Monday, April 30, 2007

Only six months until Halloween

Collecting stories on sunny afternoons

Writers collect stories and anecdotes and blend reality into fiction. So be careful being my friend, I guess, as you might wind up in a novel, provided I ever get around to writing one.

Maybe that’s why writers are lonely by nature – at this point everyone is on to this and nobody wants to be a character, a Springer show guest there on the page. Then again, a good many people want to be famous, so maybe some people act even more outlandishly for a writer, hoping to be immortalized.

Either way, this past weekend, I gathered a few nuggets worth mentioning.

First, there was a guy named Joel who was next to me at the bar Francesca’s in West Dundee. Eating alone, he said he was a talent scout for the California Angels. He has been doing this for a couple years after retiring from a long career as a baseball coach at Western Kentucky where he and his wife still live.

They were moving back up to Chicago, as he grew up in the far north suburbs, heading to Napervillle, which is one of The Blends I mentioned in my last post, but which still is a more interesting place than most suburbs.

Joel has the upper Midwest as his territory and was heading to Rockford, Champaign and then Cedar Rapids, Iowa for his weekend to scope out high school kids.

They don’t seem to have talent scouts for writers, or if there are, I haven’t impressed anybody. Maybe I'm not quick enough with my release. So it was interesting to meet someone who has to evaluate developing abilities as well as personalities and do it well enough to keep his job.

The second interesting story came Saturday afternoon at a backyard party after the Arthritis Walk in Lake County, at my buddy Gerry’s brother Doug’s family home.

A guy named Bryan was talking about sailing. His dad, who hails from Holland, went to a boat show back in his homeland and wound up buying a sail craft that he had shipped back stateside.

That’s right – a boat on a boat. It would have been ironic if both had sunk.

Bryan also was/is in band and knew the guys in Material Issue, a power pop group from the Chicago burbs that almost made it big in the 90s. Lead singer and chief songwriter Jim Ellison, who wrote a lot about girls and heartbreak and dated a friend of Gerry’s brother, wound up committing suicide in 1996, killing himself off moped fumes in his garage.

Story three came Sunday afternoon. I met up with a new buddy of mine, novelist Don Evans, who, unlike me, actually finished a book. Good Money After Bad, which is set in the world of Chicago sports gamblers, circa 1995, when the summer was unbearably hot.

Evans was giving a reading in town, and before he did I met up with him and his family and a friend of his at JB’s a bar in Elgin where some psycho opened fire in April, 2001.

Anyway, George Rawlinson, a total Chicago guy living out this way now was among Evans' guests and George mentioned having a meal with some fine looking lady who was a dancer. The dancer had a cute friend who was dating an heir to some big fortune, then dumped him to snag a mediocre baseball player who was pitching in Japan and making $5 a year.

That begged a couple questions, one being that George seems to meet a lot of colorful people like this. My vinyl sided suburban life, like my Irish complexion, pales in comparison.

The other is how do attractive women always wind up with rich guys? Is their some sort of service that hooks up the sexy with the wealthy? Is it just a matter of knowing where to look for loot if you have looks? Or is there a Web site for them where they hook up?

Not having a lot of money and not being one of People magazine’s hottest 100 bachelors, I am completely puzzled by all of this.

So I do what I do best when I get confused: After the reading, I took a nap, then mowed the lawn.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

A bike my parents had but hardly ever used

Spring time memory - my first bike

Dancing in Madison, drinking in Bolingbrook

In Madison, Wisconsin there is a bar called the Crystal Corner, and on a recent Saturday night it was filled with middle aged white people trying to dance to the music of the Rousers, a rockabilly band.

I have given up on trying to dance in public, which I used to like to do. I still might after a couple cocktails at a reception or backyard gathering, but once I hit, let's say 30, I just felt plain silly and self-conscious. Then again, I have a new unnatural fear of dying alone and being eaten by a cat. And I don't even own a cat. So what do I know?

I do sort of admire folks who aren't afraid to bust bad moves, which were on ample display at the bar. Good for them. Dude, if you want to break out your snake skin boots and motorcycle/bowling shirt to writhe away the evening, more power to you. Same to you, lady in boots and short shorts, moving like a puppet being jerked off its strings.

