My Winter of Discontent - Life With Winslow

Or was that Winthrop? I can never remember that. This post is a tribute to my good friend and my oldest friend in Albany...Warren. Warren and I met in 1992. We met through a friend's sister who was dating Warren at the time. We hit it off right away because we both loved the Cowboys and loved baseball even more. He was a Mets fan and I loved the Yanks. Anyway, Warren and I even tried to start a band. He was a bass player and I was trying to put together an Elvis Tribute band. That never panned out but we did get together often to go to sunday brunches and parties at our mutual friends house. And also to watch the Cowboys win a few Superbowls. Those were fun times let me tell you. Around 1996, Warren decided that he needed a change and he packed up and went to San Francisco to live with his brother. That lasted a few weeks and then he headed back to Albany. His girlfriend suggested (strongly I suspect) that he needed a place other then hers to stay, so she called me and asked if I needed a roommate. At the time, I was unemployed so I said, what the hell...why not. So Warren moved in with me and we developed our a close relationship. At first things were great. I was collecting unemployment and we would stay up and watch sports and play board games and eat. But eventually the unemployment ran out and Warren was having a tough time finding a decent job. I ended up taking a shitty traveling salesman job and he started working at a deli at the mall. Well it was bad. The holidays sucked and in January our power was cut off and we were getting eviction notices from our crazy and I mean crazy Greek landlady who lived up stairs. The two of us even went down to Albany County Social Services to see if we could get the welfare...haha. But they said we made too much. Huh? I remember saying to Warren..."something is going to break for us" and he said..."its already broke." So we sold my PA and his bass amp and that gave us half the rent we needed. Well we had to move out of the apartment and find a new one, which we did and when we were moving our stuff, we dropped off one load and went inside to get our more stuff and came out to find that my car was gone...repossessed!. Shit. Well needless to say, I felt totally beaten at that point and didnt have any prospects. But I went to the lady who owned the car dealership and she gave me the car back and told me she had a job for me if I wanted it. I took it. It sucked. But it paid the bills. So Warren and I eventually moved to a better place and we both had jobs and things got alot better. In the meanwhile, we got the opportunity to work on new ventures. Warren was a writer and he wrote a short play. His play was selected to be a part of a new play festival at Albany Civic Theater. He asked me to audition for this and I reluctantly did. I won a part and the rest is theater history. More on that in other posts. I don't know why I wanted to write about him today, but I guess its because he and I went through alot and we have remained friends through tough times. I miss him. Favorite things I remember about our friendship: baseball, cowboys, sunday brunches, watching All in the Family, and performing a play he wrote. I loved performing his stuff. My greatest moments in theater have everything to do with the stuff he wrote. He brought the best out of me as an actor. Damn I miss that. When I get back, Warren, make sure you have a good part for me buddy. Anyway...GO YANKS. Ha ha. May the great Iraqi lizard bless your Mets! Full lizard power to them (unless they play the Yanks). Later dudes.