Detached Retina

If It Smells Like Peat, Part 3: I Fell Into a Burning Ring of Kerry

2011-12-20T00:03:00.000-06:00

Yes, beer was how Tom and I wound up on one of those day-long bus tours, falling into a burning Ring of Kerry (and I think we heard that song in the lounge in the Galway Clayton a couple days later).
See, after a near death experience driving down a detour in a deluge to a hotel where the wind was rattling the window, it was time to kill some brain cells in Killarney.
Though tempted by a fancy kangaroo dinner at a nearby restaurant, we hit a pub recommended by a buddy, then another place recommended by the bartender (who gave us passes, which I am not sure we even needed). At the latter, The Grand, a trad band was finishing up and a act called the Waxies was getting ready. The Waxies big drummer had on a Ministry t-shirt, which for a second we might be hearing Irish industrial metal. Another Waxie appeared to be wearing a thong, which showed when he bent over to set up a piece of equipment. Tramp.
Meanwhile, in the back room, a few dozen people were doing traditional Irish hooley dancing, including a dude about my age dressed in a sleeveless white T-shirt and long khaki shorts.
That revelry soon ended, making way for fog-infested euro dance music. Finally, the Waxies played and turned out to offer a good-natured mix of slightly alternative rock and Irish tunes in the front of the house.
They had a 20 euro minimum if you used a credit card, which, as an American I felt obligated to do.
Heading toward my total, I found it odd that Irish were ordering Coors Light and that the young drinkers of Killarney, too, had been taken in by the Satanc potion that is Red Bull and Jaegermeister. Only in Ireland, they put the Jaeger in a shot glass and drop it in a glass of the energy drink.
I stuck to Guinness.
Before we hit the bars, in the hotel lobby, we ran into this guy named Paul from Zanesville, Ohio, who appeared to be in his mid to late 50s and who was traveling with him mom. We first saw them at Kilkenny Castle. And we would spot them again in Galway.
Paul claimed to own a furniture store, but the way he kept to himself and his chain smoking led me to believe he was CIA or NSA.
Tom’s leather trench coat probably set off a system at O’Hare that led to us being tailed - and to Tom having a four-in-one tool taken from his stowed luggage sometime before we left Dublin and got back to Chicago.
Anyway, Paul mentioned that he and his mom would be taking a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry, taking in the scenery.
Maybe it was a contact buzz from smelling burning peat, but on the way back from drinking, I thought it that this would be a funny thing to do. And good practice for life one day at the senior center.
So I asked the Malaysian guy working the front desk about it and find out the tour is only about $20 and all we had to do was be in the lobby at 10 a.m.
Easy enough.
Over breakfast, I scoured the tables and the lobby for possible fellow travelers. There were some whiny, elderly New Yorkers. That’s redundant, isn’t it?
Then there was a New Jersey like woman with a basketball shorts-wearing teen-aged boy who probably was her son. Was she home schooling him? Were they on the witness protection package tour?
And there were two good looking black women.
The room was rife with comic possibilities. But if you chose “None of the Above” as your answer, pour yourself a shot of Jameson.
Nay, it was Paul and his Mammy (resplendent in a heather gray knit cap with silver sequins) from our hotel, and from other spots a Dublin guy and his Chinese girlfriend, and a quiet couple, sort of snooty, probably American, probably on their honeymoon, sitting up front like teacher’s pets. That was it. And they were all so well-behaved. I get that way when I am tired.
Our friendly bus driver looked like Phil Collins does now on his Twitter account. And he provided the tag line for the rest of our trip: Get off the bus, take a picture.
Because that’s pretty much what we did for the next six hours. Well, that and nap a bit on some of the longer stretches of the drive.
It was a beautiful ride - though by sitting on the side of the bus by his lonesome as he did, Tom confessed it was sort of optically scary being in the passenger’s seat.
We hit a faux bog town, saw a statue of Charlie Chaplin on the coast off Waterville, but didn’t kiss in the tunnel. Or the Blarney Stone at any point on the whole vacation.
Lunch wasn’t until 2:30 or so, and we wound up at this roadside place that was the opposite of an American truck stop. It was all cheerfully done up in pink and raspberry, like a parfait, and filled with middle aged and older women who seemed to have coordinated their outfits with the decor. And the food was healthy stuff women the Western world over love to eat - salady stuff.
Best of all was one of the last stops, a waterfall flush with rain in a forest where the trees were covered in iridescent moss. Tom struck a Highlander pose for the folks back home. It felt more Hobbit to me. Plus there were people walking their limping cocker spaniels like a dog park back in the states - albeit a prettier one.
There was one more get off the bus stop, where there was a huge red deer stag. Had this been Wisconsin, Tom could have bagged his first ginger tail. Instead, he took a picture, one in which it appears a leprechaun is sitting on the beast. I am not making that up.
Back in town, that night was the start of the holiday shopping season, repleter with a long line at a department store. I bought Tom his Dalek Advent calendar, and we ate at a new place run by women that had an indie or Hallmark film vibe about it. Either way, they served big, American-sized portions, on special for the festivities at just 20 euro for each 3-course choice.
Our bellies full, we’d be Galway bound in the morning.

If It Smells Like Peat, Ch. 2: Off to Cobh, prawns and kangaroo

2011-12-12T17:57:00.001-06:00

If I was not the best at following downloaded directions, I was even worse as a pimp.

I had joked I would find my buddy a redhead - like in a movie, where the brooding but happy go lucky American on the loose in Ireland finds true love, or at least a fine fling, before heading home, the better man for it.

But neither of us looks like George Clooney or even Rosemary Clooney, come to think of it. I could maybe pass for a Teamster in my usual trip outfit of black coat, hooded sweatshirt, stocking cap, jeans and boots. Maybe.

Tom, well, he did have his sexy, long, black, leather trench coat with him. When he wore it, I told people he was Keanu Reeves from The Matrix, off the wagon. Without it, he was just another big American tourist (a BAT, which is not to be confused with VAT, for which you could be refunded).

Surprisingly, the vaguely menacing garment didn’t get him stripped searched at the airport (or by a redhead), though security did take his 4-in-1 tool from his checked in luggage on the way back to Chicago.

Plus, it’s because he’s a Doctor Who fan. He bought Jelly Babies candy along the way, per the show. I bought him a 1.49-euro Daleks Advent calender at an Irish version of Big Lots.

I’m actually writing this travelogue as the Doctor would go about one of his adventures, traveling back and forth through linear time. And this is getting way too pocket protector...

I am meandering again, like the roads along any given part of our journey. Where were we? Oh yeah, the redheads. There was a drunk blond the first night in Galway and her sister, in the hotel bar, on a shopping trip and chatting up us two tourists - before the blond seemed to pass out and her sister took her up to their room. They were either married or engaged or both.

Besides, redheads were on Tom’s bonus list, not the bucket list, I find out. Never too early to start on either one, I guess. Anyway those ladies almost cost us eight more phantom drinks on the hotel tab, which could have been on purpose or because the bartenders at the Clayton seemed to be about as bright as Ashton Kutcher.

Put the Fiat in reverse. Day Two of the trip meant traveling from Kilkenny (named by the South Park creators) south, at the suggestion of Shay back in Dundee, to Cobh (pronounced Cove, thanks to the intricacies of the Irish language). We were gonna go to Waterford, but they don’t make crystal there anymore, and Shay said the tour is for grannies.

Cobh is a port from where the Titanic sailed, and where victims of the attack on the Lusitania were taken. It’s also from where a good many Irish left for good, including Annie Moore, the first person processed at Ellis Island.

I learned that from a Celtic Thunder song. I have a theory on them, too. Having recently experience one of their estrogen-tinged, fog-infested, purply-lighted shows in person, with legions of women of all ages swooning, I am pretty much convinced it is a group made up of Irish vampires.

Back to Cobh. Given its history - and a slim hope to write off my vacation as actual work - I thought, hey, I’ve found a sister city for Elgin, Illinois, where I work.

With me as co-pilot, instead of near the museum, we wound up at the top of a hill near St. Colman’s Cathedral. He’s the patron saint of lanterns and coolers.

Right now, you’re probably saying to yourself, They wound up by a Catholic Church in Ireland? No way!

Next thing we’re gonna say is that brown bread was served with every meal and that Tom developed a taste for black pudding for breakfast. Call Mr. Ripley so he can believe it or not.

Still, the church was impressive and offered a good view of the coast. It had gargoyles and kindly older women working in the gift shop.

We were hoping the museum would have more records available, but Tom did find a pin in the gift shop bearing his mother’s maiden name, Owen. Even in Ireland you don’t find too many Danahey souvenirs.

After Cobh, we headed east along the cost to Youghal (pronounced Y’all like in a country song) for another of Shay’s recommendations - prawns at Ahernes.

Only thing is, they weren’t on the menu. So I asked, and wouldn’t you know it, they just came in, and there hasn’t been time to change the menu (or maybe run to the Tesco).

The host/waitress recommended a dish made with garlic and butter along with the typical prawn cocktail and served in a round, escargot dish. It was my favorite meal of the week, the prawns a tender combination of shrimp and lobster.

While feasting, I notice a decided lack of customers. Off-season or not, the host talked to a patron, a local merchant who admitted things are very slow. The TV and the papers have been dwelling on the sorry shape of the economy (and pondering the fate of the euro).

It’s just like home.

But the roads aren’t. It was getting dark making it time to hit the road for Killarney. We didn’t want to spend too much time along the roundabouts after dark - fearing the spawn of Celtic Thunder might be ready to pounce on lost tourist.

Once in Killarney, despite a wind shaking our downtown hotel room window, we walked off to find dinner. A restaurant across from where we are staying is offering tournedo of kangaroo with braised red cabbage and raspberry and port reduction. At 17 euros, we passed, saving that gastro experience for another day

If It Smells Like Peat It Must Be Christmas - or Get Off the Bus, Take a Picture: Tales from My Irish Vacation

2011-12-11T00:03:00.001-06:00

Part I: Let's Begin in the Middle (but not in Middleton, as we didn't take the Jameson tour).

So we’re driving along in Killarney when the smell hits us. Tom thinks he might have burned out the clutch. Hey, he’s been driving a stick shift Fiat on the opposite side of the roads, some of which are the size of bike paths. And I had been flinching until I got used to this, fearing the rear view mirror was going to snap off on something or other along the cobblestones.

Plus, heading up from Cork to Killarney, we had to take a detour - marked by a solitary orange sign the size of a sheet of notebook paper - up and down narrow roads, in the rain and wind, with a couple trucks passing us, probably going 60 mph or whatever the hell the exchange rate is, as we hoped no spray-painted sheep got in our way.

“I’m glad it’s dark. I think we’re on mountain roads, and that would scare the shit out of me,” Tom says. (Though the phrase doesn’t really work that well in Ireland, given the effect of drinking substantial amounts of Guinness).

But out of the car, checked into the hotel, and ambling toward The Laurels (for lamb stew, fish and chips, beer and overhearing locals talk to New Yorkers) and eventually The Grand (for a minimum 20 euros worth of credit card charged beer, a band called The Waxies, and a disco in the back) we still smell it.

It’s not until the next day, doing one of those Claddagh Ring of Kerry tours - stopping at some thatched cottages outside the town of Killorglin, where they crown a goat king every year - that we figure out the omnipresent evening odor (familiar to whiskey drinkers) is peat.

At least that’s the way I remember things. It’s been about almost a week since the trip ended. Vacations are usually best remembered as dreams, anyway. One before Christmas, even more so, given the quality of light and the harried nature of the season.

The year’s just about over, almost as fast as the vacation went. Whatever happened to languid days? Were they just an illusion of youth, like being skinny or having a full head of hair?

But back on the metaphorical tour bus. The above picture is from toward the middle of the trip anyway.

It began in Dublin. Actually, it began in summer, at the Milwaukee Irish Fest, where they offer deals. My buddy Tom had never been to Ireland. I had never been on an excursion of this sort, covering four towns in six days, tooling about with a a pal but without GPS. I had been wary, per my insecurity that the quirks of my personality would cause someone who had to spend a week, 24-7, with me, to have me mysteriously be swept off the Cliffs of Moher. Or vice versa.

But Tom has a teen-aged daughter, which pretty much prepares anyone for anything. And though I’m not a fan of the term “best friend” (as if you should list the people you love like books on the New York Times Best-seller List), he qualifies, if just for feeding me dinner as many times as he and his family have.

Plus, he agreed to drive this Miss Daisy. I know my limitations, and we’d still be trying to get out of the Dan Dooley lot by the airport if I didn’t.

And from that lot, we made our way through the mist, getting our bearings in a town called Naas (named after the Celtic rapper, no doubt), having lunch at an outlet mall in Kildare, then making our way to Kilkenny.

And by now you might be asking yourself, “What’s up with all the ‘kil’ towns?”

Kil means church. Make your own joke. Make your own town name (Kilthebastards, Kilingmesoftly, Kilsatan, Kilbill, Kilswitch, Kilthisbit).

We learned that from Johnny, the driver on the bus tour - but we’re not there yet.

We’re in Kilkenny, where I am demonstrating my lack of navigational abilities, even with downloaded directions. The roads change names (M = motorway; N = national route; O = Oprah now owns this area). Worse yet: roundabouts, where locals tell you to “go straight through” or “take the third intersection.”

Still, getting slightly lost isn’t so bad - it gives an idea of where to head later. And that’s to the local brewery, which turns out to be on winter hours and closed, dammit, and to Kilkenny Castle, which turns out to be a yuppie kind of castle, filled with tapestries, huge tables, and portraits of inbred English who once ruled the place.

We find the Marble Bar - recommended by my West Dundee via Dublin buddy Shay Clarke - and grab a sandwich at about 3:30 or so, which actually is the edge of lunchtime in Ireland.

We run into a guy at that bar from Chicago who moved to the area to be close to his wife’s family. He and his live off a golf course, which seems like something an ex-pat American would do.

He does not try to sell us a time share, and we amble off for a walk, then back to the hotel, which has a big, outdoor hot tub and our room has a heated bathroom floor and a shower without a door, like something out of the Kohler catalogue.

Time for some burgers, brews, then two, big, comfy beds with duvets (which confuses us Americans at first, being used to cover sheets). Time to put on the Breathe Rights.

Next episode: I find a sister city for Elgin, Illinois, we eat prawns, and ponder kanagaroo and cabbage

Red and Black

2010-06-12T13:08:00.004-05:00

What the puck! The Blackhawks rally

2010-06-12T12:27:00.004-05:00

Sports are filled with overused metaphors for daily life. Cliches abound like beer commercials during a playoff game. But any Chicago team fan knows one sad truism: You really can't take anything for granted.

In most of our lifetimes, the Sox have won one World Series and the Bears just one Super Bowl. The Bulls had a nice run in the 90s, but their last title was 12 years ago. And the Cubs. Well poor Pat Szpekowski knows that tale all too well.

And that's just one reason why the Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup partially mended the Carpentersville businesswoman's sports-broken heart.

Pat was a 11 in 1961, the last time the Hawks brought home the traveling trophy, and growing up in a Polish neighborhood on the Near West Side, not too far from the old Chicago Stadium. Her mom loved hockey. The family would occasionally go to games and more often would listen on the radio or tune in the black and white TV.

Reggie Fleming was a talented enforcer for the squad, and also happened to be half Polish. That might have influenced Pat asking Fleming if she could head up his fan club.

"He told me, `I'd be honored,'" Pat recalled. She soon was putting out newsletters for 200 fellow Fleming fans across the US and Canada.

See, back in the day, many players led more working class lives and mingled with the common folk and became friends with fans. Fleming wrote letters to Pat's grandmother - in Polish. She went to his wedding.

"He was like a big brother to me," Pat said.

The two kept in touch over the years. She has scrapbooks, memorabilia and even one of Bobby Hull's bloodied hockey sticks to prove it. Yes, NHL hockey pretty much always has been a Quentin Tarantino movie on skates. And yes, that is the coolest sports gift. Ever.

Fleming wound up playing for several teams, including the Rangers and the Flyers. He lived out his life in the northwest suburbs and passed away about a year ago. Fleming's son, Chris, chronicled his dad's final years in videos still up on YouTube.

Pat couldn't make it downtown for the victory parade Friday, but watched on TV. I planned on going anyway. But talking to her sealed the deal on braving what turned out to be a crowd of about 2 million people and hearing "Chelsea Dagger" umpteen more times.

We had an inkling of how things would be downtown, when the 7:50 a.m.train from Elgin wound up sardine tight by Roselle, which made it a de facto express run.

I invited my friend Dave, whom I had not seen since college, who was in Carpentersville visiting his dad. His son Keenan and brother Bob, from Sleepy Hollow, came along, too. How can you not ask someone you haven't seen in more than 20 years do join you for such a day? Welcome home, indeed. Besides Dave lives in Texas now, and everything is big there, right?

Anyway, we met up with my cousin Dan, who drove in from South Bend, as he has hockey in his blood (which is redundant). We all used to play a floor version in his big family's big basement in Frankfurt - with a light plastic, neon orange puck. Hey, it was the 70s.

