The Birmingham Sojournal - Day Four

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?



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A Sunday in July

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.



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Random Successes

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?"



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In re: Thematic Photographic #104 - Dotty

Carmi's theme this week was dotty things.


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



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Anthem

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?

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

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

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Thematic Photographic #101

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

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

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

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

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!)

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

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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