The Sweat Descends

On Saturday night I had a beer in a church. The Epiphany Episcopal Church to be precise, on the outskirts of Chicago's west loop. A fantastic venue for a concert and my favorite band in the world, Les Savy Fav, did not disappoint. Oddly enough, the beer tasted just like regular beer despite being sanctified, at least, locationally.

Walking inside I was greeted by the ticket folk, then allowed to enter the nave where tables were set up in the back corners hawking beer and water and hard liquor. The pews were removed and jammed against the walls where people were tossing their coats, hats and winter gear. About 400 people turned up, which is of course an estimate, and I was surprised by the number of women in the audience. probably close to 40/60, which is simply unheard of at these kind of shows. So either Chicago women are turned on by a front-man with a great big beard and belly (I can't say I blame them, Tim is quite charming), or just love great music.

The bands (LSF was accompanied by Jai Alai Savant) performed upon the raised chancel which was backed by a large floral mural, vaguely edenic, with a bunch of saints and our Lord and savior. There was barely any dressing of the stage although I'm not sure if it was prohibited or even necessary in the first place with such are great background. A bunch of lights were all that was needed to illuminate the murals, band, and audience in turn with your typical supersaturated concert reds and greens. Jai Alai Savant proved to be skilled and cheerful openers, and did the trick of warming everyone up. By the time they finished up I was in a knot of folks located just right of center, four or five people deep from the band.

Tim Harrington came out dressed as a priest, an outfit that didn't last long, which he used to deliver a somewhat boring if not blasphemous prayer akin to 'rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub.' And when they began to play the crowd went apeshit, at least where I was standing. You know everything is well and good when you leap up and gravity doesn't restore you back to earth because everyone else is jumping and pressed up tight together. Tim did his audience participation thing, jumping down into the crowd and wandering about, sometimes mucking around quite deep, which can be disorienting for folks, since it seems like many people focus soley on the singer, and you have much of the audience in the front with their backs to the band while other concert-goers, by far the minority, continue to cheer on the rest of the musicians.

I've always thought of Tim as kind of an overgrown toddler, who is fascinated by everything and gets easily distracted from the music by alternately being a showman and audience member himself. At times it seems to exasperate the rest of the band, I noticed the bassist, Syd giving knowing glances to the tech guys, as if to say "It's just not worth reigning him back, just let him go." At one point Syd had to remind Tim what song was next, but at least he received a delighted, "I love that song!' in response. But in general Syd and the rest of the guys seem content to be, well, not forgotten, they're too skilled for that.

As always there was a lot of physicality in Tim's showing off. the tight clothes, the wigs, the near nudity, at one point he wore a green spandex number with leopard fringe that Harrington claimed was taken from a rapper named 'middle weezy' or 'medium-sized jeezy' or something like that. And his crowning moment came in the audience where he knelt down in front of the guy next to me, unzipped his fly, and tucked the mic in the hole and began to sing his lyrics as if giving head. As many as a dozen or so cell-phone cameras were snapping pictures and recording the moment for posterity.

My only lament was that I am old and very quickly became pretty beaten up and broken down, just halfway threw the set or so. Before that I was nearly hysterical, as were those around me. Tim even gave us a shout saying, "You guys ought to spread out through the rest of the crowd." Sadly I couldn't keep up. I was dehydrated before things even began, and when I started seeing stars I thought it best to get some air. I watched the remainder of the show from the sidelines, with people gently bobbing their heads and singing along.

Yet i must have been doing something right. It's days later and I'm still sore.

Cold out There, How Could is it?

It's so cold that after a half block of walking my jeans feel as if they are made of cold rolled aluminum, the kind they make heating and air-conditioning ducts out of.

It's so cold that after a full block of walking, it feels as if the Icy Hand of Death itself has reached inside and is wringing my bladder.

It's so cold I went through 3 faces on my walk from the Jeep to the building I work in. My own face, which crumbled away only to be replaced by the Efron face (I wanted to be pretty, however I quickly learned that this was not effective against the cold), which failed and was replaced by the Jake Gyllenhaal face, which I thought was masculine enough, yet it too failed. Now i have the Eastwood Grimace, which has actually made the cold tuck its tail between its legs and run away like a little girl... for the time being.

It's so cold this makes my winters in Buffalo feel like winters in Kuala Lumpur.

It's so cold I had to frighten a family of abominable snow people from squatting in the Jeep overnight. They don't like fire, or coke zero, apparently.

It's so cold they found Jake Frost dead of hypothermia on the near west side.