Dan played goalie for St. Jude's out of the rink in Crestwood, where he befriended former Hawks star Chris Chelios, then at De La Salle High School in the city. He tended net some in college, in intramural leagues while getting advanced degrees, and in true hockey player fashion, still laces up the skates despite cracking his back a year ago. He was playing forward in a 3-on-3 game, and a fat goalie fell on him. Ironic, ain't it?

Fitting, though, is that Dan grew up to be a reconstructive surgeon. He missed Patrick Kane's Cup-clenching goal last Wednesday night because he would be heading into surgery on a, 11-year-old boy who got hit in the face by a baseball.

Dan got to see boyhood heroes Stan Mikita and Tony Esposito on one of the double decker buses Friday. He has the photos to prove it. Everybody had a camera or smart phone working overtime snapping away the most red and black shots ever taken. Heck, even the fountains in Daley Plaza were putting out blood-like plumes of water, which is perfect for hockey.

Cori Nawrocki of Lake In the Hills, who stood next to me in along Washington Street near Dearborn, held her camera above her head, hoping to capture her favorite player, Johnathan Toews. Nawrocki disappeared, perhaps joining the Pied Piper like masses who followed a the bus with bubbly Kane to the rally at Wacker and Michigan.

But on this collective Ferris Bueller's Day off, my friends and I headed to the Willis Tower. Hey, Dave promised his wife he would stand in one of those Plexiglass boxes hanging 103 stories off the building. Maybe it was I bet.

Though you couldn't see the rally from there, standing on the top of the city seemed a fitting thing to do - and a great place for a player to bring the Stanley Cup late one night, if you know what I'm saying.

And should that tourist I saw in the elevator up happen to read this. I lied. Lady Gaga did not sing a song from the victory podium. Hey, I gave her something to tell her friends back home. It was the least I could do.

And while I was looking down at the city, I thought about what Pat Szpekowski said in advance of all the craziness.

"There's so much sadness in the world, and nothing seem to be going right. Faith gives us hope, and so do the Blackhawks," she said.

Me, of little faith, might not take things far. I'm not gonna cry like Jeremy Roenick.

But I can an at least agree with Cousin Dan. Calling as he neared his home in Indiana, Dan said "It definitely was was worth the drive. And if they do it again, let's plan on being here, too."

This being Chicago, we both know it's all a big IF. And that makes you appreciate a day like Friday all the more.

Musings for Shay's birthday

2010-04-15T23:35:00.001-05:00

A Tuesday night at Emmett's in West Dundee, and the usual crowd is here. That's to say Shay Clarke and his pals are near the bar, not just for the $3 pints, with Munich Light being the favorite, but to mark Clarke's 60th birthday.

The gathering of friends spills into the restaurant. There's a cake at a table where Clarke's wife Traci is sitting. She cuts a small piece but can't place the taste. Turns out the frosting is laced with Bailey's Irish Cream.

The night merrily rolls along, and Clarke's buddy Joe Cullen breaks out an accordion to sing traditional Irish tunes. Joe looks Irish in the way the Hobbits do. You can kid him about it. That's part of being Irish.

There's a thin, quiet man with a full head of gray rock star hair sitting a few tables away. He looks like he could have been in the Rolling Stones or at least been friends with them. His name is Maurice Lennon, and he played fiddle with a band that formed in Ennis, Co. Clare, back in 1977. He would be heading back home for a reunion show Wednesday morning.

Do the math. Thirty-three years ago, Clarke was 27 and living in Dublin. Twenty-seven suddenly is 60 and somewhere in the middle of the Midwest.

Sitting in a chair next to Cullen, Lennon plays a few tunes that capture the bittersweet feeling of time's passing. Sure, at first, there's a guy at the bar with a southern accent who almost drowns out the subtle music. But a couple numbers into it, even he's being quiet and paying attention.

Lennon plays a number dedicated to Clarke's wife, "If Ever You Were Mine." This is how a love song should sound - sweet but not sticky, winsome with a hint of loneliness, the longing that comes from enjoying life but knowing nothing lasts forever. That's why there are violins.

Lennon finishes the number and points toward Traci Clarke, his muse for the night music. There is a round of applause, and Lennon matter of factly closes his case and evaporates from being the center of attention.

Cullen takes over and changes the mood with "Big Bamboo." It's a bawdy Jamaican number, and on accordion the shuffling melody seems more than a little like the Mardi Gras classic "Meet Me on the Battlefront." I tell him that he ain't being very Irish, laying on the Chicago accent nice and thick like a bad cross between a Guinness and a Miller.

It doesn't really matter, anyway. I stupidly say "there ain't no party like a Shay Clarke party," almost immediately cringing at my own bad joke. But I don't. It's like something my dad would have said, had my dad listened to rap. And at a 60th birthday party there's something to be said for acting a bit like your dad, even if you're the only one in the room who knows this.

And then I woke up

2010-01-19T03:44:00.001-06:00

When there is a horrible world crisis - and if you think about it, when isn't there - it's not a real good idea to go to sleep with the TV on. You might wake up before 2 a.m. to see Katie Couric gabbing with Charlie Rose about her trip to Haiti. And it might scare the existential crap out of you.

I don't even know if scare is the right word. It's more a combination of outrage, impotence, futility, anger, angst, and it's why the word "fuck" exists in the first place. See, here's cute Katie with her dangling earrings and tight sweater playing a clip of a little black kid trapped in Haiti screaming at the top of his lungs, "Why God, why?"

And if you're Katie fucking Couric, this is golden right? You go back to your multi-million dollar lifestyle in New York with your compelling clip, and, as far as I can tell, this kid is still there waiting for someone to bring him medical attention or even a glass of water. Oohh Charlie, look at all this suffering! I mean, Christ, this is Emmy-winning, ain't it Charlie?

I heard her last Friday, too, talking with a family that had one bowl of soup between the 12 of them, and I was thinking Katie, take them back to the fucking media tent and get them some goddamn food, you self-serving bitch. See, she pisses me off because she's become my symbol for surreal nature of all this.

Her and Anderson and the rest can fly in an out at will to tell everybody about how horrible all of this is. No shit. But your modus operandi is to hit and run on to the next debacle in the short-attention span wired world.

There's a certain pornographic quality about this, these outsiders and their "journalistic" distance wallowing in the suffering of the poorest of the poor. I mean how can you watch a woman put her six-year-old son on a bus by himself in the hopes that somebody on the other end will be there to pick him up and stand by and do nothing, because it's not your job to get involved, it's just your job to record? That they can show this live around the world or put it on the radio or the Web instantly - but these folks are still waiting for aid just adds to how bizarre and frustrating this all is.

And I bet those people in Haiti are super happy that the thoughts of the Golden Globe Awards attendees are with them - if only they had electricity so they could hear that jackass James Cameron asking Hollywood to give it up for themselves and how his simple-minded "Dances With Smurfs" movie shows how we're all interconnected (and I didn't watch this - I caught it on YouTube). At least the actors shown listening had the sense to look uncomfortable with this nonsense.

And lest you think I am turning into some liberal-bashing tea-bagger, don't even get me started on that fat fuck Rush Limbaugh and how Haiti will be one big publicity stunt for Barack Obama. Yeah, Rush, Big Barry was just waiting for the hammer to come down on one of the saddest places on Earth, just so he could bask in the glory of its redemption. In fact, Obama is one of the X-men, and he can CAUSE earthquakes, whenever he feels like it, but only to divert attention away from the health care mess, the two wars, the recession and Iron Chef faking using vegetable's from his wife's White House garden.

I don't see your fat ass down in Haiti, Rush, preferring to let your bitter old white guy meanness pass as humor from a distance. Which is a good thing, because you look like you'd be better eating than Katie or Anderson. With all that marbled meat on your bones and the drugs in your system you'd cook up nicely should it come to that, marinate in your own juices. And you know that TV sort of secretly hopes it gets that terribly anarchic.

But for now, it's just hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of bodies piled up on streets and that kid crying "Why God why?" And that's not a question lazy-ass, soft-living me likes to hear at 2 a.m.

Because this all reinforces that despite all the advances in technology, despite our best intentions - and I do believe we are mostly a nation of the well-meaning - despite James Cameron being able to make a special effects movie for $300 million - that sometimes there's not a damn thing you can do beyond trying your best. And sometimes that's not enough.

See, you want to believe that you live in the land of Superman, that we can go in an instantly solve a problem, that cruise ships, their hulls stuffed with food, could be in port right now feeding the Haitian masses. It's not supposed to take a week to get the basics to these people just a couple hundred miles off the coast of Florida. We're supposed to have all this figured out, right, because that's who we are? Things are never, ever, out of our control, right?

And that little kid echoing in my head, bringing me to tears... And here I am writing about him, dare I say exploiting him, just like Katie did, grinding out tragedy for the media machine. I'm a jerk, too, in bed, sad little me, worrying about how meaningless and trivial his suburban life is, all because he forgot to turn off the television.

Why God why?

Kid, you're not gonna get that question answered. Ok. Maybe Pat Roberston will explain it for you. It's because your ancestors made a deal with Satan to get rid of the French, so God has been punishing your island nation ever since.

Maybe your clip will get played on a the inevitable telethon. Maybe some cheeseball on American Idol will dedicate a song to you.

Katie only had a half hour with Charlie. Now Charlie is babbling with douche bag TV exec Jeff Zucker about the Conan and Jay Leno controversy, which really has America polarized. Idiots actually were out protesting O'Brien's ouster from The Tonight Show all across the country. They met through Facebook, but the local news was disappointed only 75 showed up in Chicago to demonstrate.

I'm going to try to get some sleep in the hopes my cynicism subsides to mere skepticism by morning.

A Buffalo Sings the Blues

2009-10-04T10:56:00.000-05:00

This Elginite ready to rumble

Comments
September 29, 2009
Mike Danahey mdanahey@scn1.com
It's Native American Day on Saturday at the Elgin Public Museum in Lords Park.

The festivities will include Joseph Standing Bear Schranz -- an elder of the White Earth Ojibwe and president and founder of the Midwest Saving Our Ancestors Remains and Resources Indigenous Networking Group (SOARRING) Foundation -- doing a public bison blessing at noon on the hill overlooking their pen.

To mark the occasion -- and since the bison have been in the news a lot this year -- we asked Dakota, the male of the three-member micro-herd, our obligatory five questions. Here's what the big guy had to say.

How do you feel about all the attention you've had this year?

First, while it's nice to be blessed, why do people assume that we would share the Native American belief system? While they were nicer to us than white people were, they still ate us, remember? So I am a little nervous about Saturday.

Besides, I've been living here in Elgin so long, I think I may be Lutheran. I see all those folks going to that church by the park, and they seem like a nice bunch.

As for people trying to keep me and the lady bison here, well, we're flattered. See, we've become pretty suburban. At this point, the farthest I'd roam would be the local Aldi for some whole-grain snacks. What they say about the deer and the antelope here, however, is true. Those animals really do like to play.

It sounds as if there are a lot of misconceptions about you. Would you like to clear up any others?

First, those names they gave us. Dakota? I prefer to be called Jeff. Po-Key and Cahoya go by Cathy and Judy. We're in Elgin, not Montana, and want to blend in like everybody else.

And dudes, living with two females is not as sexy as it sounds. It's always "Jeff, why are you so messy?" and "Jeff, why don't you pay more attention to us?" And "Jeff, you never listen, and you never talk to us anymore." I feel so fenced in sometimes.

Also, it's OK to call us buffalo or bison -- just not Bill. Oh, and I don't like wild wings.

Are you related to anyone famous?

My cousin Ralphie is the mascot at the University of Colorado in Boulder and goes to all the football games.

Granted, the team stinks. But Ralph is hanging out with cheerleaders.

My great-great-great-grandfather Bob posed for a coin. And I overheard somebody say that he saw my cousin's head mounted on a wall at a local pizza joint. Man, you people can be scary-weird.

If you wind up having to move, where would you like to go? Plainfield sounds like a nice place for a buffalo. And it's not too far for people from Elgin to visit.

I'm pretty domesticated these days, so I don't think I'd enjoy living on an actual plain, though. Especially if it's owned by Ted Turner. He has restaurants, right?

What would be on your iPod? Springsteen -- "Born to Run." Bob Marley -- "Buffalo Soldier." Jay-Z -- "Run This Town." Lady Gaga -- "Poker Face." Some Nickelback. But no Black Eyed Peas. If I hear "I Gotta Feeling" one more time, I'm gonna stampede.

Hawaiian shirts and "Happy Trails": For Thom McNamee, RIP

2009-06-17T22:17:00.004-05:00

Hawaiian shirts and “Happy Trails” on the holy cards. Bagpipe music at sunset. A rendition of “Amazing Grace” at the service that left nary a dry eye on a rainy day. A song from “Willy Wonka” sung by a Smoking Pope. A simple pine coffin adorned with a pair of well-worn work boots and a Celtic harp.
Those are some of the images from the wake and funeral of Thom McNamee. And while there aren’t any more High Kings of Ireland, McNamee was, at the very least, the dearly departed Duke of Dundee. McNamee lived large, a big fish in a small suburban pond, and a true character in the best sense of the word. In a world with way too much beige vinyl siding about it, the daily blur of the busy blandness dragging us down, he added splashes of color to brighten things up.
Heck, check out the paint job on one of his joints, Bandito Barney’s, 10 N. River St., East Dundee for metaphorical example. Take a tour of the beer garden where you’ll find an elephant spewing water that once stood at now-defunct Santa’s Village. Other attractions include a wall from a barn built 150 years ago in Iowa, stained-glass etchings de picting wildlife, the top of a column that once was part of First National Bank of Chicago, a 2,000-pound street lamp, a waterfall flowing into a moat, a 200-year-old wrought-iron gate, and a castle turret.
It’s like having a drink in someone else's dream, but somehow it all sort of works. And it’s there because it all had meaning for McNamee. Take the etchings as example. McNamee was friends with two squirrels, Perry and Buster, whom he would welcome into his home and feed. And he was known to keep the company of raccoons, too. A photo of McNamee with a mom raccoon and her litter hung above his casket at the wake, then at a gathering of friends at Bandito’s last week.
There were also photos of Mac from his male model days in Australia and New Zealand. That’s where he picked up the habit of calling people "mate.”
The blown-up photos showed there is something intrinsically funny about 80s hair and men with pouting faces as with McNamee posing in a pants ad with a woman at his feet, or “Top Gun” style in a motorcycle ad. He was on a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, too.
It was quite the life for a poor kid from a big Irish family that moved to Carpentersville from Chicago. The modeling came after working his way through law school as a hot roofer with his twin brother Tim.
And the brothers, with their buddy George Karas, opened Wall Street in 1978, which would become Bandito’s, but not before a fateful night 22 years ago when William Nally gunned down Tim in front of Tim’s law office along Route 31.
Nally reportedly intended to kill Tim’s law partner Tim Mahoney, with a rifle he stole from the Dundee VFW post, for the most convoluted of reasons: It was supposed to scare the father of Nadine Walter's young child into bringing the child back to Illinois. Nally did it for love.
A close as twins can be, the murder haunted McNamee, who eventually built a gazebo in a small park along the Fox River to honor Tim. Ghosts aside, McNamee built a life in the Fox Valley with a vengeance.
Thom became the Donald Trump of Dundee, buying and renovating properties and partnering in businesses including the local Dairy Queen, the salon La Femme Fatale, which is run by his wife, Heather, and Rosie O’Hare’s, a beautiful pub sprung from an ugly duckling of a place near the footbridge along the Fox River in East Dundee. For the last few years, come the Saturday before or of St. Pat’s Day, you’d find McNamee leading a parade he helped found that wound its way to Rosie’s.
Though he wasn’t much of an athlete himself, you could catch him playing sports on “Irish Rebel” teams made up of jock friends. And he played golf in the rain, because he loved the rain. One time he rescued some orphan raccoons during a round.
Every summer he hosted his own fireworks show and later in the year threw a ball, an event not quite as fancy a s the one he had back in the day at the Field Museum, but elaborate by local standards.
You could find him tooling around town in a beat-up old pickup truck with Wyoming plates. He had a place near Jackson Hole, where he’d bring his buddies, George Clooney-style, often around Super Bowl time.
On one of those trips West, he flipped a snowmobile. Much to the amazement of friends, he shrugged off the experience, saying that’s why there’s insurance.
That’s how it goes when you seem larger than life. But no one is, really.
McNamee fell off a ladder last year, while working on the roof at Rosie’s. He came crashing to the ground, breaking his nose and thumping his chest. X-rays revealed the brain tumors which would eventually lead to his death at the age of 56.
An Irish raconteur by nature, McNamee withdrew from the local limelight during the last few months of his life, traveling for treatment, staying at home getting things in order and spending time with his wife and a handful of close friends.
His last notable public appearance was in the aforementioned St. Pat’s parade. Resplendent in a kilt and a big blue and green sweater, his grin beamed like the luckiest of leprechauns in a photo from his final parade.
His own wake and funeral were subdued compared to those for Tim. There was no taking the corpse around town to old haunts, no presentation of the body laid out on a vintage Corvette.
Times change, people get older and maybe a touch wiser and learn the value of subtler but no less significant touches. That’s to say, sad or not, you can’t help but smile when you see a sea of people in Hawaiian shirts. And if you can get people to smile at your funeral, then it’s quite a life you’ve led.
Happy trails, my friend, happy trails indeed.
Note: Donations can be made t o the Timothy R. McNamee Science Foundation at 10 N. River St., East Dundee, IL 60118.

