Like Winning the Lottery!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cool! How much?"

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

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

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

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


The pre-game goings on going on...

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


PLAY BALL!


The Big Green Monster!

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

I guess I'm a lucky, lucky man!




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

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

But on to the news...

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

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

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



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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

THESE ENCOUNTERS HAPPENED SIMULTANEOUSLY!

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

A GIG!

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

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

Geeesh! I'm tired. Thanks for reading!

BBD

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

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



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Flight of the Conchords Review Linky-Poo

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

Read it 'n sleep!

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

Coming Round

Carmi over at Write, Inc. does a weekly photo assignment for his readers to follow — if they're so inclined — called Thematic Photographic. This week's theme is "Round." If you feel so inclined, go there to see the rules, and to play.

I looked around (no pun) my home office and right away saw several round things...



A paper plate with the casings from formerly round slices of salami...



A water bottle...



A whole LOTTA round, here! (a drink coaster)...



Round, and round and round and round again...



I'll have one round, and then another (and another and another)...



I'll bet nobody else thought of the thing through which we photograph
our world!! (Yeah...the lens is dusty. I know. Get off my back!)

I kept looking around my apartment and saw so many round things that I felt faint to imagine shooting and posting them all, so I stopped.



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Writing For Pay! ...Sorta....

A few of my readers may have noticed that big orange ticket looking thing that recently appeared under my photo over there to the left. The other two of my readers usually fall asleep right at "FARRA—zzzzzzz..."

What the appearance of that big orange ticket looking thing means is I am now an official EventChaser. What that means is I have signed up at EventChaser.com to attend certain shows I want to see that they want covered, and then I will write a review at their website.

I went to their ticket site, Razorgator, perused the huge list of events, from sports to concerts to stage plays to coffee shop Icelandic death poem readings... okay, just kidding on that last one... and provided them with a list of the events coming to Chicago that I would like to attend.

The site is broken down into categories that separate the different events from each other so it's easy to find the kind of entertainment you're looking for, and I was most interested in concert tickets. Their list of concerts is two pages long with several hundred different shows currently listed! I provided them with a short list of about 97 things I'd like to see, and they're now going to send me at least one, maybe two Flight of the Conchords tickets for a show at the end of April! For FREE!!

Well, free, except for that part where I promised to write a review...

And then, in a fuzzy haze of bravado the likes by which I have never before been possessed, I asked the woman from EventChaser with whom I was corresponding if she would like to accompany me to the show! She declined, claiming that she lives in Arizona. My thought was, Fine, if she doesn't think I'm worth a 30-hour drive, eating fast-food in her car at 70 miles per hour, four nights of lodging alone in roadside motels, missing a week of work, and just one evening with a really nice guy who has some minor rejection issues and who might not want sex, then it's her loss. But I didn't say anything. I had already moved on.

Keep your eyes peeled at this site for a mention of my review with a link to EventChaser, where you will get to see my very first assignment as a professional writer!



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This Has Got To Be The Most Amazing Video On Youtube!

It came up on the home page. Please watch this. You will be entertained and astounded, especially if you have an appreciation for filmmaking and animation!






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Caught In the Wash

Just when I was hoping that the bad of 2007 and 2008 was wearing off, the other shoe dropped as the axe fell on the fat lady singing.

Circling the Drain
In 2003 I topped out at 94,000 miles on United Air Lines, with three trips to Hawaii in a six-week period, plus a now long-forgotten string of trips everywhere else. But that was also the year the United States initiated war on two fronts amid an economy reeling from the burst tech bubble and the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our nation. It's when things started to come apart.

I started my job in 2001, and established a travel trend. The following year showed an increase over the first, and 2003 was the peak. In the ensuing years, as the war(s) raged on in faraway places, our clients' budgets were gradually trimmed, certain of our services were not requested or were sought at a discount. The trend continued through each year; fewer videos were requested, fewer trips were made, fewer miles accumulated, and we were expected to cram more shooting into fewer shoot days on each trip.

Then came 2008 and the financial malfeasance of the largest insurance company in the world — and our second largest client — exposed when the stock markets could no longer maintain their stability. The ensuing bailout of the financial industry, and a further, yet misunderstood, misstep by that largest insurance company seemed to intensify the gravitational pull on the economy.

That largest of insurance companies, bolstered by the federal shot in the arm, proceeded to do business as usual, the business of making money. Unfortunately for them — though fortunately for the bloodthirsty news media — business as usual included annual incentive meetings recognizing their top performers, their top earners of the many smaller companies that make up the larger. This recognition was, for one of these smaller companies, in the form of a business conference at an upscale resort somewhere in the world where its top performers were lavished with dinners and entertainment and awards ceremonies, all on top of a few days with a lush resort at their disposal. What the rest of the world doesn't know because the ratings-hungry, bloodthirsty media didn't tell them is that this lavish party thrown for the people who earned the company millions of dollars in the previous year had already been paid for a year in advance. None of the bailout money had been used to put on the spectacle, save, probably, for travel expenses. And they flew in coach. I know this. I've flown with them.

The lawmakers, infuriated by the news media "exposure" of that largest insurance company's perceived lack of decorum with their assistance money, then further restricted that company from planning any more incentive trips, thus punishing the very people responsible for the company's earnings. Further, as that large insurance company had to cancel its contracts with several dozen resort hotels, event planning companies, travel management companies, and audio-visual event staging companies around the world, it lost several million more dollars that it had paid in non-refundable deposits and pre-payments to secure properties and services.

The side-effect, then, is that all those fringe companies lost work. All those companies faced huge budget shortfalls. All those small companies that rely on big companies doing big business with them had the rug yanked out from under their feet. And now all those companies are in crisis, letting staffers go, trying to outrun complete ruin.

Down the Tube
Three months into 2009, I had traveled a grand total of 5,300 miles on my airline of choice. The average by April 1 in prior years had been around 17,000 miles. Things were looking bleak.

On Friday I was working on a long-term, in-house project creating a book of photo contact sheets of the stages of all of our conventions and business meetings dating as far back as 1996. I was just about finished rearranging all of the pages in the backup copy when the accountant/CFO of the company appeared in the hallway and asked me to come to her office when I was done with what I was doing. I said I would, but I still had about a half-hour of work to do. After she walked away, the gears started turning in my head.

In October of 2008, two of the most recently hired people were laid off. It happened on a Friday afternoon at the end of a pay period.

I looked at my watch. It was about 4:00. The CFO rarely asked me to come to her office. If I was missing a receipt, she usually brought out a photocopy of a credit card statement with my expenses highlighted, and the transaction awaiting a receipt underlined. I started mentally preparing myself for a blow.

About ten minutes later she came back out and urgently waved at me to come with her. I followed her to her office and when I walked in, there sat the owner of the company. He asked me to close the door.

