Me, myself and I - in a bathtub, like a Roman

So I am sitting in a huge bathtub with a small waterfall rolling off my back.

Jets of water are swirling about me, but I can’t quite decide if I want them set to simulate a tide pool or river rapids. There are “chromotherapy” lights in the tub and in the dim room, occasionally changing color while new age music gently gurgles in the background

The day before this I was among Latin students looking forward to attending a G-rated Roman banquet in togas. If they could see me now, I think.

Strike that. If they could see me now, I might be arrested. Still, I feel like an emperor or at least some sore of naked senator.

At the same time I feel a bit like a pot roast, or boiled beef maybe, as I was exfoliated with sea salts before being set in the bath.

Into the Mike stew my kindly young aestheticist Melanie added John Michael Kohler Bath Salts, Phytomarin Anti-Stress Bath and Phytomarin Dried Seawater Bath.

I am yummy I bet - to a hungry, dumb bear who forgot to hibernate or maybe a ravenous deer attracted by all that salt.

This is all part of my John Michael Kohler for Him Bathing Experience at the American Club resort’s Carriage House, which ends with me getting sprayed with John Michael Kohler oil, a sort of seal coat on a snowy winter’s day in Kohler.

On my way back to the locker room, I ask to see a Vichy shower in another treatment room, which looks like one of the power car washes set up over an examining table.

Now judging by this, if you didn’t know any better, you might think John Michael Kohler was a hair stylist who made it big, took a liking to cheese and moved to near Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

But if you’ve gone to the a nice bathroom, you’ve probably seen Kohler’s name at an intimate moment or two in your life. John Michael, of course, founded a company made famous by its bathtubs, plumbing fixtures and bubblers.

There appears to be little evidence that Kohler ever willingly exfoliated then soaked in seaweed, and you can fact check that at the Kohler Design Center and Museum next door to the Carriage House.

It all makes me think I’d like to have my own town someday, with nice little houses that make me hungry for ginger bread, and deluxe golf courses galore, and a hunting club with tasty gourmet roast beef sandwiches served on cibatta bread.

And if this doesn’t sound like Wisconsin, then you haven’t been to Kohler or Sheboygan. I mean even the hunters I saw coming into River Wildlife were wearing clothes right out of the original Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, replete with required pure bred black lab. These are models, not Pabst drinkers, I think.

But nothing ever really is at it appears, which is a good thing, because if it were, that would mean the knuckle heads on talk radio are actually right about the world.
And speaking of how things appear, or don’t in this case, back at the spa, there are separate saunas and whirlpools in the locker room of each sex. But on this day, the guys are wearing swimsuits (at least until one proud of his skinny ass dude showed up and made everyone uncomfortable).

This is not Rome after all, so if most have a suit on so do I. (Even Melanie closed her eyes while I covered up with a towel, which was probably best for everyone.) What I learn, too, is I am not the only guy here new to this man spa stuff.

Guys come up with their wives (but not in the Mormon sense of that) more than likely get some after spa loving, and, most importantly, get away from the kids for the weekend.

There seem to be gaggles of women here, too, getting away from their men - though I do picture deer hunters coming here in the fall for a warm body butter application.

It’s all about the me time. As a single guy who sometimes is socially autistic I have way too much of this. I know for a a fact that at least one good buddy is jealous of this, the grass always seeming greener or this time of year, the snow whiter.

But I go with the flow (pun unintentional) and wind up spending most of the rest of the weekend with me, myself and I.

Hey, I had to drive back home to beat a blizzard. Keeping with the water theme, in the northwest Chicago burbs just about every type of moisture that can come from the sky did on Saturday night.

I was supposed to go to a wine tasting party, but apparently was the only guest who decided that driving in slush after drinking was not a good idea.

On a solo roll (and not big on traveling in crappy weather, 215-pound wuss that I am)I spent much of Sunday alone too, a couple hours of it shoveling slush from the driveways, 20 pound scoops at a time.

And if you’ve read this blog before, you know I shovel a lot of slush.

A bad apple day and some Miami out takes

So I had a frozen weekend. So did my computer.

All of a sudden Saturday afternoon it starts typing bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb and like Rosie O’Donnell on The View or her equally annoying nemesis Donald Trump won’t shut the fuck up and give it a rest.

So I reboot and it won’t let me log back in.

Great, I think. I am being punished for looking at dirty pictures and for wasting so much time on dreary afternoons online when I could be writing a novel or making videos for You Tube.

Since I have a Mac, I call the closest Apple Store. Only thing is you can’t really talk to anyone on the phone at there. You get one of those royal pain in the ass recordings where you have to push the right button to get where you want.

I hit the one for service, which puts me in touch with India. I think he said something about it probably being the keyboard (and I did spill just a small drop of soda on the “a” key area), but he was hard to hear from across the ocean.