Led Zeppelin brings families together

2009-04-05T21:27:00.000-05:00

Late Sunday afternoon at Mad Maggie's in downtown Elgin and "Kashmir," a Led Zeppelin chestnut comes wafting out of the PA system like it has a millions times at thousands of bars over the last four decades. Yeah, Robert Plant is 60, and Jimmy Page is 65. So if you're a teen, Zeppelin, once the symbol of youthful rock and roll excess and bombast, is, indeed, your grandfather's music.

"Yeah, that's funny. They got the name because people said they'd go over like a lead zeppelin," Ken Elsenbroek said. "But it's still working for people. Who would have ever thought that?"

And who over a certain age would have ever thought that rock would one day become a family bonding experience, like Little League baseball or or a Sunday pot roast dinner at grandma's?

See, Elsenbroek and his wife, Marguerite, were in the bar helping their son, Kenny, 17, set up his drum kit for a gig with the band named after a town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Copper Harbor. The kit actually used to be Elsenrbroek's, and his son, a junior and Genoa-Kingston High, has been drumming pretty much from the time he could hold beat out a rhythm with sticks. The boys in the band practice in the Elsenbroek family basement three times a week, which is a bit different that when Ken was a kid.

Growing up in DuPage County, "My parents didn't mind me being in a band, but it was two different lifestyles. Once in awhile they'd get to a show. With Kenny, we try to make all his events," said Elsenbroek.

Elsenbroek's band played hard rock, with Aerosmith, Foghat, Rush, and, of course, the aforementioned Zeppelin, among its influences.

Some of the bands Kenny's age do, indeed, play tunes by such rock dinosaurs. And they dress like them, too, as if the last 30 years never happened, or they heard about a casting call for a sequel to "Almost Famous."

But Kenny said Copper Harbor, which also features Dillon Anderson, Mikhael Colon, and Jeremy Quinones, all of Elgin, is more of an indie unit that covers some Bayside tunes. Unlike back in the day, when you'd have to hear them live or hope somebody had one of those new-fangled cassette players, you can check them out online on MySpace. And you can check out Bayside, too, without having to head out to sift through bins at an old fashioned record store.

Still, "I still listen to (Led Zeppelin), too. It doesn't get old. It will always be around. (The family) were listening to them on the way over," said Kenny.

Maggie's hosts all ages shows a good many Sunday evenings, giving younger bands a crack at playing a venue with professional stage lighting and a good sound system. Bar owner Sean Davis said the Elsenbroek family's support of their son and the infatuation with the 70s typical of what he sees at such concerts.

"We get tables filled with moms, dads, neighbors. Even grandpa and grandma come out," said Davis.

That's not to mention that parents' minivans come in handy for hauling equipment. Or that while his dad sipped a beer before the set, Kenny had a bottle of strawberry lemonade.

It all gives a whole new, practically wholesome, meaning to "Whole Lotta Love."

Danaclot, the heparin drip stick

2009-03-07T11:51:00.000-06:00

Once again, I was a heparin hostage.

It all started last Sunday. Recovering from my most recent adventures as Blood Clot Boy, I felt some sharp pains in my chest, on the right side. The stabs only happened when I would take a deep breath, laugh, cough, turn in my sleep or see naked pictures of Rush Limbaugh which apparently are being sent as some really nasty computer virus.

Oh, sure. I could have just taken more cough drops, slept completely still (AKA funeral practice), stopped breathing (also funeral practice) or logged off the laptop where I was being lured by the sexiness that is Rush. But, being told that blood clots are nothing to sneeze at (or cough, breathe or turn), to be on the safe side I called my doctor's office. They got back to me in a half hour and suggested I go to the emergency room for some tests.

Well, until Friday afternoon I was embedded in the hospital. I just gave myself a shot in my belly fat - a trick you jock types with 6-pack abs can't do. So much for your muscles. But I thought belly shots were supposed to be fun.

Here's how I wound up being held captive by the Catholic hospital and now giving myself expensive liquid blood thinner for a few days.

First, if you want to get attention in the ER, just say they magic words, "chest pain." I barely had time to pee when they called my name and whisked me off behind a curtain. I told them my history and they ordered up a bedisde chest X-ray and a CT scan. Interestingly, this gave a woman from the billing department time to ring up my $50 copay - and to inquire about making my $250 copay on my last stay which ended on Feb. 13. Talk about a short billing cycle.

Aside from that, so far, so good. It only took about 40 minutes to get to the spinning ways of the scanning machine. Only thing is the dye didn't take, so the test results were no good.

I had to wait another hour or so for a VQ scan (and isn't med-speak hot?). They had to call in someone to do it, then had to find someone to read it on a Sunday afternoon. The test pretty much confirmed there was a clot on the lung - but without the CT they weren't sure if it was my old friend from February or a new pal along for the fun of a party by my ribs.

Since they weren't sure, the ER doctor talked with my doctor and a hematologist and presto, I was going to be admitted. By now it was after 3 p.m. To kill time, if not me, I was having fun listening to the other ailments: a kid with an ear infection; two bladder infection cases; a dude embarrassed by the knee surgery he had for skateboarding, and more so about the apparent infection setting in around the incisions; a blue collar type with an infected corn; and an elderly woman with her insulin needle stuck in her belly.

I was back in a room by 6 p.m. Good thing I had that Egg McMuffin on the way to the hospital as there was a SNAFU with my food and I didn't get fed again until 7 or so. And I was hooked up again with my old friendly nemesis, the heparin drip, there just in case I was throwing clots again, like an angry rock star had invaded my venous system. Throwing Clots. Good album title.

The hematologist stopped in to talk with me as did a few friends, including a Facebook buddy o' mine, a doctor who was nice enough to bring backup grub as I waited for my misplaced meal (which never showed up - I got stew instead).

While chowing on couscous I learned they were making sure I didn't have a fresh clot, which would mean getting a filter placed in my groin, which sounded a little too S&M for my tastes. But as my doc buddy pointed out, I could be starting the latest trend of body jewelry - and I am all about being on the edge. if not looking like The Edge.

Ever try to sleep in a hospital? How many times did you pee? Did you take a dump? Let's take some blood samples. And your bed makes electronic burping noises as it adjusts to your every movement. Surprisingly, somebody waking you from a deep sleep seems to do wonders for your blood pressure. My best readings came scared away - 116/56 if I remember correctly.

Ever given 14 blood samples before 6:30 a.m.? I felt the love Billy Bob Thornton must have had for Angelina Jolie. I also realized that drawing blood must be a thankless job. It's vampire-like waking people, tying off their arms, searching and pricking their veins, honing samples, dealing with bio-waste, then heading off with the push cart to the next room.

Devoid of my hemoglobin, I needed food - which could be the title of my biography. In this case it meant waiting 90 minutes for breakfast. To the hospital's credit, complaining about the service actually resorted in prompter meals the rest of my stay - and a $5 cafeteria gift certificate for my troubles.

Little did I know I would be here until Friday waiting for the levels of blood thinner A (heparin) to reach a certain level, while blood thinner B (coumadin) was reintroduced into my system. Well, there was that and an electrocardiogram, and a CT scan of the pelvis, and more bloodwork, and, best of all, a colonoscopy - all in the name of ruling out culprits in the case of the mysterious clottings.

If only it were like House, right? It would because I ate a parasite-bearing goldfish as a dare in college, and that, combined with an allergic reaction to the laundry detergent used by the Boeing CFO with whom I was having an illicit affair while on a trip to Hong Kong, led to dangerous blood clots typical of such combinations.

Nay - and luckily - cancers of various organs have been ruled out, to which I will be eternally grateful that I currently have good health insurance that allows me to do what the doctor asks.

What fun it was to drink a chalky mix for the pelvic CT scan. That was practice for downing the godawful gallon of electrolyte-laden joy that is the prep for the colonoscopy.

Now drinking a gallon of pretty much anything is going to leave you feeling, well, crappy. And that's exactly the goal here. You can pretend its KoolAide with the little flavor packets, but not really. The trick is to chug two pints at a time, then rest for 15 minutes or so. When you chug, you don't really have time to taste. I took two hours to finish thee foulness, and then it was off to the races.

TMI HERE: The first lap took about a half hour - and not too brag, but there was a bit too much water in the bowl for what I'm packing, so every time I would flush, I'd get this cold, tingling sensation between my legs (similar to the reaction of seeing those aforementioned photos of Rush Limbaugh). But flush I did and did and did and did and did as the magic fruit punch cleansed the colon to the point water was coming out of my ass.

It's a sexy way to spend an evening. Fittingly, I had American Idol playing in the background.

Four hours later, I was pretty much tapped out.

Oddly, they insisted on asking me how many times I went to the bathroom - to which I replied, just put the damn infinity sign on your chart. Hard to keep track to which nurse or aid I made the comment, as they seem to be on odd rounds. You get used to one or another, they leave you for another floor, another shift. There has not been one here dealing with me the whole time - and I wasn't even whining like the old lady down the hall one afternoon.

I felt sorry for her at first, but man she had a potty mouth. Imagine your grandmother saying "Get me out of here. Get me the fuck out of here" in a cry that was part hurting geriatric, part cat in heat, part that mean old lady in a scary movie.

But back to my screen test. All crapped out, I waited in anticipation, if not diapers, for my extreme close-up with a camera. It was supposed to happen at 9, but because of my heparin being shut off late, it was pushed back two hours, which was about 24 hours since my last meal.

I had to strip down to just a hospital gown (I had been wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt), which for some reason made me have a desire to head to an Old Country Buffet. Instead, I was wheeled to the staging area. They sprayed my throat with something that tasted like how a Toyota dealership smells. Nobody but me got that. In a move many people who have heard my bad jokes would appreciate, next they put a bit in my mouth.

And that's the last thing I remember before waking up watching my insides on TV.

Tipsy, I think I said something like, "Hey, so that's what my colon looks like. Pretty cool. Will anyone cuddle with me when this is over?"

But just like when I went to that frat party when that football player slipped something in my drink, I was left mostly naked under a blanket in a cold room for a half hour before I was sent back to my room.

Parched and famished and feeling hung over, I still was not allowed to eat. They even alerted food services not to take my call. The reason - I had no gag reflex. No joke needed, eh?

But 28 hours later, I fueled up my belly, mostly with good things as I was told I had no potentially problematic polyps, but needed more fruit, fiber and vegetables in my diet. Just nothing too seedy to fill some colon pockets.

Imagine that - a muddling middle aged suburban American male being told he needed to make better dietary choices.

Still, no answer for the clots, so I was sent home on folic acid (No, I AM NOT PREGNANT!), antacid, warfarin and, for the time being Lovenox shots. A pack of 10 goes for $200 on some insurance, so it's like drinking downtown. Me, I got the HMO price of a mere $50. Monday I learn if I can go back to being on just one thinner.

I remain a clotted mystery. My hematologist is still on the case. Maybe I should fess up about the goldfish and the sexy CFO so he can solve this mystery.

Small town government - it can ruin your health

2009-02-23T20:32:00.000-06:00

I am propped up in bed as I type this, wearing gym clothes and one of those Old Guy in Sarasota support stockings on my left leg, which is propped under a pillow. Sultry image, ain't it?

I have been ordered to keep my travels to a minimum, to walk about for 5 - 10 minutes or so every couple hours, but otherwise keep that leg up in bed or a recliner at least until early March. Maybe this is karmic payback for all those weekends wasted watching TV sports. How I got this way remains a medical mystery, which is to say I am like a patient on a mediocre-at-best episode of "House." But apparently my blood is as thick as Aunt Jemima syrup, and while not at all high in cholesterol or sugar, prone to causing sticky problems.

I'm not telling you anymore about my malady. HIPPA, you know.

What I will tell you is about this weird dream I had after filling out paperwork related to my condition for my job. My blood thinned, I shivered dreaming about my paperwork being challenged by someone from Carpentersville or some other local burg, someone I never met, who maybe didn't like some story I wrote or was just really into following the letter of the law, like Eric "Respect My Authority" Cartman on "South Park." So, because they convinced a panel I had violated the law, my claims were all being denied and I was being kicked off my insurance.

In the dream, on one page of documents I signed my name Mike Danahey and on another Michael Danahey. To my challenger and her attorney, standing there in the shadows, the rules clearly stated that the name had to be the same. Oh, and I forgot to number my pages. And I put them in a sealed envelope and used the wrong kind of clip to hold them all together.

"The law is the law," they said in unison. Which is so true, yet often so very confusing.

"Is this fair? I am not deceiving anyone. I go by Mike or Michael, depending on my mood. I think its sexy when someone calls me Michael. I didn't realize I had to number the pages, so can't I just go back and do that? I sealed the envelope so stuff wouldn't get lost. And all I had was a big green paper clip. Sorry. I've been in the hospital," dream version Mike pleaded.

"It doesn't matter," they said, in unison again, which creeped me out.

"Why are you doing this," I whined. "Why are you people like this? Why can't someone who wants to run for office just run for office as long as he or she doesn't have a c riminal record, lives in the area they want to represent, and is a registered voter? Why the dog and pony show of petitions?" I meant to say, why can't I just refill out my forms if I must or do what I have to do so they I don't wind up destitute, which I think I did eventually get out. But hey, it was a dream.

"We are just enforcing the law as it is written. Because we can," the duo sang this time.

So there I was in one of those embarrassing hospital gowns, chasing after the two as they headed down a hall, out to a driveway and into a Hummer carrying more than 3/4 ton of petition papers from all over the place. Apparently this is what this couple does for fun - and it was a DREAM so I can know this.

"Wait a minute!," I shouted. "You're using a vehicle, possibly for commercial purposes, that fully loaded weighs more than 4 tons that I bet you leave in a driveway overnight sometimes. You should be the ones in trouble. Ordinance breakers!"

"Nope. Towns with such laws, the laws may seem to apply to us, but they are really about those ugly panel trucks or for preventing someone from parking a semi in the driveway or a bus. It's not in the spirit of the law to prevent me from parking my petition-filled Hummer wherever I want to," said the lawyer, who was smoking a cigar made from ground up petition p apers.

"What the..." I said as a wind blew up my gown, and they drove off to bother another election.

I called a friend in Chicago who doesn't have a car to come help me. It would take him three hours to get to me by bus, then train, then bus or cab. That's a=2 0nightmare for another time.

This time, in the words of Tommy Lee Jones' character in "No Country for Old Men," then I woke up. And double checked my paperwork.

Get a Leg Up: The Further Adventures of Clot Boy

2009-02-15T23:05:00.003-06:00

So my blood apparently is as thick as maple syrup, probably that fake kind, like Aunt Jemima.

Which is a glib way of saying, I have gooey blood clots again. I am back on the rat poison, with a leg that feels like the Pittsburgh Steelers defense fell on it. But only when I stand. Or sit. Or walk.

This all came to a head - or a foot, in this case - about three weeks ago. I've been having breathing troubles for some time. I walk up stairs, I sound like a horny obscene phone caller. I had tests in October - the year anniversary of the first time I had clots on my lungs - and all came back fine. I thought I was in the clear.

But even then I said my breathing seemed a bit labored on stairs. So I thought, better ask about getting a stress test, in case it's the ticker this time. I mean, my gene pool is dirty with coronary issues.

In the meantime, my leg started hurting, a slight pain in the left calf, a sore vein in the upper left thigh. So two weeks ago, I went to the doctor to talk about both issues.

She sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound, and then they found the baby growing on behind my knee. And they contacted Oprah immediately. Alright, I'm lying. They found nothing on the calf but a surface clot on the thigh.

I was told to keep the leg as elevated as possible, to heat it, and to schedule the stress test in a week or so. Only thing is, by the end of that week, the leg hurt more, especially the calf. It felt like a sports injury, like a sprain or tear, of which I know from experience. And the simple act of sitting on a bar chair caused my foot to fall asleep - that sharp needles and pins kind of numbing in the heel and big toe.

I called my doctor that Monday (Feb. 9) about it, and she said to go for the stress test, but she would order up a chemical version in case I couldn't walk well enough.

Well, I couldn't. In fact, the nurse took a look at the big toe, and it was turning a nice shade of Chicago winter sky. And that wasn't because of the registration hoops I had to jump through - as in I didn't properly pre-register for my test, so I had to hobble over to admitting, then back. Lucky, I had a friend with me.

So the nurse looks at the foot, says the stress test is off, but sets up one down the road for me that takes three hours and uses a dye, and sends me back to ultrasound. Still no baby, but this time, there is a deep vein clot on the calf and the surface clot. So they admit me - which took two hours for a bed to become available.

Another good buddy brought me a sandwich, which is good, because crabby from hunger AND in pain, well, I could have turned into Wolverine.

But I wound up in a single room, which was nice - with an IV in my arm for four days.

I had a VQ scan the first night, which showed a very high probability that I have a clot or clots on my lungs again, too. Interesting test: they make you breath in radioactive oxygen to get the images. The test was administered by a Korean woman with a nice sense of humor. She told me I looked like a genie and asked me to grant her three wishes.

I was poked and prodded for the remainder of the week - but I remain a medical mystery, like a weak episode of House.