The good part of it is that he tried to be upbeat, earnest in letting me know that there is no animosity on his part in his decision to let me go, that it is just an unpleasant part of doing business. He told me there is a likelihood in the short term that I could be called back to work on a freelance basis should the need arise, and that, long term, if things turn around sufficiently, that I could be called back to join the staff again. However, he didn't sound as confident about the latter as he did the former. He gave me his assurance that I have his recommendation any time I ask for it.

It is clear to me that he is in survival mode.

And so, I am now among the ranks of the unemployed.


Phone Deaf
Since around 2003 I have carried a mobile phone provided to me by my employer. It actually supplanted my personal mobile phone as my employer purchased unlimited long distance plans and placed no restrictions on personal calls.

Upon my dismissal from their employ, I was notified that I could keep the phone (it's about three years old) and the phone number, but I would have to handle its transfer to a personal account.

I was told that there was no hurry in getting my ass out the door. I could take time to tell my now-former coworkers of my dismissal, or I could bolt out the door that second. I chose to stay and finish putting the pages in the book I had been working on, and then I went around the office and told people on an individual, face-to-face basis that I would not be back on Monday. It got me a big, warm hug from the hot graphic artist chick! I can say that now because I don't work with her any more.

A couple of guys said they would take me out for a beer, and they did. I felt bad enough already; I didn't want to swig beer all evening, risk a DUI on the way home and then wake up feeling like hell on top of feeling like shit…and possibly in the pokey…so I had A beer. They also footed for the steak dinner I had. And the cute waitress leaned against my leg every time she came to the table.

When I got home I sent e-mail to my siblings and to all of my friends across the country to let them know I was out of work and potentially coming to live with them. I announced it to the world in my Facebook status updater, and the responses started pouring in. The sympathy and shock were heartfelt and appreciated. My college friend who now lives in Florida was worried about me because, as she wrote in the Facebook chat box, she had tried to call me but couldn't get through, and she couldn't even leave me a voice mail.

That was odd. I picked up my phone and it appeared to be off. I pressed the "End" button to turn it on. It showed me the usual Verizon startup graphic, but then the screen went black for a second or two, and a strange, blue screen that I had never seen before popped up with the Motorola logo and a very tech-y font that read "BOOTLOADER USB INIT."

Those motherfuckers! I thought. They turned off my phone pretty much as I had walked out the door! My Florida friend called them bastards!

I had planned to make a trip to the Verizon store Saturday morning, anyway, but now it was absolutely necessary!

Saturday morning I fielded more responses to my predicament, chatted again with my Florida friend, and then I went to the Verizon store. I told the woman who greeted me about my circumstances, that the phone had already been turned off and asked if I could change the service over to a personal account. She called up the account by my phone number and gave the computer a strange look. Then she said, "The number is still active."

"Well, the phone doesn't work," I said.

She asked me, "What's it doing?"

I told her about the blue screen, and she shook her head.

"That means your phone is fried."

"Fried?" I asked.

"Fried."

The conversation went on like that for a few more seconds, at which point she told me that the blue screen pops up when the memory is full with too many photos and/or texts and/or audio or video files. And nothing can be done with it. None of the stored information can be retrieved from it.

Totally. Fupped. Duck. Dead.

All my contacts — gone. All my Police concert at Wrigley Field photos — gone. My photo of Jesus Christ at the airport, the photos of my ex-wife…. okay, maybe not so bad after all.

And my former employer had not turned off my phone.

Nobody at the Verizon store would transfer the number from the corporate account into a personal account without authorization from my former employer's CFO, who was also responsible for the Verizon contract. The manager was now chiming in. I asked if the CFO could do it over the phone, and they said they could try. Then it hit me: I don't know the CFO's number; I always used the speed dial function on my mobile phone! The other option was for me to fill out a form that I would then send in to Verizon. Once approved, they would transfer the number into a personal account in my name. That would take a minimum of two weeks. Mobile is the only voice communication I have. I do not have home phone service; I'm über-progressive that way. I had to get phone service today, whether it be my current number or a new one. So the Verizon lady looked more deeply into the corporate account info on her screen and found the CFO's mobile phone number!

I interrupted her grocery shopping, but she was very helpful in speaking to the Verizon folks, authorizing them to switch the number, and telling me to call her again if I needed anything.

I got the neat little Krave™ touch-screen phone by Motorola that had a special deal on offer. Of course, now the anal side of me is in constant freak mode because I have to touch the screen! I spent a good portion of the afternoon and early evening going through my e-mail address book and discovering how out of date a lot of my friends' contact information is! I got some phone numbers loaded, but the majority are lost until I can get the numbers from mutual acquaintances.


The Road Ahead
I still haven't gotten my head completely around what I have to do. Since I joined the Air Force in 1983, I had only been unemployed twice before — the first time right after I got out of the Air Force, and the next time eleven years later for an eight-month stretch when I moved back to Chicago and in with the future ex-Mrs. Farrago. That was almost ten years ago.

I received a decent severance. I could loaf for a month or so and concentrate on my writing. I have my Big Story that's been gathering dust on the proverbial shelf and in need of a research trip or two. I could explore different careers, such as professional writer, voice actor, actor actor, nude model, mod nudel….

But the responsible freak inside me says I should find some kind of employment SOON, like TOMORROW. So I will look.

Do you suppose they advertise for nude models in the newspaper?



°

"Thinking"

I found this site thanks to John over at Random Squeegee, and I made my own little flick.

It's called Thinking. Does a woman really want to know what's on a man's mind?





°

Anatomy of a Wild Weekend

[WARNING: Long post ahead. Plan accordingly: go to the bathroom, refill your drink, get your affairs in order, sign your will, etc.]

Wild may be too strong a word for the weekend I just had. Perhaps "weird" is more fitting, though there were some seemingly wild parts to it.

Liquor In the Front, Poker In the Rear
Way back in December, when I loaded up on Meetup.com groups, one of them was "Just The Guys Social (and Foosball, Darts, Poker, Etc.)." And it's simply that; guys getting together to be free to be guys, to drink, eat junk food, and fart and belch at their leisure, and be appreciated for it.

For the first month or so after I signed up, the organizer didn't do anything, but then suddenly there was a party scheduled. He wrote of the Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament planned for the party, and I wasn't interested in that, so I didn't RSVP. Another one went by in February, and I passed on it, too.

Then, this past Friday I took the day off after my five day stay in Atlanta and, for some strange reason, the "Just The Guys Social" scheduled for later that evening appealed to me. I RSVPed and mentioned in the message that I wasn't a poker player, but if the others were willing and patient enough to let me learn as I went, then I'd give it a shot.

I arrived a little late, about 40 minutes past the party kick-off time, but the Texas Hold 'Em tournament had not started yet. A couple of the guys seized the opportunity to give me a few lessons in Texas Hold 'Em, and I was on my wobbly way. There was a $20 buy-in to get something like $3,000 worth of chips. Each player played until he was out of chips, at which point he was allowed to re-buy only twice more, and each re-buy was worth less value in chips. Then the top three players would split the pot, with 50% of the pot going to the winner, and then the 2nd and 3rd place players split the remainder 60-40.

