The last day of the Pompeii exhibit - and big spoons to be found at the Field Museum

So Saturday apparently was the last day of the Pompeii exhibit at the Field Museum, which was sold out by 11 a.m. Even so, the lines were like a Best Buy giving away computers on the day after Thanksgiving, meaning people were willing to wait hours to stare at stuff from a place where people were making mad, crazy dashes to escape from, lest they be covered in lava, thus eventually becoming part of a traveling exhibit.

Is irony the right word for this?

But despite the Woodfield Mall vibe and not being able to see petrified Romans, we queued up with the other moo-cow touristas. Make that cash cows, cuz it ain’t cheap to get into a museum. They hand you this confusing menu while you are making your way to the cashier explaining you have options.

Naturally, the thing looks like it was designed by an anthropologist on a bender. The general admission policy isn’t made very clear, but highlighted are packages where you can get one, two or three “special” exhibits or that $80 family membership. With one of the exhibits sold out, you could only upgrade to two, which means I am going into minute detail, much like my mom does during a phone call.

We opted for one special, a room called Dino Dynasty, a collection of prehistoric bones from China, which, by the time we got to them, pretty much made me hungry for barbecue.

General admission included the new hall on evolution, and, judging by the crowd sizes, there aren’t a lot of Doubting Thomases for the theory to be found in a natural history museum. Then again, the guys I saw taking notes could have been evangelical spies in the house of science, looking for evidence to dispute and refute and to rant about come Sunday morning.

True believer or not, I can understand why evolution can seem so upsetting. It doesn’t promise that cut and dried back-from- the-dead happy ending like most religions do. It’s the same reason people walk out of Eugene O’Neill plays -- for happy enders, it’s too depressing to see messy life and be inspired by such.

Plus, while I find it funny that evolution says we are here because bacteria created oxygen as a waste product (i.e. life, in a way, is literally shit), some just don’t have the same sense of humor.

And I am no intelligent design fan, but what might also scare happy enders is that they may be right about everlasting life, but just not how they imagined it.

Didn’t Einstein posit that matter can neither be created not destroyed? Couldn’t that mean there is a finite combination of atoms, which means eventually everything will combine again in the same form it is at the very moment you are reading this, like in that movie Groundhog Day, but over eons of time?

That could be how we live forever, which at the very least worst, means hearing I Go You Babe every morning for eternity - or worse, seeing Kay Couric on your TV while rushing the brats off to school and barely making the train.

Those are the kind of things that go through my Saturday afternoon kind of brain when I walk through an exhibit covering billions of years. Which is harder to comprehend, a god that allows horrible suffering in the world, or knowing you are only part of the mix for not even a nano? (Oh Freddy Mercury, nothing really matters, not even that you, the gayest of rock stars, has been replaced by a butch cock-rocker with an equally bad mustache.)

Actually, all this is more like hearing that Flaming Lips song, Do You Realize?, the one that sadly reminds that some day everyone you know will die, but as you are in a museum and not a bar, without anyone around for sympathy sex.

These are not happy ender kind of thoughts, which is why there should be beer stands in museums.

Alas, there are not. But there are still those dye cast machines where for $1.50 you can get yourself a wax dinosaur to cheer yourself up -- assuming you are not a happy ender, and you don’t burn your hand holding your new orange toy upside down while it cools off.

And you can always find something off the beaten path worth to take you mind off your insignificance, down one of those barely lit halls that seem like a romantic but empty restaurant.

Take, for instance, the giant wooden ladles of the Pacific Northwest, which indigenous peoples used for oil eating contests. Now that must have produced some serious gas.

Those original bacterial ancestors would have been proud.

You buy the beer, I'll wear the kilt (Insert snake joke here for St. Patrick)

My Irish weekend (Part 2) started at an Italian restaurant, wound up at a German bar, involved wearing a kilt, and closed out watching the Sopranos and a show about Mormons.