My hospitalist put me on blood thinners. A hospitalist is a doctor who manages the care for patients while they are in the hospital. It frees up general practitioners to treat more people and/or spend more time with those who come to the office.

I like the way that every medical person asks you to tell you what happened the first time they meet you. If you're paranoid you would think that was to see if you are faking it. But I think it would be pretty hard to fake a blood clot. And it's not like a store sells some kit to cause one on purpose.

Anyway, the stay was pleasant enough, as far as hospital visits go. The staff was quite friendly and I felt like Brad Pitt for the attention I was getting. I had my laptop, but the place had odd blocks set up - I can understand no xtube, but no blogger sites either, or social networking sites, or pretty much anything with video. And no Internet radio feeds either.

It beat work. But I think if you asked most people these days, would you rather be at the office, or have an IV in your arm and be in bed for four days, choice B would win in a landslide (provided the person answering has good insurance, as I am fortunate enough to have. For now).

Still, the leg hurts, I can't walk for more than a block without the pain. I sit as you might at a desk or restaurant or meeting, and it gets uncomfortable. The toes and heel still seem to tingle. Only when the leg is elevated does the pain subside.

That's why I didn't ask for painkillers. Tomorrow I hope to learn what the doctor thinks my activity levels should be and what to do to manage the pain. The leg clot will eventually dissolve, they told me. It's taking its time, and blocking the flow to my foot, the bastard.

I also want to see of the can find a specialist who can pinpoint what the hell is causing this. There are mysteries in life and I don't want this to be one of them.

I am too much of a puzzle as it is.

Uncle Brian and Lady Macbeth

2009-02-08T11:05:00.005-06:00

So I got to meet my Uncle Brian Dennehy last night after watching him hit the boards in DESIRE Under the Elms (I write it that way because the ads for it really stress DESIRE and almost whisper the Under the Elms part).

OK, so he's not really my uncle. You caught me in another lie on the way to my truth. Whatever.

Either way, Uncle Brian was putting on his socks when we got to go into his dressing room, and he was listening to some Bill Evans jazz on his portable which had him reminiscing about seeing Evans at the Village Vanguard.

Uncle Brian was looking tired, and how couldn't he. DESIRE Under the Elms is a son of a bitch of a play, Eugene O'Neill and lots of shouting, treachery, torment, love triangle, sex, deception, maybe some actual love, infanticide, and is this case, all those rocks on the stage.

That it the set looks like the bottom of an unglamorous aquarium, with brown gray boulders abounding, piled like the walls of a fallen castle, dangling from the ceiling even, with a cabin on ropes coming up and down from the catwalks, too.

Uncle Brian isn't fucking sure what's up with the fucking set. That's his buddy, director Robert Falls' decision. And all the fucking nudity, what's the fucking big deal, and why the fuck even have it.

Yeah, he swears a lot. Big fucking deal. He was nice enough to meet with me, a no-name writer at a craptacular publication, and a buddy of mine. And he told my buddy, who took a back-hurting tumble on an ice patch by his apartment building earlier in the day, that he better not fuck with that and get to a doctor come Monday if not sooner.'

We talked about how Wall Street has pretty much fucked up the country, with that asshole Maddoff bilking folks of money that they might still have liability issues about, taking from nonprofits like the Innocence Project, which helps free people who are wrongly on Death Row, to Broadway and other theater where there's less and less backing for mounting productions.

And how the play was cut to just under 2 hours and how you can always cut O'Neill. (And in these times, you gotta, right? Who has the patience and attention span anymore. Hell, you're probably bored reading this already!)

DESIRE was supposed to go to Broadway, but on this night at least Uncle Brian had his doubts. Hey, Broadway is Disneyland now, and even his buddy Angela Lansbury is having a hard time getting a production of Blythe Spirit going. Whose got the money to see it?

The female lead in DESIRE, Carla Gugino is hot and has a career heating up with Watchmen about to open and her one of the stars - she's leaving the cast to promote her films.

And Uncle Brian, like me and way too fucking many of us, was wondering what might be next for us all for work.

Didn't help that dumbass me said the "M" word, mentioning I had seen M-beth at Chicago Shakespeare the prior weekend. That is BAD LUCK to say M-beth in a theater, but I forgot. But Uncle Brian forgave me, luck's been bad enough can't get much worse.

And he was heading over to meet up with a buddy of his in the Scottish play, anyway.

There's nudity amidst the blood there, too, With Lady Macbeth baring her boobies and having them fondled by Macbeth. We see her ass later in the play. Oddly, when she gets into a bathtub, she has panties on. But what do I know? Maybe Scots wear them into water.

The gore in this Macbeth was almost to Tarantino levels, but the production could have been even more over the top for my tastes.

In DESIRE, there was nudity, but oddly, it was male nudity - butt shots, and a burly bearish guy going around for about 15 minutes without his shirt and with boobies almost as big as Lady M's. Hey, women and gay guys in the audience need eye candy too.

Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to get people talking about your play, even if it means putting Macbeth in a modern setting with an Obama lookalike in the cast, and video and DESIRE having a Bob Dylan song. And to me it seemed organic for these plays to do this.

More organic was seeing Macbeth spray the front row with spittle as he enunciated like a good Elizabethean actor. And seeing a woman sitting next to me fall asleep. Or here the old dude smack his gums like he was a dog eating peanut butter during the whole second act of M-beth.

I don't know what that tangent has to do with anything. After all, this is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Wait, that makes me, and M-beth, sound like Anne Coulter.

And now I am officially rambling.

Facebook is my new Floyd's

2009-01-17T23:19:00.001-06:00

A couple months ago, at the urging of an Irish friend of mine, I joined Facebook. I resisted because I associated the social networking site with Internet and PDA addicted teens, those masters of the text message who communicate banalities in abbreviated code while bowling or driving daddy’s SUV. Which is a crusty way of saying I felt too old.
But my friend can be persistent and kept teling me about how wonderful it was to share photos with family across the ocean and to make new buddies and to know just by looking at your computer what somebody you met once in Pittsburgh was having for breakfast.
Sure, it sounded like a the Kathy and Judy Show on WGN - or a perky cult. But it was Christmas, and I was feeling lonely and ripe for joining one.
Much to my astonishment I took to Facebook, well much like Patty Hearst did to the Symbionese Liberation Army (Google it).
In less than two months I have made myself more than 130 online pals. They include artists and media personalities in Chicago, college kids, a bar owner, an engineer in New Orleans, family in South Bend and the West Coast, musicians in Ireland,a TV anchor in Kansas City, and even a guy with the same name as mine who is a rapper in Milwaukee. Word.
I also joined a Facebook group, "I Survived Carpentersville," which was created by Holly Poole, 24. Poole grew up in the Ville, was living with her folks in Alabama for a couple years and moved back to town last summer. She works at a Caribou Coffee in Elgin.
"I joined Facebook just to reconnect with old friends, but I made the group kind of as a joke. Everyone from Carpentersville has a funny story about something crazy happening in the Ville. It's fun to talk about places we used to go and the things we used to there. Originally I invited literally like 5 or 10 people in the group, but I had no idea so many people would end up joining... I know it sounds silly, but you meet someone and you find out that they've lived in Carpentersville, it's almost like you have an instant respect for them," she said.
So far 345 people have joined Poole's group, with about two dozen posting on topics that include name checking the section of the town where you lived, the first time you did _____ it happened in the Ville, and things that used to be in town.
I added to the latter, that Jamba Juice, Kung Fu Panda Express and Believe in Something Cellular used to be Floyd’s.
“Ah, Floyd’s. What a great place to meet up with friends. I liked the steaks and libations, the famous Floyd’s cheese spread,” said former village president Mark Boettger, who, unless he is using an alias he’s not telling me about, is not on Facebook.
“Thursday nights, I think was open mic with Bruce Waters and his musician friends who would stop in and jam. That was always fun. The characters you would see coming in were always interesting. And it was just like being with family when you walked into the lounge,” he added.
Floyd's closed in 2005. Brian Jason, whose dad, Vic, owned the place, now runs the Walleye Grill in Huntley, The Barn in Barrington and the recently opened Barley House in Algonquin Commons. While visiting Jason's new spot I ran an idea by him: Facebook is the new Floyd’s, but without the calories or the Harvey Wallbangers (Google it).
Jason laughed, but sort of saw my point.
Of course, for Floyd's, at least most of the time you had to be wearing pants. On Facebook, you can be in bed in your undies while you small talk online with your pals all over the planet. And you can have your friends with you all the time if you have Facebook on your phone.
It's an electronic security blanket in a lonely world. And your community is no longer defined by geography - which is cool and long as you venture out to a real Floyd's of your own every now and then.
Otherwise, you're just another dork with a bag of Cheetos.

More Monkey Business

2009-01-11T22:46:00.002-06:00

Dancing on a bartop with waitresses makes you realize how we, as a culture, objectify women, how it's all about the booty and the booze.

Eh. Save that for the Lifetime Network.

If the place is the Bad Monkey in Algonquin, what you learn from the vantage point on the bar is that the suburbs are becoming a bit more tolerant about who sleeps with whom, a bit more live and let live about lifestyles - at least if karaoke and letting loose are involved.

With the help of the talented Linda Perillo, who is way better at moving to the grooving than this old school white boy, you learn the bar tender makes sure the path is relatively clear of drinks and spills and that the the surface isn't as tricky to navigate as you might think.

If you're pouring shots into open mouths of willing, baby-bird like imbibers, you find out somebody better hold still or they could chip a tooth or get liquor on their shirt. And while most people appear non-plussed by a middle-aged guy shaking his money maker, some are genuinely baffled, and men, well men, at least in the suburbs, aren't gonna take a shot from a dude, even if this is the most sexually mixed bar in the northwest suburbs.

Hell, a swingers group even hangs out there one night a week. Yup, Benny Goodman fans, and Sinatra wannabes singing karaoke.

Club founder "Mike" (no, not this one) said he and his pals used to meet at a steak joint in Elgin, The Prairie Rock. But moving to the Bad Monkey has tripled the membership. But, though a couple members are prone to singing off color karaoke versions of I Got You Babe and Summer Lovin' the swingers are just blend in with the crowd on other nights.

"The area needed a comfortable place for people to go, and this is a diverse place for people to have a good time," said one of two women named Wendy who own the place.

Both Wendys are bikers, have been friends for 20 years, and have operated other bars in the far northwest suburbs. The name just came to them while brainstorming, they said, and they opened their doors last May.

They say it's been busy from the get-go, drawing from the nearby subdivisions, but with word of mouth, folks from as far away as Chicago and Montgomery stopping by for a drink, some eats or to belt out a tune.

One of the latteris Curt Send of Carpentersville whose been known rock the karaoke with Radiohead or Cheap Trick.

"This is just down the street for me, and there are a lot of cool people here," said Send.

The oddest song Send said he's heard at the Bad Monkey: Rock Lobster, as performed by "Dan the Man." Dan's the local equivalent of Jack from Will and Grace. His take on It's Raining Men - performed while dressed like an elf and with special lyrics, "It's raining lesbians, in Algonquin, hallelujah!" - was a holiday time highlight.

The karaoke is handled by Big DJ Mikey who says that in the seven years he's been serving up tunes, the Monkey is the the friendliest place.

"There's no comparison. No matter who you are they like you and make you feel welcome," said Mike.

Hey, they had me sold, when a cougar, excited by the women dancing on the bar to Eminem's "Shake the Ass" strated grinding against me, rubbed my shaved head, turned me around and planted a big, wet kiss on me.

Fifteen-year Algonquin resident Peggy Smith, who lives just down the block, agrees.

"It's doesn't matter if you're straight or gay here. Nobody cares...Times are changing, and it's so cool how they are changing and they can all mix," said Smith.

Those blurred divisions aren't just about if you like girls or boys. You get bikers, yuppie couples, country fans, people who sing like cookie monster, and at least one time a nicely dressed Japanese woman, partial to light rock, who favors crooning light rock while her husband stands faithfully five feet away for moral support.

And name one other place where, on the same night, you can hear somebody cover a 10-minute Metallica number. Or, as bar manager Amy Meyer noted, a 75-year-old woman who is partial to "Under the Boardwalk."

The bar's typical karaoke contest is even egalitarian: everybody who sings on certain nights has their name put in a drawing, and the winner gets $50. It will be part of an actual talent contest, too.

And, like any good bar, the Bad Monkey has hosted and will be hosting fundraisers. One is coming up for a local girl battling cancer.

I"m happy the way things have turned out here. I think this is they way it should be in a bar. And I hope it helps get people off their stereotypes," said one of the Wendys.

"This place is like your favorite pair of jeans," said the other.

Me, I got a special dance out of the deal, further making, not a monkey, but a happy ass out of myself. And there are supposed to be picture on the way.

Turkey and monkeys

2008-12-01T16:21:00.007-06:00

I ate at three homes Thanksgiving Day and gained nary a pound.

I'd like to say it's because I went to the gym all day Saturday, but that wouldn't be true. I slept away most of that day, then went to see Slumdog Millionaire, which I predict will be nominated for Best Picture. This has nothing to do with the quality of the film, but it pushes all the right Oscar buttons.

It's a love story set in an exotic place, a rags to riches story, a Dickensian orphan story, a gangster story, a multicultural story - and it is more about 150 minutes long.

My other cultural experience was in 3D, going to a place called the Bad Monkey Bar in the town of Algonquin. Click on the title of this post and see for yourself.

As far as I can tell, it's the area's first mixed bar, meaning it's owned by lesbians and frequented by openly gay and straight folks of all ages, if mostly of the white persuasion.

It was karaoke night, and way too many people were singing country songs. Oddest was a guy who looked like every suburban cop - tall, stout, white, flattop crewcut - singing a frat boy reggae tune called Because I Got High. His posse included another middle aged dude who could pass for James Gandolfini playing Tony Soprano.

The deejay bear had a belly like a 9-month pregnant woman. His sidekick had that requisite husky homo guy goatee, and all their friends smoked and hung out on and off outside the place, spilling over in front of the Jimmy John's sub shop, which closed at 9 or so.

The beer was relatively cheap, too, and to add to the fun, every half hour or so the waitresses got up on the bar to dance and to pour booze down the willing throats of patrons.

While all these women were attractive, only a few of them looked comfortable moving to the grooving on a table top. And none of them really had the trampy moves down like in that stupid movie Coyote Ugly, which would have earned them big tips - if not more photos snapped by the gray haired lesbian couple in the corner.

A boy dancer could clean up at this place as there seemed to be quite a number of frisky women present. And for gay people, scoping who was watching what undulated and where could help making the decision whom to flirt with all the more easy.

I am pretty sure I will be going back, as suburban entertainment doesn't get any better.

But wait a minute! A friend at work reminded me that we went to a dive in Hoffman Estates last summer, in a strip mall, with a laundry, where lesbians - one in here finest plaid golf shorts and sweater vest - ruled the karaoke night, especially the one who sang Baby Got Back.

Could this be a trend?

Tarnishing the Dome: A Three Act Adventure in South Bend

2008-11-25T23:50:00.004-06:00

Part I - Mauled by a Cougar

So I was out drinking Friday night with my cousins in Mishawaka, Indiana. Even though it’s 90 miles from Chicago, it might as well be a lower rent Naperville, as it has the same places – meaning we wound up at a Bar Louie.

This one was populated with the usual suspects you’d find at a Bar Louie – Polish mobsters, muscle heads in disco shirts or tight sweaters, a drunk guy talking about how his first trip to Wrigley Field last year made him cry, sexy lady bartenders with painful to look at lip piercings and plenty of cougars.

This particular subspecies had a nice gym body, the face of Barbra Streisand, and a Native American’s tolerance for alcohol. She had been drinking something called a Pink Pussy, a shot with goldschlager and rumplemintz and suitable for a night when the temperature was 12.

She also had a thing for bald guys with goatees. One kept pulling on her thong underwear, which would get most guys slapped. But this mook was my evil, stronger, blue collar twin, Don the Plumber.

Don had trouble written all over his handsome face – or was it in the stitching on his jeans pockets? He wound up leaving with a woman with one of those two-tone dye jobs that looks like a Pepe Le Pew or a badger did her hair. There was a guy there who may have been jealous - of her, not him. Mr. Tight Sweater with Pooka Shell Necklace had been touching his pal's bald head. A lot.

Anyway, the cougar in question, before she left, noticed me. I was standing by a Golden Tee game, minding my own business when she came over and told me how sexy she thinks bald guys are. Then I made a cougar noise and she grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled down my cranium and licked my dome. And I say dome because it was a weekend going to a Notre Dame game.

In retrospect, I think she had mistaken me for one of those Australian toads you lick to get high.

Either way, I had a story that left my female coworkers unsettled come Monday morning.

But back to Mishawaka. We made sure the cougar got to her Avalon ok – not an easy task for her on an icy parking lot while wearing shoes with pointy heels. She wanted us to go to a strip club with her, in Fort Wayne, 90 miles away, but we took a pass.

On the way home I found out from my cousins a bit of the back story on the cast of characters. Divorces. Teenaged children. Marriages on the rocks. I felt like an asshole for finding it all so funny, but then I remembered what a fuck-up I can be, too. We're all those crying on the inside kind of clowns and bars are those tiny cars we all spill out of exposing our foibles.

