her will! She has said to me repeatedly, "You are with god," or something like that, in answer to which I just bite my tongue and smile. It's not that I fear to upset her or that I don't want to start an argument, but rather that I fear she might be carrying a rolling pin in her bag. She might be a frail old woman, but she is Italian, so she probably has a few good swings in her, and, despite the macular degeneration, no doubt has excellent aim!

---+++---+++---+++---+++---+++---

This morning I had dropped off Rose at the renal center and made my way toward the shopping center where I normally sit and wait for the computer to assign me my rides, about 10 miles away to the northeast from Rose's renal center. Around 4:20am, perhaps not quite halfway there I was on a wide stretch of main arterial roadway approaching a pass beneath an interstate highway. There I saw a most peculiar thing: a car straddled the center dividing curb, its emergency flashers activated. As I neared the car the thought ran through my mind: How the fuck did you get THERE? The dividing curb is, at the very least, eight inches high. At the nearest intersections on either side of the bridge, the curb is much too wide for the car to straddle, so I had no clue how the car got there.

But then I realized the car was probably stuck. There were no emergency vehicles around, so I decided to stop, if only to make sure that the driver was unhurt and had called anyone for help. I pulled in front of the car and into the narrow end of the nearby left-turn lane, activated my emergency flashers, and got out of my cab.

As I approached the car, a very attractive young woman got out from the driver's side (into the opposite-direction traffic lane!) and approached me. She was holding her mobile phone to her ear and was frantic and near tears as she tried to explain to me what had happened.

After spending the evening in Chicago, she had driven a friend to his car at a nearby commuter train station in this far northwest suburb, and then headed toward home in a west suburb about 20 miles to the south. She told me she was simply exhausted (though she admitted having had a couple drinks early the evening before, I didn't smell any alcohol on her) and in unfamiliar territory. She made a left turn toward the underpass, but misread the intersection and started heading east in the westbound lanes. She had quickly realized her error and, thinking she could hop the median, she attempted to do so, and got hung up on it, with the underbelly of her car resting on the concrete shelf about two feet wide.

Jen, as she told me her name, didn't know what to do, so I helped her to calm down and told her she needed to call a towing company. She looked up the nearest on her internet-enabled mobile phone, and was told a truck would be there in about 30 minutes. She kept voicing her wish that we could just push the car to a point where her front tires could get traction, and she could just drive off, but I showed her that her driver's side rear-wheel wasn't even touching the ground. Unless the Incredible Hulk happened to drive by, there was no way we two were going to make that car budge.

I told her that, if a policeman happened to show up, she shouldn't tell him that she was "simply exhausted," but to just stick with the "unfamiliar territory" part because, even if her car was drivable, he probably wouldn't let her drive home if she was indeed that pooped. I then told her that I would stick around to wait with her and, if she couldn't drive the car home, I would take her.

Some passer-by must have reported an accident because, just as the tow truck arrived, so did no fewer than four cops: two Cook County Sheriff's deputies, one Illinois State Police trooper, and one local municipal cop! At first they believed there had been a crash, but after I told them, and then Jen told them that I had come along shortly after her mishap and offered to help her, I actually saw one of them gesture toward me and heard him tell her, "He's a nice guy."

See?

The young driver of the tow truck made his assessments, called his supervisor, made some more assessments, and determined that he didn't have the right kind of truck to get the car off the curb. The local cop called another towing service, and told us it would probably be another ten minutes until that one arrived.

After the deputies and the trooper left, the local cop stuck around to keep traffic clear of our area while we each waited in our cars for the tow truck. As I was in front of everyone, I noticed in my rear-view mirror that the cop was talking to Jen through her open driver's side window. He was fairly young, so I figured he was making time with the beautiful young Jen. Hell, I would've were I he. Him...?

A few minutes later I heard a soft knock on my window. It was the cop, telling me that he had instructed Jen to get in my cab after her car was squared away, and to have me take her home. I told him that I had already offered, and that I would cut her a break on the steep fare the trip would be, not wanting to take advantage of her, and all. At least not financially.... OOPAAHH!

He told me that she was to go home, and that if she told me to take her to her car, I was to call the police and let them know. Great. Conscripted snitch.

The flatbed tow truck driver arrived and within 15 minutes had Jen's car off of the median and on his truck. The cop said that the car was being taken to a nearby auto dealer where the tow truck driver would leave instructions for their service department to assess any damage to the undercarriage and make sure it was roadworthy.

Jen said that the cop had told her that if she directed me to where her car was taken, he would arrest her! The poor kid was embarrassed, exhausted yet certain she was okay to drive, and fearful of confronting her uncle and his wife, with whom she lives, the latter whom is the co-signer with Jen on the car loan.

I entered her address in my GPS and told her to just try to relax on the drive and maybe take a nap. However, on the way we got into a conversation. She's 25 years old, a student in her final year of a management degree at a local university. We got to talking about the suburb where she lives with her aunt and uncle, and I asked if she grew up there. She said, "No. I grew up in the south suburbs."

"Really?" I asked.

I grew up in the south suburbs, in a town so far south and to the edge of the same huge county that holds Chicago — Cook County — that when I mention Chicago Heights, I assume no one has heard of it, let alone knows where it is. So unless I'm talking with another south suburbanite, I simply refer to my childhood roots as "the south suburbs."

"I'm from the south 'burbs. Which one?"

She said it with the confidence of a long-lost child, certain no one was ever going to find her. "Chicago Heights."

It was our good fortune that we were stopped at a red light at the moment. In mild shock I slapped the steering wheel. "You're kidding me!"

"What? Why?"

"Did you go to Bloom [High School]?"

"Yes...?"

I reached my right arm back behind the passenger side front seat and offered my hand.

"What are you doing?!"

I couldn't find the word, "alumna" in my vocabulary, so all I blurted out was, "Alma Mater! That's my Alma Mater!"

It was her turn to be shocked. What a freaky, weird coincidence that she could be stranded so far from her home in so unfamiliar a place, and the one dude who comes to her rescue, himself so far removed from the place of his roots, is from her home town!

"Oh, wow! This is so strange!" She took my hand in hers, warm and soft, and squeezed gently.

We shared a few of our individual memories from "da Heights" — as it is not always affectionately referred to — and our mutual sadness at its slow demise, a once hale and hardy, thriving burg, now a dying patient withering away to skin and bones, pocked with sores and cancers and important things missing.

I got her home, charged her $25 for a $56 fare, in return for which she authorized a $30 charge on her debit card.

The incident ate up most of my morning, precious Monday hours ripe for airport rides for good money. But sometimes doing something nice for someone, or doing something for someone in need is worth more than any amount of money I could have made in those hours. Bonus that she was über-cute. Double bonus that we're homies!

Scene From a Taxi Cab — The Sequel

2009-12-18T01:23:00.001-06:00

The cab sits at one corner of an intersection in the trendy downtown area of the quaint suburb, an intersection with one bar on each of three corners, and three on the fourth. It is a fairly slow night, so the cab driver has decided to try his luck trolling along the stream of passers-by on the street.

Before too long the right side rear passenger door opens and a woman gets in quickly, sitting heavily with a sigh.

"How are you, tonight?" she asks, her tongue thick with the effects of much alcohol.

The hairs on the driver's neck stand up as the woman's voice rings familiar in his ears. He turns to look at her, but his memory is too foggy. Could it be her?

"I'm well. And you?"

"I'm good," she says. "But I'm ready to go home."

After a beat waiting for her to give him an address, the cabbie asks, "And where would that be?" all the while feeling quite certain he knew.

"I'll tell you the way."

The cab driver heaves his own heavy, quiet sigh, fearing another wild goose chase through the streets of this town. He puts the car in gear and rolls forward.

"Are we... what street is this?" the woman asks, twisting around in her seat to take in her surroundings, her display of awareness encouraging to the driver.

