I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!

Greetings, gentle, and patient readers! Yes, 'tis true! Like taxes, a bad penny, or a whore's burning discharge, I have returned! I am back in Boston tonight, after flying (yes, flying--dear lord help me) out from Chicago this morning. The flight out was actually quite decent. No horrible weather, no insane old ladies foisting me out of my seat, no chance of having to see Dayton Ohio without getting paid for it. And now I sit in the same house from this past summer, typing about getting ready to start rehearsals on the same show i just got finished with two and a half weeks ago. Yep, that's right. I've been home roughly two and a half weeks. And now I'm not anymore. Hi diddle dee-dee, the actor's life for me. (I swear to god if I ever meet that fox I'm strangling him....)

I'm actually looking forward to the show again. The cast is (as far as I know) completely different, which is good news for both myself and any truck we may be driving. Our Production Manager, Jodi, is also going to be stage manager on this tour. I guess this is what one would call swinging the pendulum from one extreme to another, if one were inclined to call things as they see them. But I have a feeling this whole experience is going to be a lot more mellow, at least as far as I am concerned, since a) I can't imagine we'll end up with the kind of lousy attitudes we ended up with last tour and b) whatever personality conflicts I have with Jodi, she doesn't strike me as the type who tries to pal around with the actors offstage, so I won't have to deal with her for much of the tour. Hooray and Huzzah!

So Christmas and New Year's were very enjoyable. I spent Christmas Eve with Marta's family, where we observed 3 ancient Polish Christmas rituals--eating styrofoam, drinking Jagerbombs, and throwing Christmas cards into a laundry basket for money. Okay, okay, to be fair to my wife and her heritage, the styrofoam is actually something that translates to "angel bread". I believe it's called that because one you eat it you start praying to God that whatever you eat next tastes better. I'm not quite sure what it actually IS, but it looks, feels and (most importantly) tastes like styrofoam. Thankfully you eat it with honey. You also eat it while wandering around the room hugging people. Which, after partaking in the ancient Polish tradition of Jagerbombs, seems pretty natural. And once again, to be fair, the Jagerbombs were only partook in by myself and one of her brothers. And they weren't really Jagerbombs, just glasses filled with Jagermeister that were shown a picture of a can of Red Bull. That's what "myrrh" actually translates to. Now you know why nobody at Jesus' birth cared that they were in a stable. And as for the throwing the cards, every year, Marta's brother comes up with a new game for the family to play which results in the kids in the family winning varying amounts of money. This year was tossing greeting cards into a basket. Once before it was reaching your hand into a mason jar full of coins and seeing who could pull out the greatest monetary amount. I had dearly hoped the mason's jar was built along the lines of those monkey traps you hear tell of, where the empty paw fits, but the closed paw doesn't. Alas, no such luck for my evil and twisted amusement. Christmas day with my family was.....loud. And boisterous. And loud. And crowded, with all the siblings and the nieces and nephews and better halves and such there. And did I mention LOUD? That's a Pond family gathering for you. There was also a Nerf gun involved. And it wasn't being used by the nieces and nephews. Also, a lot of running around and yelling. (Again, NOT the nieces and nephews) I'm actually truly surprised that all the siblings are now paired up, either through marriage or sin, because when you get all of us together, we're not an easy family to take all at once. Respect the spouses and girlfriends of the Ponds, my gentle readers, for they are brave people who risk much.

New Year's was nice--we spent it with friends of Marta's. They do wine tastings for fun. Sadly, that means I don't remember much else. I made it to 2009, and that's all that matters.

Anyway, do keep checking back, my friends, for I shall once again be regaling you with tales of the road. (Hopefully this time here'll be less rage...and come to think of it, less rash.) Thanks for reading, because believe me--I don't want to do this alone!

Postscript

I know some of my gentle readers were wondering where my blog went in the last few days. I deleted all the posts due to some problems which are best discussed over drinks or on the phone. Suffice it to say, the existence of the blog caused some I was around consternation, and they decided to react with vitriol in an amount usually reserved for pedophiles and Republicans. To that end, i decided to remove the gas can from the ammo dump. But fear not. I shall return with this blog in Mid-January, when I return to Chamber to do their spring tour. Yes, I'm a whore. But the money they offered is lovely, and I need the work. So, I'll be gone from Mid-Jan to the end of May, at which time, I shall be returning to Chicago for good. So if anyone finds any leads on theatre or teaching wrk for the sumer, please let me know, as I will have to get employed quickly upon my return. For anyone who was interested in using me in a show this spring season, I apologize, and promise I'll make it up to you once I get back.

So keep an eye out for updates beginning in january. I'll send out an email letting you all know what's happening and reminding you of the url. Until then, I'll be available, so give me a call if I don't give you one first. I'd love to see as many people as possible before I return to Boston. Good thing I like chowdah......

