It was Monday night and I was on my way back from the KIS audition down at the puppet theatre. I had made the third callback along with four other folks. I was really tired from having stayed-up late creating a powerpoint presentation for an analyst at Forrester. So during the KIS audition I made what I believe to be the fatal mistake of making an offer for a scene inspired by “Bald at 15” in the foreign film exercise that related to one of the two people on stage having cancer. It was the main reason why I could justify a bald girl at 15 but afterwards I think it got me into enough trouble as an auditionee to get some black marks. The highlight of my audition was when we were playing worlds worst, but called Die, and coming-up with fake names for cereals and mine was “Chunky bits of Steve”. So it is on to another future audition. While walking home I told Mitch, a funny guy right out of college, that he wasn't likely to meet tons of chicks as an Improv performer and that his best bet would be to learn Salsa dancing as quickly as possible. He wondered if that was how I met my wife. I’ll hear that I didn’t make the troupe by Wednesday. How humbling!

But I do have an audition with IB next Monday with my wonderful instructors. It was somewhat uncanny that the feedback that I got from KIS from the first two auditions was pretty much identical to the feedback that I got from the IB classes. I look out into the audience too often for approval, talk too much/mime too little, take on too many high status characters, and don’t explore a wide enough range of characters. My guess is that these things are embedded in my personality but I should try to change them for the good of my adoring fans, mainly Lisa my sister.

So I was walking home from the audition feeling that about to be rejected feeling that is similar to standing under a piano held by a fishing line. Next to the used television store/ mob front money laundering service, on the corner of Harvard and Aspinwall I saw some books in the garbage. The one that caught my eye was a big hard cover Combat and Survival book. That caught my interest and digging a little further I also found a stack of large format hard cover art books with VanGogh, Matisse, Cezanne, and Dali. So I called Sarah and grabbed the stack of books. Then I saw two boxes labeled the Playboy Centerfold Collector Cards The January Edition Collector’s Case. Since I have this belief the collector cards and beanie babies are highly desirable by crazy obsessive compulsive people on eBay I grabbed the two boxes of January edition cards.

I then tried to figure out what they were worth but it was almost impossible to do so. Instead I found some choice other items including a person who collects Alf trading cards, a useful tidbit about sugar packet collecting. Still no information on the value of my found artwork collection.

Does everything always have to break? I had annoying car troubles on Friday night. I was pulling my standard freakish 180 degree U-Turn to park on St. Paul street in front of the condo when I heard a loud pop and suddenly could barely turn the steering wheel. I managed to get it into the space and was grateful that I had car trouble near home so that I could go inside and ignore the problem for a while. Later in the evening I tested the car and got it to drive all the way to the parking lot but with great effort to turn the steering system. It didn't take the folks at car talk for me to know that the most likely culprit was the power steering system somewhere. I figured a belt, gear, pump, or something like that had slipped or broke.

On Saturday morning I decided that I needed to fix this problem so I called the local mechanic at the Gulf Station and he said he couldn't look at it until Tuesday. So I decided to enjoy the weekend. Sarah took her car to Valvoline and they took 40 minutes changing her oil, checking an engine light that was on because the gas cap wasn't screwed on tight enough, and finding an oil leak that had been going on for years. I drank a big Coolatta from the neighboring Dunkin Donuts along with a bagel. Because the Valvoline folks were helpful and useful I decided that I would take my car to them to fix my belt, pump, fluid, whatever problem. They identified that there was a belt that fell off it's pulley in the power steering and changed my oil. Unfortunately they couldn't fix the belt and told me to go to a mechanic. I had another Coolatta during this experience as well so I was pretty high on caffeine at this point.

I then drove to the Mobil station and they seemed very busy but interested enough to take a look under the hood. They poked around and then told me that the pump for the power steering had broken, which had caused the belt to slip off. It was a $500 job minimum and they couldn't even see how anyone could get access to remove the pump so they instructed me to call the dealer instead and had me drag my power steering-less car in a painful three point turn back to the top of the long driveway to the garage.

The people who I rented my parking space from called to hassle me because I hadn't mailed them the check on time and continued to give me a lecture about how it isn't worth their time to track down parking space renter checks. I profusely apologized and promised that I would impress them with the promptness of payments in the future. I may need to do another parking search soon enough. I actually turned down a parking space offer today while I had fifteen minutes to prepare for a presentation to an analyst and was on the line via Skype to a partner in the Netherlands. I did manage to patch together a miraculous pair of people offering spaces, one who had one from the first through the fifteenth and the other who had the fifteenth onwards to replace the evil space we were renting. The space was evil both because the woman who owned the space got into an argument with Sarah when Sarah complained that the 24hour spot was blocked by deck construction 10 out of every 24 hours during normal parking hours. We then got late notice that we were going to be towed on June 1st if the car wasn't gone so we hunted the new spaces using a cheesy sign I made in Illustrator and an agressive hunt on Craigs list.