"We're on Vail, ma'am," replies the driver. "Cambpell is just behind us."

"Okay. Take a left at the next street."

He drives according to her instructions.

Mere seconds later the passenger heaves another sigh. "I just moved here recently."

"Where from?" Now he is convinced this is the same woman.

"Oh, from points far away..."

"Cagey," the driver thinks to himself as he secretly rolls his eyes.

Her instructions are precise and accurate, and within only a few minutes of leaving the bar, the cab pulls up to the woman's apartment building. It is indeed the very same place. She is indeed the very same woman.

"How much is it?" she asks, squinting at the red LED of the meter.

"Three-eighty," recites the driver. He recalls the woman's previous ride in his cab and the fare of $8.00, and appreciates just how confused and disoriented — and drunk — the woman was the last time. He also remembers that she was three dollars short then, too.

The woman hands him a five-dollar bill. He pulls out a single dollar bill to make change, as he never assumes a passenger will tip, but before he can hand it to her, she says, "Wait. Give me the five back."

The driver does as she asks, and she then hands him a ten-dollar bill. "Give me three back."

The driver adds two more singles to the one he has already pulled out, and hands them all to her.

"Thanks."

"You're very welcome."

The woman pauses a moment, and then hands the three singles back to the driver. She opens the door, pauses, and then says, "Make sure I get inside, okay?"

"Absolutely." The driver looks at her over his shoulder.

The woman lingers. She opens her wallet again and pulls out the five-dollar bill she had originally chosen to pay with, and hands it to the driver. "Thanks."

"Thank you!"

"Have a good night!" The woman leaves the car and slams the door.

The cab driver, true to his word, stays and watches the woman make her way to her apartment, the very same 6B to which he helped her the last time they met. As she enters her apartment and shuts the door, the irony strikes him that, despite her lack of memory of their first meeting, she had not only repaid him for the amount she fell short the last time, but she had tipped well for both rides!

He pulls away from the apartment building and catches a glimpse of a pair of street signs, and is struck with the revelation that there is a GPS problem with this part of town: Salem and Miner do intersect.

Resurfacing

2009-12-16T11:02:00.006-06:00

Hello. Remember me? I have been woefully remiss in contributing to my blog. It's not necessarily that anyone cares, but if one is to maintain a presence somewhere, one has to be... well... present.

Much has gone on in the month and a half since I last posted, mainly in the taxi, as that is where I have spent practically Every. Last. Waking. Moment. of my life recently. Let's see... there's the story about the gypsy kid, and the one about the ousted husband, and then there's the return of the drunk lady, and another about the polite puker.

Last, and certainly not least, is the story of Lucky Stiff, with photos (all of them of me, of course (ooh! Freaky use of "of," no? Heh!)).

With this post to act as a sort of syllabus for the course of the next few, I can be held to sharing all of them with you over the course of the next few days or weeks. ...or months.

Cast and crew of Lucky Stiff, Northeastern Illinois University
Stage Center, November 19 - December 12, 2009, with me
front and almost sorta center, where I belong.

°

Shack My Crit Up!

2009-11-03T22:28:00.007-06:00

"They're playing that??!!"

One of the way more cool — in my opinion — Chicago classic rock radio stations, WDRV The Drive 97.1 FM (look for their live stream on their website!) is doing their twice- or three-times-a-year "The Drive A to Z," where they select around 2000 titles from their library and then play through them in alphabetical order. It takes them about eight days to get through them, and it's something I enjoy immensely when I get the chance to listen, because they invariably play some songs you just don't hear on the radio very often any more...if at all.

This evening I was driving alone in the cab while they were playing through the Ds, when I heard what my brain couldn't process as reality: Dueling Banjos.

"Dueling Banjos??!! They have that in their library?!"

Naturally, I cranked the tune, as I haven't heard it in years, certainly not in its entirety.

After the final, electronically reverberated, curt chord dissolved into silence, the DJ's voice intoned, "Yes we did."

It's rare that subtle DJ humor so effectively elicits a belly laugh from me, but this was too absurd. Crack up I did!

°

The $52 Tip

2009-10-22T01:20:00.001-05:00

At risk of belaboring the fact that I’m a taxi driver these days, I share another story from behind the wheel. One surprising observation I have made since starting the night shift about three weeks ago is that I have drunk passengers more frequently on weeknights than I do over the weekends.

One evening last week — Tuesday or Wednesday — it might have even been the same night as the woman who didn’t know where she lived — I received a fare notice to pick up a passenger named Kevin at a 7-Eleven store nearby. It was only about eight minutes away, and the roads were desolate. I arrived at the convenience store and saw no one waiting outside, and the only person inside was the store clerk sweeping the floor. I stepped in and asked if someone named Kevin, waiting for a cab, was here. The guy looked at me with a confused expression, and said, “No.”

I had another fare or two afterwards, and then I got a fare to pick up at a particular address, which the dispatch message indicated was a White Hen Pantry. The name on the order was Antonio. I drove past where the address was supposed to be, but there was no White Hen Pantry. I drove in both directions along the road to see if there was one a block or two in either direction, but there was not. I returned to the address and saw that there was a liquor store there, and there was a man waving at me. He seemed a little upset — and drunk — and asked me what took me so long. I explained the confusion, seeing as there was no White Hen for miles around the liquor store. Then I asked the guy if he was Antonio.

“NO!” he shouted. “I’m Kevin.” One must bear in mind that we were several miles away and hours after the no-show at the 7-Eleven store.

I put two and two together and realized the call was indeed for Kevin, so I told him to hop in. He carried a plastic grocery bag containing I don’t know what, and he clutched a bottle of some kind of liquor, the brand or spirit I could not make out. Immediately, he said, slurring heavily, “How ‘bout you turn off that meter? You’ll make a lot of money with me. I’m serious.”

It sounded as though he wanted me to do something shady or illegal — or he wanted my help for him to do something illegal. I told him that I had to leave it on so that my dispatcher knew I had a customer and wouldn’t try to send me to another fare. He kept insisting I turn it off in return for some grand jackpot at the end of the ride, but I kept refusing.

He never told me an address, just gave me directions: turn here, go past that light and take the first left, etc.

The first stop along the way was a grocery store that appeared open, but was not. He got back in the car and once again insisted that I turn off the meter, or I wouldn’t see the cash potential.

So I turned it off. He told me to roll on. At the end of the parking lot where the grocery store and a strip mall are, he guided me to a bank’s drive-up ATM stand. There was the cash potential of which he spoke! He stepped out of the car and got some cash, and then got back in and directed me forward. The meter was on again, and this time, when he told me to turn it off, I said, “Look, if you’re going to pay me as handsomely as you say you are, then what difference does it make what the meter reads?”

He replied with indifference. He directed me around a corner, beyond which loomed a large gas station, closed.

“Shit!” He muttered. Despite the fact that he had been sipping from his bottle for the entire ride, it was apparent he was looking for another place to buy liquor. I began to wonder if Antonio at the “White Hen” liquor store had refused his business.

After one more unsuccessful attempt at getting me to turn off the meter, Kevin said, “Okay, my friend. I guess you’re not interested in making a lot of cash. Just take me home.” I followed his directions until he told me to stop outside an apartment complex. He asked me what he owed me.

I said, “Well, the meter shows eight dollars, but the first time you got me to turn it off, it read thirteen dollars.” I knew, if it ever came down to an argument and calling a cop, I was likely stuck with what the meter read at the moment. “Just pay me whatever you want.” I really just wanted him and his stupid, drunken game out of my cab.

Kevin handed me a twenty-dollar bill and said nothing. I never assume — at least not out loud — that I’m being given a tip, so I made change and handed back twelve dollars. He sat there with a smirk on his face for a few moments, and then he handed the change back to me.

He got out of the car, stood by the open rear door, and then he said, “Here,” and he handed me another twenty.

