The hero (sandwich) you want, not the gyro you need

One weekend: a rib fest, a Sonny Landreth concert, an Irish fest.
This past weekend: bar night, Batman, a work party, the Pitchfork Music Festival.
 
Suddenly, work seems a relaxing respite from the weekend. Busy is my middle name. I am a social butterfly or maybe a human shark who must keep swimming in an ocean of beer and barbecue. I should have my own Web site, a suburban socialite thing, like a Perez Hilton, but with slabs of meat instead of celebrities. 
Yeah, right. But as long as I learn things from my carousing, it’s all good, right?
 
For instance, I learned this weekend that The Dark Knight, though well-made is probably a movie you shouldn’t take your 4-year-old to see. But people do, because the kid likes the cartoon.  But hey, if the kid can figure out what that movie is trying to say, he’s way smarter than me.
 
It ended in at least three places, which is like the last Lord of the Rings. That just didn’t know when to say when. I mean, the hobbits wanted to kiss, but no, instead it’s 45 minutes more of foreplay before they get on the ferry.
 
In Batman, the girlfriend dies, the Joker is captured and recaptured and left hanging, and Harvey Dent goes ape shit, and then Batman decides for all of humanity that he must become thought of as the bad guy because Harvey gave into his evil side and it is better for people to have a hero than to know the truth.
 
Now, if they are setting up a deconstruct of that sentiment for the next epic, fine. But otherwise, as the kids’ text, WTF? As we have learned from the last 8 years, lies in the name of the greater good always work out so well.
 
Actually, his muddled, comic book philosophy aside, I was in a Batman mood at the rock fest Sunday – inspired by legions of young dumb asses who felt it is their divine right to stand as close to the stage as possible, physics be damned.
 
They packed in tight for rapper Ghostface Killah, pale white kids from Naperville finally getting the chance to be “street” in a park as close to the hood as their parent would let them get.
 
I left this area before the crowd reached sardine can proportions to catch M Ward sing Chinese Translation. Sample lyric:What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart/ and how can a man like me remain in the light/and if life is really as short as they say/then why is the night so long

Sure it breaks out no East Coast beats, but who can't relate. Besides Ghostface's beats mashed up nicely with Ward's wispy folk.
 
I had been near the "hard" stage to hear the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International play West African pop, including a cover of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle.

Sample lyric:Every time I see you falling/ I get down on my knees and pray/I'm waiting for that final moment/You'll say the words that I can't say

Been there, done that. In the 80s. When I had hair.

Even for this bright dance show, there were the ADHD types who just couldn’t hold a spot and had to step on my feet to get up close. Apparently nothing is more fun for some on a hot, humid afternoon then sweating really close to a stranger.
 
Still, I was entertained by the crowd that included: a guy who looked like skinny, white Jesus, but wearing tiny blue gym shorts, dancing with his Mary Magdalene who wore a dress the same hue of blue; a 50-something guy with his shirt off, but otherwise dressed like he came from safari, waving a red, yellow and green dish cloth. And a shaved head dude in a floor length brown denim skirt – which reminded me, there is another Mummy movie coming out.
 
That’s not to mention earler in the day, Les Savy Fav, fronted by Tim Harrington, a bearish bald dude with mountain man beard, who wore but wrestling pants with a long leg and a short, ball-tugging one. Hot. In the sense he was sweating profusely. And he got in a garbage can and had fans tote him about like Oscar the Grouch. Polite at heart, Harrington worried that fans would get crushed when they put him back on the ground.
 
Believe it or not, those weren’t the oddest people I saw this past weekend. On the way home from the bar Friday night, dropping my buddy off at his house we passed the local park. The dialogue went something like this.
 
ME: “Did I really drink that much or are there two fat dudes in gym shorts kneeling on all fours by that brick post?”
 
BUDDY: “Nah, you’re right. They are there. Maybe they’re fucking.”
 
ME: “It looks more like yoga.”
 
So I dropped my friend off, and passed the park again. The panda sized guys were still in the park. This is around 12:30 a.m. or so and not the time you usually exercise, unless you are a buff vampire, I think. So I circle back, and now they are crossing the street, and the one has got his hands on the other one’s chest, either like there were going to wrestle or kiss.
 
I go get gas and White Castle – or gas at White Castle – and decide if they are still there it will either be wrestling or sex and I can upload it on my phone and post it on YouTube and they can get famous, like Obama Girl.
 
But they had disappeared back into the night, like XXXL Batmen. Were they the heroes we want or the heroes we need? Now I will never know.

Moon over Michigan

ABOVE: I ate a lot of meat in Michigan - which is part of its allure, really.


If you live here in the Chicago area, they keep playing commercials on the radio and TV from Michigan.org that, quite frankly, make me cry.

