The Eagle Scouts
Last Friday afternoon started when I ran into Josh from Coldstone just walking down the street. He became manager at North Avenue after Stephan left (which was after I left), and has since stopped working to pursue/finish school (notice how that seems to be a trend. What a terrible work environment it must have been to turn at least three people away from work COMPLETELY). He invited me over to his apartment whenever... Stephan (Josh's roommate and former manager of the North Avenue Coldstone) is back from his hiatus to Florida for his record deal. He didn't like the way they produced his song, so he's back in Chicago producing it himself. I guess that's both a good and a bad thing... I'm pretty surprised and happy that Stephan had the balls to say "I don't like what you're doing, I'm outta here," but I wish it just would have worked out for him without any hassles.

I ran into Josh because I was on my way to Second City. They were auditioning for the Conservatory again, and Keith was giving it another shot. I think it's idiotic for the Second City to expect people to get better at improv after taking MONTHS off... I mean, Keith and I last auditioned in November before Thanksgiving... and now here we are in February and his audition is going to be better? It was bad enough that we had to wait in between our level E class and the first audition. What can you do, I guess? So he auditioned and said it was the same exact format that we had the last time we auditioned (which is starting to make more sense to me. If you have the same audition over and over again, I'm sure you get pretty good at figuring out who's good and who's not within the first five or six minutes... you know what to look for). After talking for a bit with Keith about the audition and Sara about... um... chocolate?, and ALSO trying to avoid one of our former classmates, Alan, from seeing us... we left and headed up North. Keith was supposed to pick up some wine for his boss from a former coworker who now owns/operates a wine store. Since we were headed straight North, we hoped on the Brown line and then connected with the Red. There's something funny about the red line, but first, a little about it: it's both a Subway and an El, it's the only train that goes straight north and south and-pretty much-traverses the entire city, and it runs 24 hours a day. And, because it is such a long ride from its furthest point South to its furthest point North (and because it runs 24 hours), you get some real interesting characters who ride the Red line to: catch up on sleep; get out of the cold; beg for money; use it like a hotel; and so on. So, when we boarded the red line, I was introduced to something brand new on the red line: urine. It smelled like someone had, well, just recently urinated on that particular car. I looked at the front of the car and there was an older white dude with a full, scraggly beard, and untamed, bushy hair... tattered green sweatpants, a dirty plaid overcoat... sitting by himself. That was him... a homeless man just urinated on the train. I felt bad for him... but then I realized that I was having trouble breathing because of how strong it smelled... so I stopped feeling bad for him and worried about not vomiting (not really). Then I noticed how Sara was reacting... aww... poor Sara... she was having such a hard time from becoming sick (yes, actually). We got out at least one stop too early because we couldn't take it anymore. But, before we left, a blind black man came through the car... with a cup (yep, a cup) and a cane. He wasn't even really asking for money... he was mumbling something about how hard it is to be blind and how scary it would be if you were blind and how he wanted God to bless us all... again, not really talking to anyone. But the homeless man at the front stopped him. "You blind?" he asked. "Yessir, I am blind" the blind man replied. And I tried to pay attention as best I could without it looking like I was trying to pay attention. They talked for a bit... and the blind man eventually opened the door and walked into the next car. As they were talking to each other I kept thinking, 'a blind man and a homeless urinating man talking, connecting on an El train--this is drama... this weird event is probably the most interesting/weirdest thing that'll happen to me in months.' And I felt bad for thinking that... but it's true. From what I hear, part of being an actor is being true to real life drama... even if it seems outrageous.
When we got off the train, we had to walk quite a ways to get to the wine store. The name of the store is In Fine Spirits, and it's a beautiful store. The put all these shelving units in themselves, and the floor is wood... and it was just a very beautiful store. The owner, Shane, was an old coworker (which I mentioned) and friend of Keith. It was cool to see Keith interacting with an old friend of his. You forget, sometimes, when you become friends with someone, that they had friends before you. Or maybe that's just shallow, ego-centric me. And what good would a trip to a wine store be without some wine tasting?! Shane opened a bottle just for us to try. It was an Australian red... I think it was a Shiraz, but I'm also an idiot, so I don't know. It was actually pretty good, I was surprised. I don't really like wine. Matter of fact, I think there's something about wine drinking that has always struck me as one of the most pompous activities that one could do on the entire planet. But Shane, and his wife Jill, changed my mind. They try to keep the wine as less of an event, and more as something that they enjoy that they hope others will, too. Over half (I think it's 60%) of their inventory is less than $20... and Shane said that's because they want people to get a bottle of wine every weekend, and just be able to relax over the weekend with a nice bottle of wine. It was a really good experience. And I even felt comfortable enough to start asking questions (my curious nature got the best of me). I asked about what one looks for when wine tasting... I knew about aeration, but I wondered what the differences were. He then talked about a wine's viscosity... and said that's kind of a gross analogy because most people think "oil" when they hear viscosity... so I said "Oh, you mean it's viscousness?" To which he chuckled and thought that sounded better (not really). And then I said "Shane, I want to thank you. I've been trying to drop viscousness into casual conversation for months." And that even got his wife, all the way across the store, to laugh out loud. (BTW, I didn't know viscousness was an actual word when I said it... to me, that's the joy of the English language) But he talked about a full-bodied wine and what that meant... and then he said that wines have certain fruity or herbal tastes to them... and he talked about the dry-mouth feeling that you get with a lot of red wines... which is why he liked this particular red wine. I agree that I didn't get the dry-mouth feeling... but, as he was talking, I noticed it was because my tongue felt coated... the wine kind of tasted a little waxy going down. It was an interesting experience. And I'd really like to be able to taste some wine with someone who knows what he's doing, like Shane. But we had to leave pretty quickly after we got there because I needed to be back to The Second City for Mankind and Other Oxymorons.