“Thank you very much,” I said, as it was indeed very generous. He weaved off on his way to I know not where.

A little while later, after the night had gone quiet, I moved to the back seat of my cab so I could try to go online outside a free WiFi hotel. I had no success at that particular moment, and, for no apparent reason, I looked down at the seat. Obscured in the shadows cast by the front seat in the harsh dome light of the cab was another twenty-dollar bill! Kevin had indeed come through on his promise to make the night worth my while, but not entirely as he had intended!! The good Samaritan in me was inspired to take the money back to him, however the closest I could get to him was the apartment complex where he lives. I know not which building or apartment is his.

So, score one — or 52 — for Farrago!

°

Scene From a Taxi Cab

2009-10-15T05:56:00.002-05:00

The cab pulls up to the bar, the driver searching for the name of the establishment to be sure he’s at the correct address. Outside the bar, a young man points at the cab driver, indicating that he’s the one who called. Next to him is a fairly attractive blond woman, but she is apparently quite drunk.

The young man holds the woman by an arm and she staggers as they approach the taxi, and the driver opens the automatic rear window from the controls on his door. The young man appears displeased.

“Here ya go, buddy,” he says.

The driver consults the words on his computer’s screen. “Are you Ryan?”

The young man’s expression reads frustration; fear, even. “No, but I think he’s the one who called. We called your cab company, anyway.”

“Okay.” says the cab driver. “I’m here.”

The young man opens the rear door and guides the woman into the seat. He shuts the door and says, “She’s all yours.” He leaves without another word.

“How are you this evening?” the cab driver says cheerfully.

“Mm wunnerful,” says the woman from under her stylish hat. She neither sounds nor looks like she feels wonderful.

“Where are we off to?”

“Take me home,” she says sloshily.

The cabbie feels a twinge of the absurd. “And what’s the address?”

Silence follows. Then the woman sighs thickly. “I don’t know.”

Ever helpful, the cabbie reaches for his GPS unit on the center console between the seats. “Is it here in town?”

“Yes,” the woman slurs.

As the cab driver begins to tap on the screen the name of the town, the woman gushes, “It’s at Salem and Miner.”

The cab driver backs out of the GPS address finder and goes back in through the intersection finder, entering the name of the town again. After entering the second street name, the GPS unit reads, “No information.” The streets don’t intersect.

“I can just tell you how to get there,” blurts the woman. And as the cabbie puts the car in gear, the woman adds, “He said it would all be paid for...”

Another twinge hits the cabbie, and he quickly decides that, since this is a short ride anyway, it’s most important that this woman get home safely. If she has no money, so be it.

He drives the car under the inebriated woman’s direction and, after her second utterance of “Where are you taking me?” he decides that following her directions is an exercise in futility. He stops the car and asks her again for the address.

“It’s at the intersection of Salem and Miner.”

“Ma’am, the GPS says those streets don’t cross.” He thinks for a moment. “Do you have your driver’s license? I’ll just get the address from that.”

“Yeah, I have my driver’s license,” she blathers. “Oh. But I don’t have one for this county. I just moved here.”

Gritting his teeth, the cabbie says, “Can you remember the address? If you can’t, then we’re stuck here.”

In drunken despair the woman whines, “Please help me.”

“I’m doing my best, ma’am,” says the exasperated cabbie, “but without an address, I can’t get you home.”

The woman heaves a huge sigh. “202 north Salem.”

“Excellent!” says the cab driver as he subtly shakes his head in the dark car and enters the new information into the GPS unit.

No more than a minute into the trip, the cabbie hears the sound of a cigarette lighter being operated. He turns to face the woman. “There’s no smoking in this cab, ma’am.”

She flicks the lighter again.

“Ma’am, this is a no-smoking cab! Please put the cigarette away.”

The flame licks the end of the cigarette, and the tobacco glows red.

The cabbie pulls to the curb and stops the car. “Ma’am! There is no smoking in this cab, PLEASE PUT THE CIGARETTE OUT.”

She says, “Okay. It’s out.”

The cabbie looks at the cigarette still clutched in her fingers and notices that the cigarette is indeed out. How she managed that he could not guess.

A mere few hundred yards down the road, the cabbie hears the lighter flick again. He just wants to be rid of this woman, now, so he simply opens both rear windows and locks out the rear controls so she can’t close them. He takes silent glee when he hears the woman pushing her window button to no avail.

The GPS guides them to the address, but the woman points to a building across the street. “It’s that one there.”

There’s no parking lot entrance from the street they’re on, so the cabbie backs the car to the intersection and pulls to an entrance across the sidewalk, but it is clearly not a parking lot entrance, but rather to a loading dock of some sort. “Ma’am, are you sure this is it?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You have to go back to the other street.”

Gritting his teeth again, the cabbie reverses the car back onto the street and returns to the street where he originally stopped.

“It’s this one,” says the woman, this time pointing to the building opposite the one she indicated the first time, right where the GPS had guided them in the first place.

The cabbie stops the meter at $8.00. The woman digs in her wallet and produces a five-dollar bill. The cabbie can see that it is the only paper currency there.

“That’ll do. Let’s just get you home.”

The woman looks at him. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“I’m Tony,” he says.

“Tony, I love you!”

He steps out of the car and walks around to the passenger side rear door, which the woman has already opened. He offers a hand, which she accepts, and guides her toward the building, entirely uncertain if she’s even at the right place.

“Which apartment is it?” he asks.

“Six B,” comes her reply.

Of course, six B is on the second floor. The cabbie is fearful that she’ll never make it up the stairs on her own, so he helps her stagger up both flights, and then he helps her to her door.

The woman fumbles for a minor eternity in her purse, but can’t find the keys, so she thrusts the purse at the cabbie who takes the handles and holds the purse open in order that the woman can fumble two-handed. She produces a set of keys and lunges at the lock, but she can’t manage to single out a key, let alone fit it into the lock. She thrusts the keys at the cabbie, and he finds one that looks like a house key. It slides into the lock effortlessly, but, try as he might, he can’t turn it.

“Are you SURE this is your apartment? Are we at the right building?” he asks, picturing a man on the other side of the door, trembling in fear and aiming a shotgun at the door.

“Yes, this is my place.” The woman tries the door handle, but the door is still locked. “God, I have to pee.”

“The key’s not turning, Ma’am. I don’t know what else to do.”

She lunges at the door once more while the cabbie, stuck with his own sense of responsibility, looks helplessly down at his cab parked at the curb, beckoning him return.

Finally, a minor miracle occurs and the door opens to reveal a fairly nice interior and an unenthusiastic, white Pekingese looking up at her as if to say, “Again?”

The woman staggers to the doorway, and the cabbie puts one, final steadying hand on her back. She makes a futile grab for his hand and stumbles into her own living room and says, “Wait. Come here.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” says the cab driver, backing away from the doorway, HELL NO! screaming through his mind. “I’m not allowed to go inside.” He pulls on the door handle. “You have a nice night, now!”

“No! Wait!” In her attempt to keep the door open, her weight carries forward and she pushes the door shut.

Heading down the stairs, the cabbie chuckles to himself, shakes his head, and pities the woman for the morning she is about to endure.

°

Bad Night

2009-10-12T10:58:00.002-05:00

It seems odd to me that this taxi driving job started out, with no interference from the taxi cab company, as somewhat idyllic: extremely nice people getting into my cab, some of them gorgeous young, talkative women; people really appreciative of my efforts at courtesy and good service. And the money seemed adequate, with a hint of being good in the future.

Large Richards
Lately, however, things have been a bit on the side of suck. At least once a night for the past two weeks I have received dispatches either to addresses that don't exist, or to existent addresses where no one has called for a cab (a no-show). I guess some people have plenty of time in their schedules to be dicks. I just wonder if they're sitting somewhere they can see the cab as it pulls up to where the address is supposed to be so they can stick their hands down their pants for the final glee as the driver searches in futility, or if it suffices just to know that a cab is being sent to wherever their cell-deficient brains asked for it to be sent.

