A clutter king tries to spring clean - FINALLY

I live like a grad student, which frankly embarrasses me at this point in my life. But old habits die hard, especially being single with no one to nag me into shaping up. In other words, it might seem like my inner child RULES, and it ain’t pretty.

It's also not really the case. For instance, there are no diapers.

Still, my small but affordable apartment is done up in a décor others might call bohemian but that I like to call borderline white trash loser/ meets pack rat/ meets hand me downs/ meets OCD victim. It’s an affliction common to writers, especially ones paid at least $20,000 less than your typical warehouse manager (a fact I recently learned which did wonders for my ego).

Judging by some of those reality TV shows, a nice chunk of the rest of the population has a whole lotta clutter, too. We consume. It keeps the economy strong. We fill our attics, making them our own personal version of the Smithsonian archives, and the archives spill out to the garage, then the spare bedroom.

Maybe it’s a good thing I am underpaid. I can only imagine how much more stuff I would have by now. With my affliction, while I own nothing that will get me wealthy, I do have too many books, too many t-shirts, too many CDs (I knew it was time to stop buying when I noticed about four still in shrink wrap), too many pairs of underwear (hey – it means I can wait to do laundry).

I confess: I become emotionally attached to clothing. I have knickknacks which I thought were funny at the time, but now just seem silly, and to an outsider probably more than a bit odd, assuming one would drop in for a visit. Things like toy animals that wiggle and sing, wax statues of dinosaurs you get at Chicago museums, a silver Christmas tree (now in a storage room) decorated with Irish Santas, and Barry Bonds items including a bobblehead and Bonds-as-rubber-duckie. If I would die in my sleep the coroner would pronounce me dead AND weird.

So, with a move more than likely, the landlord finally close to finishing his HGTV projects on the unit below me and close to putting the place up for sale, AND me tired of being such a slob, I finally started to whittle away at my boxes of junk, things my parents left me that I don't really need or want, and crap I have accumulated over the years in preparation to or for who knows what or where at this point. My, that was a long sentence – sort of like one of the piles I sifted through in my quest to become more of a grown-up.

This week I tossed two garbage cans full of stuff, but my compulsion is such that I hate adding to the landfill and try to find homes or charities for orphaned things others might want to add to their own quirky collections of crap/junk/treasure.

Thus I went through my closet full of shirts, t-shirts, sweatshirts and pants and gave two bags of clothes to Goodwill already, those 50-gallon ones. It was not as tough as I thought, given that I could give you a little history behind each and everything I decided to do without. Examples: that tie-dyed green t-shirt, I bought it at Sportmart; that yellow t-shirt, I had it when I worked at a park district; those jazz-themed t-shirts I got at the Jazz Fest in Chicago, where you could get a good deal on them by subscribing to magazines; I bought that Crimson Tide shirt at Kohl’s. I still have pajamas my grandma made for me when I was 6.

I need to stop now. I am scaring myself.

As I said, some of the clothes wound up at Goodwill, along with odds and ends, dust collecting stuff including old cordless phones. I gave more of the same to two sets of friends, who seemed to appreciate the gesture, dropped some books to the library and others to the used book store.

And I played Santa Claus with three bags of stuffed animals inherited from my parents before they moved West last full. I was in Wendy’s, where I often go for lunch, and where this older lady named Carol works. She's a cheery sort and but super nice whenever she waits on me. She calls me Sir, like I'm Peppermint Patty.

On a hunch, I asked her if she liked stuffed animals. She loves them. I next asked if she would like to have the three bags, no strings attached, so to speak, that I was going to bring to Goodwill after work. After I eat, I gave the items to her instead.

Most of the stuffed stuff was Christmas-y, and she looked like Mrs. Claus in her red shirt, hauling the loot to back into the store to keep in the back room until her shift ended and someone came to give her a ride home.

On one hand it made me feel good about myself. On the other, I felt relieved: the toys are hers to deal with now, should she ever run out of space or have to move.

Is this what they call a win-win situation? Hmm, there's still this odd sense of loss. Probably the OCD talking.

Top Gun? Tom Cruise? Scientologist? Bald guy?

Drifting back to Earth OR Yes, I am a Space Oddity

Continuing down the slippery slope in my year (or so) of doing things out of character, this weekend I went up in a glider, or sail plane as the older guys who do it call it.

It’s kind of neat being a 210 pound human kite (and it’s a good thing I went on a diet because 240 is the cutoff weight, in case your tubby and inclined to give it a go).

