Vampire Selfies

Dateline: 2010. So I met Victoria via some dating app & we hit it off. First date was on 'eat street' on Nicollet Ave in Mpls, aka restaurant row. Very friendly, smiley, easy to chat with. Not just a music fan but she worked in the biz. At that time she worked at mid-size concerts backstage as part of the team cooking for the touring band & crew. She would show me the 'riders' she was working on, i.e., doing the shopping a priori. Riders are what a band's management provides to the promotor, basically their list of demands for various treats & sundries. The ones I saw made me say 'sweet jebus that's a lot of booze for one night.' But hey: fringe benefit. She gave me backstage passes for several shows, meaning I could go find an empty seat and take in the gig. I saw The Chieftains, Mark Knopfler, a Jimi Hendrix tribute with several guitarists. I would meet her at a precise time at the unmarked stage door and she would let me in and give me a p...

Being flown to bizarro job interviews

Dateline: aughts & teens. The market research industry is a pseudo-science which I'll tackle separately here someday in thrilling detail. MR is filled with washouts from other legit industries who looked around & realized they could make a decent living simply being punctual & polite. There are also legit smart folks in MR, I met a handful. They & I were smart enough to slurp up the gravy train. Which I did, for 20 years. Let's focus. Ann Arbor, MI. Flown there twice, 5 years apart. Multiple MR sales ppl I know have interviewed here or been asked to. Must have hard time hiring or keeping them. We share similar stories of our visits. This unique shop is home of the spectacularly annoying popup surveys all over the webs. They claim all sorts of perks with their surveys: customer loyalty, competitor threats, yadda yadda. My 1st visit went well enough to talk about working there, the pay package (it sucked) etc. But here's the...

My first and last sea cruise.

Approaching Vancouver Dateline: 2018. One of the besties I grew up with, practically at his house, is a middle school science teacher. Summers off. He goes on sea cruises during the summer, he digs them. The thought of them made me recoil, which I did each winter when he invited me to join him, sharing a cabin, splitting the costs. Never thought of them otherwise, they seemed baffling. Except. He has a serious on again / off again illness. Currently in remission. Ergo, when he asked me again the winter of 2017, I reconsidered. He said there are two primary options: Caribbean or Alaskan. Departs Miami or Alaska. Big difference. I loathe humid heat ergo I started thinking about Alaska option. Never been to Alaska. Have you? Started to seem more appealing. Heads were nodded, tickets were purchased, the $200 wifi access pass was purchased, and so in June 2018 we flew separately to Anchorage. Me from west, he from midwest and met up at baggage claim. I recall he had been i...

Francis McGillicuddy

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