My First Scary Ride
Sunday night I started around 9:00, about an hour earlier than what I had established as the usual. After one no-show call, I received another dispatch, with a pickup name of Danny. It was an apartment block in a nice enough looking neighborhood in a nice, clean, suburban town. As usual, the number was nonexistent in the building, or the block was laid out weirdly and the building with the number I was looking for was on the other side of the block. Honestly, I don't know how the police can find these places in emergencies.

I pressed the Callout function on my cab's computer, which then triggers a computerized call to the customer announcing that the cab has arrived, and then instructing the customer to enter the number of minutes he or she would like the cab to wait.

I received a "Coming out in 1 minute" response. And then almost immediately a man came out shaking his head. Danny came to the cab and asked if he could pre-pay twenty dollars with a credit card for me to take his nephew only a few blocks down the road. He absolutely could, and after the card was authorized and the transaction completed, he directed me around to the back of the complex where he said his nephew was waiting. On the way I asked him for the address to where his nephew was going. Uncle Danny said he didn't know; the nephew would tell me. The nephew, around age 20 or so, by my estimate, said good-bye to his uncle and then got in. I asked him the address of where he wanted to go, and he said, "I think it's 2421."

"Street name?"

"Uhhh. I don't know the street name." A little alarm bell went off in my head.

"Do you know how to get there? You can just guide me."

"Okay. Yeah. I'll guide you."

So then we commenced on a meandering path from that town to the one adjacent. He directed me only to major roads and seemed to have no clue. More alarm bells. I had started the meter so that the dispatcher would know that I had a customer, as well as to know just how much of a tip I was going to wind up with at the end of the trip. At $9.20 on the meter, the nephew said, "Can you take me back to my uncle's? I'll just stay there and have to [mumble, mumble]... Is that okay?"

Trying to conceal my frustration, I said, "It's fine."

I set the GPS to the original address because I knew we had not traveled in the most time-efficient manner, and, by the meter, I was already nearly halfway through the pre-paid amount.

I dropped him at the place where I had picked him up, and he asked, "How much?"

I said, "Your uncle already paid."

Nephew got out of the car, and I beat it out of there. A few minutes later I called the dispatcher to tell him there was something fishy about that ride. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I was suspicious of the whole thing. The dispatcher asked me if it looked like the kid was trying to make some sort of drug deal connection. I told him that I saw nothing of that sort, but felt possibly that he was casing the cab, perhaps for a later attempt to do something to me or another driver. But would they pay $20 to do that? Maybe if it wasn't their credit card...

Later in the evening I had another call to a different town, this time for Benny. After "Danny," the alarm bells were ringing again. I activated the Callout function, and the response was that the customer would be out in one minute. Five minutes later no one had come down from the apartment. I pressed the Callout again, and again I received a one-minute response. Five more minutes later (that's the time I'm required to wait before I can request a callout or request a no-show) there was still no one in or near my cab. So I pressed the no-show request function. No sooner had I done that than two young men came out of the apartment building. They stood behind the car for a few moments while one of them finished smoking a cigarette. Then they got in the car. The one on the passenger side said, "Why you didont call?" His voice was thick with an eastern European accent.

"I did call," I said, but my answer apparently didn't matter to him, nor did the fact that I "didn't" call. "I tell you where to go."

Amid a non-stop conversation with his friend in what I can only guess was Russian...maybe Ukrainian, he directed me to another apartment building about $7.00 away. Then he asked if I could then take them to "the liquor store. Is good for you, yes?"

"Absolutely," I replied, while the voice in my brain was replying, "Get the fuck out of my car!"

So I drove them to the liquor store, waited for them to get their elixir of choice — while fearing they were going to rob the place — and then returned them to their destination. The fare was $11.00, and the guy gave me $18. Not so bad for being a somewhat unnerving couple of passengers.

What the Suck?
I spent the rest of the night fighting — and losing to — the urge to sleep. One more fare from a bar I've picked up from at least twice each week that I've worked nights, and Rose, my dialysis Gramma who loves me, and for whom I park in her zone at 3:30am so I'll get the call to pick her up (the dispatch computer sends the closest cab).

From 4:00 on it was so dead out there that my computer booked me off for lack of activity! I had sat on one post for more than three hours, so I decided to move, and to get a breakfast sammich and some coffee. Of course, no sooner had I started on my way than my computer came to life with a fare! Easy pickins, the guy was headed to a nearby commuter train station, where I dropped him off.

When I booked back in to the system, I saw there was an open fare in a town about ten miles away. I have no idea how long it had sat open, but I booked it within a minute or two of seeing it. I fairly raced to the address, as I knew it was at least a fifteen minute ride to get there, answering the dispatcher once when I was asked my ETA to the customer, which, at that moment, was less than five minutes. The customer never canceled, but when I got to the address, the Callout response came back as "Invalid response or no answer." At that point I have to wait five minutes before I can ask for a No-show, but after the alloted time I did another Callout, just in case the caller was on the phone or something. After another five minutes, I hit the No-show. Fucker.

From there I finally got my breakfast, and then I went to the Village of Schaumburg office to turn in my application for a chauffeur's license.

So, on the night, I took in $52. I spent $21 to fill the gas tank at the end of my shift. The chauffeur's license application cost $60 (and that's the half-year rate!). I finished the night $29 in the hole.

Aren't jobs supposed to make you money?

°

Dietro il Volante

2009-10-10T13:00:00.003-05:00

I wound up not being required to attend the play rehearsal Saturday afternoon, so I chose to work extra hours Friday night. It didn't amount to a hill of beans — or cash — like I had hoped it would. It was especially slow for a Friday night. That, or there were a lot of other cabs out there.

I was asked to help out in one of the oft-abandoned west zones, and the dispatcher told me he would help me out in return later in the morning, so I did it, which led to me being sent to another fare out there, only that one was a no-show. Then he sent me a fare from Elgin to O'Hare airport, a $46 fare! But still, the night amounted to a small mound, not a hill.

In the morning I booked off at 9:30 and headed to the Apple store at Woodfield Mall to see if they had a car power adapter for my Mac laptop. They did, but it was too much product for what I need. Thanks, but I don't want 2 USB ports, an espresso maker, and a sock warmer as part of the package. What, is the thing manufactured by U.S. politicians? I'll have to look online.

Then I went to the Verizon store to see how much it would cost to get an "air card" so I can get online from my cab during the slow times at night. Too much, it turns out, so, if I can find an affordable power transfigurometator, I'll only be writing in the cab, and not posting.

As I was leaving the parking area near the Verizon store, an older gentleman very timidly hailed me — with his index finger up in the air, not the typical "Hitler salute" kind of hail. It actually took a second for it to register that he was actually signaling me!

I was off duty, and I really wanted to go home, but then the newly awakened business man in me thought, "ees more money!" so I cranked my window down. He spoke in another language, something like "libero Woodfield Mall." It sounded like Spanish to me. Then he showed me words written on the back of a computer-printed map: "Woodfield Mall."

At first I thought he was just asking directions, but then I said, "You want to go?"

He said, "Yes."

I booked back in to the dispatch system and started the meter. Woodfield Mall was literally only blocks away, but the fare was going to be at least enough to pay for the steak, egg, and cheese bagel I had just eaten at McDonalds in Woodfield before I hit the Apple store! As we neared an entrance to the mall parking lot, I asked him "Which store do you want to go to?"

He replied, "Centro commerciale." Only the second word was pronounced "ko-mehr-chee-AL-ay." That's Italian!

I asked him, "Are you speaking Español, or Italiano?"

He said, "Oh, no! Italiano!"

