A Great Many "Could Have Beens"

My father told me the story of the time he owned a baseball signed by Robyn Roberts, a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies back in the fifties. According to him, he "should have" taken the ball with him to Las Vegas, where he moved from New Jersey, the final resting place of said baseball. My father lived in an apartment adjacent to my grandparent's bakery. He assumes that the ball was destroyed in a fire the bake shop suffered some many years ago. Even if it had survived, he could not retrieve it, nor ask his brother to send it to him, for his brother and my father have not been on speaking terms since the 1970's. My father often tells me the story of what a great arm he had. He could through a hand grenade a hundred yards according to his drill sergeant's estimation. He played baseball when he was a teenager, often striking out because he was too aggressive at the plate. However, my father could pitch. He knows just about everything about pitching. He tells me about how to grip a slider, how to release side-arm, the difference in velocities and movement between a split-finger and a four-seamer. My father's dream was to play for the Yankees, but he didn't even try out for the minors because of his duties to the family business, which sounds like he was "mobbed-up." I assure you his only interest was in the legitimate family business of baking. My father went to a vocational school and studied culinary arts because he was to take over the family business. Of course, his older brother took over the family business and my father and he had a falling out over some control issues. My father has always resented his older brother for bringing the business down with his choice of less-than-fine ingredients. The two men don't like each other and hardly acknowledge the other's existence.

My father never learned how to be the younger brother, or even how to just be cool. He is a tense and stubborn man. He maintains that he could have been a pro baseball player. He could have been a fabulous baker. He could have taken over the family business. He never stuck with any of these plans. He always had a reason to bail which ultimately lead him to the desert where he held the uninspiring position of roulette dealer for thirty years. Though, life for a dealer was somewhat glamorous in the 1970's and 1980's, it lost its allure in the 1990's. My father also lost his allure, and the position ground him down in to an embittered family man who could barely afford to buy clothes for his kids. He could have stopped at two kids and lived comfortably, but he chose to have four kids. I love my younger brothers. I am making an observation about the economic reasons to limit the number of members in one's household. I feel this is especially important when the sole income earner resents his kids for existing.

I am pleased to say I have followed my dreams. I have lead an amazing life which I continue to live with passion. I once was headed down a path of "could have beens," but I diverged from the straight and narrow long ago. I have been on a meandering paths of "come what may" without reproach and it has enriched my life tremendously. I have toured with the biggest band in the world. I have lived in Music Capital of the World. I have loved many women. I do not regret a moment. There have been hardships and struggle. There have been rewards and triumphs. I do have my share of "could have beens" but these musings are a path to regret, and I wouldn't change a thing that has happened to me or I have done.

There is still so much life to live. Life is long and if you delineate your life in to a number of days, you will see that there are good times and bad, but all in all, there is an opportunity to make mistakes, to make strides, to learn, to feel. I will never live vanilla again. I will live peppermint, strawberry, mango and lemon. I have a theory that when a man ceases to progress, his hair will fall out. May you never see me bald for it will mean I've slumped in to a sedentary life. I will prosper, advance, progress and persevere.

Thank you, oh, conscious reader. You bring truth to this ode.

Columbus Day

Columbus Day is not a legitimate holiday unless you work for the government or one of her contractors. Yes, the government is a she, kind an giving agent of democracy and infrastructure. She cares deeply about our future. I don't know where I am going with this. I just liked using the female pronoun. So, it is Columbus day and I am pleased to announce that I slept in an extra two hours, had my coffee, had my cigarettes, and am now typing away in multicolored underwear, black socks and a salmon t-shirt that hangs gauntly over my small frame. I have not shaved for days and do not intend to shower for a few more hours. Today is a lazy day. I feel as though my weekend starts today which is a cruel thought because it will abruptly end tomorrow.

Since it is a Holiday I thought I'd treat myself to a little leisure time at the Coffee Bean. I love the drinks there, especially the Ice-Blended Green Tea. Though today I went for the traditional medium dark roast. Drinking coffee and sitting on the patio adjacent to Maryland Parkway, I realized, is a uniquely Vegas experience. The lush landscaping of the of the University is visible from across the street and symbolizes man's plight to conform and beautify his environment, which is naturally a yellow dusty no-man's land. Where there were once tumbleweeds, coyotes and Jack Rabbits, there is now a six-lane highway, Einstein's Bagels and the city's center for cultural enhancement and enlightenment.

The University district is once again flourishing, brimming with youthful energy and a passion for good food, good music and good libations. The gentry here are a mix of labor class families, student's, artists and musicians. Though at night the seediness of the area becomes evident as inebriated vagrants stumble along the sidewalks and the intermittently present hum of a police helicopter circles overhead. By day it is a meeting place for conversationalists. I overheard two gentlemen this morning share golfing tips. I overheard a young woman talk incessant shit about her friends. And I heard to women discussing work and the inability to rise above their class. It flourished in the early nineties. Businesses such as Cafe Copioh, Cafe Roma, Benway Bop, and Tower records were a destination for the fourteen-and-older crowd. It was a bustling area which offered unique experiences in culture and retail. Business slowly decayed in the late nineties and in to the next millennium and franchises such as Starbucks and the Coffee Bean appeared and began to attract a more affluent crowd. Walk-in traffic for the other cafes ceased, as did traffic at the record stores. Internet business is to be thanked for that.