And kudos to the large 50something woman in the madras dress who would get up from her wheel chair to crochet in time to the tunes. Who knew making a scarf could be so much fun?

The band was older, too, which was nice to see - a place packed, not catering to the target 21-35 audience, and not a chain.

Eccentricities are for college towns, older places and big cities I guess. They are kept undercover in the suburbs, especially the rapidly growing ones sprouting up around Chicago, where everything is shiny and new.

Case in point: I went to an opening night for a perfectly pleasant place, the first Chicago area Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant in Bolingbrook. I am familiar with the small chain from its garlic fries sold at San Francisco Giants games and from its location not far from the park which has a great view of the Bay.

The Bolingbrook one is in one of those upscale outdoor malls, tucked away next to a Bass Pro Shop and across the highway from an Ikea. That Bolingbrook is now a high mortgage district is perplexing for a couple reasons, one being it used to hold a strange combo of mall and indoor amusement park where they filmed part of The Bllues Brothers.

The other is it is almost smack dab in the middle of a tornado belt, and on Google maps not far from the aptly named Plainfield and Downers Grove, and blending in with those two towns, Naperville, Woodridge, and the better parts of Aurora. In fact, I think they should call the area The Blends, much like I call the indistinguishable subdivision hub running from Aurora to Crystal Lake, Randallville.

Thing is, new vinyl-sided houses in The Blends, standing where corn once was, go for $400,000 or more with $6,000 tax bills. But there are plenty of Kohl's stores and car washes and up and coming deli places like Pot Belly's, which is a good place. In fact, none of it is really bad. It's just like every other place that has the better stores.

You really don't have to drive that far anymore to get to the shops you like, certainly not as far as you probably do for work - especially if you work at one of those shops and can't afford to live in the Blends and have to get home to Joliet.

Where is the new, Midwestern John Cheever, I wonder, the guy who chronicles the lives of people who can, or at least try, to afford such lives? What kind of money do you need? What kind of hours do you put in? What's the commute like? What are the pressures of keeping up with the Dow Joneses? How long will it take for the trees to grow? Are the kids all on Ritallin?

And when will I-355/55 construction finally be done, so things can finally run full bore?

None of this is to knock Bolingbrook. If I had a family and money I might consider moving to such a place. It's not as expensive as the $600,000 you might pay for a brick bungalow in Chicago. There are plenty of highways for escaping to a vacation home in another state.

And Gordon Biersch is a nice place to go for garlic fries and boutique beer.

But I wonder where, if anywhere, the middle aged folks out here head out to dance or hear a band that is not a tribute to, let's say, Jimmy Buffet? I'm guessing most of them are like me, and don't dance much anymore.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Senior citizen practice - and smelt

Sometimes I think my life has been practice for being retired.

I’ve worked way too many menial jobs, which prepares me well for a future that more than likely will involved passing out shopping carts or giving away samples of cheese products at some huge airport hangar of a store.

I’ve learned to live on an income that I learned last weekend falls below what is called the middle of the middle class these days. What was I thinking becoming a writer? Why didn’t I become an accountant or even a dental hygienist?

And in the last week, I had two experiences to remind me further of my future 25 or so years hence.

One was taking a coach bus trip to a smelt fry in Port Washington, Wisconsin, a sort of suburb of Milwaukee. Even there I saw condos along the highway selling for $240,000 which is another story.

I had not done a trip like this as an adult. I went by myself, largely because I could find no one who had the time or wanted to head north for a whole day to chow down on small fish.

Flying solo is something I figure will be easier when in my 60s. I can pretend I am a widow. It will seem gloomily romantic and mysterious, instead of how it may look now, which is “poor guy can’t find any friends” (for which being a writer is good cover, but for the fact for most excursions they ask if I want to bring along someone).

Anyway, the bus ride included snacks and silly smelt songs and beer and meeting some nice people who kept me company.

Aside from heading to an American Legion Post to eat, the day involved a stop in Cedarburg, a pleasant enough place with the requisite “cute” shops and taverns.

I shop at Kohl’s and book and music stores, so cute does nothing for me. And this afternoon, I didn’t really feel in a drinking mood.