It's so cold pigeons will actually crystallize if they fly 3 or 4 stories up in the air, plummeting to earth where they shatter like that robot guy in Terminator 2. All of the pigeon peices will one day pool back together in the sewers of Northern Gary where a 300 foot tall Pigeon King will wreak havoc on the populace, eating babies and pecking away the eyes of all the monuments and statues.

It's so cold that hot no longer exists, mild is in critical condition, warm is being given its last rites, and chilly moved to Florida to spend its remaining days voting republican and messing up the electoral college in peace and quiet away from its annoying grandkids.

It's so cold that everybody died. true story.

Lost in the Sound

I'm in the middle of the greatest music Summer of my life. No, it's not because of Miley Cyrus or that song about girls kissing girls that has Moms and politicians frothing with fake outrage across the country (because impressionable young girls should avoid the pitfalls of fake lesbianism, no doubt). It also has nothing to do with any actual new music coming out, or albums I've been waiting for years to finally arrive (although the recent Wolf Parade album does fall in that category). No, it's because of Chicago.

Chicago brings the music. Earlier this year I saw Gogol Bordello for the Nth time. Then the aforementioned Wolf Parade at the surprisingly stodgy House of Blues. Now it's festival season as Pitchfork and Lolla come to my city to entertain me. That's right, its a personal favor. Others that will benefit from this, you're welcome. Having grown up in Buffalo and schooled myself in Syracuse, having all kinds of crazy big artists knocking on my door was something of a rarity. Now, I have to beat them away with a stick. yes I'm talking about you, Vampire Weekend.

In little under 2 weeks time I get to see my two favoritest bands in all of creation. One is largely responsible for recalibrating my musical taste from exactly nothing (I didn't really listen to music before going to college) to something, the other broke my head and showed me what music could be if you filled it with equal parts fun, art, and noise. I'm talking about radiohead and les savy fav respectively.

The latter is performing this weekend on the final day of Pitchfork and they are bringing all kinds of great music along with them. the Hold Steady, Spoon, the Dodos, '!!!,' are just a few. Of course being Pitchfork I don't know most of the bands performing, but that just means more new stuff to see and experience. Also possible sun poisoning. But you take the good with the bad. And seeing as Les Savy Fav put on the greatest concert of my life (back when Pitchfork Fest was the Intonation fest 3 years back) I am a little bit excited.

Then on the first day of August i get to see Radiohead in Grant Park. With like a billion other people, but who cares. I saw them in northern Ontario in the middle of nowhere 5 years ago and it was wonderful. there wasn't a town for miles let alone a city, and as the show crept towards its conclusion a gigantic reddish orange harvest moon rose up in the sky as a back-drop to the stage as if scripted. This time there will likely be less moon and more frat guy, but the band will have twice as many songs to chose from, so there's that.

So yes, lots of standing around in the sun with strangers, listening to music, and having fun. And seeing as this might be the last full Summer spent in Chicago, it couldn't have come at a better time.

Because it's the Law (and sometimes even when it isn't)

On Sunday morning, freshly yoga'd and slept-in respectively, Croftie and I were making our way to the Jeepie Jeepie when we passed by one of our unsettlingly friendly neighbors who had some bad news.

"Looks like you got a ticket," he says, among many other things, he's unsettlingly friendly after all. The saving grace, he has a cute dog named Hemingway who is sort of in love with our cat Pickle. Their torrid 'through the window-pane' love affair should be categorized among the most passionate of all time. But I digress.

upon hearing those unfortunate words, I'm like 'No." Croftie gets quite rattled, but to her credit she does not let it show. We move along to the Jeep and sure enough, there's the ticket. Croftie inspects the note and finds that it is for an "Out of Date License Plate Registration Sticker." Sure enough, down below is a JUN 08 sticker on the plate.

But lo! a few months back Croftie got a letter in the mail with a new registration sticker. One designed for the front windshield instead of the plate because too many folks were going around stealing them. CT, it appears, is one of few states to do this, seeing as every other out of state plate in our neighborhood, and there are surprisingly a great many, had them. But Mr/Mrs. Chicago Beat Cop was not aware of this, and issued us a ticket, because our possible violation is something that really must be curbed and spent time on, not, you know, actual crimes or anything.

Does it make me sleep a little bit better at night knowing our neighborhood's parking transgressions are being vigilantly curbed? No, no it does not.

Brunch, Bro-style.