There a many hold-outs in near the University such as the Stakeout. A two-tiered neighborhood bad which attracts the hipsters, drunks and old maids who live near by. I ended up there one night and was surprised at how many familiar faces were there. I am not from the neighborhood, but I feel connected to it somehow. I plan to move there as soon as I get out from under this debt.

At any rate it was a lovely day. It was a eighty-five degrees and lightly breezy. It was a good day to be outdoors drinking coffee and enjoying a good book.

Austin Culture and Booze

When I lived in Austin I submitted this sample of my writing to Spite Magazine. It was my idea for a weekly column:

My first year in Austin has ended, and I feel that I know the city a little better than I did prior to my relocation. I had spent the previous three years dawdling in L.A. "Dawdle?" you ask. Yes, dawdle. I never felt as though I had ever accomplished anything in Los Angeles. Why would such a wayward sport, namely Frank Salvo, say that he got nothing done in L.A. when in fact he most certainly accomplished a great many things? Three things really: Improv, music and drinking. I will revisit these momentarily. You would think that Los Angeles would be the utopian centre of the non-conformist's world with it's street that go nowhere and inhabits who urinate on themselves. Aye, I am a non-conformist. Nay, it is not the place for a guy like me. Quite the contrary is true, polite reader. In a town that hosts the the highest concentration of personality disorders per capita, where a shameless exhibitionist could get lost in a crowd of Spidermans, hobbits, hookers and beggars, where a neurotic and charming comedian/scientist could blend in, that comedian/scientist stuck out like a soar thumb. For that man wanted to advance the art while so many others were trying to advance the industry. That man, ladies and gentlemen, was my good friend, Frank Salvo (me).

The city of Los Angeles is a logistical nightmare, exploration is hindered by the vast expanse of concrete we call urban sprawl, a swath of iron, concrete and glass in the tropical desert we call SoCal. The problem I had with L.A., from a lush's point of view, was not that there were not many good places to drink. Rather, there were not many good places to drink that were less than five miles apart. As an avid fan of drinking, I like my favorite draft houses to be only a few blocks apart. As an avid fan of improvisational comedy, I visited the Upright Citizens Brigade on Franklin or The Groundlings on Melrose on a biweekly basis. I love to laugh. Unfortunately, those theaters are isolated from the pub crawl, which, by my estimation, does not exist, except in the heart of Hollywood proper. I used to live near the intersection of Alexandria and Sunset, on the edge of Hollywood's periphery, on a block that was flanked on the North by Thai Town and on the South by Little Armenia. The little Armenians could have had a better housing situation. For example, our street was in the shadow of the Citibank tower and the Kaiser Permanante parking garage, and the house across from us had been condemned for a termite infestation. Alas, all this could have been forgiven if there had been one bar within walking distance (where I could order a beer in English).

I have a drinking budget. I usually try to keep my expenditures between $25 and $30. This gives me enough dinero for four to five imported or micro-brewed pints. I used some very basic math to arrive at this figure. A quality pint of beer should cost around $5. I tip $1 per drink. Hence, the most I should spend is $30. However, that amount fluctuates depending on whether or not I am enticed to take shots, or whether or not I have just received some good/bad news. Nonetheless, When drinking, it is best to hoof it or cab it, and cabbing it was nearly impossible in L.A. Getting a cab was challenge enough. I once remember drinking at Tom Bergin's, an Irish pub on Fairfax, and asking the bartender to call a cab so that we could make it to The Broadway Bar on Broadway and 8th. We realized after 40 minutes that the cab would never come. So, we went outside to hail a cab. We must have tried to wave down a dozen cars before we gave up. Ironically, there is another Irish pub on Fairfax called Molly Malone's and it's only 6 blocks from Tom Bergin's. We went there for lack of anything else within 5 miles. Had we made it to Broadway, the round-trip would have cost us $50. That's nearly double my drinking budget. How can one justify spending that much on transportation when one could put those greenbacks to better use? By better use I mean more beer.

This brings us to Austin, where I currently reside. I live in a reasonably comfortable apartment just miles from 6th Street's brazen collection of dive bars. The cab ride from my place usually costs $14 dollars with tip. The best strategy is to meet at a friend's place and split the cab. I have never had a problem getting a cab in Austin, and the cost of a cab can easily be budgeted into an evening of self-destructive behavior.