I smiled and blundered through the few words of Italian I know: "I'm Italiano! Mi nonno di Abbruzzo! Castel di Sangro." I'm Italian! My grandfather is from the Abruzzo region. The town of Castel di Sangro." At least I think that's what I said. Either that, or I told him I wanted to taste his underpants. I have to find my Italian phrase book.

He said, "Ah, Abbruzzo! L'Aquila; Pescara." (towns in the region). And then, in pretty good English, "I know Castel di Sangro."

By then it was time to drop him off. The meter read $5.40 — which, I believe, was the exact amount of my steak, egg, and cheese bagel and cup of coffee. It was the end of the ride for him, but the end of a really neat experience for me. I had the chance to mangle someone else's native language for him, and he got to meet the ascendant of century-old Italian expatriates. He gave me six dollars. He said he wanted something back, and I thought it was change, but he actually just wanted a receipt. So he left me with a sixty-cent tip.

Cheap dago bastard.

°

Behind the Wheel

2009-09-28T12:25:00.004-05:00

A view of the back seat in a taxi cab

On Friday I completed my first full week working full-time as a cab driver. While I haven't met any truly interesting characters — yet — there have been some interesting people passing through nonetheless, brief visits, short conversations about a wide range of topics — or absolutely no conversation at all — and then the silence of an empty rear seat within the hum of the wheels rolling me toward the next fare.

It's unfare, I tell ya!
As I am still new to the job, I am at a distinct disadvantage to the other, more veteran drivers receiving dispatches from the same company. To keep the technical part brief, the company has divided our service area into zones that are marked off electronically by a radio-GPS system. The computer/radio in each car is constantly transmitting and receiving, and the central dispatch computer can inform the human dispatcher where any car is at any given time. If I'm in a zone where a customer lives who has called for a taxi, and if I have priority in that zone (no other cab arrived there before me), then the computer will automatically assign me the fare. If no cabs are in the zone where a customer needs a ride, the zone number goes up on the in-car computer screen, and any driver who wants that fare must press a request code and the number of the zone where the fare is waiting. When it's busy, the veteran drivers who know which zones are close enough to them to make it worth their while, and that of the customer, can enter the request into their computers very quickly, whereas I must still consult the book to see if the open fare is in a zone close enough for me to get to in a timely fashion. Quite often, before I have even grabbed the training book to find the town corresponding to the zone, the fare is snapped up by another driver.

It's the nature of the game in a pool full of sharks. What is more frustrating is that quite often these other drivers abandon the zones to the far west and northwest, and those fares will sit open for quite a long time. I have made some of my best money chasing those fares while the other drivers hold out for the longer rides to the airport.

The most frustrating, however, is chasing one of those fares a l o o o n g way, only to arrive at the customer's house and learn from his wife that he left "20 minutes ago... in another cab." GRRRR!

The cab driver diet
I have shared in these pages my efforts to lose some weight and get into shape. I had started in February, and through July I had managed to go from 210 lbs down to 190. That was five months and change, and I remained at the 190 lb. plateau through the rest of the summer.

In one week of working twelve-hour shifts I have dropped another five pounds. I have been acutely aware of how easy it is to eat poorly when there are so many poor options on practically every street corner. I have restricted myself to one or two sausage McMuffin with egg sandwiches from McDonalds each morning, and some variation of a balanced protein/carb, light meal in the evenings. I have not eaten lunch all week, and I have spent an average of $11 per day to eat.

"The best cab driver ever!"
One of the things I have noticed as a taxi cab customer is how often the cab driver does little more for the passenger than open the trunk to allow the passenger to put his or her own luggage in, drive the passenger to the destination, and collect the payment. In the training class the instructor emphasized the customer service aspect this company tries to push. I don't know if it's that emphasis, or if it's my experiences as the paying customer, but I have fully embraced the service aspect of this job. Granted, that may change when there's six inches of snow on the ground and 18 degrees on the thermometer, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

I worked days my first week, with a brief taste of the action on Friday and Saturday nights. As the next weekend approached I decided to try working nights to see if it would be lucrative.

Within five minutes of firing up the computer and booking into the system Friday night at 10:00, I was running to pick up a fare to the airport. I didn't even get a chance to buy a cup of coffee! From the airport, on my way back to my designated work area, I received a fare in the zone through which I was passing: a pickup of two women at a motel. I arrived, went inside and asked the desk clerk to call their room and let them know their cab was there, and, when they came down, the cab was sitting at the lobby entrance with the rear doors open. I stood by the open door and closed it after they got in. They were two young women from Michigan in town to see Pink in concert the next night. But Friday night they wanted to go to a nightclub called Hunters, which I learned only a few days prior — from my cab driver trainer — is a gay bar. I asked the ladies why they wanted to go there, and one of them said, "Because there's nothing else to do in this crappy little town!"

At first I thought she meant Chicago, but before I opened my mouth I realized she meant that little suburb where they were staying. They were tired from driving all day, and they didn't want to go too far for some fun. The taller one seemed perhaps a little drunk, and she was flirting with me, saying that she thought bald heads were sexy. Then she said she thought guys with long, flowing hair were sexy, too. It then occurred to me that she was probably okay with most any guy as long as he had a head.

We arrived at Hunters, and suddenly the girls were nervous. Flirty girl (I think her name was Kimmy) asked me if I would come in with them...I could leave the meter running! I said, very politely, "Aw, HELL NO!" I gave them a business card with my name and mobile number handwritten on it, and told them they could call me if they wanted me, specifically, to drive them back, but I warned them that if I was busy, they might have to wait, or I might not be available at all. They went inside, and as I pulled away, I saw a transgendered man with butt implants out to HERE, huge boobs, puffy lips and wearing a short, red 'fuck me' dress heading toward the club entrance, and I thought out loud, "I'm SO glad I'm leaving!"

Twenty minutes later they called. By the sound of the woman's voice on the other phone, they were in WAY over their heads! Unfortunately, as I was leaving the parking lot at Hunters, I grabbed a fare that turned out to be a long ride from a comedy club at the local mega-mall to a hotel all the way down in the city!!

It was actually eight women in two cabs, and when the organizer of the group, and the caller of the cab company, saw me, she was thrilled that I was under the age of 60. Apparently their ride from their hotel to the suburbs had been helmed by an elderly limo (van) driver who had to stop along the way because he realized he was wearing the wrong glasses. These poor women had seriously feared for their lives. My four ladies were quite tickled by — and quite vocal about — the fact that I looked over my shoulder before changing lanes! $76 cab ride, $20 tip!

I was amazed at how busy I was Friday night. From 10:00 and the first ride, it was all pretty much non-stop until about 1:30 am. With about an hour afterward to try to catch a nap, I watched a fare sit open on the computer — another one in the far west zones — for at least 20 minutes, and no one grabbed it. Finally, and thinking it was some poor old lady trying to get home from work, I grabbed it only to discover it was a full-fare ride of about 15 miles! When I got the two young men and one young woman in the car, they pretty much ignored me for about 10 minutes until the young man snuggling with the young woman in the back seat suddenly spoke to me: "What's your name, brother?"

From there we engaged in light conversation about music, at which point I learned that the two men were in a rock band called Train Company. By the end of the ride I had learned that they had a CD out, they are enjoying some local celebrity with airplay on one of the Chicago progressive rock stations, and that if I would stick around for a couple minutes after I dropped them off, they would give me a free CD!

I haven't listened to it, yet.

Later in the morning I caught another airport ride. I grabbed it, and was a little too far away to make the scheduled pickup time. It was another fare that had sat on the computer too long. The woman was a little upset that I was five minutes late, and couldn't understand that, as she had made the call the night before. When I explained that the system calls the cab only about a half-hour before the pickup time, she calmed down a little. She was also impressed that I had gotten out of the cab and opened the door for her, and that I didn't drive like a maniac, and that I didn't smell like a week-old bath. She even said that, by the end of the ride, which she had started in a bad mood, she was in a good mood again!