There was this barely 21 doofus from Chicago who was. He wound up passing out before dinner time in the park in front of the Legion. How cute he looked curled up in the fetal position, perhaps imitating a smelt being fried.

Good thing he didn’t sit by the Japanese sushi chef who brought his own rice to snack upon and who was talking about eating raw horse meat.

Which is what my leg felt like, which is my other senior citizen experience.

See, I have this circulation problem, a varicose vein thing. That means I am supposed to wear support stockings, which I am sure some paramedic will find humorous some day should I be in a car wreck.

The vein in the one leg was swollen in three spots and tender, so I went to the doctor.

They did an ultrasound, which involved dropping underwear. They give you a towel to cover, which makes me laugh. I mean, they are health professionals. A frightened, flaccid penis should not upset them.

Anyway, it turned out to be surface clots, so I have to keep my leg elevated as much as possible for about two weeks or until the swelling subsides. And I have to put a heating pad on it a couple times a day.

This is just like being old – or me on a weekend during football season.

The wake-up call for all of this was when the check-in clerk at the hospital asked me for a contact in case I had to be admitted.

My family is all out West, my closest relatives a good 45 miles away. I didn’t give her any name, partially because I felt optimistic about not being admitter, partially because I don’t know which friend I’d lay that responsibility on.

So for you married types who wish to live vicariously through us singles, remember that.

I wonder if George Clooney has worries like this?

Monday, April 09, 2007

Me and the Bunny

Me and the Bunny: Confessions of a Hare-a-tic

I am programmed to go to church, but can't bring myself to do it. Raised Catholic, I can't see going anywhere else, and home no longer feels right, either. Story of my life, really.

I can’t see myself at one of the mega-churches that have sprouted up around here. If it works for you, fine.

It just doesn’t seem like church to me to go to a sports stadium on Easter Sunday with 11,500 other people, or to go to the place with the HD TVs throughout, skits and lite rock music, like some sort of religious Celine Dionne concert.

As for my old home, a Pope who wears red Prada shoes really shouldn’t be railing out about gay people. Benedict dislikes pop music, too, not because it sucks, but because he sees it as the tool of the devil. Now, I am no Simon Cowell fan, either, but he was talking about Bob Dylan. What year is this, anyway?

And don’t even get me going about the role of women and other issues of human sexuality.

I do miss the sense of camaraderie from going to mass, the sense of belonging, even some of the pageantry.

But it would feel like a great big lie for me to go, not because I don’t believe in anything, but because I do believe, basically in the bit about live and let live, not judging, trying to be nice to each other, and, toughest of all to do, forgiveness of others’ transgressions and tougher still, learning how to deal with your own.

At the same time, unlike, say, Mel Gibson, I am a wimp of a believer. The blood and guts stuff scares me, and Easter should be rated R for its violent content. When at the age of 7 you are told you are eating the body and blood of Christ, it tends to stick with you like a nightmare.

In fact, I vomited once at the altar, just before communion. I think this was at Christmas though, and may have been a stomach virus, not fear.

Come to think of it, I was sick with some sort of flu one little boy Easter. A Catholic school kid, we had been assigned to decorate color paper cutout eggs with our Venus Paradise pencils for a class contest.

The first one I entered was all fluffy bunny stuff and fared poorly. Home sick, with nothing better to do (this was before Nintendo, boys and girls) I designed another, a gory folk art masterpiece with Jesus hanging on the cross, dead there for our sins, and his Mom and Mary Magdalene weeping, and red and yellow checks in the bottom part of the egg to fill it out.

When I got back to class, then nun told me that would have been the winner, my first lesson in knowing your market, I guess, but a lesson I don’t apply as often as I should.

I did used to like Easter candy, too, the giant chocolate egg from Fannie Mae candy, the white chocolate bunnies, the foil wrapped chocolate eggs, even the basket. The dogs ate it all one year when we hid the treats for our younger brother.

We’d dye eggs, using the latest in egg-dying technology. I am old enough for that to mean: little wax pencils to write your name on the shell colored with the McCormick’s vegetable dye mixed with hot water and vinegar; swirling psychedelic dyes; fake tattoo-like appliqués; stickers; and the Décor-egger, in which you put the egg to art up with geometric designs made with little pens.

