Vienna Againa

Scraping ice off the windshield of my rental car, driving in torrential rains, cold, snow flurries all in less than 24 hours. Ah, Chicago weather! Drove out to Lake County to see Oakner and few old friends from St. George days. Oakner was there and Head, and Steve.  Now we're pasty old men, but from age 14 to 16 we ran around Chicago's Roger's Park engaging in various fun projects. Head could imitate his father's gruff Hungarian accent and was able to order booze from the liquor store at will. The delivery man was in on the score, and accepted very large tips for keeping teenagers awash in quart bottles of Old Style and half-pints. (As a freshman, Head told me about the set-up. I didn't believe him. It seemed too impossibly good. But sometimes there is a Santa Claus. In fact, on Thursdays, Head would roam the halls of St. George taking drink orders for the weekend.)

Head reminded me of the time Oakner and I arrived at his house to find bullet holes in the front porch. The police had been there and shot Head's dog after she'd gotten out of the yard and snarled at a passing woman. (These particular Chicago cops were neither subtle nor especially keen marksmen.) Head was broken up. Oakner and I were too, since he couldn't go drinking.

Our late friend Rocco was mentioned often. Rocco's basement was the first we ever saw with surround-sound stereo speakers, rigged up from scratch. (Rocco went on to work as an electrician.) Rocco had a facility for improvisational mayhem and probably would've excelled as a political dirty trickster or internet hacker. One dawn after we had spent the night washing down Dexedrine with Bud tall boys, we were walking along Clark Street when Rocco opened the base of a stop light, hit something inside and left the light stuck on red. I didn't even know you could open stop lights.

We did many dumb, violent, laughable things together. And it doesn't seem that long ago, yet it was. Two generations. In 1969, St. George closed at the end of our sophomore year. We were no longer classmates, scattering to different high schools. I lived in suburban Skokie and ended up at Notre Dame in Niles, even further away from Roger's Park. Into the service and back to town, then out to California; there would always be time to hook up again. Luckily, Oakner realized years were zipping past faster than telephone poles seen from a speeding car. Thanks to the web, we're back in touch, Facebook classmates with no more tests or curfews. We can stay out as late as we want . . . we just don't anymore. 1969: Rocco in the chair. Oakner in center frame and myself to the right.
2009: Head, Steve, Oakner and myself.
(Photos: Oakner)

Fun Phrases in Portuguese

Onde posso eu comprar os dentes de madeira?
Where may I buy wooden teeth?

Meu tio comeu um carneiro.
My uncle has eaten a sheep.

Let' visita de s uma prostituta
Let's visit a prostitute.

Para o divertimento, nós amarramos um anão a um avião pequeno.
For fun, we tie a dwarf to a small aircraft.

Meu gado está explodindo
My cattle are exploding.

Spain cheira engraçado.
Spain smells funny.

via: takineko

Thoughts on American Facism

With a suitcase full of wool sweaters and socks, I got off the plane in Chicago to 50 degree temperatures. Earlier today, it had rained and been cold, but I arrived to a balmy clime.

Went to Mass in the evening where I got my Ash Wednesday ashes in Chicago for the first time in decades. How many decades, I can't say as I had jettisoned religion - at least any active participation in religion - long before I left. 

An odd thought occurred to me while traveling: if fascism reigns in America, the entire country will be like the airport. You can do pretty much whatever you want as long as you stand in the right lines, have the correct documents, and don't make jokes about the system. There will be signs to the tenth power telling you what is prohibited and the police will be everywhere in pairs. I hope I'm wrong. But you really have no rights in an airport. Or cheap bottled water. Or leg room. Or food onboard. Or decent movies. Going to the airport and taking a plane used to be cool. Now it's a metaphor for laid back American fascism. 

Enough. Many people to see tomorrow. 

In Wind-Swept Chicago

Last time in Chicago, the weather was unseasonably warm. According to Tim, my high school chum, this time it'll be hellishly cold. Fortunately, my Christmas trip to the chilly northwest has prepared me for the weather, though I recall Windy City winters being the worst. In any case, I'll be traveling for the third time in three months. (Phoenix Marathon was the other.) Mirth awaits, along with soggy bites by Maz and fun with family and friends, Chicago-style pizza and Italian beef sandwiches.

(Note to Narwhal: If you're still stopping by the blog, I'll be wearing the down-lined jacket from Sears you got me, ohhhhh, say, 30 years ago. Still the best.)

Paul Rugg Thanks Hollywood for Memories

Froynlaven ponders the divide between a typical Hollywood film and entertainment.

Oscar Report

Didn't watch last night. The only two movies I liked - or saw - were Dark Knight and Gran Torino. Heath Ledger won for playing the Joker, but since he died, he wouldn't be accepting the award. If he had died and accepted the award anyway, that would've been something worth watching.

Eugene 2, 3, 4

More Animoto fun.