I'll spare my reader the rules of Texas Hold 'Em poker simply because I still don't know them! Suffice it to say that we all got some good laughs at my ignorance as I attempted to fold when everyone else had "checked" their bet, choosing not to bet but staying in the deal to see what the next drawn card might present them with (I didn't have to fold yet). Then there was the time I watched the community draw pile grow with diamonds to match the 9 of diamonds I had in my hand. Excited that I had a flush, I stayed in the deal, "seeing" other guys' raises, but never raising the stakes myself. After the fifth card was drawn, I was still in, and it was time to show cards. One other guy had a flush hand. A couple other guys had straights, but of varying suits. I laid my cards down and the whole table erupted in loud groans and laughter. Without my even noticing it, my 9 of diamonds completed a straight flush that had been laid out on the table. One of the guys told me I should have been raising the bets like crazy, as I would have raked in the chips!

After a couple hours into it, I was getting bored and wanted to leave the table, but I kept winning small pots, prolonging my play! Soon players started going broke, and, next thing I knew, there were only four players left out of the original fifteen…and I was one of them!

I had played very conservatively, but had won enough hands that I hung in there. But as I looked at my three opponents' chips, they were all richer than I by several thousand "dollars," so I knew that, unless I came up with four aces, I would go broke very soon… and I did… go broke. Other guys high-fived me for being a beginner who hung in to finish in fourth place.

I stayed to watch the end of the tournament, where the party's host kept trying to expedite the end of play by going all-in with his huge fortune in chips, only to win the "blind" pot when his only opponent folded without betting. This happened about four times! But, finally play ended, and the host finished in 2nd place.

I arrived home around 1:00am, groaning because I had a workout in the morning with George at 8:00.


Karaoke On the Set of Desperate Housewives
Saturday night saw the March gathering for the Chicago Karaoke Underground Party. I did my usual, driving about halfway to the city and parking my car at a CTA parking facility, and then taking public transportation the rest of the way to the hostess's loft apartment on the northwest side of Chicago. There was a good assortment of new faces there, along with several whom I have become familiar with over the past two parties.

Early on, two of the familiar faces made a semi-private announcement to the hostess, ML, that there would soon be an official engagement announcement. The guy in this couple apparently has really bad eyesight, because I saw him reading phone texts, and he held the phone right at the tip of his nose to read it. Let's call him Eagle Eye. For later. His lady is not what I would consider attractive in that she's quite fat, but insists on wearing her jeans about four sizes too small for her waist, and letting the blubber spill over the waistband while wearing a top short enough for all to see that spillover. We'll call her Muffin Top, for later.

Another familiar face there I had first seen at last month's party. She's somewhat attractive, though very tiny and very thin. She has a perpetually either frightened or overwhelmingly uncertain look in her eyes. She also has an annoying tic in which, as she speaks, she turns her head slightly in darts left and right, tilting and straightening, and she strikes me as just plain odd. She doesn't like me. We'll call her Ms. Flinch. For later.

And then there's Butch. It's not his real name, but our name for him for later. He was a new face to me, but he had been to several C-KUPs last year, so I was a new face to him as well. He didn't strike me as a particularly attractive guy, but some of the women in attendance thought otherwise. More on that later.

Things got rolling with the usual kick-off song by the hostess, ML. Next up was another new face, a woman who pretty much set the bar for the evening by blowing us all away with her voice. Fantastic.

The party progressed as parties do, with people drinking and enjoying themselves, getting louder and looser. I had a couple of cans of Miller High Life beer, which I later followed with a shot of Jim Beam. And that was it. I stuck to water and coffee for the rest of the evening. Not the case for Muffin Top, however.

ML likes to celebrate birthdays every month by seating the birthday people at the edge of the "stage" and facing it. She then calls everybody else up to crowd around the two mics and sing to the karaoke version of "Birthday" by the Beatles. March happens to be the month of Muffin Top's as well as Butch's birthdays, and by the time of the birthday song, about halfway through the evening, Muffin Top was feeling no pain…and no shame, for that matter. She was hanging all over Butch and squeezing one of his thighs during the song and, as someone went to take a picture of the birthday kids, Muffin Top got on her knees and pantomimed a very keen interest in performing fellatio on Butch! Everybody had a good laugh at that. At least I think everyone did. I don't recall seeing Eagle Eye at that moment.

Intermittently, Butch was chatting up Ms. Flinch. He seemed to be interested in her, and she seemed definitely interested in him. She sat with him on the couch, she got up to dance when he did. Did I mention Ms. Flinch is tiny? I would guess her weight at around 90 pounds. Did I mention also that Ms. Flinch had a drink in her hand all evening. Well…the first part of the evening, anyway.

So, the party was in full swing by 11:30 or midnight or so. Muffin Top was having a great time. She was up in front of the "stage" during someone else's song dancing with Butch like there was no tomorrow, hooting and hollering, and hanging on him like a lamppost in a windstorm. I glanced over to Eagle Eye, who was not dancing, and who did not appear very happy.

I saw Ms. Flinch standing unsteadily by the food table. I walked over and asked if she was okay. She nodded in her flinchy way. I asked her what she was drinking.

"Whyrhuzhn."

"What?"

"WHYRHUZHHN!"

"Oh. White Russian. I used to drin—"

She walked away. She reeeeally doesn't like me, that kid.

I looked over at the dancers again just as the song was finishing. Butch headed for the couch and Muffin Top walked behind him with her hand on his back. Then she slid her hand down his back and onto his left butt cheek and she SQUEEZED it! TWICE!

Eagle Eye stood silently with his arms folded.

A few minutes later Muffin Top must have looked over at her betrothed and noticed that he was glaring at her. She walked over and, though I couldn't hear what they were saying, their body language shouted. Muffin Top reached to put her hands on Eagle Eye's upper arms, but he backed away. She then tried to put her arms over the back of his neck, and Eagle Eye reached up and pushed her arms away. At that point this casual observer was becoming a voyeur, so I shifted my gaze away from them…and found Ms. Flinch.

Barely conscious, Ms. Flinch was apparently in the throes of a bout of vomiting. She lay back against the backrest of the couch, and then she pitched forward with her head between her knees. She repeated the action a couple times until she remained over her knees. I got up to look for a bucket. By the time I returned, she had already deposited some of the evening's consumption onto the floor…and her boots.

Her friend, Useless, was concerned for Ms. Flinch. "We have to get her to the bathroom."

I agreed. I grabbed one of Ms. Flinch — it occurs to me that now I should refer to her as Ms. Floppy — I grabbed one of her arms and told Useless to help me. I got Ms. Flinch up onto her feet and wrapped an arm around her waist. Her feet were there, but her legs weren't moving, and so Useless and I sort of dragged her toward the bathroom.