The kite part comes from being towed a mile high by a small plane.

The way it works, you get to sit in the front seat and the expert/instructor sits in the back one. It’s a snug fit, but not really that claustrophobic as you are surrounded by Plexiglas and scenery.

He unlatches the rope from his $100,000 craft, the plane goes one way, the glider the other, and you begin to waft your way back to earth.

Windy City Soaring is in Hinckley, Illinois, west of Aurora and still mostly farmland. WHat you notice in the glider is the this really is a flat state, nice and green this time of year, but not a sexy place, which is why I guess a lot of folks head to Wisconsin and Michigan on summer weekends.

It was a bit hazy, and though you could see a nuclear power plant and Northern Illinois University in the distance, you couldn’t make out anything urban.

You also notice the little piece of yarn glued to the middle of the front of the cap. The idea is to keep that as straight as possible.

I even got to drive the craft a bit, though how much was me, who can say but the instructor, who works for a cell phone company in an engineering capacity by day.

Now I probably shouldn’t have had a couple cheeseburgers before I flew, but I didn’t want to go up on a empty stomach, either. The meal didn’t really haunt me, until more than halfway back to earth, after a banked turn.

Interestingly, the guy told me men talk the talk, but most aren’t really thrill seekers once airborne. Instead it’s the women who get giddy and have roller coaster fun on board.

The bank didn’t scare me as much as mess just a bit with my equilibrium. Plus, as you descend it gets warmer, and heat plus a touch dizzy is not a good combo platter.

The ride really is quiet, like an airborne Prius, but for the air coming in two vents and an occasional voice on the radio.

I am pretty sure it’s not done, physics being what it is, but the view is such that it seems like it would be cool to glide at night, just lazily corkscrewing your way back to Earth gazing at the stars.

During the day, my instructors says you sometimes can fly with hawks catching the same thermals. And corn stalks sometimes get carried up that far, too.

Landing was actually smoother than many a commercial flight I have taken.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in all this somewhere. That aside, I’d recommend you give soaring a try if just to be the one to see corn drifting by, maybe with a hawk. Either way, it’s a relaxing sort of thrill, given the right atmospheric conditions.

And it must have done something to my brain, because when I got home I actually started to throw a lot of crap out, my spring cleaning starting late (by about seven years).

Back on the ground, writers are such freaking pack rats, but that’s another story. Let’s just leave this chapter with me having filled two garbage cans already.

It’s another out of character move, but one for the better.

Hemingway drank here - so did I

The corner of the bar at what now is the City Park Grill in Petoskey, Michigan, where Ernest Hemingway once drank (Miller Lite??)

Don't let this man on your slopes or your Front Nine

Reflecting in Michigan: Bad to the Boyne, in a UP window

Sitting in the bar at the Gladstone Yacht Club up in dah U P, I noticed my reflection in the big window by our table.

With a bit of beer in me, elbows resting on the table, I had the classic writer’s look about me, the round face set off by the shaved head and goatee, maybe a touch menacing (until I talk at least, with my 16-year-old sounding voice). The eyes, those windows to the soul, are brooding buggers, hiding who knows what secrets. The green Wayne State sweatshirt sets them off nicely, the beer tells me.

Damn, I’d hit on me, I thought. Like I haven’t before.

After all I shot a 59 earlier that evening at the local golf club. For 9 holes. But I am a Zen duffer in that a score doesn’t really matter to me. Make that, I prefer to think of golf as T-ball for me and it’s about being outside, not about the six balls I lost in the water and woods.

Besides, courses in Northern Michigan tend to have things unfamiliar to us flatlanders. Things like huge pine trees and rolling hillsides that half the year serve as ski slopes.

Take for instance, The Alpine at Boyne Mountain, back in the top of the lower peninsula. You ride a cart for about a mile up to the first tee and basically play your way down a 500 foot tall mountain.

Lucky for me it was raining the day I was to play that course. As my talent for golf is every bit the equal of my hiking skills, at the very least a sprained ankle was in the works.

Still, the courses I visited on my vacation north were postcard pretty. In fact, instead of the Perfectly Michigan ad campaign being run, maybe “We’re better looking than Wisconsin,” would pack more punch.

After all, depending whom you talk with, the state is in dire straits, with a sagging economy. With the gas woes right now, it’s sort of like the 70s and early 80s in Michigan, which might mean the rest of the country should be wary, too.