Of course, it took more than 20 minutes to get to the Italian place, a mile away from my house, with traffic in my town New York-style gridlock as a bridge is out for its 100-year repair work.

And if you’re going to put a base down for your St. Patrick’s Day, Italian is preferable to corned beef and cabbage. So what if I wound up smelling like a huge portion of Celtic scampi.

Friday, as cliché requires, I did wear my wool cable-knit sweater - a knockoff from Kohl’s made somewhere in Asia that I picked up for $15 a couple winters ago. Traditionally, the knot work was used to identify Irish fisherman should they wash ashore. For all I know, my knots say, “Cheap imperialist bastard.”

Anyway, I’ve sat out the last couple St. Patrick’s Days, not being in the mood for being a Mick, for poorly poured Guinness or moldy beer passed off as “green” for the holiday. But occasionally you have to take part in the silly part of your heritage. And I felt like drinking, so it made perfect sense.

We went to see a band called Gaelic Storm play at a cultural center, which is not the best place to see an Irish band on such an occasion as the crown tends to want to be in their shamrock pajamas by 10. Which only encourages the rest of us to have more poorly poured $5 plastic cup Guinness.

Which only encourages me to deep think in that flirting with maudlin, Tuesdays with Morrie sort of way during the slow songs, pining for Ireland and peat bogs and leprechauns and green beads and listening to a band that could have been in Lord of the Rings, instead of Titanic, they are all that short, and the flute/bagpipe player could have been the dark haired cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.

But so what. Every culture has its goofy parts, which is what holidays and parades are all about. So I start letting the beer do the talking and extrapolate that what this stupid War on Terrorism really should be about is having a world where no one afraid to look like a complete idiot spilling beer from a plastic bottle left on the floor.

Where, as long as no one gets hurt, no one should be afraid to dance about celebrating part of who they are or who they love or associate with or where they come from. (Maybe some of the plastic cup leached into the Guinness - or Harp, because I switched as I just couldn’t take what they were doing to the dark, brown chocolate goodness, as it were Budweiser or something).

We’re all jigsaw puzzles, dammit, and it’s hard enough as it it to get all the pieces to fit - or maybe wonder if the should fit in the first place. And everybody’s culture, background, family, while maybe not fodder for a Eugene O’Neill play, is fucked up. So let’s party.

Yeah, right on. Show’s over. Let’s go to the closest bar - a German place, where I get two beers bought for me, one being the size of a small aquarium, which is the actual loose translation for “stein.”

The singer who opened the show, a woman from Louisiana, shows up around 1 a.m. This peaks my interest as: A) she was wearing one of those spaghetti strap shirts with an exposed naval, which means she could NOT work in my office (thanks to a guy who complained about a woman who did. A guy! What is this world coming to?); and she has one of those tattoos just above her ass, which is sort of stupid, yet stripper-sexy. Plus, she is funny and tall and can play Irish and Greek instruments.

Though deep down I am sure she at least considered it for a nanosecond, she will not dump her career to join me in my suburban life. Her boyfriend runs her record label. Yeah, but he looks like Tim Burton, the guy who made Batman.

And these days, well these days middle age may be catching up, but with my attempted beard - and a kilt - I can look damn sexy. That is, if your idea of sexy is a bouncer at a Pogues concert, or maybe a haggis-eater at a Highland Leather Bar.

The kilt is what I wore to a party on Saturday afternoon, per the promise of free drink. The drink I opted for was water, because by this point, though having no sign of hangover, I was a bit worried about my liver. So I got a free sandwich out of the deal.

See, my Irish buddy Shay got tied into running the events at this bar for the afternoon, which included a kilt contest. I borrowed his and must admit that with a sleeveless T-shirt and work boots I was quite butch. In fact, I could be the new lead singer in Queen.

There were five other guys in kilts present, and by what they all said, I was the only one wearing an undergarment. Hey, friends don't freeball in friends’ clothes.