Then he asks for the serial number, which I learn is inside the CD drive door. Only thing is it is written in very small type under the part that looks like a cup holder.

I tell him I can’t read the damn thing. He hangs up.

Steve Jobs sucks just as bad as Bill Gates, but people think he’s cooler because he wears black turtle necks with jeans and dropped acid. They are all monsters, I tell you, just like Google, whicch changes things like how you get to your blog, to make it "better, faster, easier," and for them to collect more information. Yeah, computer stuff can really piss a guy off.

I frantically try to find a repair place at 3 p.m. on a Saturday. I reluctantly call Best Buy, another evil place where teens try to get you to subscribe to magazines you don’t want and ask for your zip code to feed the mother ship.

Best Buy’s geeks won’t touch a Mac, which is probably a good thing.

I call another geek place and the guy was helpful. He told me Macs rarely get viruses, to try a new keyboard first, and if it still doesn’t work call or stop in first thing Monday.

So, since I am pissed at Apple, I reluctantly go to Best Buy. The only Mac compatible ones were a one for more than $100, a wireless one, and the one I got, which is ergo dynamic, which means I am typing with my wrists on a small hill, which is not really comfortable but apparently way better for my dainty little wrists.

Other than that weekend highlights included almost breaking an ankle tripping down stairs to do laundry (which means I would have starved to death, as I live alone - OK I’m looking for sympathy) and SUnday morning almost breaking my nose on someone’s skull playing basketball. Hey, he’s short and my nose isn’t.

Strangely, I feel like I am breathing better since it happened. And now I know what a frontal lobotomy might feel like.

All the above is probably due to the fact I am suffering from a disorder I just made up (in the hopes of attracting a Big Pharm company to throw money my way to develop another unnecessary med ) called PADs - Post Adventure Disorder.

It’s the feeling you get within 72 hours of a good vacation upon returning to an office where the heat is turned as high and dry as grandma’s at Thanksgiving.

It makes you want to liven things up by playing practical jokes like convincing a chubby photographer that he has to pose as Cupid to illustrate a really hard hitting Valentine’s Day story.

And mostly it’s just a feeling that life can be more interesting.

Another symptom is dry itchy eyes and nostalgia for a week gone by.

So here are some Super Bowl week out takes:

A nice touch at the ocean view condo where we stayed: there was a copy of The Great Gatsby in a stand next to a futon.

My favorite cards passed out in South Beach to lure rubes to parties: one for rapper Young Jeezy at Metropolis kicking it old school with a Miami Vice theme party. Special guests included Warren Sapp and Chad Johnson and Randy Moss which begs the question - was there any air left in the room? The ad promised 50 exotic dancers and video vixens. And the first 100 ladies got in free.

Not free: the chance to hangout at Chakra’s Leather and Laces soiree with Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra for the low, low price of $200. Terrell Owens was invited to that one which went reverse bankers hours, 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. I am still kicking myself for not spending the coin on this one.

Favorite handy Super Bowl game day flier: an orange trifold called What’s His Name, Anyway? with a roster list for both teams, handed out by Jews for Jesus.

Coincidences you find in Florida: My buddy Butch watched part of the game from the Hollywood Hardrock where gold digger Anna Nicole Smith was found dead a few days later.

We flew back home from the Orlando International Airport on the same day astronut Lisa Nowak was arrested on charges of attempted kidnapping, battery, attempted vehicle burglary with battery, and destruction of evidence.

Hey, maybe she has PADs, too.

Miami Mike: My trip to Da Bowl

How many livers were saved by the Bears losing the Super Bowl Sunday, how many credti cards didn’t get maxed out, no one knows for sure.

That came to mind as I sat in Dulles Airport in Washington DC Monday evening with my buddy Butch and a bunch of other Bears fans connecting back to the frozen tundra that is Chicago.

There’s a male model type across from us dressed like every third person we saw on South Beach in black pants and a bluish shirt. There’s a group of 20somethings, a baby faced guy with two reasonably attractive young women at the other end of the facing rows of seats wearing Bear-aphernalia. By them are three approaching middle aged, middle management guys, one black, one white, one Asian.

Sure, their team lost Sunday. But media accounts to the contrary, there weren’t any tears in the beers. In fact, though disappointed, perhaps hungover, and more than likely lighter in the wallet, everyone was positively giddy.

You can’t come back from Miami without a boatload of stories, and these folks had enough water cooler material to keep Hinckley and Schmidt in business for the rest of the decade.

Take the youngsters. They hung out on South Beach most of the time, which for you Chicago types who have never been, is like Rush Street on steroids or pheromones, and with sand and humidity.