The next evening my phone rang at 6:15, waking me from my fitful, daytime slumber. It was Kimmy and Krissy, the two Michigan girls, asking if I could come pick them up to take them to the concert. Of course I could!

After I picked them up, I told them the bad news that I wouldn't be able to pick them up after the concert because the village of Rosemont, where the concert venue is, has an exclusive contract with two taxicab companies, and mine isn't either of them. If I got caught picking them up, I could get a pretty hefty fine. I told them to just take one of the local, authorized taxis, and they should be just fine.

Around midnight I received another call from them. The taxi line was miles long, and could I please, PLEASE come pick them up? I asked them to walk away from the arena and the crowds and let me know where they were, and I would try to sneak around to get them. After a couple of more phone calls back and forth, I parked behind a hotel, out of sight of any of the Rosemont police officers on crowd- and traffic duty, and guided them to me.

They were very happy that I had worked so hard to get them into the cab and save them from waiting forever, and as we neared their hotel, one of them said that the next time they come to Chicago, they're calling me to be their cab driver! The other one said, "You're the best cab driver EVER!"

And I am.

Sunday night I didn't know what to expect. How much bar traffic could there be? Who was out that late on a Sunday night? Surprisingly, there was quite a bit early on, all short rides.

I received a fare that turned out to be at some bar in one of my home zones. As I arrived, the bar appeared to be closed, and I thought I had another no-show on my hands. I walked toward the doors, and they were locked. But seconds later a young man and a very attractive young woman came out and said that the other guy would be out in a few moments. That was fine with me, and as I headed toward the cab to wait, the young woman shouted, "You're the best-dressed cab driver I've ever seen!"

I turned back around, looked down at my khaki pants and my short-sleeve, button-front shirt — business casual at best — and said, "Thanks!"

She then proceeded to tell me of a worst-case scenario she had experienced in a cab, the driver of which had his small, pet dog with him that bit her and she was "bleeding all over the place." Then she said she would definitely want to ride in my cab! I was thinking that this could be a nice ride (wink, wink).

To my dismay, the other friend came out, and the two guys got in my cab, leaving the woman behind. Then I learned that the guy who had been with her and had been making out with her in the parking lot had only met her that evening. He was kicking himself and calling himself stupid because he felt he had neglected to say or do something for her. He asked me to turn around so he could go back to her, and I did. Back at the entrance, his friend talked him down, asking him, "Is it really going to make a difference?"

Tall boy got back in and said, "You're right."

And then I said, "You got her phone number, right?"

You would think I was Sherlock F. Holmes by their reaction!

And then I felt knees pressing against my kidneys through the seat foam at my back, so I slid my seat forward about an inch or two. Tall boy shouted, "Dude! This fuckin' guy is awesome!"

His friend shouted, "You're the best cab driver EVER!" I am not exaggerating. He said exactly the same thing Krissy had said a mere 24 hours earlier!

And then they both started quoting — I think — Wiseguys, and chanted, "This fucking guy! This fucking guy!"

Oh, yeah. They were both pretty drunk.

After that it quieted down for a couple of hours, during which I cat-napped. I caught a really short ride at 4:30, an old lady who needed to get to her dialysis appointment. When I left her at her destination, I got the first of three consecutive, $30-plus airport rides. cha-CHING!

I'm liking the night shift! And never have I worked ten 12-hour days in a row, and ENJOYED it! This is truly weird!

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Strange Indeed

2009-09-21T21:01:00.002-05:00

A tired mind goes to strange places.

I worked Sunday from around 11:30 in the morning with plans to knock off at 8:00. A couple of late calls to the far west suburbs kept me out, and then they were very difficult to find, or far to get to, and I wound up getting home around 11:00. I had planned to start Monday at 4:00 am.

Not one to be deterred, I delayed my wake-up by half an hour, started a half-hour later than I had intended, and worked 14 hours Monday on only 4 ½ hours of sleep.

After I called it a day I stopped at Rosebud of Schaumburg for their Monday all you can eat spaghetti and meatballs special. While I was waiting and watching my waiter who was also one of the bartenders, and waiting because he was really busy, the phrase "like a chicken with its head cut off" came to mind. I've never seen a chicken get its head cut off — and I don't EVER WANT to — so I've never seen if the body actually runs around, or if it just flops and flails. But then I got to wondering about the head. Does anything on the other side of the cut stay "alive" afterward?

And then my mind drifted to the poor humans who have met such a fate. I would venture to say that our bodies are a little more sophisticated than that of a chicken, but I don't recall ever hearing that the headless portion continues moving in any fashion after gravity (and that's quite a fitting word!) has had its way. And again, but what about the head? Is it like being hit with a blunt instrument, where the temporary interruption of nerve impulses cause a momentary lack of consciousness...? Only, in the case of a beheading it's permanent, of course.... Or would the sudden cessation of oxygen to the brain cause immediate lights out?

How awful that would be, no? If the last moments of cognizance were of the point of view of a window on a ball rolling around on the floor and seeing the rest of your body from a distance and perspective — and in a condition — you had never seen before!

My apologies. As I wrote above, a tired mind goes to some strange places, indeed. Time for bed!

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Life Is a (Taxi) Caberet

2009-09-20T10:30:00.007-05:00

Times are tough. And when things get tough, the tough get going.

The rest of us take jobs as waiter or taxi driver...

I picked up my cab on Friday from a guy who owns a lot of cabs. Three million, I think. He's a big Russian guy — from Russia. People listen when he speaks, mainly because he has a great big foghorn of a voice that you can't help but listen to, as you cower in the corner protecting the glassware around you. I can't help but think "Russian mafia" when I see this guy, but I guess that's racist. We have a stereotype here for Italian mafia, what they look like, how they talk. I haven't a clue what cues Russian mob guys give out. All I know is that when I asked him, in the event of a missed weekly lease payment (mine) on the cab, if he broke fingers and toes as payment, he just smiled at me and chuckled.

So I drove around a bit on Friday, off-duty, getting a feel for the car, how it drives, how comfortable it is to me. I couldn't find the cigarette lighter outlet to save my life. I thought the car didn't have one. I even called Mario at the shop (where the big Russian guy told me to take the car for any problems). I pulled in and Mario's guy found it in two seconds, flat. See, the two-way radio is mounted to the underside of the ashtray door. I couldn't pull it down with any amount of reasonable pressure, and I didn't want to break my cab before even my first day on the job. But the really complicated trick, see, is that the ashtray pulls out, not down. I'm sure those Russian mechanics had a good smeyaatsa at my expense!

I decided to start slow. On Saturday I took care of some things for the car that I wanted to have at my disposal, like a center-console with cup holders. And then I hit the road.

The dispatch system is all computer controlled, so there's a terminal in my cab with buttons and a readout that I had to learn about in a class. I log in to the computer in the car, the central dispatch computer detects which zone I'm in by radio-GPS, and then sends information to me about how many other cabs are in my zone, how many cabs are in other zones, and any open fares where there are no other cabs.

I drove around through some of the zones in my area. In some of the zones are posts where cabs can sit and wait where there's a likelihood of people walking up and requesting a ride. I went to the huge shopping mall near me and waited for a little bit, but another cab from my company was already waiting there, so I left for another shopping center to the north.

Once there I sat for only a few minutes when my computer sent out its "you have a fare" tone, and I was on my way. My first job!! The address popped up on the computer, and I entered it into my personal GPS. They recommend that we use the GPS, but they also require us to have a 6-county atlas in the cab just in case the GPS can't find the address. Or Earth. I drove to the location, a corporate office park for Motorola.

And?

