A New York moment in the northwest Chicago suburbs

I have a disease (well, at least one) which I call Auto Tourette’s. That’s to say, when I drive, I have this bad habit of uncontrollably swearing at all those motherfuckers out on the road these days.

It’s my way of coping with the idiots going 95 while reading the newspaper, sipping coffee and talking on the cell phone. Or my new personal favorite -- the dickheads who think that the green arrow light means any car in the turn lane has been given the divine right to turn regardless as if the arrow has long disappeared. I get flipped off by such cocksuckers on a regular basis for my mistaken belief that if I have a solid green light, that means I can go straight and no longer have to wait for them to cut in front of me.

For them I toot my horn. My potty mouth though typically is shouting behind closed windows in my own time out room that is my car.

Until last week.

I’m driving home from work down my usual creature of habit path, a back road less traveled, which means less likelihood to encounter morons. As it’s along a river and a nature preserve there is a good chance you might kill a raccoon or get your windshield pummeled by a dear, or worse yet, see someone in one of those neon bike outfits, but it’s worth the risk.

But to get to that road, just one house off a relatively busy residential intersection someone is putting up a new home. That’s meant construction trucks and other things to dodge, like in a video game, which apparently is what most people equate with real driving.

Anyway on this particular day that included a couple trucks, including one big ass one with the Shaq-sized wheel wells that apparently give blue collar types stiffies - and the piece de resistance, a metal plate on the street unevenly covering a hole in the pavement, a corner sticking up not like a store thumb, but like a knife just waiting to blow a tire.

As this is just one house past the corner, after I make my turn and see it, I don’t have much time or room to maneuver. So I go slow over to the other side of the street to avoid tire trouble.

Of course, another car is coming toward me but a good 100-220 feet away. I figure he sees me, will slow down and wait for me to pass, the courteous thing to do, given it was Easter time, the week Christ had Judas betray him so he could die for everyone but Patti Smith’s sins.

Well this jackass doesn’t slow down. Instead he pulls up until he has me blocked in and stops. I am still a good 20 feet or so from him and stopped, too. I roll down my window and shout, “What do you want me to do?”

He rolls down his window and points to his ears and laughs that he can’t hear me. So I say the same thing again, to the same effect, because morons, like monkeys and babies, are easily amused.

Fine, he wins whatever it is he thinks he won. I carefully back up -- with cars now behind me. When I drive by this mook in his minivan he just gives me this shit eating grin from under his baseball cap.

“What an asshole,” I say to him from behind sunglasses as I drive by.

Now I wish I would have sounded like Clint Eastwood or at least cop-like. Instead, my voice broke like a 17-year-old.

“Hey,” is all he said back, because apparently I offended his wife (or maybe it was a kidnap victim) sitting in the minivan passenger’s seat.

“Hey?” Like I was going to get out of the car and have a throw-down? Two middle aged white guys in minivans.

Come to think of it, that had comic possibilities.

But I drove home instead, sort of embarrassed by swearing.

I mean, the prick deserved it. But it’s too easy to swear and probably what he wanted and expected.

I should have said, “Sir, your behavior was most obnoxious and rude.” Or, in the spirit of the holiday, I could have wished him a happy Easter and said I’d be asking the Lord to forgive him.

I could have been wittier. I needed a scriptwriter.

Once that bit of neuroses passed, on came self-importance (a disease called Oprah-itis). I started to worry that the guy knew who I was or wrote my license down and would somehow get me in trouble at work.

What was I thinking? I’m not a TV star, or even a local politician or whomen passes for famous in the suburbs. No one reads anymore. Well, maybe bad drivers on the expressway, but not guys on side streets.

Super big fun at Benihana - If looks could kill I'd be in jail

So I went to Benihana with a bunch of tourists from Ireland Saturday, which sounds like the opening line of a bar joke, and in a way it is.

