Solo at the Jazz Fest, and other riffs on the last summer weekend

Metaphorical image of the summer: So two weekends ago at Six Flags, the power went out for a bit and people got stuck on the roller coasters.

We saw evidence of this firsthand, a train full of people on the Superman ride suspended about 40 feet above the ground. That’s the ride where you are supposed to look like you are flying like Superman, but actually look more like Underdog, on all fours, sniffing the ass of the Underdog in front of you.

There these people hung for more than a half hour, dangling like some sort of modern version of the stockades. Probably not so funny where you are trapped there, paying $55 a ticket for the pleasure. But afterward, even though it was at the very least annoying if not scary, later you just have to laugh about it.

But hey, I am weird - but in a good way. And I am peculiar, but that makes me funny.

That’s what I was told by a woman who looks the like actress Andie McDowell (Bill Murray’s love interest in Groundhog Day) at a party I attended Saturday.

Could it have been the joke I made about the name I made up for the mythical land my office now is - Estrogenia, a place with feuding factions of women?

Or was it the jokes about what would make a good band name or super heroes I made up with lame superpowers (the Arranger, the CPA, the griller).

It more than likely was the double take I invented that night, where you wipe the sweat off your beer bottle, then rub it on the top of your head down through your nose.

I can’t help what I am, whatever that is. In fact, that was a point of conversation earlier in the evening, that book The Secret and implications therein that you can just will things into being.

All well and good to be positive, but, as but one example, no way I am going to have enough hair for a nice brush cut crew cut anytime soon. And it’s sort of funny that a book called The Secret doesn’t mention that we all have secrets on top of our dreams of Lexus cars and big homes.

For instance, did you know the paintings of Thomas Kinkade, the master of light, make me weep? OK. That’s a big freaking lie.

Speaking of secrets, I was in Naperville Monday for their Final Fling - a town fest where you send the kids so you can cheat on your spouse. Again, I partially lie.

But at this Fling, some students from Northwestern had a booth where you would get free candy for filling out a survey - about your sexual preferences.

At the end of the survey the asked about what hands you do certain things with (no, not the ONE thing you think they would ask), and sketched a family tree, then looked to see which way your hair swirled.

And none of the above did I fabricate, but for a few of my answers on the aforementioned survey.

Apparently the young social scientists were looking at correlations between sexuality and genetic traits - though I wonder if they took into account that using candy as a lure might make for a good correlation, too.

That I was in Naperville is a secret I am willing to share. I know in certain circles you’re not supposed to admit liking such a yuppified downtown. And even though I am not in the demographic, I like a suburb with a cajun restaurant and a comic book/antique shop along with the usual suspects like Williams Sonoma and Sur La Table.

Sure, it can seem like Stepford. But sometimes we don’t want ripe fruit to fall (poetry allusion. Google it.) And that’s not a reference to the NU survey.

I know this time of year, I don’t want the sun to set so early. I want that one, long glorious perfect weekend, with a boat, and friends, and sitting on a pier, all of us dangling our feet in the water, and the beer is flowing and we are all weird and happy. a giddy mood tempered by the melancholy of the end of a season, with the Flaming Lips “Do You Realize” playing, the perfect song for that moment.

So if you have a boat and a pier....

Since I don’t I went downtown Sunday night by myself. It was either there or to see Cheap Trick, and I had no takers for either.

So because the happy place in my head now consists of this lakefront image, I went to Chicago and the Jazz Fest.

I had a processed rib sandwich and some nachos, a Diet Pepsi and some Charles Mingus.

I walked about looking at all the faces on a night that if it were always like it was, Chicago would be San Diego and housing would be even more unaffordable.

Women in summer dresses. A dad chasing his kids around a blanket. A teen in a hat made out of a newspaper. A guy with a beard that made him look like Burl Ives as Big Daddy. African Americans in Sunday church clothes. Round faced, beer bellied white cops - and in Chicago a good many guys not in uniform look like they could be on this force. Out of place punks with mohawks. People on bikes. A tall guy apologizing for sneezing. Several foreign languages.

I don’t know much about Mingus but his music made a good soundtrack for my solo mood.

I think I will get one of his albums. At the very least it will remind me of a nice but lonely night. And I just might learn something in the process, which ain’t such a bad thing.