Tuesday September 7th, 2010 - St. Thomas, Virgin Islands/Miami, FL/Chicago, IL Now it’s just ridiculous. I received a call from the ship office at 11 o’clock this morning telling me my luggage had been delivered by the airline and I needed to go pick it up right away. I’d told the airline I wanted to pick it up at the airport in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands as I flew out today to avoid any further chance of it staying lost. They brought it anyway. I scoured the bowels of the ship where the office said I’d find it, and sure enough, there it was. It was dirtier than when I packed it, and it looked like it had been beaten up pretty badly since I’d seen it last, but after the miserable week I’ve been through I didn’t mind at all. I was just glad to see it, like a long lost run away pet that returns home unexpectedly. Sign off time for us was 1pm today, so I hauled the bag back to my cabin to take a long hot shower, shave myself and put on some clean clothing to get ready for my flight home. When I opened the bag I noticed a plastic bottle of shampoo had burst and put a big stain on every one of my clean shirts and pants, creating one big gooey shampoo mess. Yuck. What else did I need to endure for this week? I did find one clean t-shirt and some socks and underwear and I felt like a civilized human for the first time in an entire week. I put a splash of the new cologne on that I just bought and headed down to disembark the ship to get to the airport on time. I had to get my passport back and take a shuttle to the airport. I shared the shuttle with the other comedian Phat Kat and a juggling team billed as The Village Idiots, who are very nice guys. We got to the gate only to discover we had a delay of almost two hours which would seriously jeopardize my connection home to Chicago. Not only is there nothing to do in the St. Thomas airport, it’s an open air situation and it started to pour in buckets so we all sat there with our education getting wet, knowing our flight home was delayed by two hours. None of us were happy about it, but that’s how the breaks go when a person travels for a living. All we could do was wait it out, so we did. As it turned out, the pilot made up some good time in the air, and we got to Chicago at the exact 45 minute window I was told it takes to make a connecting flight. Of course the apes on the plane wouldn’t move quickly, and people wouldn’t sit and let us who had the connecting flights go first, and it made me despise the masses of human filth even more. How about some courtesy? NO, too much to expect. I ran like O.J. Simpson through the Miami airport and of course the gate was as far as humanly possible from where we were. I was huffing and puffing and panting when I got there and was THE last person to board. Originally they were supposed to put me up in a hotel and give me meals, but all I really wanted was to get home, which I did. Then I went to pick up the luggage I’d just got back earlier today, only to discover it wasn’t there. They lost it AGAIN. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What a nightmare this whole week has been. Before I committed a felony, I walked away dejected and got in my own car as Jim McHugh picked me up. This is hell. I know in the big scheme of things this is all barely a flea fart, but in the moment this is a major catastrophe. I guess I have to look at it from the big picture, and treat it all as just an exercise in day to day living. I didn’t get diagnosed with cancer, nobody got killed, the main problem is a suitcase full of a few clothes that is temporarily lost. It’s not a big deal. This is a short time inconvenience and easily fixable. It wasn’t like I lost a leg or an eye in a car accident, and I didn’t get fired from a job when a wife and house full of kids were depending on me to bring home the bacon. I had an inconvenient week long gig on a ship. I’m going to get paid, and the shows weren’t all that bad this particular week. Monday’s late show was actually one of the best responses I received. Unfortunately, it was because I had to rip a table of drunken hecklers in the front row, but that’s always been a sure fire big time crowd pleaser. If there’s one thing I know how to do well, it’s vaporize hecklers. Actually, it felt good to unload on those people. They looked like they were not only the kind of people that had money, but they probably didn’t earn it. They were dressed nicely, but very disrespectful of the rest of the people around them. I tried to be nice and explain that they were disrupting the show, but they kept it up so I took no prisoners and let it rip. Normally, I’ll throw one or two lines out there and go back and forth for a while but this time I just kept it coming. They were irritating me personally and I could tell they weren’t endearing themselves to the rest of the audience either, who actually were there to laugh. It was the right place at the right time, and the rest of the crowd was in my corner. I also had some trouble from a loudmouth Southerner who was ordering drinks rudely and with a chip on his shoulder so I turned and started in on him too. He backed down immediately as the rest of the room was howling with laughter. At least I got to show who was boss. That’s not the kind of show I ever want to do, but I’ll defend myself if I have to. That’s a time when I had to, but it was more than that. It was a chance to vent a little and recoup a little of my dignity and self worth from having to piece my life together the whole week. The flight delay and lost luggage on the way home didn’t help any of that, but I’ll get it back eventually and life will go on. I don’t get paid until Friday of this week, but I’ll get it deposited in my account and the check won’t bounce like it did at Giggles in Brookfield. I have to learn to focus on what’s positive and let the rest roll off my back. It’s not easy to do on weeks like this though. One thing goes wrong after the next, and before long it’s a full fledged nightmare in progress with no end in sight. This was the most horrific week I’ve had in a long, long time and I can’t say I’m not thrilled it’s over, but I have to go on. One thing that made a huge difference was getting home and checking my email to find notes of encouragement from all kinds of people like Arnold Mukai and Spike Rizzo and Teme Ring and John O’Brien and several others who say they follow my exploits and are in my corner. I guess I forget others read these ramblings. I just do it to keep a discipline.
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