As we crossed the threshold into the hallway, Ms. Flinch passed out. If she was floppy to that point, she was totally limp after. Even though she weighs about 90 pounds, she almost took me down! Useless was…well, useless, and I was carrying Ms. Flinch on my own. Useless opened the door to the bathroom, where I tried to maneuver Ms. Flinch over the toilet, but managed to clonk her head on the rim of the bowl not once, but twice. We got her face over the bowl, but the only thing that went into the toilet was Ms. Flinch's hair. I held her up while Useless tied Ms. Flinch's hair up into a bun on the back of her head.

It was pointless. I couldn't hold her at the toilet and wait just in case she puked again. I couldn't let her go because she would either fall over or go face-first into the toilet and drown. So I told Useless that we were bringing her back into the party, and to lay her out on the couch.

I told Useless to open doors for me, and I would carry Ms. Flinch. In trying to maneuver her unconscious body, I had to grab her high on the back of her thigh, near her rear end. It was soaked. She had totally let go, and everything came out of her. She was a disgusting mess. While carrying Ms. Flinch back to the couch, I had a brief argument with Useless.

"Make sure you lay her face up," she said, "or she could die."

"NO!" I practically shouted. "You lay her face down or on her side." Imagined images of the death of John Bonham, the drummer of the rock supergroup Led Zeppelin, played through my head.

"But…"

"If she's face up and she vomits again, she could suffocate. You lay her face DOWN!" I thought to mention John Bonham, but it occurred to me that Useless is about 24 years old. She wouldn't know John Bonham from Dick Cavett.

Once I got Ms. Flinch on the couch in the correct position, Useless freaked out. Ms. Flinch was supposed to go home with her to spend the night, but now Useless didn't want her there because she can't have her throwing up in her apartment, and she couldn't possibly get her on the bus in this condition…. she thought it best that Ms. Flinch go home where she lives with her mother…in the north suburbs. About 25 miles away.

I told her that Ms. Flinch isn't going anywhere any time soon. Useless seemed to be of the impression that ML, the hostess, wouldn't allow Ms. Flinch to sleep it off here in her loft, so we had to get her home. She didn't think Mrs. Flinch could come for her daughter at that late hour.

So I did a quick poll of those standing around us. "Did any of you drive here tonight?"

Nobody. Those who had driven had left already.

"If her mother can't come for her, then I'll drive her home," I said. It would mean getting on the train, riding about 30 minutes or more to where my car was parked, and then another 30 minutes or so driving back, but I was concerned for Ms. Flinch's safety and her health, and no one else seemed capable of thinking about either. Was I the only one sober?!

Ms. Flinch was starting to come around, and someone suggested that she get some water into her system. Useless ran and returned with a cup of water from which Ms. Flinch sipped. And it came back up almost instantly. Though her stomach continued to erupt, she remained conscious.

While Useless tried calling Mrs. Flinch now that her daughter was conscious, I went back to the bathroom to wash what was most likely remnants of Ms. Flinch's pee, poop and puke off of my hands. As I returned Eagle Eye was in the hallway in his coat and heading back into the party, and yelling at Muffin Top, also in her coat, to stay in the hallway.

"But…"

"Just STAY THERE!"

I simply said, "Excuse me," as I slid past them.

Mrs. Flinch did agree to come get her daughter, and she eventually showed up. There was some circus surrounding getting Ms. Flinch into her coat and keeping her on her feet. I ran to get some paper towels to wipe away the vomit that was clinging to her face, but when I returned she was on her knees before a sizeable puddle of new vomit, just a few feet from the door.

I worked on getting her scarf from around her neck, as it was disgusting, while someone else managed to clean up the floor before we got Ms. Flinch on her feet again. I convinced her to hold onto my arm as we entered the elevator and rode down, and I walked her out into the heavy downpour and to her mother's waiting car with Useless in tow.

No sooner had the outer security door closed and locked behind us than Ms. Flinch asked, "Where's my hat?"

We walked to Mrs. Flinch's car and got Ms. Flinch situated. Mrs. Flinch offered Useless a ride home, which she reluctantly accepted. I asked Mrs. Flinch if she wanted to wait while I ran back up to ML's apartment to get Ms. Flinch's hat. She was agreeable to that, so I ran back to the door and rang the bell. And I waited. And waited.

And waited.

I rang the bell again. Nothing. The party was still going on upstairs, and no one could hear the doorbell.

I turned to walk back to the car to see if Useless could get Ms. Flinch's hat in the next day or so, but when I was barely ten steps from the car, Mrs. Flinch pulled away and disappeared into the rain-soaked night.

ML's building is perched right on top of a subway station, so I wasn't in the rain too long before I headed down the stairs to the lonely train platform.

I looked at my watch. 3:16am.

Around 3:35 a train finally pulled into the stop and I got on the front car. The doors remained open longer than usual, and I noticed some canisters containing liquid occupying some of the seats nearest the conductor's cabin. A sign read, "These canisters contain chemicals used to remove ice from the third rail." Despite the hour, the train car was pretty full. I found a place to stand near the rear of the car and waited for the doors to close. Suddenly I heard the sound of liquid hitting the floor. I looked around to find the source, and soon enough I saw the puddle of vomit on the floor between a man's feet and beneath his bowed head where he was seated near the entry doors. The "Doors Closing" warning had not yet sounded, so I gambled at leaving that car and heading for the second car behind it. Another guy had the same idea at the same time, and I accidentally cut him off as I dashed for the exit.

The train ride seemed slower than normal, yet it didn't seem as though the CTA employees were spending extra time de-icing the third rail, either. Thanks to the extra helpings of coffee at the party, the extra time spent getting Ms. Flinch down to her mother's car, and to the longer than usual wait for a train, by the time I got off at the stop where my car was parked, I was approaching bladder distress. As my trip home was practically all expressway from there, I knew that there is an oasis not quite half-way where I could stop before I had my own disgusting accident.

The rain had turned to heavy, wet snow and, the farther northwest I drove, the thicker and heavier the snow had become. No snowplows had been down that stretch of I-90, so the going was treacherous at times. In the roughly 15 mile stretch of highway I had to travel on to get home, I must have seen at least 5 cars that had spun out and gone off the road. CRIPES, people! Did we not just come out of one of the snowiest winters in this city's history? Did you forget — already — how to drive in this stuff? IDIOTS!

As I approached my exit I felt my stomach growling insistently. My intent had been to drive straight home and go straight to bed, but I realized that if I tried that, my complaining stomach would likely keep me awake. So, right off the entrance ramp and at the end of the road I where I live is an International House of Pancakes where I stopped and had a quick breakfast of eggs, bacon and hash browns, with yet another cup of coffee. The snow stopped some time during my meal, and when I went out to my car the eastern sky was clearing, and the breaking clouds were beginning to tint toward purple. I drove the last two minutes to my apartment and headed inside. As I closed the door and locked it behind me I looked at my watch: 5:22am.

