Chicago: A rainy cesspool

Today, I left majestic Chicago. As fortune would have it, I experienced it in its worst possible state: cold, rainy, and dark. However, fun WAS had.

Here's the Wrigley Building. This was home to the famous bubble gum empire. Sadly, the building itself most certainly did NOT taste like bubble gum.


Here's Wrigley Field. Strangely, this place DID taste like bubble gum, and the fat man next to me tried to gnaw his way through his seat. And when I say "fat man," I mean "everybody in the whole fucking town."


Chicago is so windy, it straightened my hair. This had to be documented and never mentioned again.


This is Millenium Park. It's a lot like Central Park, only if it were designed by alien cyborgs who were hellbent on taking over Earth through abstract art and confusion.


Here's me and a giant metal cashew.


Here's an ancient Babylonian torture device used to coerce people into not laughing when they say "Babylonia."


Here's the boat I took for the architecture tour, christened "Chicago's Little Lady." It was named after a whore who was brutally drowned and thrown in the river. She was then boarded and sailed throughout the city by many citizens. This boat is a tribute.


Someone doesn't bother to carry an umbrella. Someone is sorry.


Here's a AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! ARGFHGHGHGHGHHHHHAAAHAHH!


Oh, and gay men love me, apparently. On the rainy architecture tour (which was awesome), a gay Canadian who also didn't bother to bring an umbrella, used his lack of foresight to try to bond with me. I was pleasantly aloof. Then, when I came back to Detroit, I got to the hotel, ran three miles, swam a few laps, and relaxed in the spa. A gentleman promptly joined me in the bubbly bath and sat right next to me. This is a rather large pool of hot, steamy action, so you could imagine my surprise when he chose a seat so close.

HIM: You come in here often?

Did he actually just use the old "come here often" line?

ME: Uh, no this is my first time. In the spa.

Awkward pause.

HIM: It's not that hot.

ME: Nope. Thought it was going to be a lot hotter (WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???)

He then got out after I propped my head back and pretended to sleep. He hopped in the pool and I decided to get out of the spa and run for my room.

HIM: (from the pool) Have you been in the pool?

ME: Yup. Yes, I have.

I left with my sneakers barely on my feet.

Then, I decided to drive in to Detroit proper to eat at a place called "Floods." It was supposed to be soul food, so, I thought, that would be something pretty unique to the area. I walked in to Floods and glowed like I was made of fucking ivory. I was the only white guy in the place. Despite how confident I've been feeling, there's a difference between being bold and being bludgeoned to death with a karaoke microphone. So, I went down the street and had Greek pizza.

YOU THINK IT ENDS THERE??? FUCK NAW! I managed to drive from Detroit back to my hotel (about twenty miles) at night HAVING FORGOTTEN TO PUT MY LIGHTS ON. I really thought they were on. Nope. I can only hope that other drivers thought I was some sort of pilotless robot car. I'll read the paper tomorrow and see if anybody reported it.

Chicago!

Download it here, or chuck this in your iTunes:

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Some additional notes on Chicago:

* Regardless of how interesting or attractive the person is, the accent will make you want to strangle that person to death

* Genuinely kind people

* The area around Wrigley Field? Gay gay gay.

I'm in Chicago

Oh, there'll be some juicy tales tonight, my friends. I have a lead on the adapter, so we should have some interviews if everything goes well.

I'm IMing my best friend Paul as I wait for my hotel room to be ready and we're talking about sensitive subjects. I would love to bear my heart, but I've got about a dozen Chicago-style homosexuals breathing down my neck in a cafe. There are some woes of the heart I doubt they'll be sympathetic to.

Or, now that I think about it, maybe they could offer better insight than I'm expecting.

A subtle Chicago nightspot:

Michigan Pt. 1

You can either download the Travelogue here or subscribe to this feed by placing the following url in the "Subscribe to Podcast" option in your iTunes task bar:

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Items that didn't make the cut:

* Some Michigan retard, it seems, went to Coney Island one day and brought back Coney Island hot dogs. "Coneys," as they're known in these parts, are hot dogs with chili, or "Coney Sauce," not so much spread on them, but smothered to within an inch of its life.