South Beach, like Rush or North Michigan Avenue, It is a relief valve for locals, as it keeps the tourists and the celibritocracy away from them as the outsiders look at shiny objects, drink, gawk and do other touristy things like buy t-shirts and pay outrageous parking and cover charges.

The threesome from Chicago met a guy as big as a jockey who bought them drinks a good portion of one night. Initially they were afraid he might be trying to date rape the dude, but he was just loaded in both senses of the word.

They had friends there who just came down without anywhere to stay. One slept not in the Versace mansion, but a Versace jacket on a park bench. Another friend brought a party bus down, parked next to a yacht that the young guy’s dad had docked in Fort Lauderdale.

The only thing they beefed about was returning to the cold. I told them with all the alcohol in them, it could get to 20 below before they would have to worry.

Then there were the black guy and his buddies. Like Butch (who has the perfect Chicago Bears name) they tried to get into the game Sunday.

The trio saw the glimmer of hope that was the first play of game kickoff return by Devin Hester on a tiny black and white TV, sheltered from the deluge by garbage bags, perched on the back of a Humvee, then held high for the replay.

That the game remained close until after half time meant that scalpers asked more than $1,000 for a ticket long into the game. The black guy, perhaps wisened by the experience, thinks there might even be a slim chance the NFL might be alienating its fans by going for the corporate gold, by making their product unaffordable to the masses who love the game.

Which is a navel-gazing way to say the guys headed to a bar.

So did Butch, all soggy, with a wad of cash in his wallet that frankly made me nervous for him, given Miami’s reputation from CSI and other crime dramas. Butch is a good guy for a writer to have as a friend for an adventure like this because: A) he looks like a Bears fan and B) he loves to talk to people and ask questions, which makes it easy for a lazy ass like me and C) thus he gets good stories.

While vainly searching for tickets, Butch befriended a young lawyer (which is always a good friend to have) who came down on a private jet with some guy whose businesses he was soliciting (and no he wasn’t also a hooker - I could tell as he wasn’t wearing fuck me pumps and Daisy Dukes). The rich guy apparently was pulling his chain, getting him close, but no Havana cigar, while he and his corporate clan sat in Dolphin stadium and watched Cirque du Soleil reinterpret football for Europeans and metrosexuals.

The two headed to the Hard Rock Cafe and Indian Gaming Casino, taking a cab ride from an asshole who at first refused service because they were wet. Butch told the driver that everyone was going to be wet, but the driver made him throw out his raincoat, Rather, the driver took Butch’s raincoat and threw it out the car window during the $40 ride.

Me, I wound up at a house party in Hollywood with some transplanted Midwesterners. The hosts assumed the rain would break, so most of the food and all of the drink was set up outside in a yard along a gully as nature tried to rightfully reclaim that yard as a swamp. That made it hard to to quench a thirst.

They had about a dozen TVs set up in the place - and a pool in what looked like it used to be the garage.

I left before the game ended, as did most people, leaving lots of seafood spoiling in the mildew-ripening air, off to pick up Butch at the casino.

Thankfully, some nice folks at the party gave good directions, which is rare to find in South Florida as most people there are from somewhere else and because English is a second or third language for a good many. Case in point: we snacked one night at a pizza placed run by Russian immigrants.

Which brings me to where we wound up staying, a high rise condo, 12 stories up, overlooking the ocean and Biscayne Bay. It’s on Sunny Isles, which sounds like name for a juice product, but is where Donald Trump is building more of his Antichrist Towers - across Collins Avenue from a Denny’s.

The place has the worst valet service ever, poor working stiffs who barely knew English or how to find cars in a less than 100 feet from the front door. And that is my only complaint.

The digs had an elevator that opened directly into the unit. Butch thought there was a mistake when the door opened, and I convinced him by showing him the number on the service door.

How we wound up there: a buddy of mine who lives in Seattle came down with his brother with tickets he got from a Seahawks connection. I found this out about this just two days before we left and as I scrambled to find lodging.

He got dibs on the MTV style crib from a young woman from Northbrook who used to work at a blues bar the brothers run in Pearl Jam land. Her Russian born parents live in Northbrook. That’s all I’m saying, aside from that we each paid less than $60 a night for our stay, making it the best bargain, aside from the free sleeping on the couches Butch and I crashed upon in Fort Lauderdale by the Sea on Friday after drinking at a McSorley’s (named rented from the famous New York pub) where we saw tipsy lesbians make out, which is far more entertaining that catching a glimpse of Justin Timberlake at a place with a $500 cover charge could ever be.

If I ever met that boy band twit, I’d hit him. I brought sexy back, mother fucker, not your skinny white ass.

Sorry, had a South Beach moment. Hey i was mistaken for a cop, once by a nervous but friendly grocery store check out lady (Butch told her he was the cop, FBI in fact, while I was a writer) and later that night/morning by a hooker looking for some Butch action. I flashed my wallet and a Chicago-style “how ya doin” to her, which sent her walking as fast as one can in high heels and hot pants.

