A Coupla Bums and a Broad

The set has gained the beginnings of a home run basket,
a fixture at Wrigley Field, and the actors plod along toward
readiness. Here are three of the actors working out the final
scene of the play. These are not their costumes in the show.



°

Sprung!

°

Taking Shape

The Bleacher Bums set, which is a set of bleachers, is underway and, most importantly, under us.


Kitty and I mug for the camera on publicity photo night in what may or may not be our costumes. I play Herb "Zig" Zigowski, and Kitty plays his wife, Rose Zigowski. And no, this is not a "Zig" face.



°

One of Those days

I went through the whole day without taking one photo...
until I got home and I took...one photo.



°

Idle Time?

Midnight snack (a double-decker PB&J, invented (maybe)
by my brother Dan) while watching the first installment
of the Die Hard "marathon*."


"And, lo! Beneath the layers and stacks of papers he beheld
a desk! A mighty and sturdy desk!"


This may be part of the ad I put out for
a roommate: "Has internal plumbing!"


Now doesn't this look like the kind of place where you'd like
to just chill? Because it sure didn't yesterday!


*Not exactly a marathon since I didn't get to watch all three in one sitting.



°

"And She's Buying A Stairway To..."

A shot of "Jacob's Ladder" phenomena, otherwise known
as crepuscular rays, on the way to breakfast on the way
to work this morning.



Where breakfast wuz.



°

CAPTION CONTEST!

See if you can bring any meaning to a meaningless photo. Mine is below.



It was a long fall from the 'striped tomato'....



°

iFiddling

Playing with my iPhone's camera feature.



°

copspoc

I had a pick-up of a personal customer (he calls me directly when he needs a ride), which gave me about a half-hour to kill convenient to the breakfast hour, so I went in to a McDonald's close to where the guy lives.

On the way to the bathroom first, I walked past these two guys and first noticed that one on the right in the photo is left-handed — indicated by the placement of his holster on his left hip — and the other is right-handed.

After I sat down and was presented with this picture I noticed that these two gave nearly identical images of each other in reverse. I snapped this with my iPhone from across the room but couldn't get a better or more centered angle without attracting attention to myself by two guys armed with semi-automatic pistols and hand-cuffs.

And yes, I did have the hash browns.



°

Dey Got A Lotta Balls

Notes From The Speeling & Gramma Department


I dunno... Maybe the owner is from New Yoak?





°

Good Spirits

Scotch is a luxury I can't afford that much any more. While I was employed and in a two-income marriage, I cultivated a few of the finer tastes in life. But that seems to be a theme with me: find the good life, develop tastes, blow it, lose everything, wind up out in the cold looking at that life through a smudged, foggy window.

Wow, I didn't intend to write such a bitter post! At least this Scotch was relatively inexpensive. Thanks to my schedule, I manage about a slowly-sipped shot per week, so I can enjoy it for a long while.

I love shooting in natural light. This was a fairly low-light shooting situation, and it took me several attempts to get a clear shot without motion blur. It's a good thing digital photography came along, or else I couldn't afford to buy and send off film for processing.

DAMN! There I go again!

Cheers! Or whatever.



°

Thai Score

A gray, cloudy day today...with impossible clouds!


I know the title of today's post makes it sound as though I made it with an Asian woman, but no. However, give me a few minutes to let that thought run through my head....

Okay. I was asked recently to participate in a workshop session to help a playwright tweak and hone a play he's trying to finish. It's a very collaborative effort in the second draft through final draft process; we as actors get to give him feedback into what we read aloud onstage (no audience except the playwright), and he takes that and changes what he agrees needs changing. It's fun.

But never mind...that's not important. What's important is that the neighborhood in Chicago where we did the workshop is near to where I lived during my marriage, and, after assuring myself that I was at the right place, I looked across the street from where I had parked the taxi and was delighted to see Thai Thai, a restaurant that the ex and I frequented somewhat infrequently. My default Thai dish is the Pad Woon Sen. And it was delicious! Only, I realized several hours after I finished eating it that the perfect opportunity to photograph the food had passed several hours before...and I had my camera with me!



Oh, well.



°

Farewell, My Friend

Lucy Volpe
September 18, 1964
March 7, 2011



°

Insert Clever Title Here

Most of my work is sent to me through this fancy dealie above. It clicks and beeps, and tells me there's a job being offered to me. When I accept, this screen pops up, with the address where to pick up, number in the party, the destination, sometimes the pickup time and usually the person's name. In this case the "ORD" means O'Hare airport means good $$!



Until about a year ago, the building above was a Blockbuster Video store. Maybe it was two years ago.... Anyway, suddenly a couple weeks ago it looked like it was being torn down, but, alas, they were actually revamping the entire building, apparently switching the main entrance from the north side of the building to the west side, and adding some kind of signage facade. I eagerly await learning what it will be....



Sometimes I just want to cry.



°

Ready For Anything

Yes, it's St. Patrick's Day, and I am 1/8 Irish, but the sad truth is that I have no time for a social life, and so there was no green beer, Guinness Stout drink-races and no corned beef and cabbage.


Chicago is a four seasons city. Unfortunately, sometimes we witness all four seasons in one day. So, at this time of year, one must be ready for just about anything!