Sunday, here in the City of Wind (and snow and tulips and bears) there was a humongous bicycle event along the lake. Bike the Drive it is called, after the mode of travel and the means, Lake Shore Drive (which is abbreviated LSD with the occasional hilarious consequences [at least to me] as in, "oh, yeah, I'll be there in a few, I'm on LSD"). Anyhow, the Croftster and myself often brunch it up at a certain place which happens to be located near the finishing point of Bike the Drive. Thus our already jam-packed weekend eatery was even more packed with jam, er, people. some of them sweaty and dusty with post-bike related hunger.

But the single most revolutionary aspect of this particular dining experience were the number of men eating brunch together. sometimes, just two of them in a little side table, tiny little coffee cups in hand. eating like there was nothing wrong with two dudes going out for omelets on a Sunday morning. it was Brunch, Bro-style.

I'm Sorry Sir; You Do Not Exist

Concisely put, I'm getting tired of this. I'm tired of being told I don't exist. I assure you, mister suit-selling guy, I do exist, in fact I am standing right here.

or at least I was. Over the weekend the Croftie and I decided to get my wedding suit on. A friend of hers got a great deal from some swank place that has a store downtown as well as in the north and clybourn area. We went the clybourn route, because it was reasonably nice out and we could walk there.

Upon entering above mentioned merchant place we were greeted by a guy I'm going to call Regis. Regis was a nice enough young man who was wearing a suit that appeared to be made of a carpet in some sort of 60's non-shag mode. He also had a sizable pimple on the bridge of his nose that looked like it would rupture if he so much as lightly sneezed. But Croftie and I were flying blind. All I had in my head was a color, the only color I invest in, blue, possibly navy, perhaps closer to midnight. Regis dutifully scrounged us some offerings and i was shocked by both their non-affordability and non-fitability. In these suits I would not only be broke, but broke-ass busted.

So Regis's friend, whose name i never got but whose physicality bordered on Andre the Giant-esque, was called over with his measuring tape. Andre the Giant Tailor measured me, all the while looking respectable if not precisely good in a preposterously large suit. Andre the Giant Tailor barks out some numbers and tells me;

37 Long. you don't exist.

But... I DO exist! I swear. Its just i don't have the bulk of the modern day man. what with his HGH and his Doritos and his general American bulkiness. Its more an issue of proportion. Most 6'+ guys have broader shoulders than i do. As even my pediatrician told me when i was 14, "You're a tall drink of water.' Tall maybe, but i suppose the 'drink of water' part means I'm a slender nancy boy.

Andre the Giant Tailor then suggested I go get a suit made custom. Or else I'd never be really happy. Regis told me to 'pump some iron.' I just went somewhere else and got something much nicer than anything they had for significantly less.

Don't Look Now

Last evening Croftie took me out to the theater. It was opening night for Conor McPherson's Shining City at the Goodman and despite my lingering cold I was excited to go. I knew nothing about the play save for what little I'd gleaned from Croftie's magazine, that it was a ghost story of sorts, but without actual ghosts. Sort of. But not really. Or something like that. I don't know what I was expecting but I was definitely surprised, and in a good way.

Have you ever seen something patently ridiculous in a piece of artwork, a line in a poem say, or a single scene from a film and thought "wow, that really doesn't belong here"? It is impossible to see the last few seconds of Shining City and not feel the same way, however, sometimes these ridiculous 'extras' or indulgences just feel... right on. Let me try and explain this... these moments or segments have both the feel of something superfluous and yet somehow make sense and almost through their sheer ridiculous nature, tie themselves back into the whole. I'm probably not explaining that very well at all, but if you were to see the 'surprise ending' as the Goodman has advertised it, you'd know exactly what I'm saying. You might disagree with me about the piece fitting back in to the whole part of my equation, but thats what opinions are for.

There are some real powerful scenes in Shining City, most of them culled from an older married man's devastated psyche after he flirts with a younger woman and then suddenly loses his wife in a tragic accident. This man (played by John Judd) goes to see a psychiatrist who we learn has his fair share of issues as well, but the shrink helps the old dude to talk his way through the painful recent events of his life. Rather than let these moments inform his own life, the psychiatrist apparently learns nothing at all, tries to bury certain undesirable feelings and experiences of his own life and ends up trading places with his patient towards the end.

The ending turns out to be not quite a surprise, but it is good for a scare. There is more than a little of the film Don't Look Now and that's all I will give away. I jumped quite a bit and there were a few screams from the audience as well. I was nowhere close to scream out loud, not near the Wait Until Dark level of fright, but the hackles on my neck rose and I got me some shivers and that was fun enough. Croftie is not a big fan of the ending, but then she has a closeness to the play that I lack, she's been working in its proximity for months now, so maybe the novelty has kind of soured for her. She also rightfully plays the 'they packed too much stuff into one play' card, what with the ghosts, affairs, loved one's deaths, baby drama, and confused homosexuality. That's enough for half a dozen plays, but either way, a fun night and a moving drama.