* Hotel Porn Titles:
1. First Timers
2. Raw Sex Trio
3. Xtra Filthy Sex
4. Sex at Work
5. Adultery (? - ed.)
6. Screwin' Young Things (! - ed.)
7. Sex with My Sister's Friends (I shit you not - ed.)
8. Sexual Overload (Fittingly, last on the list - ed.)

I don't give a bleep

A small observation: both the feature film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" and a recent article in New Scientist called "Mr. Hawking's Flexiverse" make reference to "the observer." This is a key element in centralizing the perception of the universe not from within the universe itself, but from within the individual. One's perception of reality is really all there is.

As a quantum mechanical example, the New Scientist article references a test where a light beam is shot through a piece of paper with two slits in it, on to a piece of photographic paper which records the results. (This will all be part of my play, by the way). When the beam of light passes through these slits, it produces two slits of light on the photographic paper that gradate out and "interfere" with each other. You can imagine that, I'd think. If you shine a flashlight through a sheet with holes in it and aim it at a wall, you'll get two bright spots that sort of bleed into each other and fade into the darkness. Now, if you fire a single photon at the same two-slitted piece of paper, one would assume that it'll choose one of the slits and form one bright spot on the other side. But it doesn't. It produces the same effect as the whole beam. Hawking believes this is because the photon takes every possible path. What's interesting, is that if you "snap a picture" of this event, you only see one path. It's the way one sees the path that makes it so. All other paths cancel each other out.

I probably have taken huge liberties with the text, but it doesn't matter, really (which is in the spirit of the text, ironically). I read what I wanted to read. I interpreted it how I thought it should be interpreted. And if you can see that the path is clear depending on how YOU perceive it, why worry? You make it happen.

Taking a page from Amanda's Blog

Forgive these first few posts for being so introspective, but, goddamnit, I've reached an understanding with myself that is unprecedented in my entire family much less in my own mind. I noticed that Amanda occasionally uses her blog to construct a list of goals. Part of this is most definitely for her but there's something about the public declaration of it that makes it solid. Here's the plan:

1. Go to Michigan and have a good time. I'm being sent to Michigan against my will at what I thought was the wrong time. After deep consideration, it's the perfect time. I may have a weekend with nothing to do, so I've decided to drive to Chicago and see a Cubs game, followed, the next day, with a riverboat architectural tour of Chicago's skyline (though, it is supposed to rain all weekend in Chicago. A detail I would've missed if I had never met a certain girl. Weather.com never seemed so bittersweet).

2. Upon returning to New York, immediately meeting with my commercial agent to pin down the legit agents worth going after and setting up a plan of attack. Mine, as I've written before, is a little on the crazy "look at me, look at me" side. Her's will probably be more conventional. I'm hoping beyond hopes that my agent has an in somewhere, because she normally has an in everywhere else.

3. Massive mail attack. Hit the agents. Hit the postings I find on my new Backstage.com account.

4. While waiting for an agent to work with me, keep hitting the Backstage postings. I turn SAG in May (insert joke here) so it raises a question, if I book something before I'm officially in SAG, do I have to report it? Do my employers? Anybody know?

5. Write my one man show ONE MAN (working title. Jordan and I also enjoy CASE IN POINT: YOUR PARENTS CAN FUCK YOU UP). It'll be a blend of family stories and quantum physics. Think Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, a parallel between atomic theory and relationships, and tales of one entire family hell-bent on destroying itself. Told by one man. Me.

6. Select and begin rehearsal on a play for the summer with Aaron Bergeron. Aaron is someone I've written about before. I was envious of him. I was scared of him. Now I'm looking him in the eyes and we're going to work together. And it's going to be amazing. The frontrunner for a play, so far, is Philadelphia Story. Anybody who knows Aaron knows he'd be perfect for the Jimmy Stewart role. Me? I'm Cary Grant, bitches. Truer words have never been spoken.

Holy shit, Amanda, that really works. It's so helpful to look at everything written out like that.

I don't know about you, but I'd hit that

GRRRRRR!

A girl at work noted that this picture makes her want to kiss my neck. Whether or not it was an overt come-on, it was unsolicited and pretty awesome.