L.A. Connection Days

Spoke with an old chum, Larry, last night. Back in the early 80s, we worked together at the L.A. Connection Theater. Improvisational comedy was the venue. Based on audience suggestions, actors would preform a scene that was hopefully either funny or brief. Scenes ended when the light guy blacked out the house, again, hopefully, on a laugh line. Rehearsals were on Tuesday nights out in Sherman Oaks. As the cast was hard-drinking even by acting standards, our breaks included a stop down the block at Tony's Liquors for beef jerky, Marlboro cigarettes, quart bottles of Budweiser and Auto Club Cocktails - mixed drinks in a small can. (The second half of rehearsal tended to be more raucous than the first, degenerating into bawdy suggestions and cat-calls that prepared us well for our audiences.)

Belonging to the L.A. Connection was money-out-of-pocket for "dues." Most of us were earning little or no dough, living in Hollywood and Silver Lake. We hung out between shows, talked about this show biz job or that show biz opportunity, and kept on struggling and complaining about the director and paying dues and how the dues were spent.

Eventually, Larry, myself and six or seven others coagulated in a cast that performed Friday nights from 1982 to 1984. Some evenings we sold out. Other nights we played for a half-dozen people. You worked with tension. Audience expectations were generous as they saw improv comedy as high wire walking without a net. Nevertheless, they did expect something. Full house or no, the goal was to get laughs. That's what made performing so sweet - bombing sucked the life out of cast and audience. Nailing a scene on a blackout line to big laughs and applause pumped the actors higher than Ozzy Osbourne in his prime.

(I would give examples but trying to describe old improv sketches is like trying to relate a sexual experience - words fail the deed.)

After the shows, we'd head over to someones house to beer-up and watch SCTV, or over to a local bar, the Chimney Sweep, where a pretty, blonde Canadian waitress served us all the alcohol we could pay for. ('So hey, would you like a chuter with that beer.')

In time, we drifted off to this and that. Back then we were in our mid-20s to early 30s. Now we're all solidly middle-aged.

Larry has been working for a casting director for almost 20 years.

Tina lives out in Arizona, doing something New Age.

Ken Segall writes animation and fed me my last few scripts for an MGM show.

Autumn teaches acting in Orange County.

Ken B. runs a dive company, taking people out to the waters around Catalina.

Elaine trains dogs, sometimes for the movies.

Bob produces segments for History and Discovery channel shows. As far as I know, he was the last to perform on-stage, appearing in a one-man show in 2007.

No one knows what happened to Darrell.

As we were drifting out, a new cast was drifting in, including Marc Drotman, Mitch Watson, and some young punk named Rugg.

From an experience that seemed rather cheap and low-rent, many good things emerged. I still hang with Ken Segall who was best man at my wedding. I met M.D. Sweeney and Sherri Stoner and, through them, went on to work at Acme Comedy Theatre and Warner TV animation. Bob and I acted together at Acme and stay in touch. Rugg is a horrible pain-in-the-ass that I can't seem to shake.

And the L.A. Connection rolls on. I still meet young actors and writers who have gone through the Connection, bitching about the organization and the director. Hopefully, they'll keep a few fellow cast members in their lives. At best, they'll have a lot of laughs.

I mostly remember the laughs.

And the stinking dues!!! Did I tell you about the sign party? We were trying to raise money for a sign this one time, see? And instead . . . .

Running and Coyotes

Fie upon these fallow knees! I went out and ran for 45 minutes today over at Griffith Park. Staying on soft dirt trails, I would run for a minute and walk for two. A few twinges here and there, but overall the knees felt fine. Tomorrow will tell. I'll probably ice tonight just to be safe.

Finishing my run around dusk, I saw a coyote amble across the road past my jeep - just taking his sweet old time, big bushy tail dragging behind. He joined another coyote and they, in turn, hooked up with a third. Their needle snouts pointed in the direction of the Merry-Go-Round parking lot and I wondered if some poor woman was walking her dog up there.

I think the park has too many coyotes. Perhaps one day a famous person will announce on TV that he's eaten a coyote and that it tasted real good. (Maybe not like chicken but more like turkey loaf.) Then people will sneak into Griffith Park and pot coyotes for supper. I'll bet hats with bushy tails become popular with the ladies. Let's hope for this, or the introduction of a colossal coyote-eating bird, because there are a lot of tasty coyotes going to waste with tummies full of pets.

AHHHHHHH! TIME SUCK!

I joined facebook.

Russian Through the Water

At my health club this afternoon, doing lap pool lengths with a kick board; guy in the lane next to me is swimming freestyle laps. Two large Russian woman ambled into the water like Slavic hippos and blocked both lanes. There was a brief game of aquatic chicken in which the freestyle guy, myself, and the Daughters of Muscovy all advanced on a collision course. But the women moved at the last second and I continued my workout, though wary now. Clearly the idea of a lap pool as a place of exercise, as opposed to drowning dissidents, seemed to have escaped them. They eventually went over to the hot tub and bobbed in front of other people's air jets. 

Big fat commies.