Bears, Colts, and....Prince

It's taken until Thursday for it to sink in that the Chicago Bears are going back to the Super Bowl.

It's been 21 years, which is considerably less time than it took the White Sox to get back to and win the World Series.

The thought of Bears fans - lots of pasty, fat white guys - hitting South Beach off Miami is rife with comic possibilities, as is picturing people from Indianapolis in the same spot. Who knew blue and orange Speedos came in XXXL?

And that middle class guys and gals are pretty much willing to do anything this side of shoving a cucumber up their asses while selling an internal organ is funny and scary at the same time.

Sure, it would be nice to go to the game, as evidence points to this being a rare occurrence. Yet, $4,000 for a ticket is insane. Buy yourself an HDTV for that money. Hang out at a bar and buy your pals drinks. Give Bono the money to save 4,000 starving Africans for a year.

Funnier still is that the halftime entertainment for the big game will be a guy who was at the top of the charts the last time the Bears were in it: Prince.

The NFL went all Puritan after Janet Jackson's nipple flash. Last year they censored lyrics from Rolling Stones songs. Now they hire a guy who used to perform in a leather jock strap and a trench coat. Didn't they see Purple Rain?

Of course, Prince claims to have cleaned up his act, which makes him a bit boring. Still, the little guy can play a mean guitar.

I guess we won't be hearing any of the following tunes come February 4th. And in case you aren't a fan, I am not making any of these up:

Do Me Baby; Sexuality; Jack U Off; Dirty Mind; Do It All Night; Head; Soft and Wet; Billy Jack Bitch; The Lubricated Lady; Hide the Bone; Erotic City; Cream; Come; Sexy MF; Horny Toad; Irresistible Bitch; Scarlet Pussy; Sister (which is about incest); and Darling Nikki (which simulates masturbation and lesbian sex).

I'm not complaining. When he's not being overly weird I enjoy Prince's music.

Come Monday after the bowl, though, I don't want the NFL copping some holier than thou attitude if Apollonia and Vanity show up Sunday in teddies.

After all, football is one of the most violent sports, so why not throw some sex in for halftime. That's as American as apple pie. Or would that be cherry pie?

What would the opposite of "Career Builder" be?

I know you’re not supposed to write on your blog about the place where you work - it’s like those kids who rag about high school then get suspended.

Of course, the troubled teens often threaten to bring weapons to class or, at the very least, write bad poetry about the people they hate.

And until Friday I had a perfectly good week. I went to a play, an outdoors show, a cooking store, got a personal tour of a water park and got to ride on the slides and arranged a visit to a comedy club. Believe it or not, it is all legitimately part of my job.

What fun I have, I thought. I am a lucky guy.

Then Friday rolled around. A 2:30 p.m. meeting. There were only five people at the meeting including the boss, who started out by thanking us all for the hard work we’ve done the last few months while we were short handed.

Then she handed out manila folders to the four of us, each with our first names written on them and each with two handouts, one a personalized list of critiques, not one of them positive, the other a survey.

We’re supposed to e-mail our responses back to her by Wednesday. Things we like and don’t like about our jobs is on the survey.

Now the catch is, do you actually risk being honest on such a document - in light of the fact that at this meeting the boss implied that if “things don’t change, there will be consequences.”

Funny thing is I talked to her boss a couple months ago, when she was last having management issues, and he used the same phrase.

Hmmm.

What’s frustrating is this boss rarely gives any feedback at all on the work I do, work, mind you, that me being major league anal retentive, typically have done well in advance, meaning if it is not of the quality she wanted she hs had ample time to rectify.

Nay, she decides to pass out folders, the second time during her reign she has gone the handout route.

Needless to say, nobody is really happy right now about working for her.

If this weren’t irritating, it would be funny. Or maybe it is funny because it is irritating.

Of course the guy who is the boss of her likes to sit in his corner office with the lights off.

He also recently banned cell phone use from the office. I understand that some rings are mighty annoying, but apparently putting the phone on buzz is not supposed to be an option.

I learned the value of the cell phone with a sick parent over the summer, so I am not going to listen to him.

After all, fair is fair. It’s not like they are listening to the rest of us.

A fine starter to the New Year (out with the old, the new, and anything else I ate that day)

So, I blew the starter.

No, I am not a cheerleader on a reality TV show set at the Ohio State University.

Get your mind out of the gutter. Or out of the Buckeye backfield. Goodbye Columbus. Or words to that effect.

But I jest about the fine Big 10 school and all it stands for. After all, it is not Miami - the one in Florida, of course, not the one up the road in Ohio.

But I digress, which happens when I go without food for more that a day, living on crackers and lime Gatorade. More on that later.

Nay, the starter I blew was under the hood - of my sexy minivan.

I tried to be a good boy New Year’s Eve and stayed overnight at the friends who had me over for their house party. Little did they know I wouldn’t leave until 4 that afternoon. I was being that good.

Plus, what they say about mixing beer, wine, sparkling fruit wine, fried salami, lamb, goat cheese, sugar cookies and chicken turns out to be true.

But alas, I wound up with my auto on a side street in Oak Park, the hood up, the electric off, smoke briefly billowing under the hood, much as my stomach was around noon.

So, a half dozen phone calls and 90 minutes later I wind up getting towed home by this chubby little Italian guy who loved to talk. Nice kid.

I learned that people in his profession make more money than most reporters for a job that is pretty similar if you think about it - coming across people in uncomfortable situations, chatting with them, then taking their money. No wait. That makes him like a psychiatrist. Or a divorce attorney.

And that’s how my New Year began.

Two days later, back at what passes for a job I grab a salad and a chicken sandwich for lunch. Again, trying to be a good boy.

This, too, shall pass. And pass. And pass. And pass.

It’s not safe to eat anything anymore, but for Space Food Sticks, if you can still find them, so it might have been the lettuce. Or the honey mustard.

I’ve ruled out the low carb fettucini because no one I dined with Wednesday wound up doing Linda Blair imitations in the dark hours before dawn but for lonesome me.

One of life’s toughest choices is what end to attend to first, especially at 3, 4, and then again at 6:30. That’s all I’m saying.

That, and 5 pounds later I’m convinced I don’t have the stomach to be a super model. The looks, maybe, but not the intestinal fortitude.

Dehydrated baby I am, I did go to the doctor to learn I will live or at least not die from this malady, which passed in less than 24 hours, taking with it a good part of me I hope to never see again.

Turns out there’s some stomach virus going around. Also turns out that in the county I call home there have been more than a dozen cases of salmonella in the past week or so. But the health department, bless it’s soul, doesn’t want to cause a panic so wouldn’t say where anybody ate just yet. All they would give was the demographic information, which fit nicely with the folks who working preparing food in most local eateries.

But I worry too much by nature. There’s no one here to do it for me. It’s when you’re sick that a spouse could come in handy. That’s what love is for.

Me, I took it easy, relying as usual on the kindness of friends who fed me soup one evening, then potatoes the next, and staying in for the weekend.

The place needed a cleaning anyway. I do tend to live like a grad student. Yeah, being single - it’s just like George Clooney’s life, really, just on a smaller scale.

Besides, a new starter (plus a battery and a total bill over $600), a g-i cleansing and an early spring cleaning (given the weather) are a fitting way to begin a year.

And now I have more empathy for the Bush Administration. I mean, just when you think things can’t get worse...


At least I didn’t have a camera phone. Or any neighbors from a rival religious sect. Or do I? Maybe that’s why I was sick.

I’m going with that. Damn Congregationalists at the church next door.