This time the state is trying to drum up more tourism, and if you live in the Chicago area, particularly the south side and suburbs, it might not be that much further to come up to Northern Michigan than it is to hit Door County. And maybe one day they can build some sort of super fast hydroplane that could have you to your hotel up north in no time.

For me, I might prefer Michigan because Wisconsin only brings up odd memories of family vacations, like the time my dad beat a Northern Pike to death against a tree. That fish and all the perch and sunfish he caught wound up being frozen in cut-in-half milk cartons, put in a cooler, only to take the drive home and put in the freezer, never to be eaten.

Fishy moments aside, the part of Michigan I visited doesn’t get the amount of traffic from Chicago it wants and maybe needs. That’s good if you play golf like I do and don’t want to bump into someone who might be from home and out with one of those cam-phones.

And, like a good part of America, the area shows a growing gap between haves and have-nots. A tipsy contractor we ran into in a sports bar claimed that the homes in the midlevel market have lost significant value in the last year. Meanwhile, places in the Bay Harbor area are listing for $500,000 and up, some way up.

Rich Chicagoans like the Wrigleys have always had places up this way. My question to myself is, why can’t I sleep with someone who has such a summer home, a place visited just a few weeks a year? Can't I persuade someone of my literary intentions with the freshly shot digital picture of me sitting at the corner of the bar in the City Park Grill where Ernest Hemingway once drank, eavesdropped and had a reasonably good time.

That might just be the morel mushrooms talking. They were in season and on our pizza at the Noggin Room in Petoskey, a snug of sorts, with mugs hanging from the ceiling, those mugs belonging to to members of the Wall of Foam - folks who have drunk one of every beer the bar serves, but typically not all in one evening.

Actually, the mushrooms might have caused the following hallucination: a pretty woman, in the Andie MacDowell sort of way, was looking at me while she listened to the acoustic guitar player.

So, I say hello and strike up a conversation. She’s moving to Tinley Park, Illinois, she says to stay with friends. She’s heading to the University of Chicago to study geology. No, I misheard (again wishing to meet someone with a high paying job, gold digger that I am.)

She will be in the big city to get a master’s in theology. Top it off, she’s a Muslim, in a tastefully low cut top. She converted. She’s read the Koran four times. She is looking forward to hitting the library. Her dad is a Congregational minister.

We exchange e-mail address. It goes no further, in part because she is there with the aforementioned dad, her mom and her brother.

So that night my golf buddy Stuart and I headed back to the Inn at Bay Harbor, a Baby Grand Hotel built about 10 years ago where a concrete plant once stood. I am doing a travel piece for a Chicago area magazine, which is how a Milwaukee’s Best budget guy like me can stay at such a nice place. And sometimes its nice to have well-traveled friends who know which hotels to recommend. Another on the choices looked like one of those bad 70s chalets, back from when fondue was all the rage.

At Bay Harbor, there is a bonfire going on near the beach. A 50-something couple from Indianapolis is there, soon joined by some ex-pat India Indian doctors from near Detroit, then members of wedding party. They are well-scrubbed and the groom seems to be drunk on cheap beer and quite nervous. Small children are toasting marshmallows and handing them out at will.

I had a lot on my mind on this trip, and such moments are why you go on vacation, so that even if just for a couple hours, you can forget all your troubles as the sun sets, the fire burns and strangers share stories.

It gives you something happy to think about when you wave to your otherwise complicated reflection.

Can you beat the blues with a fairway wood?

I went to a financial planner Saturday for an initial meeting, because like a potential AA member, first you must admit you have a problem.

Mine is not your typical American run up as much debt as you can before you die, but that I am abel to save money but haven’t done a damn thing to invest it. It just sits in a bank account, doing nothing, much like me on a Wednesday night.

The guy I met with looked about 15 and had a degree in economics, which made me feel old and dumb.

From there is was over to Duke’s Hot Dogs in Bridgeview, where a writer pal o’ mine John McNally had a book signing before he headed back to his teaching gig at Wake Forest. He grew up in the area and uses Duke’s as a setting in some of his stories.

There was a writer there, older than me, who recently lost his job as the Chicago Reader. Ouch. This must be how a used minivan must feel, I thought., because us writers are in about as much demand.

It’s been one of those cycles though, where I sort of feel like Tony Soprano, but without the fringe benefits of being in the mafia. Which is to say, I’m feeling pretty mortal right now, just like Tony is on the show.