Most of the time the eggs went uneaten, kept around until they were about to rot. One year, in fact, apparently thinking they’d make good fertilizer I buried the eggs in the back yard.

And I miss the lamb cake, too. My grandmother had a mold and my Mom may have actually used it once or twice. Pound cake covered in coconut frosting. But we usually got one from a bakery or Jewel.

A buddy of mine made one this year, covering it with chocolate frosting instead, a black sheep for the table which may or may not be symbolic but probably more edible than the traditional style.

Of course, there is ham, which my cousin Dan, who is a doctor now, once said is the meat closest to human flesh. Or maybe that was a line from a movie.

That may be, but what kind of a guest would I be to turn down a ziplock baggie or two of leftovers?

See, I may not go to church, but I did go to three places for eats yesterday. You can’t get the past out of your system, so you might as well enjoy the meal.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Big Ol' Blog Post of New Orleans

I don’t know what it’s like to miss New Orleans. I just visited for the first time, another middle aged tourist who doesn’t have the patience to wait the half dozen or so years for the AARP discount cards.

I am guessing the missing might be like the feeling you have after breaking up by phone with someone you shouldn’t have gone out with in the first place. It was doomed from the start, and deep down you knew better. But you couldn’t settle for being friends, and the sex takes over, chemical attraction really, like some goddam junkie, and pretty soon somebody gets hurt, maybe even bodies who didn’t have anything to do with it. And you’re never, ever gonna see that person again, because that’s what you have to do for true freaking love sometimes, just dance with the ghosts.

There’s a mess left all around you, big empty spaces, water marks on your sorry soul. But there are bars, lots of bars and plenty of food and a places left to boozily, woozily wander it off, make some new friends, go where everybody’s got some crazy-ass story so nobody’s gonna judge unless you’re a Level 5 asshole.

It’s not really some Oprah style healing. The is no fucking secret about it, just some spinning before you try and get a new set of bearings, a less wobbly foundation.

That’s missing. That’s the New Orleans I saw, a place that could easily give someone inherently lost and slovenly like a Tip O’Neill nose, a Paul Prudhomme belly and a sometimes dark mood hidden under a goofy parasol.

How could I not get a little crush on a town where the first party I attend is in a double shotgun style house with crawfish boiling and somebody feeding two baby hawks on one of the front porches.

The birds eat ground nutria, some invasive rodent imported to Louisiana for its fur, which turned out to be so orange not even pimps would wear it.

The crawfish, you gotta suck the head, squeeze the tip, a frat boy T-shirt slogan way of eating best done, like a lot of things in New Orleans, after drinking an Abita or three, even if its one of the strawberry flavored ones.

I am at this party as a guest of a group of bloggers from First-Draft, who are much more adept at the bells and whistles and the ways of the Net than silly old me who gets distracted all too often by its naughty bits and music downloads. They actually make friends with like-minded people and meet them in the real world to be do-gooders.

I write from memory and ain’t good with names, but do recall the house being owned by a pleasant couple, the husband of whom looks like he could be Tom Petty’s brother.

Their abode is across the street from a church left vacant by the hurricane. On higher ground (a relative term here under sea level), it survived pretty well. Story goes some cross dressing squatters saved it from a band of roving young gay looters, when told about bad mojo from the spirit of a legendary departed drag queen neighbor if they touched anything on the grounds.

This is a far more entertaining story than my own one that night about family on the West Coast deciding not not to calling me in Chicago about my father being in the hospital for three full days, waiting until the night before I left for my trip as not to worry me.

I’m expecting once one of my folks inevitably passes away, I will not be at the funeral because no one will tell me about it lest I be sad.

By the way, the dad is fine, with scar tissue causing his belly ache successfully removed. My belly is filled with boiled bugs, garlic and potatoes.

Luckily for anyone who somewhere in the universe might have had thoughts about it, I sleep alone. But there is a couple down the hall at the Place d’Arms where the one that probably is a woman makes sex noises most of the night, like a cross between a guinea pig and an asthma attack.

