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!

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.



°

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….