It’s not just stuff in my life, like car shopping, and looking for a better job and trying to put my money to use so I don’t have to work at Wal-Mart when I am 70, and a bad salary and a lackluster love life and another holiday (Mother's Day) where it is akward being single (and yes, I did call my mom who lives on the West Coast). Christ, am I a whiner.

I mean I have one friend who just had tumors removed, another who just lost his job, another who just learned he has heart trouble, an uncle who just had triple by-pass surgery, an aunt on a heart transplant list, another aunt who just lost a relative, a dad who had surgery about six weeks ago, and others with other existential issues.

Hey, I did go to a party at night at a bar - a friend of a friend’s bon voyage as she is leaving for France in a few weeks for a couple years for work. I even posed in some silly Moulin Rouge-style Can-Can thing where you put your head in the painting. I hadn’t cross dressed in a long time, so it was uncomfortable yet sort of sexy.

Which is to say, sometimes you just have to do something out of character, to be the idiot in the hopes it will get you out of your bad karma self.

So I am going on a working vacation this week which will include golfing.

I do golf better than I ski, which is to say I don't fall on my ass as much. Actually, I can get some nice hits, then totally whiff, then whiff, then a few shots later hit a nice one. It wouldn’t be so frustrating if I sucked with each stroke (which sounds naughtier than intended).

Which reminds me. Now is the time you can make your own comments about any or all of the following:

My hook and slice; how I grip a shaft; how hard it is for me to get it in the hole, or find the hole, for that matter; washing my balls; losing my balls in the rough; my fairway wood; how hard I hit with my wood; my light touch with my putter. You know, the usual dumb ass golf jokes. They all apply, like I'm Dorf, crossed with Beavis and Butt-head.

The nice thing about a golf trip, though, is it is time outside, sometimes with a cold beverage, and usually in a bucolic setting. You can still enjoy the scenery even if you can’t really play, and I will be in one of the prettier parts of Michigan.

And in case you were wondering, no I won’t be wearing a kilt.

Actually, that gives me an idea for those of you who are afraid of public thinking, or looking for a way to liven up a dull party. The old school wisdom is to picture you audience naked, which seems even scarier and sure to make you stammer - or shudder.

Nah, picture your crowd or your pals in golf shorts or those bad 70s lime green golf pants. Decide who in the room would look best in knickers and one of those caps, you or me?

Personally, I'd pay good money to see some of you you in plaid shorts, with a Polo shirt, vest, cap and some saddle shoe style golf shoes. Some of you dress that way, anyway, with your nostalgia for the 80s and Michael J Fox and Alex P. Keaton.

But I cannot criticize. I used to be preppy too. But that’s a story for another time.

Take away their pens and notebooks now!

Willie Nelson put it best. Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be writers.

Sure, the young ones get all hopped up about reading because of Harry Potter. And mommy and daddy like the books, too, and all the money JK Rowling makes.

But seriously, if the kids start talking about wanting to write, tell them to be an accountant or a plumber. And if they insist, tell them to hook up with a wealthy significant other ASAP who will be willing to support them.

People will always need people to look after their money and their toilets. If publishers have their way, books will be written by computers, and newspapers, too.

The former will use marketing research in a Microsoft program that will spit out novels intended for target demographics. The latter will used “Fair and Balanced” software and compile stuff from local blogs and ask readers to send in pictures of pets in hats.

I say this after learning that, according to a local Italian restaurant manager, the better waiters there are making $50,000 a year, which is more than me and anybody writing in my office.

I also say this from knowing some people who actually have written nonfiction and novels, novels without young wizards mind you, but with real people like you might find in Chicago.

One had publishers tell him his book was too masculine and that guys don’t read fiction anymore but for Tom Clancy type stuff.

By the way, publishers don’t exactly bust their asses for busting out talent.

So you wind up self-promoting between teaching gigs across the country, and getting freelance editing assignments or working odd jobs.

Self-promoting means lugging books to readings in bars and bookshops. That can be fun, but a lot of times you just sell one or two books, if that, and read before eight kindly old ladies or disgruntled graduate students all wearing the same type of eye glasses.

Maybe the way to do it is to get a job at an Italian restaurant in the Chicago suburbs.

And if your kid wants to be a reporter, check out JournalismJobs.com on the Web. There are papers in California and Colorado offering writers $25,000 salaries, which means you would have to wait tables, too, to pay your bills.

In my office we pay kids with Masters degrees in the mid 30s.

Since it is almost graduation time, I thought I’d share.

And remind them, as if they don’t already know, that they can blog, which is what I will still do if and when I find another job.

