April 2 - Old and Resting

Good Friday. The roads were mostly quiet.

I made a couple of pick ups and then drove to a suburban hospital. My mom was undergoing a procedure that would render her unable to drive. We hung out in her patient's room and she caught me up on The Young & The Restless. There was a masquerade party going on in Genoa City, man. Victor and Nicky were wearing masks, along with a group of hooligans who poisoned the punch. This same group has also been known to crash weddings, filling wrapped presents with dead rats and live, hissing cobras!

Hey, give 'em a break. They're just young and restless.

Afterward, Mom accompanied me to a bindery where I picked up 6 boxes of someone's ruined afternoon. When I dropped her off, she gave me an Easter basket filled with chocolate and Pez. In two weeks I'll be 35 years old.

They're tearing up North and South Wacker for the next two years, eliminating the on and off ramps at Monroe and Adams. Today I made my last venture up a ramp I've driven and biked on for a decade. The city will always change.

I stayed in tonight so I could catch up on this damn blog.

And opened a window for the first time since October.

Verdict: Win

April 1 - Fools, Schools & Tools, Mules, Rools

Fools

This morning I heard a promo for David Letterman's new NPR show. I tuned in only to discover that today is April Gullible Idiot's Day.

Schools & Tools

At the American College of Healthcare Executives, the guy in the mailroom was condescending and unpleasant to me. While waiting for the freight elevator I noticed that the organization's acronym is ACHE.

Mules

Among other things, I delivered three boxes handbills to The Congo Square Theatre and 6 cases of wine and vodka to an ice rink in Bensenville. The weather today was unreal, setting a new record at 84 degrees. I got sunburnt on my left arm and the top of my left knee.

Oh yeah, I'm going to have a weird tan for the next six months.

Rools

Then over some beers (Tom, Nicole, myself) and gin (Thea) The Nurse Novels went over vocal arrangements and overdub ideas for our new recordings. It was nice to hear vocals on these instrumental rough mixes that have dominated the van for the last month. We're going to release the records as a series of online singles, selling DIY CD-R's at shows until someone wants to put it out and/or people want to buy actual records again.

The bike ride home was lovely and windy in the direction I needed to go.

Verdict: Win

March 31 - Goodbye, Corporate Blues

We didn't sleep very well. The night before a big goodbye usually includes a groggy dawn of restless last gropes. At 5am we paid a somnambulent farewell as couples do. I handed her overpacked suitcase to the cab driver and watched her long witch's fingers wave bye. The counting begins now.

Today I played a blues drummer in a music video for Second City. A giant corporation hired them to make a video that would appeal to executives, coaxing them to come to the big conference. So they recorded a blues song with goofy corporate lyrics and hired about 15 improvisers to play various office roles. Most of them were friends of mine, or people I knew of through the big, socially awkward family of improv.

At 8am I arrived at a deserted office space by Navy Pier. Often when improvisers get together they often like to riff and do bits. It can be fun, there's often a lot of laughter. Sometimes I participate, but in recent years I've preferred to keep quiet and to myself. There's only so many silly non-conversations one can have. Also, at 8am a small break room filled with big, loud energy can be trying.

So I explored the rest of the office where time had stopped. It was a shithole. And seemed very male. I discovered boxes of old wall plaques, an instruction manual for Windows 95, and a key marked VEGAS. The kitchen had its plumbing ripped from the walls. Every cubicle had been electronically raped, with a showerhead of wires poking limp from the wall.

A cubicle tucked away in a corner became my dressing room. I hung my suits on one of the dead showerheads and took a nap in an executive chair with a broken arm.

The extras and band enjoyed a warm and decent catered meal while the leads worked on the set, blocking for this long one-shot. A lot of time was spent wandering around munching on errant chips, donuts, and jerky, waiting for something to do.

In the afternoon it was time for the extras and the band to hit the set. My drums sat atop a large corporate meeting table. Joining me on the table were Eileen on Fender bass and Anthony on keyboard. The premise was that news of the big conference turns the dull office into a blues club. Again, all in one long take. Since the band comes in at the very end of the video, we mostly sat in the separated meeting room, listening to the takes and doing half-baked bits in between. See: British accents.

Out in the office, the improvisers were riffing pretty hard. It's fun to play make believe about the corporate world when it's not what you actually have to do. Everyone was pretending to be stressed out, yelling about faxes and reports and deadlines. I even got in on it a little when I pretended an old calculator was an old cellphone. I've still got it!!!

We did about twelve takes and wrapped by 5pm. Oh, yeah and I got paid about three times what I make at my delivery job.

It was a beautiful day out. I ate an Italian beef (sweet and dipped) on a gusty strip of River North and headed to Bitter Tears practice. Fatigue made me a bit sloppy and a bit cranky about being sloppy. We practiced four songs we plan to record next week in Indiana for a European tour EP.

Despite having a lucrative day on a video shoot and a productive band practice, I can't really call a day with a long goodbye to Lauren a win.

Verdict: Loss

March 30 - Last Night With Lauren

Tomorrow Lauren leaves for a six week gig with The Second City in Arizona. The show is called Second City Does Arizona or Close But No Saguaro. It will run in Tucson and Phoenix until May 16. However, on May 9 I leave for a four week European tour with The Bitter Tears. With the exception of a 29 hour visit in April, I won't see her until early June.