I will not pretend that it was all fine; Dinner last night sucked

Seeing old friends is nice. Especially when said nice friends are low-key, go with the flow types. However this worked to the disadvantage of Croftie and Myself last evening. My friend, let's call him Bradbury for perfectly unnecessary anonymity's sake, is in town for three days. Bradbury lives and works in Jolly Old, and his stateside adventures have mostly been in the NYC. His girlfriend has friends (family?) here in town and as such I was happy to receive a tangential visit. To catch up. All that. It's been a while. etc.

Dinner plans were made, actually made (as opposed to imagined--see previous post) for Thursday evening. When i got out of work I was told Bradbury would call me when they were going to have dinner, that it was going to be at "some Spanish restaurant in River North." Almost immediately I knew which place this was. I shall keep it un-named since I am not in the business of (openly) defaming people or places (but if you read between the lines the disguise is flimsy at best). Needless to say I'd been there before and had very mixed experiences. A mutual friend of us Crofts with a penchant for planning big dinner get-togethers (and whose target restaurants have reliably stunk) once led us all here and it was fine. rather expensive, for a college kid, but fine.

Last night however...

First off, we had to wait. and wait and wait. for. ever. For seemingly no better reason than to make the place in question appear more in demand that it should be. Waiting around late at night can make one cranky, but that was not the case with all of us, well, most of us. Bradbury, and us Crofts are all laid-back types, and i was busy catching up, and even Croftie, thrown to the wolves (while i was catching up with my friend), didn't seem to be fairing too badly. Later I learned this wasn't quite true, but all in all the evening was still salvageable.

Yet the restaurant was really loud. Think elementary school cafeteria with stereo speakers mounted in the corners focusing all the rambunctious kids to holler even louder). The food was meh. and kinda greasy. The waitress was trying very hard to push drinks over and over. And sketchy things like not telling us that when we asked for water, we were going to get bottled water, until one of our party astutely looked around and saw you had to ASK for tap water if you didn't want to pay for it.

The worst part was that when we got the check and collected the money and gave the bill to the waitress we were told we had put in a $20 too little. This was an absolute impossibility. The check split equally between all of us amounted to a $20 each. We all watched everyone put down a $20. And Bradbury counted the total before closing the billfold. Impossible. And yet... Now I suppose it was possible that a bill fell out on the way to the register, and that somebody saw it and snatched it. But there is as much proof for this as there is simple disingenuousness from the waitress. It made me quite angry. But we all re-upped and hurriedly walked out.

Part of the problem of the evening was Bradbury (and by extension, us Crofts) are so willing to go with whatever dominant personality is organizing things. The friends he was staying with are new to Chicago. But very... strong willed and opinionated. This restaurant was simply the best tapas in the city, even though every online review site disagrees, and so do most of us Chicagoans (no problem giving shout outs tho, go to Cafe Ba Ba Reeba! Bates and dacon!). This place is newbie/tourist/hipster hell. But we simply had to go there.

It quickly became clear that the organizer behind all this (the Demander) was a particularly... difficult person. Over the evening's conversation I learned his thoughts on eating meat, buying diamonds, dubya, the us economy, american's erroneous assumptions of everything asian, why NYC sucks (there i happen to agree), contemporary architecture, on and on. So i did what any sensible Pirate would do. Ate a bunch of pork. Discussed my engagement ring hunting. and defended (defended!?) a few of the president's policies (such as not pulling out of Iraq right away). To sum things up (and this is horrible, just horrible, and I am a horrible person for doing this) you can get a good first impression of this guy from his dazzling well-crafted facial hair which looks like Robert Downey Jr's in the upcoming Iron Man film (minus some of the beard, but retaining 'stache and soul-patch).

Something Significantly Worse than Bus-Stop-Girls

Riding the bus can be an unpleasant experience. Waiting at a bus-stop can be even less pleasant. Stuck out in the cold, anxious about getting somewhere at the appropriate time, and if you are picturing me via Croftie's imagination, you see a young man beseiged by a tide of lustful, impossibly attractive bus-stop girls putting on lip-stick and perfume, each plotting to steal away her man at a moments notice.