Part 2 - Kid N Play

I didn’t need an alarm clock to wake up the next morning. My cousin Dan’s five-year-old son took care of that. Grant plopped onto the edge of the bed at about 6 a.m. which was 5 a.m. Chicago time – and he showed up every half hour or so until I did get out of bed around 8:30 his time.

Still learning math basics, he wasn’t quite sure when or what 8:30 was and kept coming to tell me that 8:30 had past.

I didn’t mind. In fact, I thought it was amusing. Things like this might piss parents off if they have to deal with it all the time. Having no kids of my own and being basically insecure, I found it flattering that someone would actually want me to get my sorry ass out of bed to play with me.

So eventually I got up, went down in the basement, rode a Figure 8-shaped scooter, played some floor hockey, watched some cartoons, arranged some toy trucks in a simulated traffic jam, ate some breakfast then went to Grant’s soccer game.

Grant is pretty fast, and scored the only goal of the game. He almost had another off a shot he tried to make after falling down – a shot kicking the ball while laying on his side, like something you might see a lazy fat guy do to avoid standing or to get the dog away from his bag of potato chips.

Grant plays hockey, too, which he did Sunday. Watching a bunch of five year olds play either sport is entertaining for the varieties of falls they all take – even more so on ice, which adds sliding, sticks and harder collisions to the mix.

At 5, kids don’t seem to get caught up in winning or losing yet. It’s more about looking for parents and fans in the crowd and starting a conversation – or in the case of one lad, smiling and waving after he let a puck pass him into the net.

Ever seen a parent dress a kid for hockey? How can you not feel like a king or queen if your dad or mom is layering you up in places where you never even knew you needed layers?

Part 3 - Game Day and a Heart Attack on a Very Hot Plate

Watching five year olds in any sport is preferable to watching Notre Dame play football. People still come to the games out of ritual, like disbelieving Catholics who hedge their bets by still going to Mass.

All of this is a polite way of either saying that God is dead or the team sucks. Suck is defined as losing to Syracuse, the worst team in the Big East, which is a basketball conference. Notre Dame is good in basketball and just about every other sport, but for football, the sport that made the school what it is. But hey, nothing is as it seems it was these days.

Still, there was the NBC hospitality tent to enjoy before the game - all that free food and booze. Hamburgers, chili, bloody marys, Bud, Guinness, Irished up hot chocolate, all of which which left me warm and sleepy during a dull first half. Or maybe it was the squirrel lined pants I was wearing to keep warm on a day when local ponds were freezing over.

Since my cousins are part of the local medical community we warmed up at halftime in one of three triage areas they have in Nude Rockne stadium where one of their colleagues was on duty. Sure, we are wimps, but the way they shoveled the stadium, there your feet were planted on snow. That wasn't such a smart thing, as the students were making snowballs and tossing them in the crowd and mostly toward the sidelines, aiming for cops, cheerleaders, the IT department being introduced during one of the endless TV timeouts (but a smart enough bunch to move out of range), and, best of all, the home team. The announcer scolded, but what he should have said was "Your parents shell out more than $40,000 a year for you to come to this school. They must be really proud." Or "Effective immediately, any more snowballs thrown, any student at the game will immediately be transferred to Michigan State."

We left during the third quarter with the Fighting Irish had yet to fall flatter than a drunken fat alumni on the ice outside Linebackers.

There was still steak to eat that night at Ruth's Chris, where they slather marbled meat in butter and serve it on a scalding hot plate.

I figured eating a lot was good practice for Thanksgiving, so the 22-ounce strip came after a bowl of gumbo, a few beers, some bread and a handful of shoestring french fried. But it took all my energy to finish my meal. I felt like python must after eating a rabbit. One of my cousins told me I was off my A-game.

Maybe I was frazzled by seeing another twin - this one beefier then me, with reddish goatee and sitting with a wimpier version of my cousin Kevin. It was like Back to the Future and are doppelgangers were on the other side of the room. We couldn't get any closer or let them spot us, less we risk altering the time-space continuum. The future us may have been life partners, and since we are related, even though this was Indiana (where you can still smoke in a bar), this was disturbing.

See what cholesterol can do to your brain? (Better that, than what it did to my GI tract. Let's just say, buttery in, buttery out.)

As I fell into a food coma, a friend of Kevin's came in, whom Kevin promptly tried to set up with a waitress. Then another waitress who waited on us my last football trip to South Bend came by to say hello.

She's still in school, hoping to be a doctor, working her way through school Same as when we saw her out and about on our last set of adventures.

I can't believe it's been a year, she said.

Who can believe anything anymore, I thought. It was probably the food talking, the fat going right to my head.

Witnessing history AND an Irish bar, to boot

2008-11-05T15:02:00.004-06:00

If you had tickets to go downtown Tuesday night to the Barackapalooza in Grant Park and you took a pass, kick yourself. Or at least go rent Risky Business and dance around in your underwear to make up for your wimpy self. Because like pre-Scientology Tom Cruise says in that movie, sometimes you just gotta say, What the...

Imagine if Barack Obama hadn't taken a chance, a chance nobody really gave him a shot at. I mean, beat Hillary Clinton? Defy the pundits and all their collective wisdom? Come on!

All you had to do was call in sick or sleep at your desk today so you could witness history last Tuesday. But you didn't. And now you can't tell your grandchildren that you were there when American elected its first African American president - from the South Side of Chicago, no less, which is still hard for most people from here over the age of 35 to fully grasp just yet.

My buddy Shay Clarke decided to go for it. He dressed up nice in a coat and a tie and headed into Chicago Tuesday afternoon with me. I dressed like a cameraman in jeans and a sweatshirt my shaved head covered in a Notre Dame baseball cap.

Our plan: meet my pals Alison and Tony in Oak Park and take the el into Chicago rally. A & T were blogging and had tickets to what turned out to be a sort of fun-loving cattle pen for ticketed supporters. Shay was going to use Kitty O'Shea's in the Hilton along Michigan Avenue as his base. And I was heading to the mediaquarium, a giant fishbowl for 6,000 journalists of all sorts, hangers-on and the connected.

First we ate at a cafe in the People's Republic of Oak Park - and I call it that because I got in a Rush Limbaugh sort of mood, which was actually more Stephen Colbert, which means I was making jokes about liberal stereotypes. I warned that anyone going to the rally would have his or her wallet confiscated before entering the Obamarama, with the contents evenly redistributed at the end of the night. And that we really didn't need to be eating, as Obama could feed the faithful on a couple loves of bread and some fish.

I had a bowl of pumpkin soup (imagine baby food) and suggested that under Obama we would all be required to eat more fruits and vegetables, if not become vegetarians altogether. And if we did eat meat, or tuna, as my friend did, it would have to be free range and glad to give its life for the greater good.

See how easy it is to make funny like a talk radio show host? Easier than it was for the pregnant woman to get up the stairs from the el to the Loop, at least.

And there was a mood of levity tempered with slight apprehension about what would be happening that night. All of which meant for me that joining Shay at Kitty's before joining my comrades in the 5th Estate City, was in order. Beer has its purposes.

The bar was strictly enforcing its rules for capacity, letting an equal number of people in and out, and in about 10 minutes we found some room inside next to a couple from Crystal Lake waiting for their son. The two decided that afternoon to come down for the festivities, which included corned beef sandwiches and for Mike Poper, remembering growing up in the city and playing baseball with Richie Daley at Thillens Stadium off Elston on the northwest side.

They voted for Obama, and it turned out that typically GOP-loving McHenry County went for Illinois's junior senator, too, as did most of Chicago's collar counties. What turned the Mrs. off about McCain? The choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate and the way he ran his campaign the last month or so.

While I chatted with the couple, Shay made fast friends with Paul from Rogers Park, waiting for a friend with a ticket to arrive. He had on a Grateful Dead-themed pin which he gave to Shay. His wife made such pins to sell to raise money for the campaign. It reminded me of Ray Rayner, and if you get that, you grew up in Chicago.

Either way, that gesture gave Shay his theme for the night - taking photos of pins, buttons and t-shirts for his Facebook page. Sorry kids, even grandfathers are posting these days. Plus, Shay knew the guys in the Celtic band that was going to play.

I left my friend to his mission and wound up following two young women with press credentials to the media entrance. They had gone to the wrong spot first as they weren't really media. They had friends who work for Michele Obama (this is Chicago, kapish?). And they were from Batavia and Rockford.

At the site, I expected they would cross reference my pass with a check list and ask for ID, but all I had to do was have the lanyard dangling, turn on all my electronic equipment and pass through airport style security.

This video village looked like a cross between a Hollywood back lot, a VIP tailgate area, and an Army barracks. There were trailers, huge bright lights everywhere, tents where you needed credentials on top of your credentials to sit and type away on your laptop, other tents with buffets for special guests, and CNN on everywhere.

I made my way to where the actual people were, to see that they were fenced off, and you needed to wait in another line to get to mingle with the masses. So a good many reporters lined the fence talking to those who happened to wind up close to the cameras and crews shooting them as if they were exotic zoo animals. Oh look! It's Ronnie "Woo-Woo" the goofy Cubs fan. Wow, a black person with a gay pride flag! O my! How weird. It's November and people are wearing shorts in Chicago.

I joked with women reporter from Canada who was on a ladder about how quite a few male reporters were drawn to two Obama Girls Gone Wild types in tight t-shirts. I gave her my card just in case I ever need to flee the country, I guess.

Me, I talked to some cougars wearing flimsy tiaras.

"I grew up in Wrigleyville. That's why I'm here. I had to be here," said Donna Cooperman, who I am pretty sure gave me a fake name. Hey, her pal said she was Donna Edens and the expressway was named after her grandfather.

Ellen Tully and her daughter Caleigh were along the fence, too, lighting it up for crews from who knows what corner of the globe. Caleigh promised her dad she would make class Wednesday, so her and mom got a hotel room close by for the night. I think they were a well-off family which, again, sort of went against that whole socialist argument McCain tried to make.

I wandered off for some water, passing on the $10 barbecue Cuban pork sandwiches on the way. Further proof Democrats aren't socialists: water was $3 a bottle.

Scariest moment of the night: Seeing disrespected reporter Amy "I'm wearing my bathing suit at the home of a potential murder suspect" Jacobsen saying hello to reviled Cook County Board president Todd Stroger. I shuddered and needed to go freshen up.

A nice thing about media credentials is there were plenty of clean portable johns with no lines available. That was a far cry from where my friends were, where they could barely move. And where they were was set up oddly, with most of the throng off to the right of where the super friends of Obama and Biden could look pretty for TV in front of the stage and with the media bleachers surrounding them. I wonder if they provided makeup along with all the flags.

I think I may have been in one of those toilets when one of the first loud roars happened, laughing about my fate being taking a leak as history is being made. But I think the inevitable happened after I finished talking to the guy who was selling the $3 water, who originally was from Kalamazoo and could relate to a Chicago guy like me trying to wrap his head around what was happening in a city where less than 30 years ago a black guy became mayor for the first time after a really ugly campaign.

Hell, Obama got his political teeth cut community organizing about 10 miles south of Grant Park, using Catholic churches where my parents went way, way back in the day - in a day when the tribal rules of Chicago meant you stayed with your own kind. Chicago got the first Irish Catholic elected, the Chicago way, less than 50 years ago.

Change, indeed.

And now here I was rushing to see an elated crowd, a weight lifted off its shoulders, if just for the night, watching McCain give a gracious acceptance speech, then waiting for the first real rock star president to give his usual even-tempered speech, his Bob the Builder, yes we can talk.

Before the magic moment, the rainbow multitude had to suffer through Anderson Cooper chatting from the CNN studio with a hologram of hipster Will I Am on site in Chicago, too. Apparently, split screen is too old school.

I saw some Japanese reporters taking pictures of each other with their own cameras. I got hugged by a reporter I met Sunday who works for Al Jazeera. Her little pal called me sweet. Another big lug like me from Chicago and I joked about each getting a photo of Obama from our vantage point, with a SWAT team looking on, where he will just appear a spot or blur.

On the walk out of the park I talked to some happy black women from the city who admitted they had been crying tears of joy. There was no beer to fuel fools, but the crowd was giddy.

Back along Michigan Avenue, where there were riots 40 years ago during the Democratic National Convention, a spontaneous parade took place. Shay witnessed the hooting and hollering that broke out after Obama was declared the winner. Even the cops on horseback were smiling, he said.

Shay also managed to get an invite from two women from Wimbledon, England to Joe Biden's party. And after smoking outside the Hilton with Congressman Danny Davis - and singing Danny Boy with him - headed up for a time to a bash hosted by Jesse Jackson.

But by the time my friends got back to the Hilton, the hotel wasn't letting anyone but guests inside. So the four of us headed back to the el, past a herd of cops heading home, too. It was after 1 a.m and there were just a few people on the train back to Oak Park. There were no signs of any media-imagined potential riot that had been played up on cable prior to the voting.

The streets were quiet. It was a work night, after all, and there is plenty of work to be done.

Have a drink for Studs

2008-10-31T16:46:00.005-05:00

I wrote this six years ago, after getting the chance to hang out for an evening with Studs after he talked at Northern Illinois University. He was a force of life.

DeKALB -- Cigar in hand, Studs[0] Terkel[0] ambles his way through Twins, a bar
filled with the usual Wednesday night crowd -- softball players,
construction workers, college kids, all strangers he has yet to meet.

On his way to the bathroom, after a hamburger and a martini, he stops to
talk at a table or two, including an older couple who had seen him speak
at Northern Illinois University earlier that night.

On Terkel's way back to his table, a pony-tailed, middle-aged man is
laughing, sharing a joke, as he helps the 90-year-old author maneuver
through the crowded tavern.

Terkel's friend, publicist Bill Young of Oak Park, has seen it all before,
how his buddy works a room with an avuncular charm and grace. And though
curiosity may have killed a stupid cat or two, seeing Terkel in action
shows the trait might be key to living a long, vital life.

Watching him also serves as a good lesson for all reporters, writers, even
neighbors in what it really takes to be good at any of those roles.

For Terkel has an enthusiasm and interest in meeting and talking with
people that brightens a place. He seems to treat all people as
interesting, the stories of their lives, their work, dreams, hopes,
disappointments and aspirations well worth hearing.

Terkel was in DeKalb to talk in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium with an
audience of over 700 people. Immediately afterward, he tirelessly signed
over 300 copies of his works, including Working, Hard Times, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning "The Good War" and his most recent, Will the Circle Be
Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth and a Hunger For Faith.

The books are collections of oral histories, tales told to Terkel, mostly
by "ordinary people," a term he dislikes. After all, quoting a poem by
Bertolt Brecht, Terkel told the crowd it was such people who built the
pyramids, who carried out the deeds credited to the rulers of the day.

Mouth of a preacher

Self-effacing throughout his talk -- and wearing his trademark red socks
and checkered red-and- white shirt -- Terkel began by saying he felt like
a preacher about to offer a sermon from the pulpit.

Then he went into a story of how legendary gospel singer Mahalia Jackson
once told him, "Studs, you got such a big mouth, you should have been a
preacher."

Though that never was his career path, Terkel has been a broadcaster, jazz
columnist, disc jockey, radio interviewer, author and even actor. (Later
that night, friend Young said Terkel was cast as a cabbie in a Jane Fonda
flick, The Dollmaker, despite the fact Terkel never learned to drive.)
He's also become a symbol for how Chicago likes to see itself --
hard-working, witty and down-to- earth.

As for his own beliefs, despite a healthy respect for those with religious
convictions, Terkel described himself as an agnostic.

"And you know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist," he said.

Yet, despite what he sees as a country suffering from "national
Alzheimer's disease," his words revealed an underlying optimism and faith
in humanity: a liberalism rooted in open-mindedness, the traditional
meaning of the term; a romantic populism harkening back to FDR,
encouraging of unionism; and a wariness of disciples of Ronald Reagan or
writer Ayn Rand, whose name he finds an amusing near- rhyme for Enron.

His sentiment comes through in stories he recalled from his books -- like
the one about C.P. Ellis, who went from Klansman to union organizer for a
group of janitors that was made up mostly of black women.

Of Matta Kelly, an immigrant bride who turned to a life of drug addiction,
then became a counselor for persons with AIDS. Kelly wound up helping a
transsexual named Norma Saunders die with a degree of dignity.

And in an interview with a single mother of three in a housing project who
asked Terkel to play back what she had told him, then said, "I never knew
I felt that way."

The lost interviews

Though such moments have earned him the title "poet of the tape recorder,"
Terkel laughed at the description.

He admitted to being so technologically inept he lost interviews with
choreographer Martha Graham and actor Michael Redgrave, and almost botched
one of his most famous pieces, a conversation with philosopher Bertrand
Russell.

As for the popularity of his work, Terkel recalled that a librarian wrote
him with an anecdote about how a certain reverend in her town named Jerry
Falwell complained about a title the library was stocking -- Working
Studs, by some guy named Terkel.

"That's when I knew I had a best seller," said Terkel, with a twinkle in
his eyes.

Now, in his 10th decade, Terkel is working on a "crazy, goofy book about
hope."

Energized by the unexpectedly large crowd at NIU he said, "I can't help
but feeling that deep down their is a new silent majority." Unlike
Nixon's conservative one, Terkel feels "a stirring of knowledge brewing
underneath" today.