First, my Irish friends who have settled here in the scenic northwest Chicago suburbs pronounce the name of the place with the accent on the third syllable with that nasal sound somewhere between a hard A and a Bug’s Bunny “ehh” as is “Ehh, What’s Up Doc?”

See, Illinois is the upper respiratory tract infection capitol of the United States, so if you lived here for more than six months that how you wind up talking.

Anyway, at Benni Hannah there’s this mook in a sport coat and gelled hair standing outside with his date drinking some red yuppie drink and he spots my buddy’s 10-year-old son and starts busting his balls.

“Hey, little fella, you must be the owner,” he says, amusing no one but his drunk ass self and kind of freaking out both the 10-year-old and me.

As we are waiting for room enough for 14 people, my friend, whom we will call Seamus, because that’s his name, starts working the room. And he’s a magnet for freaks like the guy out front with the drink that matched his hair.

So the guy makes the same joke to Seamus’ son again, making the kid laugh nervously. Hey, even a 10-year-old knows an asshole when he sees one.

So I tell the 10-year-old (who loves violent video games, like most kids), as a joke, as I know he’s not supposed to swear, that I’ll give him $20 if he does the following. If the yup starts up again, say, “Listen, what the fuck is wrong with you? If you don’t leave me alone I’m gonna break your fucking arm. Don’t think I haven’t done it before. And don’t think I won’t do it again. Understand?”

As kids love Quentin Tarantino movies (or at least Grand Theft Auto), he thought this was funny. And he knew the guy was pissing me off, too. So I had the kid’s back.

With my buddy Seamus, I’m the minder, which is what he started calling me on such adventures. And you know it’s comically scary when someone needs me to be their baby-sitter. Which if fine with me, because sometimes being a Michael Chiklis sort of cop, or a Jack Bauer kind of government agent, has its secret appeal.

Anyway, dinner went fine. We had a chef at our table whose name tag read “Jun” who was from near Mexico City, which offered further proof about how this immigration battle is about six years past being serious about itself. It’s like the battle for gun control. Sure, there are solid reasons to address both issues, but we wait until things are way past the point of expecting reasonable solutions.

Back to dinner. Jun was an affable guy who did the requisite Japanese place stuff on the grill: catching shrimp tails in his pocket; balancing eggs on his spatula (which is NOT a euphemism for masturbation, but should be); making a volcano with an onion; and, most importantly, making sure no one was so drunk that they put their hands on the grilling surface, thereby spoiling the fun for everyone.

All was well until after the check came. The mook shows back up out of nowhere at our tables to say his goodbyes and goes into some babble similar to that speech Tom Cruise gave in Magnolia, which is to say one of those self-help type rambles, sort of like he did on Oprah to prove he ain’t gay.

Again, he singles out Seamus’ youngest and asks the kid what he wants out of life, And in this motivational speaker’s world view that meant knowing what kind of car he wanted and where he wanted to live.

The kid knows his cars and said a sports car of some sort and a mansion, which pleased this More Ron Huber, who babbled like a toxic brook about going to church, knowing what you want and having lots of cool stuff.

As all I really want in a car is good gas mileage and low insurance rates, I was not impressed. Most everyone else was uncomfortable.

Then the guy decides to go around the table and shake everyone’s hands like we were all guests on the talk show playing in his brain. I got up, walked over, gave him one of those head-shakes-with shoulder-roles moves you see in the movie just before someone pops somebody as I shook his hand. A look that says, Go in peace. Now.

This guy was taller, younger and in better shape then me and way more than likely drunker. Still, when I want to look unamused, I know the pop culture codes and have that special Irish way about me that might, just might scare somebody who didn’t know any better.

Mr. Infomercial finally shut up - and I didn’t even have to say anything to accomplish this. Maybe I reminded him of his dad - or the guy at the Scientology meetings who tells him he’s trying way too hard.

And maybe I should be glad I read this doofus right and he didn’t get violent and put my bald head on the griddle, a paddy melt for Irish visitors' dessert -- and quite a mess for Jun to clean up.