On Monday, despite the absence of Croftie's Sirens, the uncomfortableness of Bus-Stop was kicked up a few notches. I was exiting a bus in Hyde Park and saw a peculiar ad on the side of the bus-stop shelter. Normally these ads are for blockbuster movies or face creams or the occassional museum/culture cache. But this ad was different. This ad was made of a series of squares with sides about one foot long. Each square had the image of a place, all dark and gloomy and gray and washed out and scary looking with a word in the center. There was a creepy park bench, a street corner, the area right out front of a bar, the library and I'm pretty sure the image of an oil derrick. Reading the words your eyes visit each terrible place. The individual words spell out something like this:

To the many places you might encounter a sexual predator please add this.

Now I first inferred the sentence to be suggesting that Bus-Stop itself was the final hang-out of the sexual predator. The thought horrified me. Why would anyone make an ad like this? I feel awful enough for young women who have to wait out in the middle of nowhere for a bus full of degenerates and perverts and now they have to be constantly reminded of their unfortunate plight every time they sit down and look to the left at the big scary ad? Then I realized that the last square of the add wasn't gray and gloomy but highlighted and bright. It was a family room of some anonymous suburban residence. The ad was for domestic violence/child abuse.

Far from make me feel better, this realization actually made me feel even worse. What's more? I'll never visit an oil refinery ever again. Nowhere is safe.

T & L & SWBDR & TPOF storms

Last night as i lay in bed with the window open wide, listening the first spattering of rain outside on the patio mingling with Croftie's muted sleepy breathing, having just set down my copy of The Boy Detective Fails, already mulling over the next day's schedule what with all the organizing of shelves and displays i have to do and coming up with a 'flow-chart' for my non-existent website to be constructed in my dreamweaver class, i realized that what i was listening to were the inaugural few baby-steps of the first thunderstorm of the season.

And my pensive mood got the meteorologist in me got to thinking. Whenever i am reading online forecasts or predictions on the weather channel its always reads 'T-storms' or 'Strong T-storms.' For brevity's sake I think the designation is fine. As an accurate descriptor it misses the mark. As the first peel of thunder crinkled its opening measures into my ear before deepening, cracking into that lingering 'boom' noise that always concludes thunder like its own odd form of weather punctuation, i wondered, why focus on the thunder? Surely the noise itself isn't the defining factor of the 'T-storm,' right? I mean, the noise wouldn't even exist without the lightning part, its the electrical discharge that tears through the ether, physically ripping the air to produce the thunder sound, but few people go the whole 9 and refer to these phenomena as Thunder and Lightning Storms (and even there the thunder gets sentence priority). And I've never seen a news or web blurb, 'Warning: T & L Storms!' Its not the thunder that creates property damage or downs power lines, yet it is the thunder that has captured the imagination, its the thunder that has acquired the nomenclature and the mythology, 'God bowling with the Angels' explains away the sound but doesn't exactly take into consideration the brilliant flashes of light now does it?

But I suppose if we are going to include lightning in the name we might be opening the door for other, increasingly less necessary descriptors. Its a slippery slope from thunder storms to thunder and lightning storms to thunder and lightning and strong winds bringing drenching rain and the possibility of flooding storms.

Turnabout is... a Pain in the Ass

A few weeks back I lost a duck. I borrowed Croftie's umbrella because it was raining that morning, but on the return trip home nary a cloud was in the sky. The duck became a maroon accessory, an awkward one at that. It wouldn't fit in my man-purse, not with Anna K. So I carried her home... sort of. When I stopped to switch trains at Adams/Wabash, I saw the Brown-line I needed to catch pulling in right quick, forgot about my duck which i had set down on the seat next to me, and sprinted out of the car. Thing is I remembered my lost duck, but too late. And the evil part was, as I turned to re-enter the train I'd just left, doors closing before i could get there, I saw the person who had been seated across from me not only knew I'd left behind my umbrella, but had done nothing about it. No "Hey, Sir! You've forgotten your Duck!" No nothing. Instead a sheepish expression amounting to "I'm sorry i didn't speak up, I feel rather uncomfortable looking after you like a foster child, and have failed in my responsibilities as a human to treat others with kindness and respect." People, unlike water-fowl, are jerks.

Today I was jostling my way to Hyde Park on the #2 under similar circumstances. It was raining this morning but I had left our brand new Baby blue Duck umbrella at home, lest I lose it as well. Slightly damp in my seat I saw that a rather boorish young man in the back row was using the seat next to him as a umbrella stand, even though there were several people standing in the aisle. From time to time he would steady his umbrella from toppling over into the people in front of him. The bus struck a curb, causing many wide-eyed stares from us commuters, but Boorish guy never looked up from his paper and shouted, "Hey buddy! Learn (how) to drive!" Either from not paying attention, or through some sort of universal karma, his stop approached and he nearly missed it. I looked up from my Anna K in time to see him jump out the back door and rush off down the street. The doors closed, the bus sped on, and to my surprise i saw his umbrella still lay on the back seat.