Terkel, who is hard of hearing, took questions from the audience, too.NIU
professor Keith Gandal adroitly helped by reiterating the inquiries, which
came from quite a cross section of middle America.

As if from the pages on one of Terkel's tomes appeared an elderly women
concerned about what "the little people can do"; a middle-aged black man
wondering why other blacks don't often come to such lectures; an angry
college-aged young defender of Ayn Rand, wearing a "Vote Libertarian"
T-shirt; a writer or two looking for pointers; even a 12-year-old girl
asking about how Terkel stays focused.

Her bright smile and laughter led Terkel to say, "that's why I am
hopeful." In fact, Terkel was so taken with the night, on the way to the
bar he told Young the atmosphere reminded him of Berkeley, Calif.

Later, back at the tavern, a waitress and Notre Dame co-ed named Katie
asks for an autograph. For Terkel it brought back memories of earlier in
the evening when another young woman asked him to sign a book and made him
feel "like Walter Huston in Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

The end of the night

The bill settled -- Terkel paying from a stack of credit cards held
together with a rubber band -- it was time for the writer to trek back to
Chicago.

Longtime buddy Young pulled his car around -- seeming a bit like sturdy,
modern day Sancho Panza to Terkel's windmill-tilting Don Quixote.

On the ride to the city, Terkel would probably tilt his seat all the way
back and sleep, Young said. Once home he would work on his new book a
bit, then get up in time to make an interview about another chronicler of
his times.

Fittingly, Terkel would be on public radio reminiscing about the recently
departed Alan Lomax, who made field recordings of indigenous music the
world over.

Happy Halloween: A scary place (and a scary face)

2008-10-30T18:50:00.006-05:00

I present to you the scariest place at my office - and that's saying something that should shiver your spine if not your timbers.

None of the urinals in the entire building work. One has a sign across it from 1999, the year it broke. And there is this eerie hum in the bathroom, a smell like sauerkraut going band and almost always water on the floor.

The fluorescent lights are dingy at best, the carpeting at least 25 years old, and the HVAC system works when it feels like it. The back room is a huge, empty shell where they used to sort papers and before that actually print.

That's where the scare is located. I discovered it by happenstance over summer when hauling crap from my desk to my car via an ancient freight elevator that itself would give the Marquis de Sade a boner. The cart I used had a flat tire and when I attempted to roll it out of the elevator, it bumped the spilled, with some items careening down a gap.

What the hell, I thought. Then I looked around and found that the iron, manhole-like cover I'd been walking past for more than 10 years was not for a storm sewer (which is what this dumb ass thought) but led to the underbelly of the elevator,

It's bare light bulbs, ladder and dampness seemed like it would hold the GImp from Pulp Fiction or some sort of man-monster from a Silence of the Lambs sequel.

So, if you're ever mad at someone - really, really, really pissed - let me know. Have I got a suggestion for you...send him/her my way! hahahahahahahahahahahah

Dog days: On why I have stopped blogging (for now)

2008-10-27T21:42:00.005-05:00

I could say I've stopped blogging because I saw Edward II at Chicago Shakespeare a few weekends ago and was left speechless. That's the classic where the king gets in the end, literally: his assassin kills him by shoving a hot poker up his ass.

But the only thing that bothered me about it was somebody brought a 10 year old.

Or I could say it was because I caught a cold. Or that I am still bummed the White Sox floundered in the playoffs.

Or blame it on my laptop, which broke down - but I got it fixed in a day and that was over summer. Or I could say the dog I was watching for a weekend ate my computer, which would be a big lige.

Or I could blame my Dad. I was all set to write about how he - a product of the South Side Irish of Chicago from back in the day when ethnic groups kept to themselves and all didn't like black people - was set to vote for Barack Obama. And Obama got his start community organizing at two of the Catholic churches where my parents had connections.

But dear old Dad never registered to vote when he moved out West. He doesn't want to get called for jury duty.

But nay, the real reason I have taken a break is all this blathering.

There are simply too many words being put into the world right now. Once the election is over, maybe I will start up again. But now it's Babylon, baby, and I'd rather just be quiet.

Painting concrete and piper lore: What I learned over the weekend.

2008-10-07T22:02:00.003-05:00

Two weekends ago I was at a party in Indiana, drinking Jameson right out of the bottle. Hey, there was less than a quarter of it left. It was the right thing to do. Plus, at that point the White Sox were handing the division to the Twins, only to take it back, only to look tattered again against the Rays in the playoffs. It's tough to lose to a team that changed its name because marketing research showed people in Florida were offended by the original name, the Devil Rays.

But at least I am not a Cubs fan.

This past weekend, I took pity on one of those poor souls and helped him paint his b asement while his sig other was out of town - and painting concrete is an apt task for anyone who roots for the Baby Bruins. I am not a Home Depot kind of guy, but painting is one task I am semi-adequate at, and this was my first experience with such a surface.

If you are going to have a basement, kick it old school. Just get a freaking ping-pong or air hockey table, a fridge, an old TV and stereo, some posters from the 70s and let it be what it is. People will understand. They will gladly enjoy a place where their true slob can come out and play.

But if you must turn it into an "entertainment space," what I learned was, that if decide you want to do this, pick a color that blends in with gray.

Orange would not be that color. Actually, they don't call colors anything that simple anymore. This was something super fabulous like "outrageous orange" or "orgasmic orange," but actually it looked like baby shit or pumpkin pie. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First their was block fill to apply, thick as the crap you hear on Fox and MSNBC, which a salesman convinced my friends would magically fill all the dimples and pock marks you find in concrete. And the fill was tinted with the orange, but it came out looking the color of a Push-Up or Dreamsicle. All of which accented the small gray holes and knots on the wall.

Mind you, we were doing this after watching the Sox lose to the Rays (Ray what? Sting? Manta? Sun? Ray-Ban? Ray Charles?), from 9 until midnight. And I did a good chunk of this myself because my buddy had to go back out for supplies. And we had to move all their crap to the middle of the room. And another lonely-on-a-Friday-night pal of my friend showed up to critique and lend his meticulous touch - and by meticulous I mean fucking slow like it was the Sistine Chapel and not a basement. And a dog and a cat kept getting in the way. And I was barefoot and eventually splattered from the rollers.

I didn't care. I was in a zone, slathering this shake mix onto the wall until I was silly tired and ready to head home.

That was just my first lesson for the weekend. Saturday night I deejayed with another friend at a wedding reception for a mutual buddy's kid. We used to do this sort of side work, but got tired of hearing the Macarena. What I learned was that at white people weddings, that's still the stuff you have to play. And, oddly, songs that are considered gay anthems are big at receptions: "Believe," by Cher, YMCA, any Madonna. Odder still is when a 14 year old dressed like a Mormon on a door-to-door mission wants you to play Led Zeppelin, which would be a song his grandpa would have liked.

Yet, it was fun and was nice to catch up with people I had not seen in at least a year. Life is like that, and who knows why? You say you're gonna call someone, you don't, they don't call you, and next thing you know another year is gone. Or you call and email and don't hear back and wind up feeling neurotic about it, but you still occasionally try, then worry they might think you are a stalker, but then feel stupid about that, so you keep trying, knowing people aren't all single knuckle-heads like you are. And by you, I mean me.

So I slept that off Sunday, then headed to paint some more. The pumpkin was going up, but my friend's little buddy was doing the edge work - not the easy way like I would, with tape on the floor, but with an edging tool. I stared at him from a distance like a confused dog for a bit, but took to putting on the paint.

The Sox were winning, progress was being made, and I headed to hang out with my Irish friends, who took me to a uillean pipe recital. Actually, it turned out to be a lecture with music, and with but one Guinness in me and no air circulating in the small room holding 90 people, I fought off sleep. I was afraid there was going to be a quiz which I would fail.

But a Diet Coke at intermission revived me. I was still confused about pipe lore - for instance, who the hell thought up the bagpipe in the first place, and how and why did the Irish convert it from something you blow and squeeze and finger to something you just squeeze and finger? And why does that sound so sexy?

But I did learn that there were an awful lot of blind pipers; that one of them killed some kid who was mocking him, which would make him a rapper piper; and I picked up a handful of fun phrases I can sprinkle into my writing and conversations.

Those would include, "as lazy as a piper's pinkie" (which is because of the way the pipes are designed you don't use that finger to play); "a piper's invitation" (which can mean you show up uninvited OR you're invited only because the host felt obligated, much like they would feel toward musicians for the party); and "a poverty of pipers" (which is what you call a group of them, apparently because they don't get paid much).

One day you're painting concrete, then next you feel like a piper. You learn something everyday.

No one played Rock You Like a Hurricane - but they did play Purple Rain

2008-09-16T23:51:00.001-05:00

There’s something woefully decadent about sitting out under a big tent during a Midwest version of a hurricane, listening to cover bands playing MTV Hits of the 80s as kids dangle from large rubber bands in the rain.

Never mind that people in the Chicago area were having their belongings float away as we partied. You would have thought it was New Orleans, but for the tunes.

Why can’t I get just one kiss? You give love a bad name, so I may as well jump - or be sedated. The words all blurred together as I traded in my orange tickets for brew. And it all was innocent fun until a cigar just about did me in Saturday night. Booze I can handle. The culprit was a thick stogie: Try taking a drag on one in 100 percent humidity. See where it gets you. Wuss that I am, it sent my head spinning. I needed air, on a night when the air was made of water.

I may have been suffering from fest fatigue brought on by two nights at the same event, the Heritage Fest in West Dundee. With the remnants of Hurricane Ivan mixing it up with other funky fronts, there wasn’t much else to do but stay close to home and hope the river didn’t spill out of its banks like so much wasted Bud Light.

At all these fests there now seems to be a food version of the carnie set, a group of vendors with similar signage working the circuit offering up 10-inch sausages, Chinese chicken on a stick and other delicacies that go well with alcohol served in plastic cups. Alas, there’s less local even at local festivals – but more teeth and better hygiene.

And since people who are in their 30s and 40s are the core audience for this sort of suburban fling, the music typically is from their youth – meaning less Beatles and some Beastie Boys and maybe Brown Eyed Girl - and in one case a band fronted by a guy who looks like Beck on a bender, playing these Video Killed the Radio Star oldies. I call this White People Wedding Reception Music. I should put out the box set or whatever that would be called in download world.

Hell, one band covered Madonna’s Like a Virgin and George Michael’s Faith – so, naturally, being the American Idiot I am, I had to semi-drunk dial a friend who likes both and hold the phone up so he could hear them in Chicago. I am that kind of pal.

Since you can't really hear the people whom your with - and since I was in no mood to leave my cake out or stand in the rain, lest my T-shirt get wet and my nipples hard, as when I was in my Flash Dance phase - it became almost Zen like to be under the tent. That could have been the tobacco talking, but I went into that scary place where you think all your thoughts are deep ones.

My mantra (or movie poster tag line): In a corrupt world, ruled by the inane, and you might as well make up your own rules.

Was that inspired by hearing Billie Jean, the song that launched the psycho superstar phase of the smooth (as in he removed his body hair) criminal, Michael Jackson? Or was it due to another weird week at a company where the former owner is serving time for absconding with millions of dollars?

That's a mere pittance, a drop in the billions buckets involved in the ponzi schemes being "uncovered" on Wall Street. Now everybody is coming out of the woodwork saying, "I told you so." But everyone wanted in on the ridiculous mortgages being given to people no one thought would be paid back, but no big deal, we'll just bundle 'em sell 'em and make 'em someone else's problem. No when to fold 'em, indeed. The government will be there with welfare checks for the wealthy.

It happened with the Dot-Com days and it will probably happen again with the impending Alt-Energy craze. No one wants to really make anything anymore, they just want to win the lottery and move into a house they still can't afford. Money makes you drunk and you wind up putting lipstick on a pig and you're so out of it you still wind up kissing its ass.

I hope the "I don't believe in evolution or dinosaurs friend" of Sarah Palin don't see this.

So much for the high road this time, eh? So much with a campaign that focuses on the issues. So much for two guys who seemed like good guys succumbing to the id of politics.I just wish they would get right to the meat of it with the ads: McCain - he's old. Obama - he's black.

No wonder the poor little guy with the crewcut I saw by the beer table was having trouble deciding whom to vote for. He's just an American kid doing the best he can.

Yeah, all this was going through my Bon Jovi- addled brain, my John Cougar Melon Head. And yes, the one band ended its set with Purple Rain.

Flash forward to late Tuesday afternoon - I noticed someone dented the front bumper on the passenger's side of my car. It probably happened over the weekend, and I, being oh-so-observant, didn't notice because I don't usually look at the front of my car, approaching it from the rear most times.

I bring this up because I left out an essential part of my mantra: You can make up your own rules as long as you don't hurt anyone else. With the music playing so loud these days, it's pretty damn easy for all of us to change them up and to sing along - "as long as you don't get caught."

Festering again - with jazz, oysters, Germans and dino-rock

2008-09-07T23:54:00.002-05:00

Just a week ago, I was alone in a crowd at Grant Park in Chicago, splayed on a lawn trying to listen to genius jazzman Ornette Coleman play his sax among the din of yuppie conversations. I moved closetr to the stage to get a better hear, the postcard I bought earlier from a beggar in my back pocket. That was to make up for not buying the guy with the kid who was looking for food for him and his kid anything. Hey I couldn't find a McDonald's close by, and I was in a naive, giving, tourist mood.

Sometimes you have to fest by yourself. Other times, the fest comes to you.

For this weekend, for whatever reason, complete strangers were coming up to me and starting conversations.

Maybe I looked bold and sexy wearing my White Sox jersey on the North Side to the Guinness Oyster Fest in Roscoe Village.

Eating raw oysters has a slight potential to cause hepatitis. But since I don't recall that being a question they ask people who give blood, I figured what the hell? Maybe Irish beer kills the germs.

I did have to listen to a Dave Matthews tribute band, which was sort of scary as the lead singer was a method actor type and would not break character between songs, talking in a voice that sounded like the mush mouthed Matthews. And sort of oddly fitting to hear this band at a fest honoring animals found in brackish water as Matthews' tour bus once dumped crap into the Chicago River.

The band had its own groupie, a 30ish blonde woman who automatically turned into a bad dancer, flailing about and whooping it up to every noodling violin solo, her pants marching, crashing into tripping Billy...oh make your own damn joke. More amusing was a woman in a weird pink, punk ballerina skirt who bent over to pet a dog revealing a pair of red underwear.

And a middle aged gay couple came over to share the scant table space with me and a pal, offering extra oysters for the room. Never one to turn down free eats, I had two, upping my raw total to 14 and my total oyster intake to 20 (six of the cooked, Rockefeller genre). Per what I mentioned before, if you were thinking of having sex with me, this alone should rule out that thought - for several reasons, actually.

Next it was German Fest in Lincoln Square, where Canadian beer, Labatt's, was considered a domestic, and where it was $10 for a big plastic stein of it. Here the Sox jersey worked its magic twice, once with a nice woman in line for a sausage of some sort, who talked baseball with me until we learned the line was way shorter at the booth just 20 feet from where we stood.

Next was a guy in lederhosen and sunglasses who also wanted to talk baseball and to share his big line for the weekend about wanting to go to caribou hunting with Sarah Palin. What a hoot! And where do you look when you are talking to a guy in lederhosen without wanting to laugh. I mean, you look like an oversized Pinocchio.

In fact, trad German party clothes are way more fabulous than those of my people. Sure, you can look like you've been in your grandma's closet - or like an ugly Catholic school girl - if you put on a kilt and don't know what you are doing (example: this guy with Phil Donahue hair who was emcee at the Fox Valley Irish Fest Friday night, who tucked his tie dyed t-shirt into his man skirt). But if you do wear it well, well hell, you could front a metal band - or bounce at a leather bar.

That is way more butch than German carnival clothes, which look like something out of Liberace's closet.

Speaking of over the top performers, next up on my round o' fests was happening upon a horrible Led Zeppelin cover band, which I hated because: they had a freaking drum solo!; the quartet collectively weighed 250 pounds; they were wearing Steve Nicks' old wigs.

The band was at a free concert for the Boys and Girls Club of Elgin fundraiser, the Duck-a-palooza, so named because they have one of those duck drawings. Please, let's have a moratorium on calling anything a "palooza."
And on Zep tributes. Or tribute bands of any sort.

I was waiting for an actual blues band, not cock rock from the 70s warmed over - which would make it Viagra metal. Fittingly, the port-o-john I used was coated in Jon Bonham style vomit. As I wiped my shoes on the grass, a straight couple started a conversation. One of their friends had the same crappy crapper experience and somehow we bonded over this and over the fact I looked like a lot of the dude's buddies. But let's be honest. Who doesn't have an orc with a goatee and a shaved head as a pal these days?

They were actually there to see the fake Zepsters, and sort of invited me to head out to the bars of Elgin with them. But deep down I knew I don't rock like they do, and politely bowed out. I mean I would have probably wound up with another piercing, a raunchy tattoo or two, some blow in my glove compartment and some dead hookers.

Plus, I was supposed to go to Ikea Sunday - I mean, out on my Harley.

So we heard one more band and gave up before the headliner took the stage, leaving the 75 or so people in the park to dodge drizzle without us.