The end of the line

So, gentle readers, I am now back in Chicago after a long and arduous journey back from the frozen Northeast so that I could spend Christmas here in the...frozen Midwest. What the hell? Why exactly could global warming not kick in for this particular stretch of time??? It started yesterday morning at 4, when I boarded the airport shuttle in Boston to get myself the hell out of Chamberworld and back to a place where, if things don't necessarily make sense, they are a lot less likely to result in Jerry Springer-like activities. I got to Logan Airport and got through checking my bag rather easily, and was faced with a long line at security. Not that there were many people there to fly this early in the morning, but the security checkpoint wasn't open. Yes, you read that correctly, security had not opened in Boston by 4:30 a.m. Why exactly suggest one show up two hour prior to flight and offer a 6 a.m. flight if you are not going to have the security checkpoint operating 90 minutes prior? Thankfully, they showed up and got everyone through, which then led to the realization, once we got to the gate that the flight was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats so that we could leave. For this, they were offering a free round-trip ticket anywhere AirTran flew and a confirmed seat on the next available flight. Luckily for all involved, a family of four decided a free trip was more important than getting to their destination earlier than 10 p.m. What confused me was the fact that according to their info board above the check-in desk kept telling us that upgrades were available on this flight. If that was true, how could it be overbooked? And if they WERE available, and it was only coach that was overbooked, then why offer a free ticket instead of a free upgrade, thus allowing everyone to get on the plane? Just another facet of the airline industry I neither understand or like.

The flight to Atlanta (yes, ATLANTA--apparently there is no way to get from Boston to Chicago without flying through Atlanta even though I flew TO Boston from Chicago without even getting within spitting distance of Atlanta) went easily. I slept most of the way in my comfortable aisle seat. The transfer at Atlanta also went smoothly, once I decided NOT to listen to the employee of AirTran and check the screens for where my flight would be rather than go where she told me. "But Andrew," you ask, "why? Wouldn't she know?" Perhaps. ANd chances are that if she gave me more than ten seconds to answer her query "Connecting flights?" as I disembarked (and shouldn't that be disbarked? Debarked?) instead of answering immediately the second I said, "Chicago," she would have sent me to the gate where my 11:05 flight was departing from instead of the gate where the 9:55 flight was leaving from. As it was, she didn't, and she didn't. So luckily, I checked, made it to the right gate, and went through the whole. "We need someone to screw over their travel plans right before Christmas because we somehow can't comprehend that we only have x number of seats on this plane so when we sell x number of tickets we should STOP SELLING" yet again. Only this time, thy had to up the ante to 2 round trip tickets as well as a confirmed seat on the 4:49 flight to Chicago. Since we took off, I can only assume they snagged someone.

I had settled comfortably into my aisle seat when a woman with an attitude and a nose that pointe straight to the celing came and told me I was in her aisle seat, using a tone which suggested that there was no way anyone could possibly contradict her as she was the type of person who would take a shank in prison before she sat anywhere that was NOT an aisle seat. I pointed out to her that it was my seat, and she brandished her boarding pass which had her seat assignment on it as if it were Kryptonite and I wore blue pajamas. The lettering system on AirTran starts near the window and goes outward so A is a window, C is an aisle. I was in row DEF, and her ticket had D (which is a what? Right--window) and mine had F (AISLE) However, since she showed no inclination to move, and there was a line of annoyed holiday fliers behind her, and since to be honest, I was willing to believe that the airline had screwed me over somehow (cuz that's what they do) and the fact that the stewardesses (sorry, flight assistance engineers or whatever the hell they insist on nowadays) were very busy doing anything else besides engineering flight assistance, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and gave up my seat to her and took the window. I figured what the hell, it's only an hour and a half flight, how bad could it be? 

Karma does not exist. If it did, much more horrible, demeaning and career-ending repercussions would have hit certain members of our cast at the end of tour, and I would not have gotten stuck in a window seat on an overcrowded, overheated plane while we circled Midway airport due to limited visibility because of snow that came into the area just about 30 minutes before we were supposed to land at an airport that despite the technological advancements of the planes themselves, and the training and ability of the pilots, is NOT equipped with any technology that would allow a plane to land with less than a mile visibility. (The planes themselves have auto landing functions and the pilots are trained to land them with visibility of as little as 600 feet. Stupid, STUPID old airport!) So as diverting routes to places such as Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and DAYTON OHIO (God help me!) were discussed, I sat in my no-leg-room seat and considered the relative merits of trying to put my head through the window. It was then decided that if the weather did not clear in the next ten minutes, we would fly to Milwaukee, refuel, and see if the weather cleared in enough time to make flying back to Chicago feasible. I was flipping through contingencies in my head for getting to my parents' house fro Milwaukee's airport and just staying there until Christmas when the pilot announced that the airport had given him the go ahead to try and land. His words--"We've got one shot at this, so I'm gonna take it." I actually took a surreptitious peek to see if there were cameras and we were, in fact, being filmed for some bad reality show. We started the descent and I just kept my eyes glued to the vast whiteness waiting for Chicago to appear beneath us. Thank goodness it did, and by the time the wheels touched down, everyone on that plane, many of which had barely gotten on after their flights to other places such as Milwaukee had been cancelled DAYS ago, had a little more Christmas spirit. Talk about the clouds parting. It was a lovely moment, with everyone cheering and clapping (I really DID look for those cameras) and for just that moment, as we left the plane, everyone had a smile on their face and I think felt a little closer to the person next to them.

But next time I'm driving.