It’s mildly amusing, but for the fact 7:30 a.m. comes early, but not three or four times like the lusty lady apparently did and/or faked, thanks to Viagra I am guessing.

The early to rise thing is the reason for the voyage, volunteering with a nonprofit called Acorn to gut a house. You gotta wear a respirator and a cheap space suit, rubber gloves, regular gloves, thick soled shoes and a head cover, which may or may not have been part of the fun for the loving back at the hotel and would make for a good bank robber outfit.

Working in 80 degree heat though, like the happy couple, you break out in a nice sweat too. And nothing is as sexy as wet finger holes in rubber gloves.

The house was owned by a guy named Roscoe A. Allen, Jr., and I know this because some checks starting with the apt # 911 are among the items sitting along the curb that might be salvaged.

The collection reminds why one should go full metal Buddha and not get too attached to material things. After all, once you go, someone will sift through your possessions and wonder what the hell you were thinking when you bought the Santa Mickey Mouse, the frilly French plates, the Neptune statue.

There’s a wheel chair, too, and a neighbor comes by to say that an elderly couple lived in the house being gutted not more that 30 feet from the canal that spilled its dirty water was owned by an elderly couple. No family is left, he says, but for a daughter in an asylum.

I remember how my own dad stretches truth like Silly Putty, but figure there’s a grain of truth to it. The guy and his wife have a Fema trailer. They recently returned to the area from the Chicago suburb of Olympia Fields.

He and his dog hated snow more than the threat of another hurricane, so they are back much to his daughter’s dismay. Maybe it’s because he remembered that the young woman across the street looks like she could be Vanessa Williams' daughter. Or maybe it’s just the stupid pull of what we call home, come what may.

The man and his wife actually go and buy fried chicken wings for everyone who has been putting a pile of junk on the lawn next to his. It makes you hope there really is a heaven.

The project, though, is more mythological, real Myth of Sisyphus stuff. That’s to say, there are termites partying in the back room walls, so it might have to be a total tear down.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how things are being done, anyway. All this time later, there’s no grand plan in place, no one sending eager groups of youngsters to help in some orderly fashion, block by block, house by vacant house.

There are tour buses, though. But I’m a voyeur, too, and, like I said, you don’t judge in New Orleans. You got ghosts of your own to deal with, like the baby faced fat guy you see at the oldest bar in the States, Lafite’s. Go-cup in hand, he’s a dead ringer for a long lost friend you know you ain’t ever gonna see again but in some weird dream brought on by gumbo or a burrito. He gets lost in the crowd, another big white boy, a chubby Casper in the chocolate city ambling down sidewalks where Mardi Gras beads lie buried under cracked pavement.

Wacky Mayor Ray Nagin to the contrary, in the tourist parts of town at least, there is plenty of vanilla to be found. The French Quarter may be for the visitors, but that doesn’t mean it’s all Disney.

With the right guide, you get to its fringes and outskirts, beyond the Bourbon Street shtick.

Lucky for me I meet such later that night at another house party, a shindig hosted by a woman who makes beaded bustiers for a parade I think they call Krewe da Rue, but am not sure an too lazy right now to double check. I do know it’s not the St. Pat’s one, where they throw cabbages in lieu of beads.

I learn this from a my new buddies, Derrick and Maitri, a couple transplanted from Wisconsin, one by way of India and Kuwait. 5 points if you correctly guess which is from where.

That’s no more exotic than the transgender couple, one of whom is a bright scientist and a pretty good cook. Brighter than me whose brilliant Abita fueled revelation is that transsexuals turn out lesbian because they have no interest in penises whatsoever. Me, I am quite attached to mine, much to my detriment.

Anyway, who really knows how people become fast friends, much let a kindred cross dressed couple.

And my new buddies and me did the bonding the old fashioned way, meaning we didn’t even know each other by screen name (and as far as I have been told each were wearing the undergarments considered appropriate for our chromosomes.) I do know there is a picture now of me and D floating around the WWW of me and D labeled “When Harry Met Sally,” and rumors of a Sundance Film deal for a flick about the three of us.

But so what? Lonely bachelors with bald heads and attempted goatees need friends, too.

I think this all had to do with the hearty Midwestern thing about drinking and shooting the shit, swapping stories. And I was in a place where a famous old bar which played a role in the birth of jazz was called Storyville.