°

Horizons

°

My Name Is Tony, and I Am Not An Alcoholic

I "won" this gift basket at the very last holiday party that was held by my employer while I was still an employee there. That was a few days before Christmas 2008. I lurve Bailey's...and one of them is coffee flavored!! The bottles remain unopened, though I think I hit the chocolates a few times.

Over all, my life pretty much sucks: I'm divorced, childless, basically unemployed and barely making ends meet, and if things continue as they are, I will grow old and die alone. Plenty of excuses to hit the bottle. In the nearly two years since I lost my job, I've gone through a bottle and a half of scotch, a bottle of bourbon, a bottle of rye whiskey, and maybe two or three bottles of red wine. The only other drinking I've done has been at the karaoke parties where, admittedly, I have gotten pretty shitfaced at most of the monthly gatherings. Once. A month. That's not even enough to cause a blip on my medical questionnaire or a lecture from my doctor. Not exactly blotting out my sorrows.



°

The Daily Ouch

°

CLEEEEAAANNN!

Sing Song Sang Thang...and Dancing!

The date of the party was March 12, but most of it happened
after midnight. Posted to the 12th anyway.



°

Oops!

°

BFF

I don't necessarily care to use the current lingo; it sounds so cliché. But Lu has been my best friend since we were in the fourth grade, which might as well be forever. We don't get to hang out or talk much any more, as we live a good 70 miles apart and he and his wife are raising a teenager these days, but circumstances made today a good day to get together and just chill and chat. Whenever we get such a chance, we immediately find the pattern and rhythm that our conversations took on when we were just kids lazing on summer afternoons, and the conversation effortlessly flows forth.



°

Foot Joy

I know it makes me sound like an old man who spends two hours every morning reading the newspaper and drinking coffee at the local McDonald's, but these shoe insert are da bomb!


°

Flat Tuesday

The first breakfast I've cooked at home in...months! I made
an egg sandwich, so both yolks were broken
and hard-fried deliberately.


Thanks to my thick schedule of late,
I have had no time to do anything
beyond shower, shave and eat...and post
to Phlog. My pendulum clock stopped
months ago, and happened to do so in the
classic "happy face" time at which adver-
tisers used to make sure to display their
clocks in catalogs and newspapers.



°

Stacked Monday

I'm on vacation, so to speak. I decided a while ago that, as long as I'm driving a taxi and making my own schedule, I will have four weeks of vacation each year, taking one week off each quarter. I decided that this week, after the grueling overlap of two plays, would be the week I take this quarter. The owner of the taxi that I drive told me to turn the car in so he could make money off another driver with it, which meant driving it to the office, walking to the CTA Blue Line Rosemont station, taking the Blue Line to the Jefferson Park station which sits adjacent to the Metra regional train line's Jefferson Park station, and then that train to the northwest suburbs. I did stop, however, at Mac's, one stop down from the Rosemont station, at Cumberland, for breakfast!


At the Jefferson Park Metra station: I miss the days when
graffiti meant the thrill of defacing a wall with the "F" word
and getting away with it. Now it can get you killed.



°

Quiet, Fun Sunday

Last night's party went on until around 5:00am, and I had to crash on the hosts' couch lest I drive myself to jail. I didn't get home until 9:00am, at which point I readied myself to go see my grand-niece's performance in her high school production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. As high school plays go, this one was done pretty well. The director, with whom I spoke afterward, pushes professionalism on the kids, so that any gaffes or problems were dealt with quietly and deftly, in order that no one in the audience — save the parents who saw the show for the fourth time when I saw it once — knew anything had gone wrong.

I didn't take my camera in to the auditorium, figuring that it would be rude to snap photos during the production (it was prohibited when I was in high school productions), but there were parents snapping away. Oh, well.



°

That's a Wrap!

par-tuh-HHHHAY!

Emma's Child saw its final performance tonight. There was no official cast party for the show, and I wouldn't tarnish the dignity of the production by calling this debauchery a cast party. As it goes, most of the cast and crew were here at the home of one of the cast members.


At a party where alcohol is consumed, this is what happens
when you let someone "see" your camera.


They wouldn't let me sit between them, but that's okay. I
only would've gotten myself into trouble there.


Startled by the unexpected self-portrait.


Oh, if only I were 25 again...and in one case, a woman. *SIGH*


How many chins is one guy allowed to have?

For the record, I don't recall who took most of these photos, and it's quite clear I didn't take many of them!



°

Fresh Heir?

You may have seen this fast food chain in your area, or perhaps in your travels. Since its arrival in Chicago some ten to fifteen years ago, I've wondered often about this company. I mean, look at its name. Now look closely at my name. I dunno. The lack of a capital letter in the name, plus the apparent obfuscation of something by the flag at the start of the name intrigue me. Maybe I could work myself into position as an heir to a fortune...or at least a lot of pizza!





°

Faces

In previous posts I had tracked the progress of our Emma's
Child set, but I had never taken or posted a shot of it once it
was finished. Now I have. So quit your belly-achin'.


The not-so-secret secret reason I do theatre: gorgeous
theatre babes! (l. Roula; r. Danijella)



°