Still, when you can get a loudmouth to be quiet, in this day and age you have every right to be overly impressed with yourself.

Smoking Popes, Behemoth Bob and a Closed Curragh: Slacking in the Suburbs, Parts 4, 5 and 6

You gotta love a band where the drummer looks like the bastard son of Sebastian Cabot (Mr. French from TV’s Family Affair, not the other one from history class). Or he could be the result of a Bachman Turner Overdrive appearance at a town festival somewhere in the Chicago suburbs sometime in the early 80s.

Either way, the guy plays for Smoking Popes, one of two bands from where I call home that have almost made it big. Funny thing is the Popes front man has accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, while the other group, Alkaline Trio, holds lapsed Catholics who flirt with that Anton Lavey Satanic silliness.

Both bands also play melodic punk rock with singers who are crooners instead of the whiny kid that usually moans his way through similar music. The head Pope, Josh Caterer, is even partial to show tunes. And you haven’t lived until you have heard a pop punk cover of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

“Almost made it” is a theme I can relate to, and probably most people can. And when you come from here, calling one of your major label albums Born to Quit and the other Destination Failure makes perfect sense.

The Popes played a homecoming show of sorts out this way last Friday in front of about 500 people, about a third of them claiming they went to high school with the band. The guys are all in their 30s and according to some bullshit in the recent New York magazine, if they were East Coast they’d be called “grups,” people approaching or at middle age who still maintain some of their youthful hipsters habits.

Fuck New York magazine. I’ve been accused of acting like I’m 23 since I was 23. And just because people have figured out they don’t have to wear suits or Dockers, can still listen to whatever the hell kind of music they want to and some writer wanted to get paid to hang out with them, they get this label.

The people who still wear ties all the time - those are the ones who scare me.

One of the Popes wore leather pants, which was funny, not scary.

Sad, and sort of funny was running into a friend I hadn’t seen in five years at a bar called River Lee’s, which is nothing like any place I’ve ever visited in the Ireland from where the name comes. It’s more like a pre-old man bar, a smoky island of misfit toys kind of place.

One guy there fancied himself Gary Busey and was dressed in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, perhaps because of the Jimmy Buffet concert going on inside his head or his Hunter S. Thompson outlook on life. It felt like it was going to snow outside, so looking at him only made me colder.

Seeing my former friend was just a tad disheartening. What do you say to someone you haven’t seen in five years? It’s not like we had a falling out, more like neither one called the other. A guy thing.

Anyway, now he’s huge, close to 300 pounds I would guess. You can’t exactly say, “Hey, you’re looking good.” Do you offer to buy a Lite Beer? Make an Atkins joke? Be honest and say, “What the hell happened to you?”

Instead I teased him about the Cubs and his Amish beard and pretty much left him alone with this two other drinking buddies. We had run out of things to say to each other, which is really tense for an idiot like me who oft times can’t shut up.

Awkwardness is what bars are for anyway, right?

Despite that, I am glad I went into this place if only for learning that they now make plastic beer pitchers with a compartment by the handle in which you put ice to keep the brew cold. I’m going to by one for mending ankle sprains. I figure I can put my foot into it, too, which might improve the flavor of your typical domestic low calorie beer while allowing me to heal.

On the other end of the bar spectrum, I closed my weekend out by heading to the last night of the Curragh, an Irish place by Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg.

Why is it closing? Did the River Lee’s crowd show up one night and scare off the yuppies?

Nah. The place is was doing fine and was seven years old. The owners (Greeks, by the way) got an offer it couldn’t refuse, from Tiffany’s, not Tony Soprano. Apparently the store wanted the retail space (because Lord -- and Taylor -- knows there is nowhere to find bling in the burbs) and offered $6 million for the spot. They will tear down the building and put up a new one.

The regulars were moaning about not having anywhere decent to hang out at in Schaumburg. Well, duh. You moved to Disney World, you deal with Mickey Mouse places and It’s a Small World approximations of a good time.

You gotta go find your fun out here. Just drive safely.