The lessons from this are multifarious:
a) all ducks go to heaven.
b) it is inadvisable to carry an umbrella on public transportation
c) don't be boorish, or you might end up caught in the rain.
d) it is inadvisable to use public transportation even when not possessing an umbrella.
e) water-fowl should not be made into umbrellas, but are a delightful combination nonetheless.

coming to theaters this Spring

Untitled Movie Trailer. Based on a true story. I shit you not.


Fade from black, ominous music in the background, lessening. Two young men on rickety chairs in a cramped office doing busy-work. One is blonde and strapping and wearing a wife-beater. The other is, well, the other man is me. Close up of me processing a textbook order. Red Ball-cap. haven't shaved in a while. Here's your hero, you think to yourself. Then, a mysterious scratching sound.

"Hey Doug," Strappy Wife-Beater says, "Check out the size of that 'roach on the wall!" Camera zooms on Strappy's finger, then swings violently toward wall.

I look up and am horrified. Only the second 'roach I've ever seen. and I want it dead. I stand up slowly lest I disturb the winged beast. Camera moves back to long-shot as i struggle to find a suitable weapon despite the fact I'm drowning in clutter. Cut to one second shot of bead of sweat on my temple. Cut to wall. the 'roach is gone. Fade to black.

Fade from black, same ominous music, same cramped office, same dudes. Maybe an hour has passed. I'm on the phone taking to Cal/Princeton. Sweet-talking them. Minding my own business when I catch something out of the corner of my eye. there it is, an inch from my blue puma, scraggling along, seconds away from climbing in and up my pant-leg. I shudder, shift and stomp.

Ker-splicket!

All the while my sultry business-phone-tone never quavers. Transaction takes another minute to complete. I slowly hang up. freak out. OMG. leave cramped office and Strappy for some fresh air.

Cut to 15 minutes later, me walking into the famed 3rd floor bathroom, now free of 'out of order sign.' Ominous music gets stronger. The bathroom is dark, the light flickers. I only want to wash my hands. I move toward the sink when what do I hear?

soft crinkling insect feet. Another cockroach!

Camera zooms in on toilet, then dark corner opposite, then waste basket. Nothing is revealed. I jump back. I run from the bathroom, camera pans around to show 'roach, now visible, stowing 'out of order' sign behind the trash can, chuckling to itself in small hissing noises. I catch my breath near the soda machine.

Put in change, ominous music growing louder.

Press mountain dew...

sold out!

Dr Pepper...

sold out!

diet coke? Per-chigga-clung. Diet coke in hand I turn around only to overhear a conversation down the hall. Camera slowly zooms down hall, perversely, voyueristically, focusing on nothing but a disembodied voice. All one hears is the coversation:

female voice: "Oh my God, what is that!? on the wall! Its a what!? Ew, I've never seen one of those before!"
male voice: "Yeah, it's a cockroach, I just killed one in my office just this morning..." They're everywhere.

Some hero. I turn and run. I don't look back. Save yourself. save. your. self.

trailer *fin*

curtain.

flipping the switch

Bathroom Trilogy of Terror! (Part 3)

the fans get what the fans ask for. don't let anyone tell ya differently. my zombies, robots and dinosaurs know a thing or two about the water closet. perhaps a thing or two too many. Case in point....

I was visiting a friend's apartment almost a full year ago. It was a small gathering, there was some drinking. As such a trip to the lav was soon necessary. Door closed, I imagined myself alone in this foreign bathscape. I proceed to unzip, etc... there's really not that much prep-work that goes into a man's number one. However there is a light-switch-esque on/off mechanism that gets released. The mind gives the go-ahead and then there is a lag, perhaps not even a second or so before relaxation can commence. Well what to my abject horror can you imagine happens, just as I 'flip the switch,' but a furry lightning bolt leaps up onto the rim of the bowl.

I watch in terror during the first split-second as I fear the cat will go head over tea-cup into the drink. But he does not. Grace is a particularly innate feline gift. A gift I proceeded to urinate all over. I couldn't stop! It wasn't my fault! The switch had been flipped... of course i reigned it in but there's an even more stubborn lag involved in a premature ceasefire. For perhaps a whole second or two I peed on my friend's cat.

Mortified, I tore off swatches of TP, wet them in the sink, and began wiping down the cat. I added handsoap to some of these swatches, but not much, apprehensive of adding even more foreign material I'd never sufficiently get out of the small animal's pelt. Then I rubbed and petted and stroked, 'fluffing' the beast back to an appearance I deemed reasonable, if not altogether not urine-soaked. All the while I still really have to pee. even more so after deceiving my poor body, issuing the 'a-okay' only to cruelly demand a cease and desist.