They are narrated by Tim Allen in somber tones, with minor key piano music. In my mind, what they essentially say is, "Remember when your life was better, when you didn't have to get up early in morning to head out to sit in an office wearing a tie so you can stare at a computer all day? Remember the 90s when you could golf with your buddies and call it work? Remember, when your life didn't suck? Well, come to Michigan and things won't suck as much - at least once you get through the traffic hell that is Indiana."

Yes, Tim, yes. You are right! You are peering into my soul as no one has since Celine Dion crooned "My Heart Will Go On" during the end credits for "Titanic."

So I took old "Tool Time" Tim up on his offer. Some friends invited me along to their annual vacation to their friends cottage along Lake Huron outside Bay City, the town made famous, briefly, in the 70s by a band from Scotland, the Bay City Rollers. I saw no kilts, and forgot to pack my own should I have needed it for a Rollers 4th of July tribute weekend.

In fact, I went way kiltless, if just for a few minutes, out in the lake. The first day there, the water looked so inviting I mentioned out loud that I have never been skinny dipping. Which led to a dare, which led to me getting a 24 free beers, 12 of them, aptly, Blue Moon, the others local brews Old Bastard and Thunder Bay. I went for pricey craft labels. All I had to do was what I wanted to do anyway, in the middle of the day, with God - and maybe a jet skier - as my witness.

Zebra mussels have mucked up the ecosystem, so the water near the shore has a bit of green algae to manuever, and there were rocks and seaweed to negotiate. But all I had to do was wade out to a sand bar about 100 yards from the shore and the beer would be mine. That, and hope no one called the Coast Guard or that there was no lost sounding fish from the Amazon there waiting to crawl up Little Elvis. Such fish do exist. Google it.

One friend mocked that I looked like Pamela Anderson at the beginning of Bay Watch, the meaning of which I am not quite sure.
Otherwise, no one seemed to notice full moon in the middle of the day - but perhaps the crew of the Space Shuttle, temporarily blinded off the glare from my pasty Irish body. And there is photographic evidence, if you are interested - though why you would be confuses me.

Nay, my closest brush with the law came on a trip to Frankenmuth, to Bronner's, where it is always Christmas. I wanted to go to Frankenlust, which I assumed was where horny monsters hangout. And I think the Bride of Frankenstein is totally hot. But one member of our party is a Christmas Queen, so muth it was - and meet it was, as we ate at a German place where they make the poor waitresses dress like milk maids and the dudes look like the brothers of Sam Adams, beer label version.

In fact, I don't think I have been as carnivorous in my life as I was on this trip. Which is why it's a good thing that I won that beer.


ABOVE: It's Christmas in July - and the other 11 months of the year - in Frankenmuth, Michigan.


Anyway, if you haven't been to the subtle as Las Vegas Bronner's, and you love the holidays, you really should make the journey. I mean, it's so hard to find Christmas decorations in time for the holidays. But where else are you going to find a mannequin torso of a bride with her dress apparently a tree or maybe an evergreen bush? Since the Santa's Village amusement park in Illinois is closed, where else can you pose with elf statues in broad daylight? And that's not to mention the float out front which combined CHRISTmas (as they spell it at Brommer's) with the 4th of July?

Overdosing on the jolliness of it all, as we passed table of women painting whatever you wanted on bulb ornaments, I suggested that we ask for swears. The Christmas Queen was in the midst of spending $500 on this year's theme, so my thought inspired a theme of my own - a Tourette's XXXmas.

Uncooth me let a few f-bombs fly, not realizing there were other patrons nearby, one a dad with a baby. After realizing the error of my ways, I quickly apologized to him. Twice. Three times. But he was pissed. And not just because of the kid.

"Oh, make fun of people with Tourette Syndrome. You the man," he scolded, sarcastically employing the phrase typically used by mooks after Tiger Woods tees off.

I wanted to recommend he rent What About Bob?, with Bill Murray, which has a funny scene about Tourette's. I wanted to say, oh, yeah I'm the bad guy. Did you notice Santa apparently moved his workshop to several sweatshops in Asia, but I am the bad guy.

But, wimp that I am, I was expecting that he would sig the Reindeer Police after me, that every camera hidden in an inflatable Santa Snoopy or giant Precious Moments nativity set was now pointed toward me - that I would be escorted out and handed a complimentary lump of coal. But nothing happened. We posed a small statue of a dog with its mouth suggestively open under one of Santa pounding away at his workbench, just as a test. Somebody we didn't know laughed - and may have bought our creation, for all I know. But I avoided punishment once more.

My partner in crime became a golf buddy on this trip. That's how much Tim Allen's words have touched my soul. I had not golfed in a year - and the last time, was, indeed, in Michigan. It's magical, I tell you, like the Blue Moon, I drank, or some of the things you get to see for free on the Internet.