This will be another fun good challenge for us, but mostly not fun and not that good. We'll be fine, it's just the draggy part of being a couple that pursues separate creative whims.

We brought a six pack to our local Ethiopian restaurant and sat side by side, looking out the window instead of at the weird TV. We filled up on lentil sambusas, spicy squash, gomen, and beefs and lambs and peppers.

Then it was back home to relax with some silly television singing contests and that stuff that people do.

Verdict: Win

March 29 - Inevitable Shit

Everything about today was stupid and unnecessary.

It began in the lobby of a high rise.

I waited for the doorwoman to finish her conversation with a maintenance woman.

"Good morning," I said.

The doorwoman seemed annoyed with me.

I explained that I was picking up three small items from one of the tenants, and gave her the name.

"Do you have an apartment number?"

I didn't.

"I need an apartment number."

I gave her the name of the tenant and the floor she lived on.

"Do you have the tenant's name?"

I told her the tenant's name, and pointed out that it was the third time I had said her name.

The doorwoman now had the daunting task of looking up a name in the directory on her desk.

She contacted the contact and rushed through a flurry of instructions for me, pointing behind me.

When I walked away from her, she raised her voice.

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

I was extremely fatigued, and hungover. Again.

The glorious show last night in Milwaukee was now just a figment of my imagination in the reality of the service industry.

My fuse was about a millimeter.

"WHERE DO YOU WANT ME TO GO? YOU POINTED OVER HERE."

She told me she had pointed at the sign in sheet, which I needed to sign, and then indicated another direction for the elevator.

Livid, I signed the sheet like an asshole teenager, making sure to scribble hard and take up 3 lines, writing well off of the margin and onto the desk. I hate when I do shit like this, but I suppose it's better than hurling a potted tree at the worthless doorwoman's shitty face, which is what I felt like doing.

When I got to the 36th floor, the tenant was passive aggressively kind to me. She quickly handed me two long photography C-stands, about four feet long, and a shoulder case. These were not "small" items as indicated on the order. She commanded me to "have a nice day" with a false lilt in her voice.

The rest of the day followed in a similar way.

The woman at Calumet Photo spoke to me curtly and without politeness when I didn't know the exact information about the C-stands.

At the post office in Westchester, the woman behind the counter beckoned me by calling me "miss." She asked how I was.

"I'm fine, how are you?"

She responded by staring at me with cold, suspicious eyes. For the rest of the transaction she decided to be impatient with me.

I decided to be annoyed when the people at The Laborers Pension referred to me twice as a "new driver." I've been doing this fucking garbage for ten years.

And that's when it hit me.

I've been doing this shit for ten years. Getting into the same petty situations over and over again.

And while there may be some entertainment value in my inability to play the game of fitting into society, there needs to be some sort of character development in me.

Otherwise, this will become Curb Your Enthusiasm.

People may like it, but after a while you know what's going to happen in the first paragraph.

So I have to find my arc.

I'm trying, but I give up too easily.

When I say "good morning" or "how are you?" in an attempt to initiate good relations at the top, I can't turn on people immediately if they don't respond accordingly.

In other words, I have to lower my expectations of the human race.

So I went to a junkyard.

Then I had to teach.

My mind wasn't working very well.

It stuttered.

One of the students joked that next week I'm going to try teaching sober.

I didn't have a comeback.

That sucks.

Verdict: Loss

March 28 - Rush To Milwaukee

The alarm sounded rather early for a Sunday. But it was right.

Hung over, I loaded the van with drum gear in three trips and headed to Second City for an 11am put-in rehearsal for Rush. The show has been extended on Sundays through Mother's Day. Which is good!

Rush went well. Lauren met me afterward and accompanied Alan, Mike and I for a Bitter Tears show in Wisconsin. We stopped in at Mars Cheese Castle, where Lauren had a terrible side dish that pickled her face. The Circle A in Milwaukee is my new favorite venue. Read all about the rare Bitter Tears trio performance on The Mush Behind Your Tongue and Cheek.

We got home late enough to inevitably ruin tomorrow.

Verdict: Win

March 27 - Sea Day Swear Jar

When Lauren and I worked on the cruise ship, there were days the ship would be at sea all day. These days were cleverly called "sea days." Generally we would perform on sea days, but two times in four months we had a whole sea day all to ourselves. On these occasions we would stay in the cabin, watch movie after movie, order (free) room service, and remain in our pajamas.

Today we had our first sea day in many months.

We made breakfast, hung out, watched televised entertainments, and did laundry.

It was the greatest group of activities we could have done on a cold Saturday.

In the evening Lauren made her world premiere on a bicycle in the city of Chicago. She was a bit nervous. My delicate birdie had been used to the smooth, bike friendly streets of progressive Amsterdam, not the hostile, pot-holed piss pits of miserable Chicago. But we managed to make it to The Annoyance without incident.

It was opening night for Swear Jar, the first sketch comedy show directed by Mick Napier at The Annoyance. I loved it. It's dark and wrong and stupid and Vaudvillian hack and funny and wicked.

Afterward, we drank until we didn't know what time it was. By the time we figured it out it was too late. So my birdie and I rode home on the desolate side streets to the chirping of dawn's birds.

Verdict: Win