What a fupped duck night!

I checked e-mail, updated my Facebook status, got undressed and was in bed by 6:00. I slept until 12:30 Sunday afternoon. And I think I'm still paying for the weekend on Tuesday.

I wonder how Ms. Flinch feels. Or Eagle Eye.



°

Asian Persuasion

A strange phenomenon has occurred in the recent past in my life: Asian women. Now, while I often find them attractive, I’ve never been fixated on them. In the past couple of months, however, they seem to have invaded my thoughts.

Aged To Perfection
Several weeks back I attended a Meetup.com Dining Out group event at a Chinese restaurant. It was a well-attended event, despite the snowstorm that hit our area that afternoon. The organizer had split the group in two based on preferences: those interested in dining family-style were at one table, and those like me who wished to order individually from the menu were at the other. Once everyone had arrived I found myself seated not quite directly opposite a beautiful Japanese woman who appeared to be about 35 years old. Though she’s a long-time member of the Dining Out group, none at our table had ever met Hiroko before.

As conversation progressed, a couple of people asked Hiroko about her life. She told us in her heavily accented English that she has lived in the USA for 25 years and that she has been divorced for about 10 years. Someone asked her how long she was married. Her answer: 20 years.

Apparently all under the same impression based on her appearance, we all scratched our heads as we each frantically tried to do the math in our heads. Finally one brave soul asked, “How old were you when you married, twelve?”

Hiroko blushed and laughed. “No, I was 20.”

Before anyone could finish that math problem, she said, “I’m 50 years old.”

Silverware rattled as jaws hit the table. There is no way, from any angle, in any light, that I would have guessed Hiroko’s age at anywhere approaching 40, let alone 50!! And judging by the reaction of everyone else at our table, neither would they!

Dinner continued, and Hiroko was positively charming, and I found myself screwing up the nerve to ask for her phone number. I’ve never been comfortable asking such things with an audience, so I chose to wait until I could take her aside for a private moment. However, to my deep chagrin, another member of the group, a man who I could probably more accurately guess to be around age 65, and who apparently has no hangups about an audience, turned to Hiroko right there at the table and asked her for her number! Never before have I felt so compelled to punch an old guy’s lights out!

Undaunted nevertheless, I did wait until we were all getting ready to leave and, while we were putting on our coats, I did ask Hiroko for her number, and she did give it to me. It still boggles my mind that I want to chat up a 50-year-old woman!

The problem now is that quite a few weeks — maybe a couple months — have gone by, and I haven’t screwed up the courage to call her. Have I missed the window? Would I be right or wrong to call her now? Feedback, please.


The Pinch of Sugar
Back in August I signed up with Soulmates, a face-to-face dating service. For a fee they provide referrals which I then call and, if the chemistry seems right or the conversation goes well, I can meet face to face with the woman for some hopeful dating success. Or sex.

“Success” has been fleeting with this group, however. Since September I have met with only three women. The first one seemed very nice, and we even made arrangements for a second date...but then she screened my calls and never returned messages. The second one was very attractive, a medical specialist who drove a BMW, but she had told Soulmates that she wasn’t interested in meeting any divorced men, especially someone as freshly divorced as I was at the time (one week)! The next one was sick when I called and promised to call me back...but she never did. The next one — a woman from Belarus — after a missed meeting because she had forgotten her mobile phone at home, was not very attractive and was very difficult to understand. I need to follow up on my comment to Soulmates to teach their “counselors” the difference between “speaks with an accent” and “speaks broken English.” The former is charming; the latter can be maddening.

Then I got the call a couple weeks ago with a new referral. Sugar (yes, it’s her real name) is 32, from Mongolia, divorced with a 10-year-old son who does not live with her. She is “slender and attractive,” but does not have a driver’s license, so I would have to drive to wherever she is. Was I interested? Uhhh...sure. What the heck!

Usually a little more geographically savvy than the average American, I drew a blank on Mongolia. I went online and found it, tucked there between China and Russia. Then I Googled “Mongolian women photo.”

Holy WOW! I was encouraged.

I phoned Sugar and we chatted. She speaks English very well and with little difficulty. We texted our e-mail addresses to each other, and we agreed to meet on the following Saturday at a mall in the southwest suburbs.

We rendezvoused at the agreed upon place and ... Holy WOW! She is gorgeous! We walked to the Starbucks in the mall, ignored the coffee counter and went straight to a table. She was on her lunch break (she’s a caregiver for invalid and terminally ill people), so we only had about 90 minutes to chat.

The conversation went along smoothly, and we really seemed to hit it off. I was curious about her feelings on the 12-year age difference between us, and when I asked her about it, she asked me what year I was born. When I told her, her face read concern. She must have already known my age; Soulmates would have told her that. But age wasn’t the issue.

“You’re a dragon.”

Huh?

“You’re a dragon. That’s no good.”

Why is that?

“I’m a dragon.”

HUH?

“People of the same Asian zodiac sign are not compatible. The best is the sign four years apart. You want rat or monkey.”

I tried to reason with her that it was all superstition, but, having come from Mongolia only seven years ago, this is practically law to her. She was unwavering.

“I really like you. You the first man I meet from Soulmates I like and want to be friend with.”

Great. The “I like you, but only as a friend” line, with a sexy Mongolian accent.

She did, however, tell me that she has a Mongolian friend who is a rat that she would like me to meet. Maybe the next time they went out together they would call me and we could all three go out where we could meet. I started to protest, saying that I like Sugar, and if this woman isn’t as beautiful or charming to talk to as Sugar is, I would spend all my time talking to Sugar. She laughed and said that her friend is “nice.”

Then I realized two things. One, if Sugar truly believes that she and I would never get along simply because we were born under the same Asian zodiac sign, then it will bother her forever, no matter how well we might get along, and would eventually come between us, magnifying any differences we might have and drawing her attention to that zodiac-mandated “incompatibility.” Two, she was proposing a threesome date...Farrago with two Mongolian women, one of them certainly gorgeous, and the other potentially as hot. While the every-man’s-fantasy scenario would most likely not happen, I could stand being the envy of every guy in whichever place we might spend our evening! And who knows? Maybe the rat and this dragon will make sparks! So I backed down from my protest, and agreed to let her arrange a meeting between her friend and me, if the rat feels up to it.

Regardless, I’m feeling a little relentless. I invited Sugar to the next Sunday Series concert at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra April 5. I still await word whether or not she wants to go.

The Impossible Dream
I spent last weekend and half the week in Atlanta with a client’s annual convention where I did my usual on-site thing, shooting a highlights video. Another usual on-site thing I do is flirt with the home office women who work the registration desks and in the organization’s booth in the exposition hall. With the camera as my tool, and also as my social crutch, I am able to get away with more than I would just on my own, so often I will use it to “torment” my chosen target(s) and get some good video.

