I Can't Believe I Remembered

I actually remembered that my passport would expire this year. I've only used the darned thing once in 10 years and somehow, without even having to check the date, I remembered that August of 2006 would mark the expiration date and today I sent out the necessary crapola to renew the thing.

I only got the passport in the first place because at the time, I had an agent convinced she was going to book me overseas and she needed to know that I was ready to travel. Since I figured an extra form of I.D. never really hurts and there might be a day when I would actually travel out of the country, I went out and got the thing.

Funny story about this agent. I've worked for several agents and agencies throughout the years, but have never really had "an agent". Unless you're about to break through or have become something of a commodity on your own and need a little further help, you don't really have an exclusive agent for my type of work.

One day, out of the blue, a gal by the name of Simone Finner gave me a call from Hollywood and she wanted to be my agent. I don't know for certain where she found me or who she was, but she wanted to be my agent and she was going to make me some real money. All things I've heard before.

To be fair, Simone Finner was actually a pretty big deal in her day when it came to booking variety acts. On her roster was the legendary Señor Wences, whom she represented most of his career. This, however, was not "her day" and she was clearly at the end of her career if not a littledelusionall.

She was, however, fun to talk to and had many great stories so for all intents and purposes I told her she could be my agent for certain venues and bookings so long as I got to keep my regular locall work . She told me, "I don't deal in pennies, kid so keep your local work for yourself."

She tried unsuccessfully to get the Kennedy Center Honors to honor Wences and have me spin plates at the show (he was a juggler & plate spinner as well as a ventriloquist). Wences was still alive and performing at the time (he lived to be about 100) and that would have been cool.

She submitted to a resort in Lake Tahoe for a 3 to 6 month contract at $1,500.00 a week. That never came in.

"You wanna work in Japan for about 30K this Spring? I'll get out your stuff."

There were numerous phone calls and she actually did submit my promo to a lot of places, but she never did get me any work and I never did really think she would. She did, however, ask to borrow some money a few times and since I wasn't exactly working I had no money to lend. I joked, "I guess I need a better agent."

Regardless, she provided me with a lot of funny stories, sent me a rather frightening photo of herself and her dog (long gone, so don't ask to see the photo), and gave me some hopes that somebody would find my act worthy of being booked. She may not have ever gotten me any work, but she made me feel better about not getting any than I'd ever felt before.

Since then I've had MANY different agents call me up and ask if I could travel (meaning do I have a passport). None of them have ever managed to get me that high-dollar international gig, but just in case I do get work like that or just get to take a vacation I decided to renew.

I got to use my passport on my one trip to Jamaica. This was a belated honeymoon for me and April. We'd planned on going to Florida for a weekend and found out that all the Y2K flying panic made it actually cheaper to get a week in Jamaica (hotel and airfare) than to get three days in Florida. So we went to Jamaica and had a most wonderful time. I'm sure I'll tell you more about that some other day.

For now, let's all admire how young and FAT I looked 10 years ago. Geez-O-Pete! What the fuck was I eating back then? Must have been beach balls or something. Hard to believe I got so much action back then. I'm way better looking now. I'll show you my new photo when the passport arrives, assuming they issue me a new one.