Tickets

Wednesday night

I was in a parking garage with actor Tim Daly, although in this case he wasn't Tim Daly himself -- he was the character he played on "The Sopranos," a drug-addled screenwriter named J.T. Dolan. Suddenly we were approached by someone who wanted to sell some hard-to-get Springsteen concert tickets. A bidding war erupted between Dolan and some other very tough-looking characters who had been lurking about nearby. The other guys offered guns for the tickets; Dolan proffered a $100 bill plus two $100 gold coins. The seller thought about it and said he'd have to go with the cash. Apparently Dolan had outbid these bad guys in the past, so it was a pretty tense scene. I got into Dolan's car and said nothing. The seller said, "OK, they're yours, but you still owe me that bottle of wine from before." He got in the car with Dolan and me and we drove off to look for a wine store so Dolan could make good on the debt. On the way, Dolan talked to the ticket seller about the movie business, particularly the B- or C-level pictures with which he was associated.

The next thing I knew, I was on the set of one of the bad films mentioned above. I was standing in the background, watching a writer-director-actress act out one of her scenes. She was crawling on her hands and knees, calling out her lines in an exaggerated voice, and over-acting horribly. Apparently she was doing it on purpose. When her scene was finished, the crew clapped. The "actress" acknowleged the applause and said, "My secret? It's gotta be the full-size underpants." I guess she was referring to part of her costume. Maybe she was wearing an adult-size "onesie" or something. It was strange, but funny.

*****

My wife and I are big fans of "The Sopranos." We've watched the entire series this year, save for the last few episodes, which haven't yet come out on DVD. In fact, we just started over again with the first season.

I'm also a big fan of Springsteen's work in the first 15 years of his career (1973 - 1988) and have enjoyed a smattering of his songs since then. I caught every tour he played in the D.C. area from 1980 through the mid-1990s. He frequently shows up in my dreams.

I was a coin collector when I was a kid, and though I never had a gold coin, I love those designs from the early 1900s. If I had one of them, I wouldn't trade it for a concert ticket, no matter who was coming to town.

Incidentally, the new gold-colored "presidential dollars" have been out for a while, but I haven't seen any of them yet. At one point I went to the bank and asked for some, and they didn't even have them. How's that for an unpopular coin?