I was home by 10:30 and all fested out - at least until next Saturday.

GOPer broke

2008-09-07T23:53:00.000-05:00

Here's what I learned from watching GOP week.

1. Republicans are better at being mean and sarcastic than Democrats are. Democrats are better at being smarmy.

2. The GOP has lost its edge in convention production values. They used to put out the spread, but this time the Democrats had the pizzaz.

3. McCain's subtext is very Batman: Obama is the hero you want, McCain is the hero you need.

4. Sarah Palin looks like one of those women from an 80s or 90s hair metal bands who played a teacher or librarian - the took off her glasses, let her hair down, and danced on her desk. If she would have kissed Cindy McCain, now that would have sealed the deal on the frat boy vote. If McCain had kissed Palin's hunky husband, well, now, that would have been maverick.

No pussyfooting around here with the sexism - none of that, what the hell is someone who had five kids, including a Down syndrome baby and a pregnant unmarried teen daughter doing running for VP. Going right for being a pig here.

5. White people should not be allowed to dance in public, especially ones who are openly Republican.

6. What the hell is a maverick anyway? And if you have been in Washington since the 80s, WTF?

7. If you are a Democrat, don't go on Bill O'Reilly's show unless you really know how to play in the the twilight zone. David Lettermen is the only guy I have seen who knows hot to handle him, and Obama is not programmed that way. I love how O'Reilly has to break his Obama interview into segments. This allows him to bring out conservative blonde Hooters girls to rip on him (no subtext there, eh?). This basically is saying his audience has short attention spans and has to be spoon fed the talking points. O'Reilly would have been fun to watch had he been around in the 1950s.

8. McCain seemed more comfortable one on one on Face the Nation than he did in front of his own party. So much for the hostile, liberal press, eh?

9. If race is no longer an issue, why the lack of blacks or Hispanics at the GOp convention?

10. What the hell is abstinence education? And how much do you think they are paying the baby daddy?

The Obama-rama and the Str8 Talk Express

2008-08-29T13:07:00.002-05:00

Ten things I learned this week about politics:

1. If you want to be a player, you gotta be a hottie with a back story and down with Jesus.

Some slob with good ideas is never going to be President. It's all about having a story that Oprah Show voters will love, that shows you have overcome or been redeemed in some way.

The Obamas are easy on the eyes, have cute kids and both walked right out of updated Horatio Alger stories. Sure, Biden is no silver fox, but the man does have nice capped teeth, a pretty wife, and a great biography.

McCain was a stud POW which is Teflon, baby, and he used to look like Tom Cruise. You can't pick on that. Then he picks Sarah Palin, a MILF with five kids, a spunky governor from the wacky, libertarian state of Alaska for his VP, who hunts, has a Native American husband, is against abortion, appears to be conservative and is "willing to stand up to special interests" who used to be a journalist AND a beauty queen. Suburban women might dig her - until they catch their husbands drooling.

2. Never, ever, wear a tangerine pants suit.

Hillary Clinton was better at being gracious and when the pressure was off than she was during her shrill, poorly run campaign. Not to go Mr. Blackwell on you, but that outfit she wore for her fine speech, it was like something a transvestite convict on a road crew would wear. Not sexy - and we're tired of the Clintons' story.

Lenny Kravitz music and Clinton. The mind still reels. I thought she would play My Heart Will Go On from Titanic.

3. Why even bother going somewhere cool for a convention?

You never would have known the convention was in Denver but for the names of the football players on lining the stadium, the mighty bronco at it's enrance.

Note to media types: You go to one of the most beautiful places in the United States, but you might as well just be in a TV studio or back at your office, because that's all you dipsticks know - a hermetically sealed bubble filled with the hot gas of Fox News, CNBC, CNN, bloggers and political blowhards. To the 12 of you who actually talked to real people, or found out anything at all about life in the Rocky Mountain West, I apologize. The rest of you are just part of the problem.

4. Barack Obama IS a rock star.

There is nothing wrong with that. He should embrace it. If you can get 85,000 people to stand in line for hours to see you, well hell, crank up Living Color's Cult of Personality and surf the crowd. Bring da noize.

Because if you are going to judge candidates by speeches, well this isn't much different than enjoying Springsteen jam - or in the case of McCain, jitter-bugging to the Glen Miller Orchestra.

In fact, they are all rock stars. Who has lives like these people? Aren't these jobs best suited to single people who have no interest in sex or social lives (which would make them Christian rock stars)?
I can barely get up in time for work some days, and, as but one example, here's McCain's uber woman VP choice, running a state, taking care of a infant with Down Syndrome, running off to hockey practice for one of her other kids, hunting caribou, and talking to people on two Crack Berries.

5. Most ludicrous campaign promises thus far:

Obama: Energy independence in 10 years.

McCain: I will track down bin Laden to the gates of hell.

6. Be wary of the phrase, "how things ought to be," and the people who use it.

Exactly who makes that determination?

7. America reluctantly enters the 21st Century.

It IS great that we finally have a bi-racial, multi-ethnic man running for president and a woman VP nominee - but it's also kind of a shame that it's taken 232 years for this to happen.

It's silly it's even an issue - and that it isn't really that hard to find people who still have a problem with both.

8. No one is going to miss GW Bush.

I listened to McCain speak when he introduced Palin, and Bush's name didn't come up once. In fact, he sort of sounded like Obama.

9. It's 1992 all over again.

It's been 16 years since Clinton first took office and the issues are pretty much the same, but with more high tech toys and the volume amped. Bad economy. High gas prices. Terrorists on the loose. A shaky Middle East. Iraq. Iran. So for all this talk of change....

10. Believe in something.

That's the new, baffling U.S. Cellular slogan, which shouldn't be confused with Obama speak, which is asking us to believe in his ability to change Washington and our ability to change ourselves. I wonder what kind of calling plan the DNC offers? Are incoming calls free?

A foul ball and a beach smooch

2008-08-24T22:09:00.006-05:00

Family legend has it that way back in the 50s, my grandmother got hit by a foul ball at a White Sox game. Hard. They took her to the hospital. Turned out she was fine, and the team paid her hospital bill and gave her an autographed ball.

Well, Friday night, history came about 10 degrees from full circle. Sitting six rows up, down third base line at US Cellular, not far from where the warning track starts, a foul ball sauntered our way. I watched the ball spin toward the stands, slower than I thought it would.

The trajectory seemed to put it several rows behind us, so I just sat there, beer in left hand, my eyes on what turned out to be the prize. Suddenly, as if doing that lame wave, people near me, grdually and in a sort of order, were all standing up. Then the guy right behind me had his arms stretched up as he tried to nab the ball.

It's weird how people behave over such a souvenir. It's sort of a blur, but folks seemed to rush toward him, scrum-like. For whatever reason it popped out of his hand, and landed right in front of me, practically in my lap. On one bounce, I grabbed it off the concrete, with my right hand, beer still cluthced in in the left paw, and yelled in a gruff Chicago meets Batman voice, "I got it!"

For a moment I felt like the Hindu god, Vishnu, with extra hands and chubby limbs where they should not be without permission. Interestingly, when I claimed possession, which after all is 9/10ths of the law, the appendages disappeared. And a couple guys apologized for their role in having me lose maybe an ounce or two of beer on my short pants, and maybe for copping a feel.

A kid scampered back to his seat, and for a second I thought about giving him the ball. But these were expensive seats and I assumed the lad was from Naperville and 13or so, so no deal. The guy behind me almost lost his hat, and I offered to buy him a beer, but he said cool, but it wasn't necessary.

Like a 12 year old, I texted a couple buddies and called my niece and nephew to brag about my summer's coolest accomplishment.

We buried the ball in my friend Jamie's bag and for a good part of the game I had a case of the giggles. In the car on the way home I played with the ball as if it were my favorite Christmas present. I think when no one was looking I kissed it.

Hey, you gotta kiss something, right?

I also secretly kissed the sand, through a towel, while lounging on Michiana beach off Lake Michigan late Saturday afternoon. It was such a beautiful day - and it was such a taste of my fantasy Michigan beach house lifestyle (the place where it's always in the 80s, late summer, and I'm holding court on a pier with friends and people I love), I felt I owed the place a smooch.

Yeah, like you didn't know I was goofy - and that I am going to miss this summer.

Fly boys, whisky and a Sentimental Journey

2008-08-22T00:22:00.003-05:00

If I were smarter, younger, better-looking, studlier and less of a slacker I would quit my job and become a fighter pilot. One of the Blue Angels, so I could tour the country like a rock star, wowing people gathered on beaches, scaring animals in zoos and pestering high rise high rent district types with my soaring skills like they did last weekend in Chicago.

Imagine how easy it must be to get laid if you are such a fly boy. Just run the You Tube clip of your stunts off your iPhone and have your potential mate extrapolate from it how wild you must be in bed. Can you really make it go up like that, big boy? And dart across the sky at a 45 degree angle?

But hey, at least this summer I have the other parts of this suburban fantasy-on-a-budget lifestyle down pat. Starting off that weekend, I golfed in an outing for work Friday, where two in a foursome behind us could barely speak English by the 7th hole, they were that stewed. And I am not saying anyone cheated, per se, but a winning score of 57, even in a best ball format, means 3s on just about every hole. White people. No wonder we rule the world.

I'm not complaining - a sunny day outside, cracking wise, having a couple beers, and dressed in shorts and a ... what the hell is the difference between a golf shirt and a polo shirt anyway? One of those.

And that Sunday, I headed up to the Irish Fest in Milwaukee, where the baking concrete and asphalt surface of the Summerfest grounds made me thirsty. This led to learning a valuable lesson about whisky, namely that it is not a good idea to drink much of it on a hot day, even if you are in the shade and some guy on a business trip from New Jersey is buying it for you and for your big red headed friend who looks more Irish than you but actually isn't. And it didn't help that the bar tenders were nice guys who seemed to ply us for their amusement.

All I am gonna say beyond this is around 9 p.m. I left DNA samples in a garbage can shortly after taking a bite out of a corned beef sandwich - and that someone may have licked my ear. I am not sure about the last part. It could have just been a beautiful dream. But I am pretty sure there will be some stories told back East and up in Milwaukee about some idiots from Chicago at the Jameson Bar on the roof. And before anyone calls MADD, I did NOT drive home. I also was not that drunk - no headache, but damn if my stomach didn't feel like Dick Cheney had crawled inside and took a peat bog piss.

Thing is, Monday I actually was supposed to go up in military plane, Sentimental Journey a B-17G bomber that survived World War II. Out of commission, it winters, like a lot of oldsters, in Arizona and spends its summers touring the country. While my stomach had its act together, one of the plane's engines needed a few parts from NAPA, so the trip was delayed until Wednesday.

Tourists have to pay $425 for a 20-30 minute voyage this weekend at DeKalb's Corn Fest, but it costs $3,000 an hour to keep the craft in the air, Russ the pilot told us.

Back in its prime, the plane could climb to 30,000 feet, but the cabin wasn’t pressurized, so it got to arctic temperatures inside the cabin. They had to plug in their clothes in an attempt to stay warm and guys got frost bite while shooting waist guns that held 9 yards of ammo a clip - supposedly leading to the phrase, the whole 9 yards, we were told. (The WWII phrase most fitting for any era: SNAFU).

On the B-17 belly is a ball turret, so compact that the shooter could only be 5’ 4’’ tall and weigh no more than about 150 pounds. And even those these planes has early computer systems on them, it took different, maybe ballsier skills than the video game math heads who are fighter pilots today. You can learn more yourself if you Google it and come to your own conclusions.

Once airborne I was thinking, sure, this is pretty cool, me up here with a video camera, maneuvering my less than agile frame through a ramp and crawling into the front gun station for a panoramic view of the smooth as a baby's butt landing near farmland. But how odd that I am up in a plane where young men were probably scared shitless fighting in a war that was the sequel to the war that was supposed to end all wars. And since they were in this plane, they were pretty damn good at what they did and/or pretty damn lucky too, seeing as most of these big aluminum cans in the sky didn't make it back.

War shouldn't seem so fun. Then again, I am a pussy at heart - and a guy who knows he has it pretty easy, whose only real complications, thus far, have largely been of his own making. Lucky, indeed. At least for now.

A pierced ear and a Bryan Adams song stuck in my head

2008-08-10T23:00:00.002-05:00

So last week, a PR person offered us tickets to cover a Rod Stewart concert.

Now I was a fan of his old stuff from the 70s, the Faces stuff and Maggie May (an early cougar song come to think of it), and Every Picture Tells a Story, and Gasoline Alley. Then came Tonight's the Night and If You Think I'm Sexy and his inner cheese molded forward. And this century Stewart recorded a couple albums of Great American Songbook standards on which he sounds like Macy Gray trying to sound like Sarah Vaughn.

Needless to say, I took a pass and sent the offer to someone who is a fan. And she was happy because Bryan Adams was opening the show. too. (Which made me think - Adams may have been there to sing off stage in case old Rod the Mod couldn't hit any notes. They do have similar voices.)

And that's where trouble began.

First, somebody at work started singing Adam's Summer of 69 - the one where he got his first real six-string at the 5-and-Dime. If that weren't bad enough, next thing you know I have his opus from Kevin Costner's Robin Hood stuck in my head. Yup, Everything I Do was playing on an endless loop in my brain.

If that weren't bad enough, attempting to exorcise that demon, I shuffled through my 5,000 song iPod and played the damn song in my car. Yes, I am man enough to admit I have a handful of Bryan Adams songs downloaded. They remind me of when I and my firefighting friend Tim used to deejay wedding receptions.

Having to play Love Shack, the Hokey Pokey and YMCA 10,000 times did get old. But there was free food and drink and it was usually fun. Sure, about half of all marriages end in divorce, but for the most part receptions seem so damn optimistic. Almost every guy looks nice in a tuxedo, fresh and almost innocent. Brides even more so. Of course bridesmaids often have to wear those dreadful dresses (perhaps to make the bride look even hotter), but that adds to the fun.

Watching white people dance is always a good time - and where but a reception do people slow dance anymore? So when we were deejays, we had to play a lot of songs like and including Everything I Do.

But who amongst us doesn't have wuss music in their collection? (And at least one of you better not be laughing too much because I know YOU like and own Celine Dion music!!!) Thing is, though, playing the song alone in my car, I teared up a bit.

Yes, I become a blubbering wimp. I have mixes that make me sad and lots of Sinatra and I on occasion play this melancholy music when I am driving. It's therapeutic. Maybe it's a middle aged thing, but either way it cleanses the pallet. I turn into Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye and start missing everyone. And I think about wedding receptions and, for better and worse, not ever getting hitched myself. And about not having kids to take to baseball games and dinosaur shows. And about time flashing and the novel yet to be written. And about my flailed relationships. And about the last time anyone said they loved me.

Yes, my heart will go on. But I SWEAR that is NOT one of the songs I play!!!!

I bring this all up because this past weekend I went to a 10th wedding anniversary party for my friends Allison and Tony. I saw some old friends, some couples I didn't know with their babies toddling about and it seemed to reinforce (in those post-rational way we make connections) me playing the Adams song (yet nothing excuses me singing along with it).

All of which is a roundabout way of saying congratulations to all of you who have found and have had success holding onto those you love. May a better song play in your head.

Me, since I don't see myself donning a wedding ring anytime soon, I bought another piece of jewelry. I got my ear pierced. The right one if that matters to you. And by right I mean the left. Earring codes have me confused. For all I know it could mean I joined the Latin Kings and love to sleep with goats.

It was only $23 at the Piercing Pagoda, where they will split a pair for you, at half price plus $2.

Oddly, I also bought some topsiders, which means I've just set myself up to look like a Jimmy Buffett fan - or one of those CPAs who fancies himself a biker. Sometimes all you can do is something silly to break a mood - or get a song out of your head.

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

2008-08-04T23:19:00.006-05:00

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.

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

2008-07-21T23:21:00.000-05:00

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

2008-07-06T23:32:00.005-05:00

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

2008-07-02T23:15:00.002-05:00

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.

I might as well just wear a kilt for a living

2008-06-23T22:13:00.006-05:00

Sometime while either mowing the lawn or trying on a kilt this weekend, I had a revelation.

Sure, I like blogging. It's like talking to myself, but in a way that makes you me seem less nuts. Sort of. But it is what blogging has meant for me and my fellow scribes that has me worried.

Newspapers, in large part to the Internet (especially the seemingly benign yet actually Satanic Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame) - and their own failure to figure out a new business model - are on falling into the tar pits like West Coast dinosaurs.

They are all trying to go multimedia, building Web pages with all sorts of bells and whistles - audio, video, message boards - essentially everything but porn. But give it time.

What this has meant for journalists is more and more typing for stagnant pay - the workload increased not only because of depleted staffs but because many are now required to keep blogs.

Which means you are almost literally tethered to your laptop. How you are supposed to find time to actually develop any story - well, who has time for that anymore? Instant news, just add water.

And let's be honest. Nobody should have that much to say/write about in one day. It's as if the model is my Mom - who can talk your ear off when she is in the mood, giving you all the details, down to the number of buttons on the dresses worn by the bridesmaids at my oldest cousin's wedding. My Mom, crossed with those blowhard pundits on cable and radio and the Net who say stupid things all the time in part because they have no time to think, and in many cases thinking would just make their empty heads explode.

