The only thing I hate measuring more than my waist...

Success is a very difficult thing to evaluate. For example, I am sitting in the lobby of a very classy hotel in Puerto Rico. I have just spent two days and over $1,000 of my companies money in order to stand at a booth in a trade show and hand camisas to the local alarm dealers, then in turn, ask them for their business tarjetas. I have wandered among palm trees on hot nights, drank Coronas while enjoying the puertoriquenos especiales (beef stew, rice and sweet plantains last night-yow!), watched brief moments of the lives of the rich and attractive, and stared silently at the surf from my 9th floor corner suite. I earned a free round trip flight on the way down here (on a flight that I also did not pay for). I occasionally earn a bonus from selling a small cellular transceiver to people I barely relate to in an industry I have no interest in which utilizes technology I will probably never understand. Although I'm not on top by any contemporary standard, I certainly must consider that I've done well for myself. So, what's the deal? Is this success? I don't really know.
Here's what I think about when I'm lying in the impossibly soft sheets of a luxury hotel, or staring at a starscape over the tumbling waters of some ocean, or eating something called the 'special' which doesn't have a price and which doesn't need to because I'm not paying for it anyway. I think about writing in my blog. I think about whether or not the dishes in my sink need to be cleaned, and how I hope my wife will leave a big pile of them for me so that as soon as I get home I can work on them. I think about how I wish I had brought my guitar with me, but I never will because I'm nervous about the dynamics of flying with one. I think about how I keep trying to get more shifts at the restaurant I work at but I am running out of time and energy in my weeks. This makes me think about how I'm aging and still want to start up that sketch group comprised of the brilliant and hilarious friends I've made over the years that just aren't known yet. I suppose I think about dozens of random things, but in the end, it boils down to the fact that I think about how I'd rather be doing something else entirely with my life. It makes the ladder of success that I'm climbing seem very high and very dangerous. Not because it isn't firmly planted at the top, but because the higher I go, the more risk there is of me jumping the heck off. I could take a fall when I was a little younger, but they are getting harder to walk away from. One thing I don't think about, at least not yet, is seeing my face superimposed over over Willy Loman's in Death of a Salesman. I haven't allowed myself to believe that the situation is terminal yet. Perhaps this is the divine window, the hope of something more fulfilling, that hasn't closed yet.
The funny thing is, the elements aren't completely off. I actually enjoy hotels, air travel, seeing something new, eating something new, it's just that I see beneath the current set of circumstances not my Appian Way, but a slippery slope down to obscurity and unfulfillment. At least I'm writing in my blog and not shaking hands with another client. Maybe I'll garner a song from the whole experience. Death can feed life, if you want to be really dramatic about it. I'm reminded of the picture of the 1/2 swallowed frog choking the stork with Winston Churchill's quote beneath it: "Never, never, never, never give up". I'm also reminded of a line from an Elton John song: "You ain't seen nothing 'til you've been in a motel baby like the Holiday Inn".
Maybe in the end, give or take a few details, this isn't as far from success as it might seem.

Seriously, I thought I was selfish...

So, for the most part, I liked what I saw on the Tony Awards last night. Whoopie was entertaining, the young locals had their moment in the sun, the August: Osage County set reminded everyone out East that the Midwest does produce some mighty fine theatre, and...something else...what was it...?
Oh, yeah. Patti Lupone took a massive dump on stage in front of her family, her peers, the world. I wasn't around to hear her acceptance speech 28 years ago (well, I was around, but it would have been well after bed time), but if it had contained any of the self-important wallowing that last nights' tirade was sick with, I'm surprised anyone ever considered letting her up there again. Perhaps it took this long for all the old voters to die off or forget.
Listen [and this is just for Patti]--You had it all! You had everyone's respect, their awe, you've had a long, successful career, you've been a star of stage and television and screen, your show just cleaned up at the Tony's, you already have a Tony! Perhaps it might have been a little more magnanimous and, say, HUMAN of you to simply be grateful and maybe even congratulate the other hard working women in your category who don't already have Tony's, whose potential moment you soiled upon. I'm glad they stopped cutting to your family, for unless they have learned to completely block you out by now (and if it were me, I would have), they must have been horrified. If I were Whoopie, I probably would have said something. But, I'm sure she didn't get to host the Tony's by telling everybody what she thought of them.
Anyway, what price, fame? I believe Marilyn once said Hollywood would only give you a nickel for your soul. Well, Broadway can apparently save its money, because as Patti showed through her '28 Year Itch' last night, she doesn't even have one to sell.