Thirty Days in the Air

Ok.  So here’s what happened.

I planned on spending this weekend in Portland, OR and  then starting my trip down the West Coast.

Only as I was checking in, I looked at my tickets and saw Portland, ME.

Long story short, I opted to hop off the Jet Blue express and fly an American direct flight back to Austin to regroup.

Did I opt out of the opportunity for some adventure?  Yes.  Did I also make a decision to take a short travel break and make sure my bills are paid?  Also yes.

So, for the sake of justifying my decision in my own mind, let’s do a little accounting.  Here, from my own desk in Austin, are some of my favorite moments from the trip so far:

- Getting to listen in on headset during Come Fly Away, the Frank Sinatra review on Broadway (NY, NY)

- Comedy open mic in Times Square (NY, NY)

- Broadway audition (NY, NY)

- Watching my best friend shed genuine tears as he talked about why he’s pushing so hard, not just to get into IATSE Local 1, but to get vested in the retirement program early…Because he loves Jen and he’ll sleep better knowing she’ll be looked after. (NY, NY)

- Visiting the Cloisters museum, where Tim Gunn goes to get inspiration and clear his head. (NY, NY)

- Karaoke at an Irish pub with a real, live Broadway singer as a ringer in our group. (NY, NY)

- Meeting a total stranger who managed to give me hope and perspective on some of the hardest parts of my life.  (NY, NY)

- Home cooked meals in the city of takeout. (NY, NY)

- Seeing an all-girl Freak Show and riding the oldest all-wood roller-coaster in America on the last day of the season at Coney Island (Brooklyn, NY)

- Going up to Insectavora, MC and fire-eater of the freak show and saying casually, “Hey, I think you know my friend Erik.” resulting in a couple of dropped jaws. (Brooklyn, NY)

- Cropdusting the entire Gem Room exhibit in the Museum of Natural History. Ah, the simple pleasures in life… (NY, NY)

- Deliberately getting lost in Manhattan and walking the long way around from 34th and 8th to the Resevoir bar at 11th and 5th. (NY, NY)

- Understanding what the fuck I just typed.

- Recording wackiness at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum annex. (Washington, DC)

Verner von Braun’s grandson at The Air and Space Museum

- Open mic at the Topaz Hotel bar where I almost got someone to laugh a table over. (Washington, DC)

- Taking time to appreciate being naked and not on anybody’s schedule. (Pikesville, MD)

- Barging in on the set of Motorweek on their 30th anniversary. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Baking cookies with the Green family. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Forza Motorsport 2 played as a driver/navigator team with Joe Green.  Followed by taking his RX-8 down some of Motorweek’s favorite test roads, at speed.  Can you believe he let me drive? (Owings Mills, MD)

- watching kids eat crabs. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Remembering the things I loved about the way I was raised in a noisy, hectic, 4-kid household.  Seeing two people parent as partners with discipline, flexibility, and rivers and rivers of love for their kids. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Getting the chance to turn an ex-in-law into a friend. (Washington, DC)

- Tramping across most of lower Manhattan with my entire kit and not looking remotely out of place.(NY, NY)

- Booked showcase at the Hog Pit with Dan Kilpatrick, Paul Oddo,  and about a dozen other comics.  I went up dead last, got laughs out of what was left of a tired crowd and then got to run into Trey Galyon and Mike Creed, other Austin comics. (NY, NY)

- Two open mics in one night in Boston and Cambridge.  Held my own…didn’t slaughter, but definitely made an impression. (Boston, MA)

- Discovering that, in a pinch, Logan Airport is not a terribly uncomfortable place to spend the night. (Boston, MA)

- Found hilarity at street vendor. (NY, NY)

- METS GAME! (Queens, NY)

- Hours of free time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, much of which was spent writing, admiring Japanese armor, and discovering a statue that appears to be masturbating. (NY, NY)

- Seeing Billy Elliot on Broadway from the lighting booth.(NY, NY)

- Crying when Billy reads the letter from his Mom and missing my Dad awfully.(NY, NY)

- Discovering that I like waiting on the ground MUCH more than I like waiting in the air. (Somewhere over Detroit).

- Getting to see a yet another dear friend who helped me through a tough time.  Seeing on her face that she’s in the right relationship now, with the right person, at the right time.  Finding that hopeful.(Chicago, IL)

- Gaining new appreciation for The Blues Brothers movie as said friend’s apt. is RIGHT ON the El tracks. After only an hour one’s conversation naturally starts to break every 7 minutes to wait for the train to pass.(Chicago, IL)

- Giggling at the “Bong Rest Area ahead” sign. (Northern Illinois somewhere).

- Re-discovering a dormant friendship as if not a single day had passed.(Cudahy, WI).

- Getting my ass handed to me in old-school Unreal Tournament by tag-teaming brothers, neither of whom was alive when Unreal shipped. (Cudahy, WI)

- Katerina.  (South Milwaukee, WI)

- Baking cookies with the Wagner family.(Cudahy, WI)

- Meeting one of Bill Cosby’s grandkids at an unplanned open-mic excursion (where I kicked ass and took names) (Milwaukee, WI)

- Teaching Rob’s kids the sword fighting routine that I learned in stunt class, deliberately to irritate their mother.(Cudahy, WI)

- American Science and Surplus (Milwaukee, WI)

- Getting lost in Chicago.