Austin is a celebration of eccentricity accented by Christmas lights and blues rock. The City of Austin is divided into halves by the Colorado river. This is a narrow, winding river that offers the city's inhabitants many recreational pleasures including boating, kayaking, fishing, etc. Upstream you will find both Lake Travis and Lake Austin. Lakes mean marinas. Marinas mean restaurants. Restaurants mean bars. You see where I'm heading with this. North of the river is downtown Austin, the location of 6th Street, West 6th Street, East 6th Street, 4th Street, 5th Street, and Red River. Each of these districts is easily navigated. Every time you head downtown you may choose your avenue and meander your way around until two a.m. when a friendly cab driver named Salazar takes you home and tries to show you a porno he made on his iPhone. South of the river is South Congress. South Congress is best known for its Saturday afternoon street scene. Airstream trailers serve everything from deep-fried avocados to green tea frozen yogurt. Classic car and motorcycle enthusiasts show up to sport their rides and ogle the machines brought by their neighbors. At night, the locals flock to Guero's, a mediocre Mexican restaurant with an extraordinary patio and tequila bar.

AC&B focuses on my nightly adventures. I encourage you, polite reader, to consider tracing my steps when you are in Austin. You may follow my ghost from The Key Bar around the corner to Dirty Bill's. You will say, there's the pizza stand where Frank was once slapped by a girl he had his eye on. None-the-less, AC&B is the survival guide for those who want to avoid boredom and for those who loathe their chaste and temperate live.

Clingy

I think I get too clingy. I think that's a side effect of my obsessive personalty. I tend to latch on to things. I tend to over-think everything. That's rumination. I find myself thinking of things I don't want to when I don't want to. I'm obsessed with improv. I sit at work and think about improv. I am thinking about improv while I crunch numbers at my desk. I am thinking about it in the car. I am thinking about it as I fall asleep.

I have not dreamed about improv yet, but last night I had this dream where this girl I liked asked me to her house for a party, and there were a bunch of people, and The Phantom Menace was on TV, and I was drunk, and I was making fun of the movie the whole time, and one guy pulled me aside and said, "I think you're pissing some people off, dude. These guys like Phantom Menace." Then the girl was embarrassed by me, and I decided to lay low. Then I decided to leave. Then I tried to find the girl to say goodbye, and she saw me and pretended not to see me and walked the other way. So, I didn't say "goodbye." Then I walked out the front without saying "goodbye" to anyone. I turned to look back and the girl could be seen through the front window waiving her arms in the air, dancing and having a blast while all of her friends cheered her on. I was alone in the driveway looking into a house of fun-loving people who enjoy the magic of Star Wars, dance and each other.

Great Idea (for making money)

What if we formed a group of people who said we'd manage everything for the community. We'd assess the needs of every man, woman and child and find ways to meet those needs: transportation, education, disaster relief, public safety, and whatever else comes up. We'd make a contract with the people, to allow the people to elect the decision makers. We will bill the people for our services, good, materials and sub-contract work. We will estimate the amount of money it will cost every year and give the people the option to have their wages garnished on a regular basis so that they will not have to pay the bill all at once. Every few years, we will allow the people to vote on who maintains their position. If one of us is not doing the job that the people expects of him/her, they may elect a replacement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7fBwc803CI

Every now and then an issue will come up that is so polarizing that half of the people will want action to be taken for it and the half will want action to be taken against it (here's where we get rich). You say you want to take action and I'll say I want to block the action. So, it sounds like nothing can get done since you will produce a plan and I will shut it down. We will let the people decide the issue by allowing them to elect one of us. We can try to gain followers. We will let our followers know that we can win an election if only we could get the word out about our opinions and how we plan to defend the people's trust. We will ask for charity. We will raise as much money as people are willing to give us.

In the end it will come down to what you say your beliefs are, what part of town you live in and who you know. It will also helps if you are a distinguished member of society: if your family owns a bank, or you are an attorney with a lot of connections, or you own a lot of land, or you are a decorated military officer.

Anyway, we can begin by pushing agendas that everyone can agree on: schools, roads, police, hospitals, firehouses, waste disposal, clean water, etc. Those are topics everyone can agree on, but if everyone agrees on something, how can we ever threaten the people with pushing an agenda that they absolutely detest. Let's polarize everything. Let's split the people on education, on the environment, on transportation, on energy, on medicine. Let's take something that everyone can agree on and muddle it so that no one can agree on it. Then, we can spin our wheels and never accomplish anything. Let's push these items right to the forefront. We'll put them on TV and we'll send out the message that each side is ruining everything. At the same time we'll send out mailers with postage-paid envelopes so that the people can effortlessly return the envelopes containing their support in the form of $50 or $100 or $1,000.

I will send out a message that looks like this: "What is your freedom worth to you? Surely, if you cared about your family and you wanted to guarantee a future for your grandchildren, then you would send me some money so that I will have the resources to fight our common foe. " You will send a similar message your constituents. We will get money to fight the threat of socialism or fascism, respectively.

All the while the community is losing its focus, and if only the people had given all that campaign money to a not-for-profit hospital we'd have health care fixed forever. Instead, you and I will get the money to argue with one another through advertisements on TV, on the radio.

The part I left out is where we don't spend all of the charitable contributions on our campaigns. We spend a lot of it on our press junkets, hotels, food, our entourage, assistants. We pocket what's left. We will make so much that we couldn't possibly spend it all.

And the best part is, as I already mentioned, all the money we rake in is charity. We will be millionaire politicians with book deals, investments, and trusts, not to mention a sizable salary, and top of all that, the common man will give us their charity.

Can you imagine that?