Needless to say I swiftly booted the cat from the bathroom, cursed my bad luck and succeeded in accomplishing what I had walked in there to do. But never again will I enter a friend's bathroom so insouciant and on top of the world. Ladies, colleagues, friends and enemies, please lock up your pets before inviting me over lest i befoul their coats. But like I said. It wasnt my fault. honest.

Bathroom Humour

This is the second in what I hope will not be a trilogy of lavatory based posts. Yesterday I stumbled upon spectacular bathroom pejoratives as only the University of Chicago can muster. Laced across the surface of a bathroom stall was a dialogue that made me laugh, then feel ashamed that I'd found it all funny. It is mostly a repartee back and forth between two formidable foes, but with a surprise rejoinder at the end from a visiting dramatist. (the parenthetical annotation is my own) Voila:

"God is Dead!," -Nietzsche

(the almighty strikes back)

"Nietzsche is Dead!,"- God

(Very true, but Nietzsche proves resourceful)

"Zombie-Nietzsche Lives!" -Zombie Nietzsche

(the almighty is impressed)

"Well-played, Zombie Nietzsche!" -God

(and the stunning conclusion, from a surprise entrant, reminding us that yes, this is writing in the men's room)

"Zombie-Nietzsche sucks cock." -Zombie Euripides

that guy is out of order

The bathroom on the third floor of the building I work in is out of order. It has been out of order for as long as I can remember. It is not locked, the door remains propped, slightly open, but a large sign aggressively taped to the front declares "Out of Order." Now we can debate the semantics of the phrase "out of order," what a bathroom in order might entail, whether or not, in a philosophical sense, order can ever exist, or hypothesize that if the predominating order of the universe is entropy, that human life itself is "out of order," and that of course the bathroom on the third floor of the Chicago Theological Seminary, just adjacent a posse of vending machines, is, and forever shall be, "out of order."

But that still does not explain the behavior of a colleague of mine.

The soul-crushing boredom of work + a tedious ride in an elevator can result in some interesting discoveries. Co-worker got into the elevator just as the doors were closing and seeing that we had next to nothing in common, our topic of conversation strayed down some unorthodox path. Somehow we got to chatting about the bathroom on the third floor. That's when I found out that said facility wasn't out of order, or at least that my colleague still used it like it was perfectly fine. "How on earth did you figure that out?," I asked, perplexed.

"I just went in and used it anyway," was the simple, direct, bewildering reply, "I'm just that guy."

So now I can add yet another category of 'that guy' to an ever growing list I've compiled over the ages. There's 'that guy' who sells moisturizer on the Red-line every morning, who gets on at 47th street and proceeds to inquire if anyone wants any "body oils." There's 'that guy' who comes in every week or two and drops $300.00 (!!) on poetry. And there's 'that guy' who goes to the deli place and orders sandwiches with "just turkey and bread." Actually that last guy is me. But anyhow, as i was saying, I have a new 'that guy.' Now there is 'that guy' who randomly defecates in public restrooms with signs on them stating they are 'out of order' just to, you know, make sure they really are not in service.

Book 'em Dougo.

Last night at around 7:00pm me and three other young men wanted by the police sat around a long library table trading stories. The remnants of an ad-hoc cop dinner lay strewn about: salt and pepper packets, a box of disposable forks, and several mostly unused napkins littered the wooden landscape. The other three men wanted by the cops, let's call them Joey, Chandler, and Ross, they were all about my age and uniformly uncomfortable.

Joey, though he probably wouldn't admit this, had a receding hairline and sat across from me fiddling with his backpack. Chandler sat to my right in large emo-black glasses and an embryonic pompadour. Give it time and it will grow. Chandler also had a penchant for bad jokes, mostly of the law enforcement variety, good-cop, bad-cop, you get the idea. Ross sat to my right on a diagonal wearing a baseball cap low on his head. He slouched and though I wouldn't be able to tell you how I know this, he easily made more money than the other three of us combined. We had all been sequestered in this tiny community-college-esque room to wait for an improbably long amount of time before viewing a police line-up of potential muggers.