- Discovering in the middle of the Science and Industry Museum, as I was entering my age into an interactive exhibit, that I am officially “Holy Crap!” years old. (Chicago, IL).

- Constantly being humbled and amazed at the generosity of my friends and of total strangers. (Everywhere, all the time)

- Having the toughest decisions of my life spelled out for me by example over and over again and feeling that I have made the right choices. (Every minute of the trip)

- Letting things go badly awry and having enough fun that it seems like that’s what we should have been doing in the first place (countless examples).

- Meeting a ton of funny people. (Every stop)

The flight in was glassy smooth until we passed down through the cloud cover hanging over the city.  I recently started investigating flying lessons; even took an introductory flight.  Every one of these Jet Blue trips is a thought experiment in whether or not I’m going to pursue it.  This flight was one check after another in the “for” column until we hit the cloud bank; then it was 4 and a half minutes of “meh, probably not.”

Boston very wisely separated their airport from their city by bodies of moving water, so that they would have an excuse to dig tunnels under the whole city. I mean….if you’re bound and determined to find a reason to hate where you are *and* a means to escape it, you can’t do much better than hiding your airport on an island.

I bought a 1 day “Charlie Card” public transportation pass and hopped the Silver Line into the city. Walked from South Station to the Commons just to get a lay of the land.

Statue commemorating the Boston Massacre

Few people realize the Boston Massacre actually started when British soldiers started razzing the locals about “pahhkin’ the cahh in Hahhvahhd Yahhd”.

I settled into a Dunkin Donuts to write for a while…long enough to discover they didn’t have a restroom.  Neither did the Starbucks across the street.  I felt some glimmer of understanding about why everyone seemed to be irritated and impatient.  In Manhattan I’d gotten shoved around in an intersection by a BMW and at least that lady was indifferent.

I decided to start counting the Ronnie James Dio look-alikes perpetrating a puffy-chested rooster-walk when I realized I still had to pee.

I hopped on the Green Line, D-train and took it down to Chestnut Hill, because Roggie’s is on Chestnut Hill.  Except the Chestnut Hill stop isn’t on Chestnut Hill.  I rode the train a couple more times until I figured out which stop got me closest.  Guess what. No bathrooms at the train stops.

You can read about the Roggie’s open mic in a previous post.  It was a positive experience and well worth the effort.  Also, nice bathroom…sorry about the over-spray.

Cabbed it to The Middle East club, which is also the subject of another post, and then figured I’d catch the Red Line down to its other end where the conglomeration of maps I was consulting estimated I would find a Ramada…see, the plan was to hit town, tell some jokes and then grab a cheap hotel room on a public transit line that would make a short trip back to the airport…except the trains stop running at 12.  Fuck you Boston.  Where the hell are the homeless people supposed to sleep?

So I got a cab, and we tried 2 different hotels before someone (the cabbie) remembered that there was a Microbiology conference in town, and as we were rooting around in the general MIT area, there were probably no hotel rooms.  The next hotel we tried confirmed that, to a point.  The nice guy behind the counter found one room at one hotel and gave me the address. I gave it to the cabbie.  He said, in a thinned out Palestinian accent, “Chad I have driven cab in this city for 18 years; know every corner.  I never saw a hotel at that address and if is one there is not a place I would leave you.”

Ringing endorsement.

“I tell you Chad, I slept three nights in Paris airport one time.  Missed all my flights, it was fucking shit.  I still think you better off sleeping at airport.”

Ok.  Well, Chez Aeroflat it is, then.  Tack on another $60 cab ride (I tipped him pretty well for looking out for me) and picked out a likely bench in a restaurant inside the airport.  And it was no mean feat.  There were a lot of people sleeping in Logan Airport that night.

Dear Boston.  Walk around your bus station and airport at 3am sometime.  If there are more than half a dozen people sleeping there that you didn’t smell first, maybe build another hotel or something.

Could I have harassed various comics until one of them coughed up a couch?  Probably.  Is that how I treat people on a regular basis? No.  No it isn’t.

Some perspective: if you’re prideful about not being a burden to people you’ve just met, you end up sleeping in the airport.  I’m either going to have to get over asking strangers for help or plan better.

Boston comic Josh Gondelman was kind enough to turn me on to a couple of open mics for my brief foray further north.  The first of these was in a basement bar under a pizza joint.  Cute bartender, huge beer selection, and a room full of comics.  Very grateful to host Matt K for getting me a spot, and one early enough to let me do 2 shows in one city.  Kind of sorry I missed the rest of the show; there’s some neat stuff going on here.

The vibe is around here is supportive in the way that tight group of comics can be….which means there were more than a handful of in-jokes, shit-talking eachother from the stage, and the obvious pressure to bring new stuff to your peers.   From the outside I suppose it might look a little caustic but comics know that when you can make a room full of comics laugh, you’ve got something worth working on.

…ok usually you’ve got something worth dumbing down so a regular audience can get it, but still.

Host: Matt Kona

Format: first come first served, 5-7 minutes

Size: more than 20 comics.

Results:  Eh.  I was tired, the room was tiny.  Still knocked out a respectable set, got laughs, got off on a laugh.  Call that a win.