No one. I drove around that campus for 15 minutes looking for this person, and I couldn't even pique the interest of security...if there even was any. Finally, after contacting the dispatcher over the radio, and them telling me — repeatedly — that the person was at door 'D,' despite the fact that the only building at this Motorola campus that had lettered doors — from 'A' to 'S' — skipped 'B' and 'C', an Indian woman came bounding up a small hill — from another part of the office park that isn't Motorola — carrying what looked like lunch in a small plastic grocery bag. I apologized for being late (my first job!), and she politely told me where to go.

I mean, where she wanted me to take her. People tell cab drivers where to go all the time. HEY! My first cab-driver joke!

Since the train station where I took her isn't too far from where I picked her up, I returned to the office park to try to figure out where I went wrong. And I couldn't. At least, I don't think it was my mistake. The message from dispatch read "Motorola Main Entrance." I think the passenger must have referred to the main entrance as a landmark, as where she was is a smaller office complex closer to the road. And none of those buildings had a door 'D', whether apparent or obvious.

When I was doing my training/orientation with a seasoned driver (the guy was covered in salt, pepper and oregano. It was really annoying...and made me hungry), every time we approached a post at a particular Marriott hotel not too far from the big shopping mall, he would get a fare call. Nothing was happening in the zone I went to at another, smaller hotel, so I headed toward the Marriott of mention.

While I was still about ten minutes away, I got another call for a fare! This time it was a strange, funny woman I picked up at a grocery store who then wanted me to wait while she ran back inside to try to find her boyfriend's sunglasses she had accidentally left in a shopping cart.

After I dropped her off I again headed for the Marriott when I noticed an open fare in a zone that was really too far for me to chase. However, the fare had been open for at least fifteen minutes. So I "conditionally booked" it, which basically tells the dispatcher human that I'll accept the fare if he/she feels we can afford the customer waiting that much longer. He/she gave it to me, and I shot out about 20 miles west and a good bit south to pick up two fares at some sort of community college. I had done something wrong with the computer, and the dispatcher human called me to help me understand what to do next time and, oh! Hey! you have another fare in that same zone!

So I ran and picked up an apparently developmentally challenged man from his job at a grocery store.

On my way back to my "home" zones, I saw two open fares way south of where I had taken those three in the west. I figured that it wasn't worth my while, and someone would take them. Then the message came over the computer: "Zone 337, please help, anyone" which is a call to the drivers to think of the people, not the money. By that time I was already back in my home zone, but I "C-Booked" anyway, figuring the dispatcher would think me too far away. Nope. Booked.

Back all the way as far west as I had gone, and another twenty miles south, if not farther. Two different pickups, two women who, for whatever reasons, can't drive. They both seemed of sound body, so I assumed DUI. The dispatcher had told me earlier how to properly book two separate, simultaneous fares, but I think I did it wrong, anyway. And then I was definitely headed back to my home zone. I had been out on the road eight hours already, I was hungry, and I wanted to sit out at the airport for a while and maybe pick up a $30-40 fare.

Nope. Another fare in one of the far west zones, but this time only ten minutes away from where I was, to the north. I forgot to start the meter when they got in, so after the very short ride I estimated five dollars. The guy gave me eight, said thanks, and he and his wife left my cab. Since it was a short ride, I started the meter at the hotel where I dropped them and returned to the restaurant where I had picked them up. The fare came out to $6.40, so I undercharged him $1.40, but he gave me eight dollars. I was still ahead, and I hadn't overcharged him.

Okay, NOW back to the home zones, and I was STARVING!

I saw a Steak N Shake along the way and so I decided to stop there for a bite. I love their chili, so that was what I would have. However, as I tried to log out of the computer (if I don't log out when I'll be away from the car, and they send me a fare to which I don't respond, I will be suspended for 24 hours), it started having communications errors. The driver manager I tried to call wasn't answering his phone, so I decided to move to another location to try again. Nowhere around that damn Steak N Shake could I get a signal! So, about a mile and a half down the road my computer finally re-established communication, and I was still starving.

I got to the airport cab lot behind seven other cabs. The line hadn't moved, as I had observed on the computer, so I knew it was slow. By 10:00 at night on a Saturday (I had wanted to be there two hours earlier) I knew it would be. I sat there for about 20 minutes and my position in the queue hadn't changed, so I left and headed for my home zones again.

As a cab moves through all the zones, the central computer is constantly tracking it, and if that cab happens to be the only one in a particular zone when a fare in or near that zone comes up, the computer matches them and sends the cab the fare offer. A driver must accept the offer or be suspended!! So, not quite to my zones, and hoping to take some grateful drunk people home from some bars, my computer chirped to life... just as I entered a strip of road through a forest preserve with few places to turn off or turn around. About a mile down the road I was finally able to turn off and park.

I loaded the address info into my GPS and turned around. In the driveway of the pickup address I saw one very large, very drunk man in a Hawaiian shirt come weaving down toward me. He apologized(?) and asked if I could wait about five minutes. Hey, it's what I do.

A few minutes later a very drunk woman came staggering down the driveway and got in the car, followed by a plump girl of about 15. The big guy squeezed himself into the back seat with his wife and his daughter and gave me the address, saying the entire time that he would "take care of me" when I got them home.

I reached up to the meter, pressed the "extras" button — as there were two extras — and suddenly the readout on the meter showed a four-digit number!! I thought I had perhaps forgotten to shut it off, and now it was showing some outrageous amount, but then it flashed, and the numbers changed. I couldn't get the meter to show me its normal display, and in the meantime, while I fidgeted with it, a very large, very drunk man and his somewhat trim, very drunk wife were slowly asphyxiating their daughter wedged between them in the back seat of my cab.

Unsure of what to do, I called dispatch on the radio. They measured the distance to the destination address, estimated $13.00, and sent me on my way.

At their home, the big guy took care of me with a $20 bill. A 54% tip is nothing to sneeze at. I just wish I had taken them to the north suburbs instead of one town over.

It wasn't yet midnight. I had started around noon, and I wanted to put in 12 hours, so I though it was a good time to eat. I could park the cab, shut everything down, and maybe the meter would reset, or something. I knew there was a Steak N Shake on the way back to my zones, and I had been dreaming of their chili for the last three hours, so I headed there.

They were out of chili.

Thirty minutes and two BLTs later I was back in the car, learning that my night was over, because the meter was still phukked. When I got home I had $54 in my pocket that hadn't been there when I left, $10 shy of what I had pocketed since I paid for my dinner from the pile. There's another $80-100 coming to me for all the far west rides that I chased, as they were mass transit subsidized, and though each person paid me only three dollars, PACE transit will pay the difference to the cab company, who will pay me the full amount for the fares.

Maybe I don't know any better, but I say it's not bad for a Saturday.

Now to see what Sundays are like.

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40 Septembers

2009-09-14T17:59:00.003-05:00

A strange thought occurred to me today as I headed home from an errand trip.

I know I have lamented on numerous occasions about my current jobless state, but this thought is a peculiar one, if not monumentally ...uh... trivial.

In the past 40 years, since I was 5 years old, I have never been "off" in September.

Kindergarten through senior year in high school things always started in the last days of August. In the fall after high school graduation, and after determining that I couldn't afford to go to school, I dug into my savings and started at a junior college in my home town. A year later I enrolled in my last fall semester before entering the Air Force.

Four years later I was home from military service, arriving in early November. After a few weeks I was working as a driver at a school bus company, as well as delivering for an Italian restaurant. The following September I was already in residence at Southern Illinois University, where I remained for another two and a half years, graduating mid-stream in December of 1990.

Despite the fact that it took me two years to find video production work, I did find a job not too long after graduation, again as a driver, but that time for a livery/limo service, carrying customers to and from O'Hare airport from the south suburbs. Then, in May of that year, I started as a security officer at a nuclear power plant.

Laid off a year and a half later, in January, I immediately found work at a TV station back in southern Illinois (I had applied down there amid rumors of the layoff, and interviewed immediately after I was cut loose).