Me in a kilt again (Hey, it's Spring!)

He doesn't like Mexicans, or their sausage

So in the local paper today there was this story about chorizo, the tasty Mexican sausage, written by someone I know quite well. In fact, I live with him. He's a bit of a slob, but otherwise an OK guy.

Anyway, later in the day, a buddy of mine got an e-mail from someone who took offense. Unless you are a hardcore PETA type vegetarian how an article about spicy sausage can turn you into a Rush Limbaugh wannabe is beyond me.

To paraphrase Rodney King, "Why can't we just get along and eat each other's foods?"

Anyway, unless the dude who dissected the piece is heavy into satire, he seems not to like Mexicans. I am assuming he's white. Here's how he tore apart an otherwise innocuous story. With his comments labeled, WHITE GUY, and my responses labeled BIG ME.

Here goes:


STORY: Cinco de Mayo marks the date in 1862 when the Mexican army defeated Napoleon's forces in a battle about 100 miles east of Mexico City, potentially saving a good deal of the continent from coming under French rule.

WHITE GUY: I prefer to remember the Alamo!

BIG ME: I'm too lazy to look it up, but there is evidence to suggest that the May 5th fight kept the French at bay, out of the US and that Americans aided the Mexican Army. Of course, for WHITE GUY, what a dillema that would be - choosing between the French and the Mexicans.


STORY: These days, here in the United States at least, it's become more like the Mexican-American equivalent of St. Patrick's Day.

WHITE GUY: Except everyone of the St. Patrick's Day people are legal and hold their head high!

BIG ME: WTF! Has WHITE GUY never been to an Irish bar with actual Irish? ANd on St. Pat's Day lots o' folks wind up with their heads in a toilet.

STORY: All of which is a long way of saying May 5 has become an excuse to throw a party. And what would a party be without food?

WHITE GUY: Like a day without Mexicans?

BIG ME: Actually, this is a good one. As the movie showed, without Mexicans not a lot of manual work got done in California, so good metaphor.

STORY: If you're looking for a way to add a touch of tradition to your festivities, if you haven't already done so, this would be a good time to try chorizo, the spicy Mexican sausage.

With help from Carpentersville Deputy Police Chief Mike Gillette and police social worker Griselda Hernandez, the folks over at La Rosita, 651 Illinois 68, Carpentersville, were kind enough to show us how they make their own chorizo, a process which takes 60 to 90 minutes, explained the store's head butcher Ramos Villanueva.

WHITE GUY: "Police social worker?" Hernandez, says a lot doesn't it?

BIG ME: I guess so. I mean it pretty much does describe her job.

STORY: The sausage, which sells for $2.59 per pound, is so popular that Villanueva and his crew (Miguel Gonzalez on this particular day) make between 250 and 300 pounds once a week, usually on Wednesdays or Saturdays. Chorizo is made with a leg cut of pork, sliced off the bone, then ground and blended with a half pound of cloves.

WHITE GUY: Do they wash their hands?

BIG ME: I was there, dude. They wore gloves.

STORY: The hand-blended recipe calls for garlic, cumin, and a chipotle-like chili. The mixture also takes a bath in a chorizo premix, which adds to the sausage's red coloring. It's all put back through the grinder to be stuffed into 10-foot long casings which are made into pieces of more modest size.

While chorizo is sold in links, typically it's removed from its casing for cooking. A few popular ways it is served include the meat being mixed with eggs or with beans and eaten in a tortilla. It's also often mixed with potatoes as filling for a gordita, which is a thicker tortilla.

At family get-togethers it can be served on the grill, cooked inside aluminum foil, explained social worker Hernandez.

WHITE GUY: Social worker cum chef?

BIG ME: Right. Only the people on The Food Channel can offer cooking tips. Actually a social worker who is a chef sounds high concept. I think I will pitch it to TV - someone who helps people sort out their lives with good food.

STORY: If you want to try a spicier pork sausage, La Rosita also offers longaniza.

Villanueava said that it is quite popular, too, and the shop frequently sells out of what it makes. That's in large part because the process for making longaniza involves letting the sausage dry out for two days before it is ready to sell.

WHITE GUY: Dry out? In the open or in a cooler, in the sun, or in the back seat of the pickup? Remember the Hispanics killed last year because of bad food?

BIG ME: Actually, they put it in the back seat of a Camaro, heated by VIrgin Mary votive candles. Remember all the white people who got sick on those cruise ships?