I saw a new face, whom here I will simply call ‘D.’ She’s young, slighly plump, and beautiful, with a hint of Asian features in her face. I pressed the record button and aimed the lens right at her, at which point she immediately threw up her hands to block her face, which she had also tried desperately to tuck into her armpit! I did not relent, enthusiastically encouraging her to let me see her face. Then she grabbed the lapel of her sweater, official wear provided to her by her employer, and pulled it up over her face, perfectly displaying the organization’s logo right to the lens!

I momentarily forgot that I already had the tape rolling, and when I saw this perfect display of the logo, I thought it tapeworthy. I said, “Hey! That’s great! Do that again!” I wanted her to cover her face and, since she didn’t want me to capture her countenance, I thought this the perfect scenario. She could cover her face and I would get the video I wanted!

But D was having nothing of it. I lowered the camera to my side in a gesture of peace, and I pleaded with her to do it, but she persistently refused.

Then I noticed a flush in her cheeks, and her eyes looked distressed, almost as though she were about to start crying. I was crushed. I felt I had upset her badly and, despite that my company had worked for hers for more than twenty years, mine is still a vendor and hers is still the client. I could get into trouble for upsetting or pissing off anyone at this event, and I felt I had crossed a line. I apologized and excused myself.

It was already near the end of that first day of shooting, so I left the expo hall and encountered one of the client bosses and told her about the situation, and I apologized to her. She seemed too busy to notice that I was even speaking to her, but I had delivered my apology, and I went on to the next thing.

The next day was just as busy, if not busier, than the first, and though I wanted to approach D in an uncharged moment to give her my sincere apology, I didn’t see her anywhere.

That evening was a late one for everyone involved, as there was an awards dinner, after which I had to shoot a scene as part of a larger sketch we had conceived (and I had written!). I saw D at the doors to the dinner, but she was surrounded by her coworkers and, my audience hangup still perched on my shoulder, I felt unable to approach her.

After the dinner and after the brief shoot, I returned the light I borrowed from another shoot we had going in another room, and then on the way back to my room I took a detour through the bar to see if any of our guys was there, and to maybe have a drink.

Amidst the throng of convention attendees — all of whom seemed to have been at the awards dinner — I did see one of our guys, and after a few minutes of talking with him, I spotted D at a table with a couple of her coworkers. She was still wearing the evening gown she had worn working the awards dinner, and I thought she was absolutely stunning in it. I abandoned my coworker like a soiled diaper and wended my way toward D and said hello. I told her that I really felt bad that I had upset her the day before, that it was never my intention to do that.

She replied that it was no big deal, that she wasn’t upset, just embarrassed. I didn’t believe her, and I told her that I still felt bad for tormenting her. I asked her what she was drinking, and if she wanted another. She did.

Twenty minutes and $23.50 later (fekking hotel bars!) I returned with a Grand Marnier on the rocks for D, and some brand x blended scotch for me. We chatted for a while, and that’s where I fell. I looked at her face and saw the most sincere eyes I’ve ever looked into. She seemed to be listening to every word I said, and when she spoke to me I could have believed anything she told me. She locked her eyes onto mine whenever either of us was speaking to the other, and it seemed to me as though all the crazy noise from the people surrounding us couldn’t interfere with our conversation.

She’s 25 years old, of Filipino and European descent – her mother being from the Philippines and her father of German and French origins. I told her that it appeared she had wound up with the best qualities of each. She asked me my age, and I told her to guess. I always feel that’s a mean thing to make someone do, and I usually respond cruelly to anyone who asks me that by purposely guessing way older than they appear. So call me a hypocrite.

She guessed 28! When I told her my real age she first didn’t believe me, but then she gave me a high-five for my deceptively youthful looks. And I felt my heels float past my head.

As it went, she and her coworker decided to head outside for a smoke (big negative), but D grabbed my forearm and said, “Come with us!” How does one describe the sound of swoon?

We stood outside for a few minutes amid the throng of conventioneers there. D asked me to take a photo of her and her coworker, we engaged in small-talk, and then we went back inside. Done with my drink around 12:30am and looking at an early enough morning ahead of me just for work, and adding to that the workout I wanted to get in beforehand, I announced it was time for me to go. D turned to me to thank me for the drink. That face again. Those eyes. The sensation of falling into them.

It occurs to me now that I should have responded in amazement at her impossibly accurate guess at my age, that people usually guess me a little older, even above 30 sometimes, but she hit the nail on the head with her guess of 28. My evening might have ended differently if she didn’t think I was so much older than she is....



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Mother Nature Attacks!

Just about two weeks ago, on a Saturday, I visited my best friend, Lu. He and his wife and son live in northwest Indiana, about an hour’s drive from me in the Chicago northwest suburbs. It had been a while since I drove the Xterra that far or at highway speeds, so I thought it was a good workout for my car. Also while in Indiana, the timing worked out such that I needed to put some gas in the tank, always a good thing where gas is typically fifteen to twenty cents less per gallon! Of course, that plus Lu, plus two of my sisters who also live in northwest Indiana, comprise the entire list of things I like about Indiana.

My visit with Lu was nice. He and his wife fed me dinner, plied me with wine, and we reminisced and talked politics and economy, and just plain had a great time, wondering why we don’t do that more often. Very late in the evening I headed home.

The next morning I headed out to do some shopping. I started the engine of the Xterra and I noticed a rhythmic thumping vibration throughout the whole vehicle. The engine was idling very roughly. Then I noticed that the “Service Engine Soon” light was illuminated. Aside from the “Service Engine Soon” light, I had experienced a rough idle in the Xterra before, but it usually cleared up in a matter of minutes. The light, however, had never come on before. Perhaps, I thought, driving it a little would clear it up. That only caused the “Service Engine Soon” light to FLASH. That couldn’t be good! Damn Indiana gas!

Of course, the timing was Farrago perfect; it was Sunday and no garage — let alone my preferred garage — would be open today. As my preferred garage — Reliable Auto Repair — is in the city of Chicago and would likely require several hours of work, I couldn’t take it in during the week. AND, as I would normally prefer to take it in on a Saturday, I was leaving in the morning on the NEXT Saturday for Atlanta. It would be two full weeks of feeling like I was riding behind a huge sewing machine before I could get it looked at.

Finally, the hell-week in Atlanta was finished, I worked the recovery day Thursday at the office, and Friday morning I was up bright and early to get the Xterra into the city and at the front of the line at Reliable Auto Repair.

In need of an oil-change as well, I anticipated a wait of at least two hours. I left the Xterra at the garage while I walked a few blocks to a Wishbone restaurant for breakfast. Not long after I was seated, my mobile phone rang. It was Bob, from Reliable. He told me that “some animal” had attempted to take up residence on top of my engine and, proceeding to make the place his own, tried some interior decorating with the shreds of some essential engine electrical wiring. One of my spark-plug wires was chewed completely in two!

