Category: Casual Friday (page 15 of 25)

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

It is my contention that a man has the right to drop an F-bomb in the privacy of his own Bluetooth as long as it is not: sexually suggestive or within 50 yards of an elementary school; in a restaurant within earshot of my wife before coffee and dessert have been served; or, if the suicide F-bomber himself is the Governor of an actual constitutional (not emotional) state and his cell phone has a federal wiretap warrant included in his original Friends and Family package. These are just a few of my personal demilitarized zones, mind you, and shouldn’t be assigned any politically incorrect weight other than already simply stated. No more, and certainly no less, please.

The emails and phone calls began flooding in shortly after the following career shattering announcement hit the national news wires early Tuesday morning: Ill Governor Blago Peddles Senate Seat For Mucho Dinero.  The first to ring me up was fellow midwest blogging Ambassador Chris Lengquist from BBQ Capital in KC who cut straight to the chase and bluntly asked, “Mr. Petro, are you now, or have you ever been, ‘Candidate Number Five’?”

“(Bleep) no,” I replied into my headset as I shredded my 2005, 6 and 7 tax returns. “And if I (bleeping) was, I wouldn’t admit it over a (bleeping) cell phone,” swallowing my SIM card sideways.

“Then you didn’t try to broker President-elect Obama’s vacant Illinois Senate seat to the highest bidder?”

“(Bleep) no,” said I, once again, while simultaneously jiggling loose a paper jam with my toe, slipping the Rolex off my wrist and into a carved-out hardback copy of Dickens’s Great Expectations, and formatting the hard drive of my laptop.  “I can’t even broker a furnished, junior one-bedroom in this heinous market much less a vacant seat of a junior Senator I’ve only met a handful of times…if at all….or ever…allegedly. Besides, downstate Illinois is not in my farming area. I’m a Chicago boy, for crissakes, not (bleeping) Deep Throat,” choking (and doth protesting too much, I suppose).

“So then, you are not trying to ‘parachute’ yourself into the vacant golden chair coveted by Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

There’s probably no pressing need to own up to this right now but I’m isolating in front of my laptop at 3 AM and anything but Facebook and internet Texas Hold ’em seems like a heart healthy idea. So I peck away into my imagination. There’s a dull pang of ungratefulness sticking in my side this holiday season. Wait… better make that a thorn. No, a twinge. A twinge of Fate. (Or should that be a twist?) A twist of Fate. No, that’s Dylan. Man, all the really good sayings are already taken. Anyway, here’s what I’m copping to; my short, snapped-off end of the turkey wishbone:

As a kid, I never daydreamed about growing up to be {whisper}… a Realtor. There, I said it—almost out loud. Scurrying about my parents’ postage stamp backyard from bush to tree and back again dressed in full army combat uniform, cowboy boots, football helmet, with Secret Agent Man attache case tucked safely away under the old National Geographics (and pictures of half-naked female Aborigines) in the work shed, I was always a little whimsical about which distant star I might hook my future prospects on to. I didn’t start daydreaming about growing up to be a Realtor until I’d already been in the Insurance business for 15 years and one dark day discovered myself scurrying about my own postage stamp backyard as a salesman with almost nothing tucked away except some nickel and dime house equity and no naked ladies of any kind to be found. And an insurance salesman, no less. A life insurance salesman…(I think I’ll stop there.)

I wanted a career where I could ditch the suit and wear boots everyday if I cared to. And shave my already mostly bald head. And stay at home whenever I pleased. And never have to say “God forbid” unless I really meant it. It pretty much boiled down to those few requirements plus, of course, the potential to make some decent dough and drive a Mercedes. And when choosing a path to comfortable living based on such thin orders, symptoms like Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I find it worth mentioning that the first Facebook event invitation I accepted and actually attended was a funeral. I responded ‘Will Attend’ via my iPhone before realizing that the fellow who had sadly passed on was not the person I originally thought he was. Same first name, similar last name, entirely different demons come to find out. All the same, I kept my virtual promise and wore my black suit to the office on Thursday. All day long people kept asking me, “Where are you going?….to a funeral?”

It was a wake, actually. And not the kind of wake that existed before Web 2.0. This wake included an eclectic playlist from the dead man’s iPod, a digital mixed media presentation on a flat screen of his life up until the previous Monday, and no casket anywhere in site. The funeral home was a funeral home though and there was no mistaking it, we were all gathered in a parlor. Parlor D to be exact.

It turned out that I did happen to know this fellow in passing but was, more specifically, a friend of a friend of his on Facebook–you know, that six degrees of separation social network that everyone and his uncle’s friend (including Uncle Geno) belongs to these days. I looked around Parlor D and semi-recognized several of the less stoic faces. Although I’ve exchanged some Wall-to-Wall comments with a few of them in recent weeks no words were spoken on this eve. Perhaps because none of us really look like the best face we chose to make public and just didn’t recognize each other. I, for one, am no where near as cool in real life as my profile picture implies—especially in a funeral parlor, D or otherwise.

I spotted a couple mourners secretly texting and reading emails beneath scarves and winter coats, their backs and bodies turned deliberately askew, diffusing any direct sight lines from the landlined elders–those old school survivors that always roam the rooms at such gatherings. Several others were braving the lake effect Chicago chill, conducting the most pressing voice-to-voice Read more