Plus, I was worried this was/is all going to show up on www.kiltboy.com anyway, and thus ruin my chances of ever being Lieutenant Governor.

Now the other guys in kilts were not as scary as I expected. Yes, three were reenactor types, but two of those were into WWII, which really doesn’t explain the kilts, does it?

The other reenactor was an Ambercrombie and Fitch kind of guy, replete with a racist T-shirt about the Koran. I’m not quite sure what it had to do with St. Patrick’s Day but that it was green. Since he was gel-riffically chiseled, of course he swayed the lady judges.

One other guy was a theater dude who teaches stage combat. He had a sword with him. Make your own joke here.

The other guy worked at the bar and had someone else at the bar make a kilt for him. Ick, in a Brady Bunch episode sort of way.

Thing about wearing a kilt, though, is it actually is kind of cool (pun intended). I wear long shorts all year anyway. And when you swagger in one, it kind of swaggers and sways along, giving you waves of fabric with your step.

Plus, like whoever your people are with their parades and concerts and colored beverages, you can’t be afraid to be stupid in public. My role model: my long lost buddy Bob who once spun on the floor on his side like in the Three Stooges, just because he was in the mood to, and who once ran naked in the snow with a parka on his head and boots on his feet, for $20.

That’s the beauty of America, isn’t it?

Plus, if the joy is gone you wind up like Tony Soprano, which being close to his age, is something I think we all go through in middle-age. (Hey, we don’t even want to define middle ages at 35-45 anymore, even though most of us will drop on out of here between 70 and 90.)

By then, we have all these jigsaw pieces, a lot of them we only know about ourselves, or maybe some back in the box we would rather forget about. Sometimes we try too hard to put them together.

Christ, I hope that doesn’t sound like Mitch Albom. Plus, Tony is a fat, murderous mobster. Loneliness is the least he deserves.

But as an Irish mutt, it’s sadly comforting to find out even a mafia don can feel like we do. Because the Irish, dontcha know, cornered the literary market on solitary, dark souls a long time ago. Thank the British, the Pope and rain for that. Why do you think we all wound up here?

South Side Irish, parades, secrets and keys

I don’t really get parades - though, as an avid TV viewer, they do seem likea live version of channel surfing on a Sunday night, assuming every channelis a UHF frequency or public access.

But if you are going to marchin one, being in front of something popular is good for the ego - you canpretend the cheering is for you as you escort the Chicago White Sox WorldSeries trophy.

That’s where I was Sunday, walking along with a floatfor one of the “together we’re better” (which I think was a ghastly RickAstley song back in the 80s) papers for which I work in the South Side IrishParade, which celebrates Celtic pride and a lifestyle that includes wearingfunny green clothing and young girls in angular dresses prancing like poniesas their $500 red wigs bounce up and down. (But I should talk: I went fullMick in a made-in-China Irish sweater over a Notre Dame sweatshirt, accessorizedby an ND shamrock hat and plaid shorts, the closest thing I could find toa kilt in my wardrobe, not to mention by nifty, slightly bent sunglasses).

The float milked the White Sox thing, too, with a blowup of the paper the day the team won the title.

Sure,that was in October, but you count your blessings in Chicago and milk momentslike the Dean Dairy, as deep down you know it could very well be a once ina lifetime experience.

So the crowd cheers as the trophy approaches,sitting on a towel on the hood of a slow-moving SUV, with ancient Sox starMinnie Minoso inside, giving the parade wave.

The float I am walkingin front of is playing U2 and Van Morrison music, because that’s probablyall Irish the cosponsoring radio station has in its “we play everything,but especially stuff like Loverboy and Night Ranger” library. The stationalso has supplied a guy sort of dressed like Captain America, but wearingtrendy black framed glasses. He appears to have swallowed a case of Red Bull,his enthusiasm is just that ginseng and caffein enriched.

He is just a bit more frightening than the leprechaun on the float, who eventually catches the overenthusiastic buzz too.