Butch was people watching at 4 a.m. while the rest of my posse got slices in a place in line next to a a guy who wanted desperately to be mistaken for Usher, perhaps so he crash a party and get to meet a megastar like Jenny McCarthy or Fergie from Black Eyes Peas or Miami Bengal Chad Johnson whose name was on every third postcard-type handout strewn about the sidewalk.

We rolled in an orange Mustang convertible (and paid $40 to park the ride), not quite as incongruous as the old people I saw the prior night in Lauderdale in a white Escalade with New Hampshire plate or the young punks in a beater cruising Collins with a booming system that sounded like someone put a sander in the trunk.

I should talk. I dressed in a black Cuban wedding style shirt and blue jeans, getting my fashion tips from David Caruso’s moody TV show.

But not much isn’t a silly fantasy during a Super Bowl weekend, and South Beach, at least the patch of it we saw is all about pretending.

It’s oddly democratic that football fans are getting stupid drunk among gangsta wannabes and star fuckers. That guys from the South Side of Chicago can turn up in the day with cameras and get women in Dayglo thongs to pose for their digicams. It’s fun, until somebody gets hurt or until Paris Hilton shows up.

What would you even say to someone like her, if you wound up at one of parties she gets paid to attend? As a Bears fan, would you ask if Brian Urlacher is as good a lay as he is a linebacker? Does she know why ESPN makes its talent wear suits while standing on a beach when it’s 85 degrees and muggy? Does she ever think her life is just like being in high school, but, like Martin Mull pointed out, with lots of money?

Why bother gabbing with the non talent, when, flashing back to my virgin South Beach experience that Friday afternoon, you get better conversation from a Cuban expat who runs a New York style trattoria. Or from connected Chicago guys with Italian ice places with great views of tourists, hot women hawking all sorts of products, and paunchy gay guys in Speedos (that cleanses the pallette, as does the ice).

Or the guys who run the Vienna Beef Hot Dog stand, which curiously clears $5,000 a day. But I joke. Nice guys, not wise guys, I hope, and willing to talk to fellow Chicagoans.

In fact, just wearing a Bears shirt typically led to the following greeting from other faithful followers:

Guy one: “Bearzzz”

Guy two: “Bearzz”

Guy three (playfully tapping guy two on back in non Brokeback way): “Bearzz”

The hot dog stand guy has the froggy voice of someone whose smokes 600,000 cigarettes. He tells us about all the stars he knows, including Prince who will be showing up for a late set with 50 guitars, only 2 of which he will play, at a club the guy part owns. The guy does seem at least to know the names tied to places in Chicago.

But he leaves Pee Wee Herman style, on a bicycle with a metal basket on the handle bars.

I ask the other guy running the stand if his buddy is full of shit. He says know, and this seems like the type of guy you would believe. He has the right gray hair.

He’s friends with a customer in a CBS shirt who is wearing a wrist band he claimed as proof of attending a party at the Versace mansion. I think it might show he was in a hospital, but who knows? Another visitor is supposedly a Chicago alderman married to Christine Hefner. The politician looks like he hasn’t bough new running clothes or changed hairstyles since 1978.

There is a lovely woman with cocoa powder skin working the counter in the hot dog place. We ask her how to get back to our car, as neither Butch nor I will be working for GPS anytime soon (and almost didn’t make it out of Orlando at its confounded toll way system).

She leaves the store and walks us to the corner where we must turn.
Like almost everyone else we’ve met, she’s a transplant, in her case with ties to Minnesota and a mom in Naperville.

I joke to her I don’t belong in South Beach, I am not pretty enough. She tells me I do have pretty blue eyes (offset by my pasty skin which requires SPF Irish to keep from turning cooked lobster red in the tropics, which are my words, not hers).

Yes, you read right. A pretty younger woman blew smoke up my ass for no apparent reason other than her just being nice.

That made the trip. Well, that and the rest of the stuff I just told you.

And gloating by text message to frozen Chicago suburbanites that with the wind chill it was only about 75 on the beach Friday.

Then again, what do I know? I pitched a story about this adventure to my editor at my day job.

His e-mail reaction: “We would be interested in one story of an Elgin guy who was so consumed with the Bears that he went to Miami with no ticket and no chance to see the game. It could run Sunday on the news pages. But would we really need to be there to do that? Not interested in him or anyone else slogging around the bars of Miami. Sorry.”

What could possibly be entertaining about that? I mean I could have done most of this piece by phone - I thought on the ride in the back of the aforementioned convertible, staring up at opulent art deco palaces on the way back to bed, sleeping on a leather sofa with shadows of palm trees dancing on the place next door.