Post it notes from a stormy night and the last two weekends

Ok, so I have had a busy summer. That's a good thing. It keeps me off the Internet.

So did Monday night, when Chicagoland turned into a rain forest. I got stuck at a Toyota dealership for two hours waiting for an oil change as the storms roiled through the area. The power went out a few times and the strange thing is the place was pretty crowded. Apparently I am not the only dumb ass who thought, hey it's gonna storm, the Toyota place won't be busy.

A friend who moved to Chicago's Lincoln Square from California called while I was waiting. He had never been through a tornado warning of this magnitude before so he asked what he should do. I wanted to tell him, "call somebody you love, then kiss your ass goodbye." But instead I told him to go to the laundry room in the basement. He decided to stay up in his apartment so I told him if he heard something that sounded like a train, he was toast.

I called my folks to kill time - and because, well, you never know. What a perfectly odd ending it would have been - dying because I decided to get my oil changed.

So I reflected on how I have spent the last few weekends - hardly saving the world, but doing my part to enjoy the planet. Here are the highlights.

And then I wound up talking to a big white guy who plays drums with a group that plays the music of the Lakota. He's played on reservations and at prisons - like Johnny Cash if Cash were a former Boy Scout and engineer.

So add that to the following list.


1. Winding up a night on the town, about 3 a.m. at air brush artist's office. It felt like being in a Quentin Tarantino movie, without the viloence. The owner, the husband of a coworker, also is a part-time musician, so he had a caged dove sitting on a counter. The bird was ansty for food. Me, I kept thinking Mr. Pink was going to show up. I dug the incense burning near the air purifier, the mural on the wall of a wizard smoking a hash pipe, and the motorcycle shell with dinosaurs painted on it. We left there to have Mexican food at an all-night taqueria.

2. Golfing. The funny part is they check ID more at the public golf course than they do at an airport. But we can't let the terrorists ruin our courses. At Wing Park in Elgin, hearing karoake from a nearby party ruled. God Bless America. Sweet Caroline. And Welcome to the Jungle. And at Bonnie Dundee there was a guy dressed like ChiChi Rodriguez golfing with a tan pretty boy who looked like former Illinois senate candidate Jack Ryan.

3. Hearing karoake at a dive bar in Hoffman Estates (n a strip mall with a 7-11 and a laundry), with the coolest number a butch bowling ball of a lesbian in plaid golf shorts and a sweater vest rapping Baby Got Back while her sisters bounced their big booties before here.

4. Catching a reader's theater version of Romeo and Juliet in Spanglish at Little Village High School in Chicago. The sword fights in the original became knife battles in this version - albeit highly stylized videos that seemed like iPod ads. Muerto, indeed. The cast included a Brian Dennehy-like Chicago actor who played a priest who wouldn't keep his pie hole shut during an audience Q & A after the show. I had forgotten how hare-brained the plot is, with the poisons and faked deaths.

5. Hearing a man soprano sing in a church without air conditioning. While I enjoy the falsetto voices of old school soul bands from the 70s, seeing a white guy sing classical music in a really high voice is unnerving. Maybe it's knowing that some of the turnes were written for guys who had their family jewels removed is what I can't get out of my head. Of course, I was re-writing lyrics in aforementioned cranium to such gems as "I sing like this because my nuts are gone, and that is very, very, wrong."

6. Seeing the rap version of Much Ado About Nothing. It was sort of like one of those old Carol Burnett Show skits, but funny. Funny too, was despite the best efforts of the cast, the pretty much white suburban audience (which seemed to enjoy the show) just wouldn't participate in the hip-hop, with barely a head bopping, and nary a "hey, ho, put your hands in the air like you just don't care."

7. Feeling the heat at the Blues Traveler concert. I am not much of a jam banc fan, though it was interesting to hear this one cover Shout! and Cheap Trick's I Want You to Want Me. The heat came from the huge flash pots they shot off after the show as part of the fireworks display. I still smell like propane.

8. Having a beer and a BLT after the above - and a chubby woman coming up to us from out of the blue asking if we knew a place in Elgin where she could get a draft for $1.75. I wanted to say, try 1983 and successfully guessed she was a native of the South Side of Chicago. A nicer buddy suggested she head to the area's closest thing to a college bar.

9. Not having water for a couple days. Because I am a dumb ass, when the water heater broke I couldn't figure out how to have cold water while I waited for the landlord to return from his Alaskan cruise. So I needed a bucket to flush the toilet. And I showered at the gym.