Which means I wound up heading out in a old baby blue Cadillac with Dairy State plates to a place called The Three Legged Dog.

There’s a blown up photo hanging above the bar of a deceased patron who once lived above the drinkery. He once showed up with his head bashed in and told all that the hammer mark was the result of sleeping with a woman and being caught by his girlfriend.

The bartender, too, is wounded, and on the wagon. His broken knuckle happened on during a blackout when he got mad and put his fist through a wall and was allowing patrons to bust beer bottles on a back wall. He’s off the fried food now, too, and working out.

Pub two, at Burgundy and Toulouse, is Fahy’s, where wait staff winds down after feeding overstuffed travelers. I return here the next afternoon to see that dogs come to New Orleans bars, too.

Maitri is there by now and gives us permission to hop more. So we head down to see the tourists on Bourbon, past the strip clubs and gay bars and a place called The Dungeon to Molly’s, which has a button cute lady bartender who doesn’t suffer foolish underage drinkers who come in thinking that just being out past 3 a.m. entitles one to buy booze.

Derrick’s daddy was a ship’s captain on the Great Lakes and me I am South Side of Chicago by birth if not disposition, so occasional nights like this for two Irishmen are part of the genetic code, an imprint to be enjoyed sometimes as long as they don’t venture into Eugene O’Neill territory.

My new buddy kindly makes sure I get back to my hotel and calls his wife to check on her. I get into my room around 5, my friends Allison and Tony asleep in the other bed long ago.

Oddly, at 9 a.m. they are both feeling out of sorts. I think it has something to do with spongy carpeting, no windows, icy air conditioning and lack of alcohol.

Thanks to ibuprofen and Tums, I am in reasonably good shape, good enough to sit in the back of a minivan for a tour of ravaged places.

I am sleepy, but a dream state is the best way to see this Dali landscape, big swaths of city with few occupied residents, little sign of recovery, white trailers, an occasional car still stuck in a side of a house like a metal dog locked in perpetual heat.

Lakewood, The Ninth, St. Bernard’s. Nice places, no places. Bandaged levees. Trailers. And would you eat at a place called the Chicken Box, which brags it tastes like your mamma’s?

Fittingly, it is both April Fools’ Day and Palm Sunday.

In case you can’t do the math, this is folly and we’re still waiting for Jesus to return. Redemption is slow, so almost two years isn’t that long, unless it’s your house you’re talking about, eh? Just like a war you can ignore unless it’s your kid or spouse over there.

Nothing seems to smell funny anymore, though, at least literally.

I am beyond getting mad, but am up for wandering back to Fahy’s later that afternoon.

I am fitting in all to well here, listening to stories, telling my own, a little bit nuts, a little less ambitious than I should be, quite possibly corrupt in one way or another or at least, one who has given into a temptation or two at one time or another, more fallen angel than a Michael, which means I can’t run for public office, but do vote.

Repent fucking sinners, a T-shirt haging in yet another bar I visit warns.

By that point, though, I am alternating water with beer. And by the time I am at a place called 13 its about 5 waters to one beer, thanks to a waitress who keeps filling the free beverage.

My friends stories are for them to tell you. And this is approaching 2,500 words, well past my attention span.

So let’s close with my last two places I visited.

Derrick took me to a place called Half Moon on St. Mary, not far from where he and the Mrs. live. They filmed part of the docu-pic “Ray” here, but on this night a man wearing a neck brace is being carted off on a stretcher by paramedics. He appears to be talking on a Blackberry. A couple who fancy themselves cheerleaders seem to be reenacting a stunt that may have put the dude in the meat wagon. No one is saying. There are $1 bottles of High Life to be had.

Next day, all that water has me all fresh and hydrated like a daisy. Final meal in town is lunch at Lil Dizzy’s on Esplanade.

It’s soul food, home cooking. Some white customers ask the black owner about when W visited during one of his scant stops to the drowned town. The owner tells him about the dog and pony show that is a presidential visit (much less one from this Nero).

“It’s the only money he’s spent down here,” quipped one of the customers.

If only he hadn’t given up the sauce.