The ride to the courthouse-cum-police-station had been eventful enough. With many a hair-pin turn Mapquest guided us through the night, depositing us on Western just before Belmont where several overpasses fought to see which one could arc higher than the rest. Shady alleys and shadier 'business establishments' marked the street corners but across the highway Croftie and I could see a large parking lot with a smattering of cop cars. I wore my black hoodie and fingerless gloves, not because i wanted to be confused with some punk hoodlum but because there was a chill in the air--that, and i had just come from work and was exhausted. Croftie and I exited Jeepie Jeepie and made our way toward a building which could only be described as 'government'.

Inside I threw my weight around, barking out "I'm here to see Detective Hanson." That's not the real detective's name you see but we may as well continue the silly pseudonyms. Hanson was up a long flight of stairs and inside a large open room which looked exactly like every stereotypical cop teevee show that ever lived. I fought the urge to sing the theme from 21 Jumpstreet. Untidy desks. Youngish ladies grasping important loose-leaf documents in their waving hands scampered about the open aisles. Off duty cops lounged and leaned and looked generally bored. That's when Hanson, an elderly gent with snowy hair and a amiable face, sat me down with my aforementioned Friends.

After trading mug stories we were called away one by one to look at the line-up. I, of course, was last. I believe this was because the detective didn't want Croftie to have to sit and make small talk with Joey or Ross. It was all very dramatic. Hanson came in and put his arm around my shoulders, leading me away like a pitching coach trying to advise a prospect who'd gotten himself into one helluva jam. He told me:

"Now I wanna sleep well tonight, and I know you do too. This here ain't no eenie-meenie-miney-moe. If you don't see your guy, don't pick one just because. Now in a second I'm gonna have you walk down this hall and at the end there'll be a blind. We'll kill the lights and raise the blind. There'll be 5 guys sitting on a bench behind one-way glass. You'll be able to see them and they will be looking into a mirror. If your guy is there point him out, but only if you're sure."

We stepped out into the main-room and suddenly every eye was on me. It was spectacularly surreal. It went down just as Hanson had said. The lights were 'killed' and there on the bench were a bunch of bored looking middle-aged African-American men with surprisingly different styles of facial hair ranging from impeccably trim to non-existent to not even trying to be presentable. The man second from the right looked particuarly rugged, his face over-sized like a comic-book supervillian. But I knew right off the bat that none of them were my guy. I told Hanson I was 80% sure of this. My Friends and I filled out some silly forms and were unceremoniously swept on out.

Sushi and some Reckless Records finished off a rather bizarre day that began with textbook rush and ended with me, exhausted and bewildered, in bed before 10pm.

Last Night I Broke the Meatman's Heart

I can't say I know many people who can be accurately described as jolly but the guy who works the deli at the local Mom and Pop is one of them. Jolly takes commitment. Your laugh needs to boom, be heard from across the store, down the street. Your eyes need to have a manic glow approaching but never actually arriving at insanity. You need a certain stature, a large frame, either hieght or port or both. You also might need to be male though I'm not quite sure that is an absolute requirement. Is Jolly exclusively masculine? Who knows. But Jolly is a not a hobby, it is a lifestyle and Meatman is the jolliest guy i know.

He has greeted the Croft and I every time we've come in without fail. His "how are you doing?" followed by a deep round of laughter is the stuff of legend. Purchasing lunchmeat has never been so much fun. About a week ago Croft and I were stumped as to what to buy for dinner. We asked Meatman if he had any suggestions and a sombre, almost dour expression crossed his perpetually smiling face. He was deep in thought and it was unnerving. Croftie and i looked at each other thinking, 'what have we done?' After about 10 seconds he brightened back up and told us without a hint of waver that we must purchase the pork-chops and then proceeded to tell us how they should be prepared. Thing is he was right. Spot on. And Croftie executed his dinner plan with panache. It was a feast, a glorious feast.

Last night we wandered back in to the Mom and Pop in search of dinner anew. In addition to Sunday Dinner we decided to go and get meat for our weekly monday fajita extravaganza. Meatman asked how the chops went and Croftie and i gushed. Meatman was pleased. Customers wandering in from outside looked back at the deli counter with trepidation for surely no man or beast could laugh like that. Yet when i asked Meatman for the ground sirloin for our monday night fajitas he shook his head and frowned. "You need to go with the skirt-steak for fajitas. You see you just cook it up all nice and then slice it with the grain..." but this time we were not having it. We've made fajitas lots of times and enjoyed our speedy method and non-vegetative ingredients. Cooking a steak just for fajitas? Impossible. I interrupted the man, "Maybe we'll just have some of the ground sirloin..." It was a mistake. Meatman's face fell into one of the saddest expressions it has been my displeasure to know. The light went out in his eyes and there would be no more laughter that evening. It was then and there that I realized and gone and broken the Meatman's heart. And I'm sorry.