Plus, golf is way cheaper in Michigan than it is in Chicago - it's as if you have euros, it's that inexpensive. At one course, some people played barefoot, just like former Chicago Bear Jim McMahon likes to do. And at the other course, hot dogs were just $1.50, and the cute cart-tress came by with beers that were $1.50 a can!!!

And I didn't even have to pay for those - because another other new gold buddy felt guilty making us help get his cart out of a ditch, getting my other new golf pal muddy in the process. Feeling like a high roller, I gave the young lady and extra dollar for her efforts.

Yes, Michigan was beginning to feel like Brigadoon, or maybe Never Never Land where for a weekend at least, you didn't have to worry about grown-up things - which means it also was like being back at college.

We stayed up late talking about solving the world's problems, like putting an asteroid on tethers to channel its energy. The jocks just drank, the nerds played board games. Our professorial host just kept plying us with more meat, regaling us his stories in the smoky voice of a jazz radio deejay (or Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune, if you know who that is). I met kindly elderly folk, and showered in a bathroom with indoor/outdoor carpeting in a stall with a spout conveniently for cleaning special places.

Then it was Sunday, and a few hours into the ride home time to deal with Chicago traffic, which made me growl. like it often does.

One I got home, I took a nap. As as Tommy Lee Jones puts it at the end of No Country for Old Men, "Then I woke up."

Discombobulated and needing my meat fix, I went to White Castle and ordered the carrying case of 30. I shared it with my Irish friends, a clever ruse to use their pool, one chance to pretend I was back in Michigan for a few more minutes. And yes, this time I wore trunks.

It's not really a secret

Last Saturday morning, at a dedication ceremony for a wing of the local Boys & Girls Club, one of the hosts asked those in attendance to share the best advice your father ever gave you. I kept my mouth shut. I wasn't my show.

But here goes:

When I was in second or third grade, and not exactly Mr. Charisma myself, I took to making fun of the new kid in class at recess. Poor little Bruce ran the funniest way, his arms going in circles like windmills. The poor kid was a bit effeminate, too, which only added to material for my cruel comedy. And I found it funny that his dad worked for Playboy. Sure, I was book smart, but what did I know at that age about being nice to a kid who worked at such a place. I had not yet learned the value of networking. But it got laughs making fun of Bruce, and attention from my classmates.

Come report card time, my grades were excellent, but my marks for conduct were poor. It came as a shock to me, because this was the first the teacher had said anything. And in that special guilt-inducing Catholic way, the teacher sent me to church by myself to pray for myself.

I cried. I thought I was going to hell and was sort of confused about how me getting laughs was such a bad thing. Worse, my folks were summoned to a conference.

I thought I was going to get my ass kicked. Come conference time, we all headed over to the school in the big boat sedan, but only my dad went in to talk with my teacher. When my dad came back to the car, he got back behind the wheel he told me that Bruce was retarded. The term learning disability had not been invented yet.

But I got the point. Then my dad said something like, "You shouldn't pick on him. Try not to do it again."

And that's the best lesson he gave.

Of course, for most of us, with all the bad habits we develop, that is way easier said than done. We drink too much on occasion, or spend too much time screwing off, or ignore the ones we love or those who love us, or worry about petty things, or look for love in all the wrong places, or start futile wars.

Still, for the rest of the day at least, I heeded my dad's advice, albeit in a roundabout way. Actually, I combined it with an Oprah I had seen the night before. It was about that silly book The Secret where if you just keep thinking positive thoughts, you too can wind up with your own talk show.

But cutting through the crap of it, I figured what the hell, what can it hurt to be a bit more positive about things. I didn't have to ask for a better parking space or a fancy house. I would shoot for a pleasant afternoon.

Rectify your mistakes by figuring out how not to repeat them - and try to have fun. It helped that the day was sunny and low humidity, a San Diego day in Chicago. It was so nice I parked a mile from where I was heading just to soak in the city - that, and parking was only $6 at the lot.

I met some friends to see Stevie Wonder for free in Grant Park and got to watch the White Sox beat the Cubs on TV in the bar before they arrived. In the crowded park, we stood near some big black guys who knew every word to all the songs and sang them way off key. But it was funny.

And Wonder was in a Latin sort of mood and mixed that with digging deep into his songbook.

And that night we went dancing at a place where the music was a nice mix of dance and alt pop from the last 20 years or so - and where the crowd was a nice blend of people of all sorts, shapes and sizes, who seemed to be having fun without worrying about their looks. You could be old and chubby and dance at this place, or a nerdy female engineering student. It was all good fun - and somebody even rubbed my bald head for good luck.

On the way back to my car, I heard exotic Asian music coming from a restaurant. I don't know why I mention this but that it made me smile and seemed to fit in with a fine day.