(click on a photo to enlarginate)

The shame is that it looked quite cozy. Above and a little left of the
nest can be seen the tooth-severed spark plug wire.
(Photo by Bob at Reliable Auto Repair)


The other thing I notice, seeing these photos, is that Bob at Reliable
Auto Repair has one damn NICE camera phone!
(Photo by Bob at Reliable Auto Repair)

After breakfast I headed back to Reliable where I sat down, unsheathed my laptop and began writing this most recent flurry of posts. After handing over the keys when the shop opened at 7:00am — and after handing over $495 for the repair and tune-up, plus the scheduled oil change — I had my Xterra back to good health and on the road by 10:30.

On the road, that is, after I backed into a light pole trying to get out of Reliable’s lot. Fortunately I was backing very slowly, and the only contact was with my bumper. There’s a small dent there, noticeable really only if you’re looking for it.

Damn critters!



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A Change Of Habit

A great deal of things haven’t been happening in my life lately. That, and a general sense of laziness, plus the near-instant gratification from Facebook, results in blog-drought.

Life Changes
Not what it sounds like. I haven’t met the woman of my dreams, nor have I changed teams, nor have I had a sex-change operation, nor have I let Jesus back into my life, or Miguel, for that matter.

I’ve been working out. I know I’ve trumpeted that mundane fact about my life in this space before, but I think this time I really have gone about it in the right way. My attitude has changed toward my workouts: I no longer consider George, the Personal Trainer, to be Satan Incarnate; he’s still evil in ways, but not the Prince of Darkness himself...maybe a lesser demon. My workouts have been less dreadful and more productive, and I feel myself trying harder to push, pull, press and lift more weight more times.

And I think the one doing the work is always the last to see real change, but George has commented that I appear to have developed a little bit of definition in my arms and shoulders. I can make myself believe I see it in the mirror, but I’m pretty good at fooling myself. A former co-worker who came in to prospect for some freelance work, someone I haven’t seen since December or January, saw me and, upon our greetings, looked at me a little strangely and asked, “Have you lost some weight?” and, as a matter of fact, I had lost weight. Just that morning I checked myself on the scale. Ever since I started with George in that first week of February, I felt mild frustration at the fact that I had not lost one bit of weight. I had started at 210 pounds, and I maintained that weight for weeks, fluctuating between 208 and 210. I had commented to George about it, and he said that, since weight loss wasn’t my primary goal, my weight wouldn’t come down very quickly. He even asked me how I would feel if my weight went up five pounds, but I lost an inch in my waist! Then he said that, with increased fitness would come weight loss.

Then, on the very day I would meet my former coworker, I stepped on my scale at home: 201 pounds! I had dropped seven to nine pounds in a week and a half!

I have been very faithful to the rigors that George has set out. There are the workouts with him every Saturday, Monday and Wednesday. There are my cardio workouts at the office every Tuesday and Thursday, and at my apartment complex fitness center on Sundays. On the road I make every effort to use the hotels’ fitness centers, if available (as a matter of fact, in Atlanta last week the fitness center was so crowded at 5:15am that I chose to do my cardio by walking the complete loop around the atrium for 20 minutes. That was about 12 times around!). George has factored accountability into the regimen, expecting me to provide him a daily food journal to track what and how I eat, and to give him a tool to help me tune my diet and make it more balanced and healthy.

I have been eating more whole foods and less fast food. I haven’t had — or missed — a McDonald’s hamburger since February. I avoid french fries entirely. With the exception of breakfast, the only potatoes I eat are baked or boiled. Alcoholic drinks are few and far between; water and fruit juices are now the norm. My coffee intake has remained at one to two cups a day.

I haven’t been perfect; I still have occasional munchie attacks, with chocolate at the head of the cravings pack. But I feel I have totally turned my eating habits around, and George’s food journal assignment keeps me on track...and guilt-ridden if I stray (and I am freakishly honest about it!).

I have already decided to sign up for another 16 sessions with George when this current string ends. I want to feel confident about my self-guided workouts when I leave his tutelage and make it my own responsibility. I feel that, despite the fitness track-record of my life to this point, I will stick to it.

Wish me luck!



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turN mE oN, deaD maN*

You Are 9: The Peacemaker

You are emotionally stable and willing to find common ground with others. Your friends and family often look to you to be the mediator when there is conflict. You are easy going and accepting. You take things as they come. Avoiding conflict at all costs, you're content when things are calm. At Your Best: You feel connected, trusting, and fulfilled. You feel at peace with your place in the world. At Your Worst: You compromise your values to make sure peace is maintained. You give in to bullies. Your Fixation: Harmony Your Primary Fear: Causing conflict Your Primary Desire: To preserve things as they are Other Number 9's: Marge Simpson, Ronald Reagan, Audrey Hepburn, Jerry Seinfeld, and Abraham Lincoln.

What Number Are You?

*Kudos to you if you can correctly explain to me this reference.



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Okay, These Just About Killed Me!

This one is pretty funny...and cute. It's a sleepwalking dog, but she's not just wagging her legs....




Go to the bathroom before watching the next one, or you might pee while watching it. You've been warned.






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On Karaoke

I guess I’m a karaoke nerd. I’ve done musical theatre and have sung(?) on stage, before an audience, and accompanied by an orchestra…of sorts — in community theatre, you take what you can get.

When I was in college, my best friend, Lu, played me a tape that had been made of him singing Born To Be Wild at some bar in town on “Karaoke Night.” He sounded…okay. But I admired him for his testicular fortitude in getting up there before a crowd of strangers — likely drunk, most of them — and belting a tune. I remember thinking that I did not have the balls for that.

For sixteen years I had no closer brush with karaoke than seeing online videos from Japan of young people — women mostly — standing in front of a screen and mumbling the words to some familiar song or another, and of Producer retelling the tale of how one night on the road he wound up at dinner with the owner of our company and how they were surprised when a woman took the stage and let them all know that it was karaoke night. After several drinks on the boss, he convinced Producer — who sings ALL the time around the office, to just about everyone’s maddening last nerve — that it was a good idea that he give it a whirl. He wound up singing several duets with the karaoke hostess who thought he was the bees knees.

Then, in April of 2007, I was sent to Raleigh, North Carolina, for one night. I had befriended Claire through her blog and via e-mail, and I contacted her to let her know I would be in town. She invited me out to hang with her friends at their favorite bar, where it was karaoke night. I wasn’t crazy about the karaoke thing, but I really did want to meet Claire. So I figured I would go and have a beer and a couple of laughs and be done with it.

While I sat there watching person after person take the stage — some pretty good, some pretty awful — I felt within me a tug at my gut. No, I wasn’t becoming ill… it was the nagging thought, “I can DO this.” Mind you, it wasn’t the thought “I want to do this,” but from the moment Claire asked me if I was going to (she already had), I just knew I would.

