Thursday May 31st, 2007 - Chicago, IL

The last night in the apartment on Winnemac Street. This is yet another page in my life story getting ready to turn and start another chapter. The last ones were not predictable so I have no reason to believe this one will be either. I am casting fate to the wind yet again.

I never intended on staying here at all much less five years. Or was it six? Seven? I have lost track at this point and it doesn’t do me any good to be exact about it. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is I need to LEAVE and I’m doing that so that’s what I am looking at.

Warwick and I were talking about it today as I was moving my last few boxes out in the hallway to be loaded into the car. I left Milwaukee for a radio job in Salt Lake City in ‘00. It was summer because I remember driving my ‘86 Cadillac through Nebraska with barely any air conditioning and I thought I was going to roast to death. I got fired right before the week of 9/11 in ‘01 so that’s how I can tell. I had just lost my job and then 9/11 hit. I was as low as low could get. I have really had to struggle to get back to where I am right now.

I stayed in Utah for a while after I got fired and tried to work the road but there isn’t any worse place to be based out of to be a standup comic in the continental United States than Salt Lake City, UT. There is NOTHING close to it and all my drives were hellacious.

Warwick invited me to stay here when I left Utah with my tail between my legs. I could not sell my house no matter how hard I tried and now I have a foreclosure on my record. I really tried all I could think of with the knowledge I had to get out of that house but it did not work out that way so I just left the keys, told the bank I was leaving and came here.

That was a really rough time in my life and it was only a few years ago. It seems now to be eons ago but it wasn’t. I was very down when I got here and Warwick did me a favor. I started reconnecting with comedy bookers and worked my way back into the mix but then the job at the Loop came up and I was right back into radio again. That was a big mistake in hindsight but back then I had to take it. It was a ten minute drive from here and I could still do comedy gigs in the area to make even more money. On paper, it was a sweet deal.

I started at the Loop in November of ‘03 and got fired December of ‘04. The time since then I’ve been trying to stay alive by working road gigs and teaching classes and nothing else has come along to make me move out of this place. It’s been easy to just stay here so that’s what I did. The rent was cheap enough and there was off street parking which is an absolute must for anyone living in a big city and there were a lot of great restaurants right here in walking distance. The neighborhood has continued to improve since I got here but now it’s just time to move on. I stayed a lot longer than I thought I would but now it’s not an issue. I’m out of here as of tomorrow. Who knows how long I’ll be up in Lake Villa?

I don’t even want to hazard a guess. I’ll go there and see how it works out. It’s about as different as I can get so I’ll either love it or hate it. I don’t have a lot of stuff anymore so I can move out of there a lot quicker if I don’t like it. Here I go again, rolling those dice.