Friday night was closing night of my writing five show. Before the run of the show started, I told the other writers that we needed to buy the actors and MT (the director) gifts. That it was a common courtesy. That we shouldn't wait until the last minute. So guess what we did? Yep. *shakes head* I don't even know why I try sometimes. We had decided to get them all a bottle of wine (one is mentioned in the show), a lottery ticket (also mentioned in the show), and a nice thank you card that we'd all sign. I had already purchased the cards on Wednesday (one of the errands to keep my mind off my audition). I just needed all the writers there early to sign the cards. Turns out, we got the wine and lottery tickets no problem... but getting the writers to sit down long enough to sign those damn cards was like pulling teeth. I ended up signing most of mine DURING the actual show. I then watched the show (which was good... but they were all trying TOO hard: adding little "funny" things and going overboard trying to pander to the audience)... and went backstage to get the other writers to sign stuff too. We ended up forcing the actors to wait in the teacher's lounge while 'we' (read: everyone but me) finished signing the cards. Then we headed to the lounge and there was MT and the rest of the actors... singing "pomp and circumstance." It's weird, I hadn't even thought about the fact that I was graduating from the writing program. So we got little certificates, and gave the actors and MT their gifts... it was just like Canadian Boxing Day!

After the lengthy gift exchange, we headed to the North Park Tap for some drinking bondage... that didn't come out right. You know what I mean. It was great because we had ALL the writers and all the actors come out for the first time ever... so we all got a chance to hang out with everyone. The bar was super-crowded, and as I made my way over to Sean to see what he was doing, he went to get another drink. Typical of me at "parties"... "What's this person doing? Oh, they're leaving... okay. I'll just stand here awkwardly." When he came back to get back into his seat, it was so crowded that he really had to squeeze past me... and he tripped on something. Then he said: "God damnit Steeno! Lose some fucking weight!" I don't know what it was about the way he said it, or the context in which it was said (at a busy public place), but his words stabbed me deep. They didn't cut me, it was a full-out stab. I thought maybe he was upset because his ex-girlfriend, Jill (also in the cast), was there with her new boyfriend, Brian; and I thought maybe he was taking it out on me. So I asked him a couple times if he wanted to "talk about it". And only after about the third time of me asking, did he say he was just "kidding". Let me tell you... I've seen this boy act on stage before, and he was not kidding. That is not how well he acts (that was harsh, I know, but there are some people who, when they're on stage... they project "I'm on stage! Look at me!"; and then there are some people [like myself] when they're on stage could be anywhere doing anything. Sean is in group A). What he said was real, and there was real anger underneath it... and it hurt so damn much. After about a minute of standing there and feeling fat, awkward, and hurt, I moved away from Sean and started talking to Jill and the new boyfriend, Brian. While we were talking, a Justin Timberlake song came on at the bar... and I couldn't help myself from singing along. Turns out, Brian knew the words too. I then said "I've always secretly wanted to start a boy band" and it was like I had told Brian it was going to be Christmas every day for the rest of his life! We started talking about it and we decided to call ourselves the Eagle Scouts... and he would be Billy, the 'sensitive' dancer... and I forget my name, but I was the strong, but fun guy. And one of his friends showed up, Pat, and he was going to be in the group too... and we just had an awesome time singing along and dancing (yes, I was dancing) as, for some reason, they played about four Justin Timberlake songs in a row.
But then Brian, Jill, and Pat had to leave to meet some other people at a different bar. There were very few of us left at this point... but Jim, another writer, wanted me to come get nachos with he and some of his friends. I had forgotten how hungry I was, and nachos sounded really good... so we hopped in a cab and went nacho eating! We went to this bar that they all knew (and I had never been there) and got these greasy, delicious nachos. It was fun to hang out and just shoot the poop for a while. Jim's a really funny guy, so that's always cool--to not have to be the "entertainment" and to be able to just sit back and interject whenever I feel it appropriate. But, on our way back to our respective apartments (Jim lives near me), they wanted to go into another bar! I believe the kids call this bar hopping. And, while I can understand now that different bars have different atmospheres... I was completely content with the evening, and wasn't looking to get more beer or more food or more smoke-smelling... I just wanted to go home. But, like most things, if you are assertive enough, I'll crumble and do whatever you want. I just don't care enough to make a fuss about it. So I stood in this bar, being one of a hand-full of the only white people there... and just waited for them to be "finished" with whatever it was they were doing. I didn't feel uncomfortable so much being the minority race... I felt uncomfortable because this was the third bar I had been to and I wanted to go home, and I didn't know when it was going to stop. Turns out, the third bar's the charm... and we finally parted ways. I think I would have told them "no" if they had wanted to go to another one... but I'm not sure. I hope I have the balls to tell them no. I guess we'll never know if I have testicles. Wait...