On top of all this trouble my mom was mad at me for not having responded to the pictures that she had sent me and the folks at the video store only had the VHS copy of Attack of the Clones which was crappy. Sarah and I went to Home Depot and bought lots of home fix-up stuff like new lamps, dimmers, and a screwdriver bit. It was a really long Saturday. So today I am off to the dealership to get answer#3 on the broken power steering. My guess is that it will be about $900 to fix the damn thing and they will determine that my flux capacitor is also broken and that will cost even more.

On Wednesday night I met with an influential potential business partner and Aaron in Concord over dinner by the bar. It was unfortunate that I had to skip out on my Improv group practice for this occasion but it was a case where prioritization worked out. The guy was the number two person at a start-up in California with venture financing and their CEO was on the cover of Newsweek last month. At dinner Aaron and I learned all sorts of interesting stuff about our potential business partner. He was an eccentric man including a stint in military school as a child, then becoming an Olympic jujitsu fighter in Korea, getting shot in the gall bladder as a paramedic, working as a recruiter for Cisco stock per hire when Cisco had 35 employees, owned a fight gear clothing company, and finally became a good buddy of the venture community by rescuing some failing start-ups. He also would go crazy if he didn't work 20 hours a day, said "GOT IT" whenever he understood something and loved the restaurant we went to in Concord because to him it was the Cheers of Chinese restaurants.

Upon arriving the partner was drinking a fruity looking beverage in a tall blue Chinese restaurant mug with a naked woman embedded in the side of the mug. I asked him what it was called and he called it a "One of these". This was the name that had been given to it by Paul the bartender, a tall Asian man with large Elvis sideburns who had created the drink for my new friend the partner eleven years ago when the partner was just a kid. The partner used to come in with the most beautiful woman he had ever met but they then moved to California and she had stumbled into a Less than Zero situation before marrying a biker. The partner was now married to a Dolche-Gabana Japanese model who he couldn't love any more and is now living atop Pacific Heights in San Francisco. He only was attracted to Asian women and spoke fluent Japanese. At one point he picked-up his Treo phone and answered is "Moshi Moshi" because the ring was the one for a Japanese country code call. It turned out to be an engineer for his company working in Japan who didn't speak much Japanese. He was sending his kindergarten age kid to a fancy school that cost $30,000 a year and the partner thought the kid would be getting the same education back in Concord. That's why I got in touch with the partner. I filled out a form and despite there being a lot of forms being filled-out on the web site, mine came with a 781 area code. So I guess I won the lottery?

I decided that I had to try the unique concoction in the girly glass so I ordered a "One of These" as well. The "One of These" was a potent drink and despite it being a unique concoction for the partner it was very similar to a Scorpion bowl in an embarrassing Chinese restaurant mug. Aaron arrived and soon we were all drinking these beverages and chatting away about the adventures of the partner, who he knew in common with Aaron. We did talk enough about business for me to get that the partner felt we had a good shot at success but that we should raise some money to execute faster. "GOT IT".

Paul, the bartender who has the Elvis sideburns, is an amateur singer. The partner had taken his Dolce-Gabana Japanese wife to this restaurant and Paul had sung for her and she had cried for three days. We had gotten there at 5PM but by about 7PM we had already imbibed two "One's of these" and were ordering dinner including a the partner special and an Earl special. Earl was the guy that the partner brought to the restaurant when he owned a landscaping company in the area eleven years ago and was cutting his teeth in business. Earl's claim to fame, other than the aforementioned Earl special was that he could drink 48 beers at a sitting. Now this is quite impossible and he would likely die. Earl's secret was that he would drink them and would throw-up in the middle of the drinking multiple times in a Romanesque vomitorium style. Both of these dishes were off the menu and had been created those 11 years ago when both the partner and Paul the bartender were just starting out and the restaurant had just opened. The Earl special was a seafood dish with scallops and shrimp in a viscous sauce with vegetables including mushrooms and chinese broccoli. The partner special was a fried chicken dish also with vegetables in a viscous sauce.

When the third "One of These" arrived the glass was changed from the blue naked woman to a flesh colored Fu-Man-Chu bearded guy mug. The drink itself was getting stronger and Aaron dropped off drinking, his 50 years experience kicking in. We were chatting a bit with some executives at a table next to ours and it was fun to see the partner talking to an executive who had never heard of their company. That was when I learned about the Newsweek article. The partner convinced Paul the bartender to serenade a woman drinking at the bar and he sang what seemed to be an Elvis song with a great southern twang to his voice. Around 9PM Aaron brought the leftovers home to his kids and the partner and I moved to the bar.

We chatted a bit more about life and getting married. I could tell we weren't birds of a feather because he thought he would slit his wrists or jump off a bridge without working for 20 hours a day and wasn't that involved in his home life. I gave Sarah some glowing marks for having her head where mine was and us both wanting to chill out and enjoy being parents a bit. After the fourth "One of These" it was 10PM and time for the restaurant to shut down for the evening so we parted ways. Paul gave the obligatory warning to drive home safely and I walked out to my car smelling like I had just raided a liquor cabinet. My calculations were that I had four drinks in five hours so I was probably not so drunk to drive but might be close enough to play it very safe.