In southern Illinois for two years from February that year until January of 1995, I moved down to south Georgia where I worked for four years at two different places. I did take a one week vacation in September of 1998, just a couple of months before I moved back home, but that doesn't count.

A week before Christmas, 1998, I made the move back to Chicago, where I was jobless for eight months until I got another video job at the same company — more or less — for whom I had worked in Georgia, but at a considerable cut in pay commensurate with the lower position I had accepted. That job started in August.

Little more than a year later I switched jobs again, in January of 2001, where I remained for the next eight years.

And now I'm experiencing my first September for as long as I can remember without something to do!

That may change soon, as another odd occurrence hits me as I write. My fall-back over my working years has seemed to be driving jobs. And once again, as the career prospects appear dim, I resort to the wheel. Barring any difficulties with licensing or my chosen company, I will most likely, within a week or so of this posting, begin driving a taxi cab for a living.

I sure hope there's no Louis DePalma to deal with....

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What I Didn't Do Last Summer

2009-09-09T09:27:00.003-05:00

Five months have passed since I was laid off from the job I had longer than any other. I planned from about the second week of unemployment to chase a couple of dreams, see if I could make any headway in the new careers, and try to generate some income from them.

And?

Not so much. Admittedly, I haven't been chasing the video production work too hard, but that's the "old" career, anyway. I've been to probably a couple dozen auditions, now, mostly for short, no-budget films. My first audition, back in May, was a personal disaster, as my combined lack of physical coordination and rhythm doomed my chances for a role even as a piece of scenery!

There was a somewhat unnerving audition for a role in a film about about men with secret gay lives, in which, I was told, would be sex scenes with nudity and "simulated sex." It sounded like a fantastic challenge, but as I was interviewed by the production team, I realized in my own head and body that I was not ready for anything like that!

All of the other auditions seem to have passed into the blur of shallow memories.

I have responded to a couple of calls for extras in no-budget short films, and have gotten some camera time. The wait is still on to see if I ever get screen time.

I auditioned last week for a stage musical at Northeastern Illinois University. I performed a comedic monologue I had downloaded, and I sang "The Impossible Dream," the signature solo from "Man of La Mancha." I joked a bit with the director, received a nice compliment from the music director on my vocal range, and learned a little bit about the play, which is about a young man who, in order to receive the inheritance from his dead uncle, must perform a list of tasks lined out by his uncle...and he must do them with the dead uncle.

I landed a part in this musical, entitled, "Lucky Stiff." And, yes, you guessed it, I landed the role of the dead uncle! I joked again with the director, asking what she must have thought of my acting and singing if I got the part of the corpse! She laughed, but then she said that the role of the corpse is quite demanding, and is onstage almost the entire time! Now it sounds as though the role of the corpse might kill me!

Exciting as this all may sound, none of it is generating any income. So I have decided to seriously investigate employment possibilities as a cab driver. It appeals to me for the reason that, as an independent contractor, I can set my own schedule and still pursue freelance video production, writing, and acting opportunities.

Check in for further updates...

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OMFGravy!!

2009-08-27T22:59:00.004-05:00

So Wednesday night I tried something new in the kitchen. I had a hankerin' for some pasta, so I thought I would heat up some canned chicken breast (from Costco) and boil up a box of elbows. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about sauce for the pasta, but since I had a bit of bacon grease still in the pan from breakfast earlier in the day, I thought, "Gravy!"

One problem. I've never made gravy before. In just under 40 Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners that my mom and/or sisters made while I grew up in the family home, I had never quite gotten around to watching and learning exactly how one makes gravy. I knew it had something to do with pan drippings and flour...but that's about it.

So, thinking I can figure out just about anything, I boiled the water and got the pasta going, decanned the chicken chunks and got them warming gingerly in a pan, heated up the bacon grease, pulled out the bag of flour, and experimented.

I sprinkled some flour into the grease and was just a little uneasy as it bubbled up. It settled down fairly quickly, and so things were going smoothly. It didn't seem like quite enough, so I added some more flour. And then some more. It was coming along nicely, but still seemed a little loose. A little more flour and it seemed just about right.

I drained the water off the chicken chunks and slid them out of the pan and into the "gravy." Suddenly the "gravy" thickened into a paste, and glommed on to the pieces of chicken in a very ungravy-like manner.

I plated some elbows, dumped the chicken-chunk-paste on top and sat down to a nice freshly made dinner.

And it was awful. I'm no great cook, but aside from occasionally burning a few things beyond taste, I've never been unable to eat something I've made. I thought I was going to hurl!

I rolled the pasty chicken chunks off and ate just the pasta, and I threw the chicken away.

Only then did I go to the internet and look up "gravy for idiots," and I actually learned something!

Take two...
Thursday night I was contemplating my dinner choices again. I still had four-fifths of Wednesday night's pasta in the refrigerator. I felt cheated on the gravy idea that I botched. So...

Was I ready to try it again? Absolutely. The bacon grease was already there, waiting in the pan since this morning's breakfast. I threw a steak on the grill outside and actually finished cooking that before I started anything else. I put about a cup and a half of cooked pasta and a little bit of water in a small skillet and covered that over a very low flame. I got the grease warmed up and started adding flour and stirring. This time I knew to stop at two tablespoons of flour, and to let the mixture get a little pasty, and then I added just one cup of milk, stirring it in slowly, just a little bit at a time. It started to get a little too thick, so I added just another splash or two of milk.

In just a few minutes it looked perfect! But what about the taste? I sampled a bit, and determined it needed salt and pepper. As I was still sampling it, I thought I had added too much salt, so I decided it was gravy. I uncovered the meat, dumped the pasta onto the plate, poured all of the gravy (what, was I going to save some for later?) over the pasta, and sat down to eat.

And?

HOLY CRAP! Was it GOOD! It was another one of those moments in my nascent culinary journey that I couldn't believe I had made it, it tasted so damn good! And the fact that I sit here at the computer several hours later instead of doubled over a toilet proves that not only was it good, but it was edible!

So... Gravy? Check.

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Chunky Cheese Burgers

2009-08-11T19:39:00.007-05:00

It's not often that I am inspired to cook something I've never cooked before, and even less often that I am inspired to create culinarily.

It's a word.

Sunday at my sister's house for a family gathering and pool party, we were poking light fun at my niece, #9, for the hamburgers she had made for the occasion. With a little bit of A-1 Sauce in the mix, along with some egg and diced onions, they were fairly typical of back yard cookout fare. Except for their size. She had factored too much for shrinkage on the grill and had made them huge. They wound up only slightly less huge. But give her a break; she has one year left toward her nursing degree...it's her younger sister who's the budding chef.

The diced onions were cut fairly large, too, and that gave me an idea, which I tried today. I saw the chunks of onion and thought, "What if that were cheese?" Imagine thick squares of cheddar embedded in your piping hot burger, oozing out when you bite into it!

So Tuesday I gave it a shot.

I had done some grocery shopping on Monday and picked up a block of medium cheddar cheese and about a pound of ground chuck. I had another pound of regular ground beef in the freezer, which I put into the refrigerator Tuesday afternoon to thaw.

Into a mixing bowl I threw both packages of ground beef, two eggs, one half of an onion, diced, and 8 ounces of cheddar cheese cut into roughly half-inch cubes. I mixed everything together, as one is wont to do when making hamburgers, and threw them on the grill.

Click on a photo to make it grow.

And they came out? Meh. The cheese that went onto the grill exposed melted out of the burger and onto the grill. It smelled bad while the burgers were cooking. I made three large burgers and three average sized to see if there was any difference in the taste or the melt of the cheese. There was not much difference at all.

I do think it's kind of a good idea...maybe something fun to do with kids, but next time I'll use smaller chunks of cheese...and learn how to cook.

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