The best-kept secrets are left in bars

Originally posted by Tribune Media Services
COPYRIGHT © 2011 GREG SCHWEM DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC


I'm currently writing a one-man show. I haven't finished it, but I know it's going to be awesome. Critics will rave, theaters will sell out and tickets will go for three times face value on StubHub.

How do I know all of this? Because I'm going to leave the unfinished script in a bar. Hey, if it worked for Apple, it should work for me.

Much has been made recently of an incident involving an Apple employee, an unreleased Apple product and a San Francisco drinking establishment. According to technology website CNET, the employee left some cool Apple gadget (and aren't they ALL cool?) on the bar, where somebody else scooped it up, sold it and, in the process, let Apple's secrets out of the bag. Police are reportedly involved even though nobody is saying exactly what is being sought.

Speculation is that the gadget in question is the iPhone 5, scheduled to be released just as soon as everybody waiting in line for an iPhone 4 has purchased one. (At a Chicago Apple store, the line ended somewhere around Peoria).

If this incident of absent-mindedness sounds familiar, it is. Last year, another Apple employee left the iPhone 4 prototype in a Redwood City, Calif., bar. That device ended up at the offices of Gizmodo, another technology website, which reviewed it before it hit the market.

Once the iPhone 4 actually DID hit the market, it promptly became the best selling single mobile device since somebody started keeping records of mobile device sales. Which begs the question: Did the second Apple employee conveniently forget his device on purpose in hopes of duplicating the iPhone 4's success?

I'd bet my house that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs encouraged this sort of thing. Before stepping down last month, he probably emailed his workers with helpful advice nuggets as, "think out of the box," "look at an old product in a new way" and "never be afraid to leave a tip and an unreleased product on the bar at the same time." Apple employees, who would no doubt swallow an entire hard drive if Jobs suggested it, seem to be complying.

Perhaps this is why the support section in an Apple store is called the Genius Bar. It also makes you wonder if some of the biggest flops in history would have met different fates if they had been left in between the pretzels and the cocktail napkins. For example:

A half-eaten McDonald's Arch Deluxe

A can of New Coke

The "Sex and the City 2" draft

Terrell Owens' career

I refuse to let my script end up in some theatrical trash heap. I just need to find the right bar and the right person to discover it. I live in Chicago, a city that certainly has no shortage of watering holes. Website Yelp found 68 bars within a four-block radius of Wrigley Field alone. I've frequented several and, while the bars vary in personality, all seem to contain at least one autographed photo of a Chicago Cubs player who stopped in at some point. (Based on the Cubs' record, these visits most likely occurred before the game.)

My bar will contain an abundance of foreign brews. Who knows? Maybe a deep-pocketed European investor will find the script. It will also have one of those trivia machines perched in the corner. Anybody who feels the need to exercise his mind while drinking could do wonders with my show.

If you frequent karaoke bars, do not look for it. I refuse to let it fall into the hands of anybody who might read it and think that Act Two would improve if a bunch of college-age women started singing Summer Nights from Grease.

Finally, the bar will allow dogs. Anybody who brings a dog into a bar is cool. And the dogs I've met in bars are supercool.

So if you are in Wrigleyville one evening and happen to see a stack of pages containing a mild chicken wing stain sitting unattended, do not toss them out. Make copies and send them to every theatrical agent you know. Google "theatrical agents" if you must.

See you at the Tonys.