So as I started to drive home I felt nice a paranoid that I was going to get pulled over by the local police out hunting for DUI cases to throw in jail. Because of this I switched to the slow lane on Rt. 2, which was the only route I could figure would lead me home. Being in the slow lane is an interesting experience because you see more police in the slow lane. They hide in the bushes, pass you in the fast lane, and generally make a very good appearance when someone is up late and night and praying to not get pulled over. One of the police cars that looked like an SUV drove in front of me and then pulled himself over to the side to form what looked like a speed trap. I sighed a good sigh of relief because if he wasn't there when I passed then he probably wasn't looking to catch me speeding or swaying like a snake on the road or whatever else I might have been doing to alert someone that it might be fun to make me blow into a DUI tester or walk a straight line while touching my nose. I don't think I can do that sober. But the same police car appeared behind me only thirty seconds later with lights flashing to pull me over.

I have seen the show Cops many times and I always wondered why any criminal when pulled over by the police for an unknown reason, except for Timothy McVeigh, would get out of their car and run as fast as they could into the woods of Lincoln. The answer was suddenly clear to me as I was pulled over, not for speeding, with alcohol coming out of my sweating pores. Adrenaline! I don't often get shocked with an extreme dose of adrenaline but this was a case of pure fight or flight super-high. I was ready to pop someone in the face, run away from the saber tooth tiger, do whatever it took to get out of that situation as fast as possible. My life could be ruined. This was going to be the most embarrassing incident of my young and foolish life. There goes the presidential nomination. I had just been thinking about how I could try to run for president as an atheist and I could at least say that I didn't have DUI charges like George W., wasn't a coke addict, and after eight days of marriage, hadn't proved to be a serial adulterer. Granted all of those traits actually qualify you for the presidency so I shouldn't have been worried. Now here I am, my own deep throat admitting everything anyways.

So I fumbled my license out of my wallet and tossed the wallet into the seat beside me, grabbed the registration from the glove compartment and greeted the officer when he arrived at my rolled down window with a smile while trying hard to hold my breath and control my breathing. This would be easy if my heart rate wasn't around 205 from the adrenaline but most people appear a bit fidgety when they get pulled over so I may not have seemed that off to the officer. At the window of the car he asked me a question and I was sure it would be "Sir, have you been drinking this evening". But somehow those words had morphed through an act of science fiction into "Sir, do you know that you have a broken tail light?". I answered "Yes." He wanted to know how long I knew it was broken and I said that it had been about a month. He then let me know that I should get it fixed as soon as possible and then turned back to his vehicle to write me either a ticket or a warning.

The return to your vehicle for a cop with this mystery ticket or game show warning is always an interesting experience as the driver. It is basically a horror game show. Will you get a ticket that will effect your insurance premiums permanently or a warning that will make you want to hug the officer? In my case I still wasn't sure whether I was being observed for signs of drunkenness so I was just sitting on top of the brick underneath me that had been extruded from my anus and was staring into the mirror trying to see what the officer was doing. The new jumbo LEDs that have been installed into emergency vehicles are very compact and very bright. They are bright enough on a dark new moon evening to cause significant temporary blind spots in your vision. So as I looked back in the mirror my field of vision was slowly turning into a fun, 60's fantasy world of lights and colors no matter what direction I looked in. My cell phone rang and I decided to ignore it, knowing that it was probably Sarah, my pregnant wife, wondering when I would be home. I didn't pick it up figuring that the police probably think of calls by waiting pulled over drivers to be calls for the gang to ambush the officer or spot legal consultation suggesting guilt. I considered closing my eyes to avoid the blindness and pondered how I would drive off blind and potentially DUI in front of the officer if he did let me go and imagined ending-up in the blinking ditch twenty feet in front of the car.

When he returned to the car I smiled again as he gave me the "warning" for the broken taillight. I nodded and gave a guttural OK to continue my policy of not breathing on the officer. Finally he turned back to his car and I pulled out in front of him. Cops love to follow you for about a minute while you drive the speed limit and then pull off ahead of you approaching the speed that a Delorean uses to go back in time. He did this and when he sped into the distance I called Sarah back.

I gave her the scoop on the situation and she offered to come out to pick me up but instead I decided that I was fine driving but totally freaked out by the experience. So I held Sarah on the line as I was driving home, recounted the story, and let her know about the two hundred cops that seemed to be out on the empty roads leading all the way home on Route 2 including two motorcycle cops who kept stopping at lights next to me for three straight red lights. I was happy to catch the red lights for a change and one of the lights freed me from my motorcade of unrequested police escorts. I just dragged myself through memorial drive, storough drive, comm. ave., and Saint Paul Street, until a breathed a heavy sigh of relief upon arriving in the driveway of a private property at which point I yelled into the phone to Sarah that I was free. She was probably home rubbing her belly the whole time wondering why she was on the other end of the line of the late Hunter S. Thompson reincarnating himself in me for some fear and loathing on the way home from Concord on a Wednesday night.

She welcomed me home and let me know that I smelled like I had raided a liquor cabinet before we went to sleep. I didn't sleep well. I was thinking too much about how I had decided that we needed to raise some financing to keep the business on the road forwards and worried about all the changes that would mean.