Me,I walk a as far away from the captain as I can, with a couple friends andtheir baby. I feel like the advance unit in a Secret Service Detail. Hey,with my attempted goatee, girth and lack of hair, I was mistaken for a copearlier in the day, so why not pretend?

It’s a writer thing, too,to scan the crowd for stories, for the strange guy in the orange coat droppingballoons off a roof, for the Japanese restaurant on the freaking South Sideof Chicago.

And I’ve been feeling a little like an agent lately anyway,as writers do when they hear compelling stories but don’t feel right sharingthem, which can happen if you want to have friends who actually talk to youwithout fear of becoming material.

I’ll make something up: If youknew someone was Batman and who is little Robin buddy was what do you do?Do you tell the tale? If so, when and how?

Well, if the Caped Crusaders were as wired as faux Captain America, the choice would be easy.

Soyou march with your mouth shut, scoping out the 20 or 30 deep crowd, a bitdisappointed there is so little debauchery, at the same time it’s nice tosee how well-behaved it is, given the chip on its shoulder South Side parade’sreputation.

Hell, after that epic long parade, the bars aren’t eventhat rowdy - then again, I think they have to keep their doors locked andcan only let people out and a few back in.

A buddy of mine and I decideto check one out, and all that they have to drink is Bud and Bud Light andcans of Guinness. It will do, but be wary of having to use the porto potties,their primordial ooze coming precariously close to flowing out of the bowl,overused since 10 a.m. or so.

Be wary, too, of a young woman in agreen sequined Cat in the Hat hat. You look familiar, she tells me. Do Iknow you? Whahh? It’s your eyes, she says.

Oh yes, the blurry bybeer writer eyes. Damn sexy. It is so nice to be hit on by someone who mightbe young enough to be your daughter. I play a song on a jukebox she asksfor, then she goes to dance with a fireman from Boston who I found out isheading to another Paddy party in Fort Lauderdale before the big parade backEast.
Yes, he is tailgating, so to speak. I mean, how hard can it be fora guy built like a football player in his parade dress do get laid?

Allthis is grand fun, until I find out I don’t have my keys with me. I leftthem on top of the fridge at the party I was at (so I wouldn’t loose themin the parade), and forgot. As it is only 9:30, I don’t think this shouldbe a problem.

Only thing is, the hosts were in bed already. And Iam not going to knock on the door of a darkened home from keys. That’s justa really drunk thing to do.

So I take this as a sign, and wind upsleeping in a spare bedroom at a buddy’s house, after having Denny’s at 10,which feels like 2. And I fall in and out of sleep thinking about contingencyplans in case my car is towed or I did indeed drop my keys (or had them liftedby the flirter) or I need to get a spare set from my parents house then calla locksmith for my house key.

I worry too much. Nature of the job. The keys were there, I got home OK, and at least this much is not a secret.

But I’m still not telling you who Batman is.

Crystal Lake: scarier that the one in the slasher movie

There should be some sort of fine when people behave in a stereotypical manner. When you live close to such a place you should be allowed to get some sort of tax break as incentive for trying to raise the collective I.Q.

Case in point. I live near one of the whitest counties in Illinois, McHenry, where you better like Bush, and, if you are a guy, in more ways than one.

In a real Chamber of Commerce moment, the county’s biggest town, Crystal Lake was in the news for its park district voting 2-2 and thus denying request to have a canoeing one of the Gay Games events over the summer.

As far as I can tell, all the gays wanted to do was canoe, and it was like the natives thought that the International Fist-Fucking Festival was coming to town.

(Though one funny moment: a TV reporter said the group chose the lake because it was long and wide.)

One of the commissioners, David Phelps,is quoted as saying, "I do not believe the Crystal Lake Park District should be a vehicle for the promotion of an agenda."

What exactly is the "gay agenda" anyway? Do you know where I can get a copy so I know if and when I am being indoctrinated and if I might even like it?