I wound up as one of the last singers of the night, and I did Surrender by Cheap Trick. I’m pretty sure I sucked, but not as bad as some of the others of the night (I mean, come ON! I HAVE done some musical theatre, fercryinoutloud!)

I sat down, a little embarrassed, but with the sense — nay, the knowledge — that I had accomplished something, that I had confronted a fear and defeated it. I would never have to do it again.

The next time was on a Baltic Sea Cruise we worked for one of our clients about four months later. One bar aboard ship had karaoke two nights a week, and Producer and Editor told me they were going there for a couple of drinks. I had stuff I needed to shoot that evening, so I told them I would meet them there. By the time I got there, karaoke had been going on for about 40 minutes, and very few people were interested in participating. When I sat down with my coworkers, Editor was deep into razzing Producer for his cowardice, as he was stalling to choose a song and give it to the KJ (Karaoke Jockey). I joined in the razzing and, shortly after Editor, who has sung with rock bands in his youth, totally shredded (in a good way) The Beatles’ Twist and Shout, the KJ shut down due to lack of interest. So I neither got to see Producer sing, nor did I feel the pressure to try it again.

About three months after that I was on a convention site in Orlando, Florida, when word went around that some of the stage crew were piling into a van and going out for a steak dinner. And Karaoke. Producer and I were asked if we’d like to come along — he, I’m sure, because they wanted to hear him sing, I because I was standing beside him when they asked.

We went to a Stuart Anderson’s Black Angus restaurant where the steak was decent, the beer cold and the KJ very late. He eventually showed up and got things rolling. I had had a beer with dinner and another while we waited for the KJ to show. The song list was passed around our table, and Producer stalled again — this the guy at our table who had sung professionally as a young man. Most everybody had chosen songs, even a couple guys I would never have suspected would want to do this, and the daggers were getting pointier the longer Producer stalled. I kept razzing him, calling him a chicken-shit, as he’s the one who was always singing. “Now’s your chance,” I said to him. “Now I want to hear you sing, and I’m not going to tell you to shut up.”

Finally he had enough, and he shot me an angry look. “Are you gonna do it?”

I shot him back a look just as mean. “Not until you do, chicken-shit.”

Our friends started getting called — there were really very few people in the place, and fewer participating in karaoke — and once the music started, and I saw my friends and coworkers up there — some pretty good, some pretty awful — and the beer kicked in, I laughed hard, sang along loudly and had an absolutely fantastic time.

And then Producer walked up and turned in his song choice to the KJ.

Oh, shit.

I had spotted in the list the song I thought I wanted to try, so I wrote it down on the little sheet of paper provided for the occasion, and, a man of my word, I turned it in.

A couple more of our coworkers were called up, and our table of six was laughing and shouting along with them. Producer was called and he did some old standard, made famous by Sinatra or someone of that era. And he was pretty good.

Then it was my turn.

The song I had chosen was “December ’63,” by The Four Seasons. If you’re not familiar with the title, it’s the song that begins with “Oh, what a night/Late December back in ’63.” I sang it in its original key (the KJ can adjust the key with the touch of a button or the turn of a knob), which, the guys later told me, they thought was way higher than they ever imagined I could sing. They told me they all looked at each other and thought, “Oh god, this is gonna suck.”

Aside from getting lost in the words on one of the verses, I didn’t suck, and I nailed all the high notes, even the ones that, halfway through the song I realized I had forgotten went so high! The guys were all high-fives and back slaps when I got back to the table, and I felt an exhilaration I had not felt in years! I don’t know if it was singing a popular song, feeling that I had done it well, or the reactions of my coworkers, but it felt really good.

In the ensuing months after that I had discovered that a bowling alley near our office does karaoke night on Fridays and Saturdays, and I tried to get some of the guys interested in hanging out sometime and doing that. The problem is that work lets out around 5:30, and karaoke at the bowling alley doesn’t start until 9:00 or later. So it never happened.

Then back in December, the evening I signed up for a bazillion and a half groups on Meetup.com, I also signed up for the Chicago Karaoke Underground Party meetup. It’s unique in that the hostess holds the party in her home, which is a huge loft apartment from which she also operates her business. It’s a commercial building, so after 5:00 most evenings, she’s the only person in the building, so she can make as much noise as she wants to without bothering anybody. She structures her parties with a limit of 15-20 singers so that no one who wants to sing gets left out, and she makes it a point that her place is not a bar (though there is plenty of booze on hand!); people are here to sing, to be heard and to listen, and have a good time. It is also a very supportive environment; no one who sings ever faces jeers or criticism, no matter how “off” he or she may have been.

I’ve been to two parties there, now (she hold one per month), and both times I have been dealing with a cold — the first time coming down with one, the second time coming off of one — so my voice wasn’t what it could be. In other words, I sucked. But I had a good time.

In the few karaoke events I’ve done, I have noticed that people fall into some interesting categories, and those of a type all seem to be very similar. I’ve named them somewhat arbitrarily:

The Warbler is someone who doesn’t quite exactly have a handle on her voice. He is usually off key — often not even close — and never goes above the volume of a raised voice. She stands stock-still at the microphone and stares intently at the lyrics on the video screen. The Warbler often chooses a song that would be difficult for even a veteran karaoker to do, but he does it because he loves the song, and he wants to be up there singing it.

The Stickler strives to perform the song exactly the way it is performed on the original album or in a particular performance from a live recording. He tries to hold every note, stroke every vocal nuance and pronounce every word just as the original or popular artist did it in the original recording. She usually stares at the screen, but occasionally knows the song well enough to stare over the heads of the audience. I do believe I fall into this category.

The Entertainer is a frustrated performer who had — or maybe still has — dreams of being onstage and was diverted by life happening to him, she took a crack at it at some point in the past and failed, or he just believes he has the charisma to pull it off. She does her own stylized rendition of the song, often vamping and taking other liberties with the lyrics or the melody, playing air guitar or air piano (or horn, or whatever) during instrumental breaks, and can often go off-screen and perform the song confidently from memory, referring to the screen only occasionally to make sure she’s on track.

The Impersonator attempts to embody the performer who made the song famous, with vocalizations and body movement. He is usually totally off-screen, the accuracy of the lyrics secondary to the summoning of the original’s persona to the stage.

The Ringer sings regularly, currently or formerly professionally or in a church choir or community theatre. She is very comfortable up in front of a crowd of people and has a great command of her voice. He often has a certain repertoire of songs that he has practiced often and does very well. The Ringer is often quite entertaining, but makes the rest of us feel very self-conscious at the mic!

The Addict can fit into any of the aforementioned categories and does karaoke as his only form of social entertainment. She seeks out bars and other establishments that feature karaoke, and may frequent two to three or more in a week to satisfy the craving for expression and attention. I fear I may soon fit this category as well….