I need input, y'all

Having ignored my career for eight years, assuming, wrongly, that an Oscar would be sent to me via mail if I waited long enough, I am almost completely sans knowledge when it comes to talent agencies. My commercial agent wants to work it out with me after I come back from Michigan, so, in the mean time, I humbly ask for any input my friends might have.

I've heard good things about:

Harden Curtis (from what I'm gathering, this is my top choice)
Paradigm

I've just plain heard about:

Abrams
Gersh
Innovative

I'm in the dark about:

The rest

What I'm looking for (and aren't we all) is a smaller place that has a good "teacher/student ratio" (if you will).

Also, here's my opening paragraph for the cover letter (all criticism welcome):

"Dear sirs (absolutely no women may read this),

I am a stage and screen actor currently enjoying success in commercial work in New York. As a newly minted member of SAG, I'd like to broaden my career into film and theater. Also, if you can find me roles, rest assured, I'll act the shit out of them. Ya heard?

Take on me,
Gabe Silva"

All joking aside, I'm seriously considering using the "acting the shit out of them" line. I want to be noticed. I want them to read the letter and be taken aback. I want them to think that there's something wrong with me and I'm just the man they need.

Eight years and this is the first time I'm doing this. What'll be most surprising, in the end, is how easy it all was for me.

Fuck whatcha heard, who's the best in New York?

Fulfilling fantasies without that nigga Mr. Rourke?

A little Biggie Smalls to get shake the cobwebs out.

Having been unable to unload Yankees tickets to anybody on the street for free, I decided that the best way to dispose of them would be to use them myself. After a week in which I did the most soul-searching I had ever done in my life, I decided that it would be exactly what I needed.

As I sat in the upper tier, staring contently at the diamond majesty of Yankee Stadium, I realized I was using new eyes. Most of the last week and two days had been spent in a vaporous stupor, not actually moving so much as finding myself in places. I would awake and find my body walking down streets during work hours, not lost, but out of control. The skipper had jumped into the sea and there was no one driving the boat. Then, in a final fit of epiphanic convulsion, I was violently thrust through a membrane, and through that threshold was shed five years of sorrow. Any comedian knows that there's time to retire a bit. My self-hatred bit started as just that. A bit meant to be charming. As time plodded along, the bit grew and enveloped me. Rather than do what is NECESSARY to grab hold of my life, I hid under the bit. I ended up convincing myself that I was an ugly nobody. Well, that ain't charming, Jack, and nobody's impressed. I even convinced the person I loved most in the world. And now she's gone.




Sitting in these steep heavens, at these Olympian heights, the world around me drew to a sharp focus. Thanks to quantum mechanics, we learn that our world doesn't change around us. We change our world. At long last, I'm back in my body and it feels good to be here. I watched four plastic bags dancing in the air, high above the heads of the players. A gentle waltz happening concurrently with the sporting struggle below. I turned to Mike Sanzone and remarked, "that's actually kind of beautiful." And it was. And I made it so for myself.

But, Mikey Sanzone blew my mind by smoking a cigarette, a scene so strange that the only other image more bizarre would be my mother holding her own cock.

Back with a vengeance

Here's the scoop. It has long been believed that out of chaos blooms creation. There's a sort of sinister beauty in destruction, seeing hearts rended apart only to reveal a deeper heart that burns like hot fucking magma.

It turns out that the world is not out to get me. If only I had seen that sooner. How could I become so bitter, so negative, when all I had inside me was nothing but the purest, whitest love. If that love could even possibly exist, on any planet, in any universe, then how could I even entertain the notion that all I had was contempt, disdain, and fear. And it IS fear. Everything I ever feared came true on a single day in April and it happened because I assumed it would.

As I walked into work today, I realized that people beam when they see me. That only happens when I'm beaming at them. I have a new sense of faith that I've never, EVER, experienced before. And it isn't a faith in a god or an idea or an idol. It's faith in myself.

Now don't worry. I haven't turned soft on you. I'm confident in myself and I'm mad about it. It's amazing. It's this aggressive desire to make people understand how awesome I can be. Chances are, if you're my friend, you already know that.

I've always prided myself on being humble. But that humbleness became humility, and that humility became self-hate. As I write this, I weap, but not because I fear or pine for a better life, but because for the first time in my life I really know I can do it.

Friends of Davey Jones is back. And it's going to be on stage very soon.