One of the people I saw expressing her deepest concern was upset about AIDS and gays. And, as far as I know, you can't get AIDS from canoe paddles being used in the proper manner.

I say they should form a group: Keep the Queers Out of Crystal Lake (KQOCL - pronounced “cockle”).
Of course, they have a nice performing arts center, so that would probably have to be monitored very closely. So will the hair salons. Maybe even the showers at the local gyms.

I hear there are gay-sniffing poodles and cocker spaniels who cab pick out those people by the stylish scent they have.

Cockle sure will have its hands full, so to speak.

All this, at the very least, should wind up on The Daily Show.

But obviously, it’s sort of sad, too. I mean, it’s just canoeing by gay people. Do you really think you can choose who you fall in love with? Is that an agenda? Is that canoeing?

And this open hostility was a wake up call for me. I mean you kind of figure some things are part and parcel of the lifestyle out here, but it really shocks you when you see them acted out like that (to turn an observation on its head).

The funny thing about a lot of the homophobes is that they don’t want gays to marry, then they call them promiscuous (And, like no bars in Crystal Lake serve as pick-up joints for pre and extra marital sex. No fucking way!)

Also, the make their Jesus a single guy in his 30s, living with his mom who hangs out with 12 other guys. And that either makes him Irish or....

Anyway, some buddies of mine who live up in Crystal Lake used to drink at a place that was owned by a gay guy. A corner bar like any other. The beer was just as cold.

The guy had a bit of a drinking problem, which got him into trouble, and he wound up killing himself.

PLEASE ADOPT ME!

Well, God bless them. My parents finally sold their home and are moving to California to live by my brother and my sister and her family.

Essentially, that leaves me alone in Illinois, which in a way feels nice. But with genetic tendencies toward being a hermit crab, this in not necessarily a good thing for me - and me is what really counts, ain’t it?

Oh sure, you say. I could go out and find someone of my own, but I don’t think you want to go there.

In fact, I am sure you don’t want to know about my most recent attempts at dating. Comic though they may be, I’m not dumb enough to put them on a blog (on the slim chance my boss, that cheerleader I used to know, the ASPCA, or someone from Crystal Lake, Illinois might read this).

Still, my New Year's resolution to get out more officially lasted until March, a full two months, which is longer than I expected. This looks like the weekend that will break the streak of going out at least one night/day each weekend with other people.

Yes, it's my deep dark secret (one of them) that I can go whole weekends with this being my entire real life interaction with others: go to gym Friday night then again Saturday morning; go to grocery store or other place for food; play basketball Sunday mornings.

Which is why, since I am becoming a sort of orphan in middle age I have this idea: someone here in Illinois, one of you couples who really, really want to have kids ADOPT ME.

There are some sound reasons:

1. I am, for the most part, already potty trained and can speak in reasonably complete sentences.

2. I have a minivan you can use to haul around other kids.

3. Since I do play basketball, you can come watch me Sunday mornings.

4. You won’t have to give me an allowance. As I am a writer, I pretty much make what a teen gets these days all on my own, thank you.

5. I am pretty much out of the house by 9 and back home by 7:30 most days, and have no problem following a curfew.

6. Since I am probably at least as old as you are, you won’t have to worry about leaving me an inheritance.

7. I like to mow the lawn, shovel snow and am willing to take out the garbage.

8. You can brag that your kid was a Phi Beta Kappa in college - and won’t have to pay any steep tuition for the privilege.

9. I am way bigger than the other kids, so I can kick the crap out of any of them. Also, I can lift stuff.

10. I promise not to bring anyone back to my room (and you can ask the people who live downstairs from me to verify this).

The drawbacks:

1. I like to eat. A lot. But unlike many a teen, or husband, or wife or significant other, I am an appreciative eater.

2. I am a bit of a slob, so you will have to nag me to keep my room clean.

3. You may have to treat me to a movie if you want the house to yourselves over the weekend.

So, please, consider it. I could make you proud, and in time you will learn to love me like your very own.