I imagine the weekend I just had would have been a lot less fun if I would have had to give instant updates to a virtual features desk. I'd try on the kilt at the Highland Games, then have to post a picture, then write about what it felt like to have a breeze blowing up my yahoo. Then I would spill expensive Scotch on my PDA - right after I set up an online poll about if I should buy the all black kilt or the Hamilton gray one.

At the Taste of Randolph Street, I would have had to sample foods and make video of all the dopes who brought their dogs to a crowded fest.Do canines enjoy the country-tinged college rock of the Drive-By Truckers? Or are they secretly hoping to break into the Amish Chicken Products office off Lake Street on the way home? And who the hell buys a Great Dane and lives in the heart of a big city?

Of course, I would have to make this all "cute" because the marketing department tells us at stories about cute dogs will get hits for the Web site. Or I could have opted for the fear factor - as in, "How afraid of these dogs should you be?" or "How safe is your pet at a street fair? Could Fido get food poisoning?"

All of which has been a meandering way to make this point: Who the hell has time to look up stories about doggies at festivals online? Who has the time to look up any of this extra super bonus content?

People tell us they don't have time to look at an actual newspaper anymore, but here we go, putting even more sentences out into the world, but on the Internet.

What people do seem to have time for, apparently, is screwing off at work. When else are they doing all this surfing? Over dinner? In the car? At the kid's soccer practice?

Nah, between spread sheets and memos come incessant peeks at e-mail, shopping, looking for dates, Facebooks, trivia quizzes, iTunes, YouTube videos and job searches. We're hoping people might just take a look at the news, even beyond what the Google, Yahoo, AOL and Comcast pages are offering. I mean, we have cool videos, too - just like YouTube and all that implies.

So my job now is to encourage you to be less productive at your job so that I can still have a job. Either way, we're all spending way too much time staring at computer screens.

On "Kung Fu Panda" and identifying your own superpowers

2008-06-17T22:34:00.002-05:00

So I took my niece and nephew to see "Kung Fu Panda" the other weekend.

You gotta love a movie where the hero is overweight and affable - and where he gets his motivation during training from food.

Plus, Po the Panda reminded me of a couple of my friends - though they are not as heroic as he is, as far as I know. I mean, they could have secret lives, costumes and caves. One of them took martial arts lessons for awhile. But I don't think either of my buddies makes the kind of money it seems you need for that lifestyle.

The movie also reminded me of my own slothfulness as I once toyed with writing a story about a round, divorced accountant who lives with his young daughter who can turn himself into a human bowling ball. Hey, it's what a fat guy could do. He discovers his super power one night after visiting a Dairy Queen. Did the power come from a Blizzard? Who knows? Anyway, on the way home (he walks to Dairy Queen for exercise), he sees some thugs picking on, then rolling a chubby kid. He chases them down the trail, and at first he is winded. His anger builds when the punks call him a fat ass, so he continues the pursuit, trips on something, but instead of falling he rolls, then rolls, then rolls, gaining speed then bowling over the bad guys.

At first, like all heroes, he keeps his identity secret. But eventually his daughter finds out. At first she is embarrassed, because he dad isn't a hottie like the other superheroes, but porky. But she comes to accept him for what he is and becomes his sidekick, The Spare. He could be called 10 Pin. Or The Striker.

Kung Fu Panda also made me hungry for Chinese food - though there are fine Chinese places, there are no buns or noodle shops to be found near my suburb. Panda Express does not count.

I also wondered if I could parlay any of my talents into being the inspiration for a comic book, then a movie based on that comic book, preferably a Pixar picture.

Sometimes I feel invisible, but who doesn't? And other times people say I look like somebody they claim to know who isn't me. Not hard to believe, as beardless, I was just another overweight, balding middle aged suburban guy, and with the beard I look like every eighth guy you see at a baseball game or a bar. Sometimes people forget I was at an event with them. I could be Camouflage, or just Camo for short.

I can eat and drink really fast. This blog offers proof of my pie eating prowess. And last weekend I took two of three rounds in downing shots called Irish Car Bombs. That could make me Snarfer, but I am not exactly sure how that could help humanity, especially with a looming food shortage.

I am pretty good at making up rumors. One I wanted to spread: If elected, Hillary Clinton would have required men to be implanted with GPS chips upon being granted a wedding license. But this skill would just make me Karl Rove.

I did recently save the lives of my coworkers. A suit was giving an inspirational talk that went on for more than a half hour when I noticed the chafing dishes of food behind him were starting to smoke and boil over. No one else made a move, but as the boss man continued to inspire, I bravely walked behind him and put the lids back on the Sterno cans, slightly burning my thumb in the process, but ultimately preventing the building from burning - or at the very least the barbecue sauce from carmelizing.

Then there was the water cooler being broke for three weeks. Finally I took it upon myself to call the 800 number on the side of it to get the cooler fixed. Turns out we were waiting for corporate channels to be cleared.

And there was the time a guy in the office couldn't find a phone number so I Googled the name for him and found it on a white pages and a people finder site. Or the young woman whose phone didn't work for a month - I went in the back room, from the part of the building where they just laid off a half dozen folks, and swapped hers out with one of those recently orphaned.

Hmm, I could be Common Sense. But that's a name of a rapper. And, while common sense is indeed in short supply, I sometimes don't display much of said behavior, myself.

So I am still thinking. You do the same - what would your heroic power be?

Strangers in the Night: My Parents' 50th Wedding Anniversary

2008-06-10T00:09:00.001-05:00

Going to mass was what my parents wanted to do for their 50th wedding anniversary. Though I am not one for ceremonies and have long lapsed in my faith, once I saw the inside of St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in Incline Village, I understood. The windows behind the altar offer a view of Lake Tahoe that makes it easy to believe in God.

But my folks were late for the mass.

Blame it on the cable guy. They didn't want to leave him alone in the house where they are staying for the summer, a home very graciously lent to them by my brother in law and sister. It allows them to be less than 10 minutes away from their grandchildren - and gives my brother, with whom they live a good part of the year in the Bay Area, a breather for a few months.

Me, I am typically thousands of miles away in the Chicago suburbs (the one who stayed behind) but was there for the occasion, a surprise visitor there in the pew waiting as they sheepishly ambled into the 5-minute-old service.

The priest introduced Bob and Louise during his homily - a sermon which also included a snippet of Garth Brook's "Friends in Low Places." (Hey, the theme of the service was Jesus hanging out with the likes of tax collectors and His call for mercy and forgiveness. And the Catholics have to compete with those multimedia megachurches.)

"It's more like 500 years for her. She deserves a medal for putting up with me," my dad said. That got laughs, which just encouraged him. So when the priest asked him how they met, my dad told of how my mom was supposed to be a friends date. That friend went on to be a priest. So did the friend's brother.

"They were the smart ones," quipped my dad. More laughs.

Then my parents hugged, and the parishioners applauded, maybe just like they did when my folks married at a church on the South Side of Chicago, St. John's in the Roseland neighborhood if I am not mistaken. There were less than 50 people in attendance that day in the late 1950s.

Apparently my mom's side of the family wasn't too keen on their Lithuanian daughter marrying an Irish guy. My dad was skinnier and nerdier than Buddy Holly, just out of the Army and had no college degree. My mom worked for lawyers. Jewish lawyers, which, as we all know, are the best by their nature. So the only part of her family that came to the wedding was my mom's mom and her uncle, who gave her away. Her dad didn't attend the wedding of his own child.

There are remnants of that kind of thinking in Chicago, where to this day your ethnicity frequently is included in the adjectives used to describe you, an outsider - as in, "Have you met the bald Irish guy?"

Ah, the tribal nature of Chicago, one of the obstacles overcome allowing me (and then my sister and brother) to eventually come into being, me, that bundle of joy with the bright blue eyes in the red vest and bow tie in the picture I have, the smart one who could read a newspaper by the time he was 4. (Sometimes I think I peaked really, really early.)

But from this gene pool I swam:

My dad's dad looked a bit like an Irish Nat King Cole and was known to be the life of the party - and all the good and bad things that encompassed. Sure, he could sing and play a tune on the piano by ear and crack wise. But he couldn't hold any job - and when he did he would scheme things, like bootlegging cigarettes when he worked for the Chicago Park District (Some things about Chicago never, ever change - which is to say, if only my grandpa befriended a Daley.)

So my dad, his two brothers and their parents wound up living with relatives. My grandfather Bill was raised by relatives himself, his own parents in Pittsburgh apparently too poor to care for him. Short and dark, he looked nothing like his portly brother, with whom he had little to do. I only know this from pictures from my folks' wedding album that my brother in law put into a DVD-style slide show.

Still, what I do remember of my dad's father is, indeed someone who could light up a room, who would play tag in a graveyard, and let you run under the hose on a hot day in your underwear and who took you to the "beer store" on the corner. And he died of cancer when I was a small boy - my first tears of real sorrow.

And my other grandfather - well, Joe he came from Lithuania to escape the Bolsheviks. He headed to the States, a brother to South America. A quiet man, he did once chop up a piano because my mother didn't play it any more. And the first few times my dad called my mom, Joe told him she didn't live there.

Still, despite me being half Irish, he loved to feed me smoked fish and rolls slathered in sour cream and listen to baseball games with me in the back of the small grocery store he and my grandmother owned and lived above. And he would take my sister and I on adventures to get the food they sold at their store. That's not to mention the first taste of violent crime I had when their store was robbed at closing time. This was before 9-11 but I ran to call the police - but being scared, forgot the address.

Those and myriad memories swirled about in my head during the mass, the family history on rewind, then fast forward - the visits to the cemetery with "aunts" who lived with us and our cousins; the chocolate milk, potato chip and ham sandwich lunches at Catholic grade school; the "nervous breakdowns" suffered by both grandmothers; the floor hockey in the basement at my cousins; the aluminum Christmas tree; the vacations in the station wagon; the arguments; the Christmas without my father.

I wished my folks would write their versions of the family stories stories down instead of reading suspense novels or doing word search puzzles. How did they fall in love? It still seems a mystery.

As I pondered, the mass went along. I held hands with strangers at the appointed time just before Holy Communion, then shook hands with those around me - the silly part of the modern mass, but also the part I like best, because silly is good and so are awkward greetings because in church they usually at least bring a sheepish smile.

Before the mass let out, the priest asked any visitors to stand up and introduce themselves. Inspired by another couple from Chicago, my dad and mom stood once more. And my dad spoke again telling all how he was staying for the summer to torture his grandchildren. The congregation laughed again. If I were a teen I would have found it all so very embarrassing. Instead I was hoping it would inspire my father to get off his ass and get involved in a place where they haven't heard all his jokes yet, where he could make new friends and be the life of the party - where, like happened at church, someone came up to him and started talking to him just because he was from Chicago, too, which is the Chicago way.

In the restaurant that night where we celebrated, there was a table filled with young women in purple, pink and orange wigs - a bachelorette party just beginning, someone else embarking on her own matrimonial voyage.

I should have introduced this bride to be to my parents. But I was in quiet man mode, all this past somehow tying my tongue, sad and smoky Sinatra songs playing on the iPod in my brain.

Confessions of a Sox Fan 2: What We Detest About Cubs Fans

2008-04-28T21:38:00.005-05:00

Here's what it's like to be a White Sox fan - and what we don't like about some Cubs fans:

At work, we got an offer for discounted baseball tickets to selected Sox games, and since we writers are paid less than Burger King managers, anything discounted causes a stir in a news room. So some coworkers were looking over the availability list and the Sox - Cubs rivalry came up.

"We don't even care about you guys," said this 20-something Cubs fan who sits next to me. "I am heading to New York to see Yankee Stadium one last time and to see them play the Red Sox. Now that's a real rivalry," she added.

Hearing that, I had one of those "Lord help me, I might spew one of my dad's 10,000 cliches" moments, this one being: "These young people today they know everything. They get out of college, and they have all the answers."

But I didn't say anything. It couldn't. See, this woman already had given me that "talk to the hand" motion the prior week, when I teased her about allegedly feeling an earthquake and how her dogs awakened her. That led to her calling me a shit head and telling me not to talk to her anymore.

Oh the nostalgia: It was like getting to re-enact one of my parents' fights.

And it also made me think: This is what you long-time Cubs fans have to deal with. The albatross around your collective neck is that Wrigley is filled with people like the one who sits next to me.

As a Sox fan, on one hand I am glad they root, root, root for your Cubbies.

You Cubs diehards know what I am talking about. These people started to show up in the 80s, when your team began the transition from scruffy fodder for local theater and Mike Royko columns to lovable losers. They changed your neighborhood, gentrified it - and did the same to your team.

The Cubs became part of their lifestyle choice. And, the media being what it is - enamored of the superficial and allegedly glamorous - the Cubs became their darlings.

As my coworker said: South Side types just don’t matter.

Peeing in a trough suddenly was sexy. Urinating on lawns trendy: Your park became a Jimmy Buffett concert with baseball.

We Sox fans had a brand new stadium which no one found charming, unless a mall is your idea of cute. They’ve made improvements and actually it’s not a bad place to see a game, way more fan friendly for families than your place. But you can’t convince nouveau Cubs fans that anything but Wrigley is worthy of paying the cover charge to sit around drinking for three hours.

The Sox stadium got named after a cell phone company. No tears here for Comiskey, a stingy man by most accounts, and US Cellular is a fine local brand, and I get my service from them. But it’s a mid major player, which means as soon as the market gets better in might be sold, and the park will be called who knows what.

The Cubs, of course, play in Wrigley which makes men old enough to remember think about nubile twins chewing Double Mint gum.

And starting in the 80s, women that attractive were moving with their sorority sisters to Wrigley

But nobody finds the area around the Cell sexy – though it is a real slice of Chicago, with a great view of downtown from the walkways at the park.

The yups are trying to take over there, too, tearing down bungalows to build block long mansions in Bridgeport (where the Daleys ruled) and tearing down housing projects to make way for town homes and condos.

But it still feels like a blurring border point, where blacks stayed east of the Dan Ryan and whites the other, and the Chinese are close by, too.

That might be a little too rough for the modern Cubs fan.

The bars, like Shinnick’s and Schaller’s, are mom and pop joints. The most exotic restaurant might be an old school Lithuanian place on Halsted. Despite where the media heads, the fake New Orleans bar Bourbon Street, shouldn’t really count as a South Side Sox spot.

I read once that Sox fans on average actually come from a higher rung on the socio-economic ladder than Cubs fans: think Naperville as instead of Schaumburg. We will forever be thought of as that guy with the mullet who ran onto the field to beat up a coach for the Kansas City Royals – unlike your fans who threatened to kill one of your own for allegedly costing the team a shot at the World Series a few falls ago.

And thanks to the team itself, we will always be associated with the never really cool sounds of Journey, while Metro is just down the block from Wrigley.

All of which has been a long way to explain to you Cubs fans why we Sox fans have chips on our shoulders at least as big as the chunks of concrete that have fallen from your so-called friendly confines.

We are the Sun-Times. You are the Tribune.

Still, we have the object of your desire: a World Series championship, a sweep no less.

And when I went to the victory parade I learned that our numbers are spread out in the suburbs. Heck, the train from Elgin was full, the el parking garage at Cumberland jammed.

Downtown was dressed in black for a day, but not for the usual trendy fashion reasons. The procession went through neighborhoods of all sorts, from poor to rich and whatever is in between.

We have that, Cubs fans, and you don’t.

Of course, once you do, you’ll be harder to take than Boston Red Sox fans. We just went back to being what we are.

Oh, one more thing: the St. Patrick’s Day following the Series I marched in the South Side Irish Parade, in a kilt and a big wool sweater, no less. As luck would have it, Minnie Minoso – resplendent in a full length fur coat – walked with the unit behind us, an SUV with the World Series trophy perched on the hood. Don’t Stop Believing played from the car stereo.

That’s what I have as a Sox fan. And as Louis Armstrong, who once lived on the South Side, used to sing, They can’t take that away from me.

A dream job - and I've been doing a lot of day dreaming lately

2008-04-13T22:08:00.001-05:00

A week ago, a friend of mine left for Ireland, where he'll spend two years teaching bartenders how to make mixed drinks. Already a Master of Scotch, he'll be his employer's spirits ambassador to Ireland, which doesn't come with diplomatic immunity but does include an office in Guinness headquarters.

I'm sure every job has drawbacks, but on the surface at least Marty's gig seems like a plum assignment.

But hey, I got paid to look at pelicans last week, making a stop on their way to Minnesota. OK, it's not as glamorous. It was also cold and windy and scary - because the big birds were in a marsh in a forest preserve and forest preserves scare me. How can you be comfortable in a place that is the first they search for missing and presumed dead housewives, where freaks meet to have sex and where packs of dogs have been known to attack joggers.

And there were dobermans the day I went to see the pelicans - albeit with owners who were seemingly wealthy white women and not rappers, though I supposed they could be both.

The birds head north, my buddy flies overseas and I am feeling grounded.

See, I've known Marty for more than 20 years. We met in improv classes back when I had hair and was skinny and would have gotten the arrogant asshole parts had I more talent or a stomach for show business. We were in a show together called Revenge of the Muffin People and did a skit called Art vs. Science, a dance contest between the two staged by a grad student at Andy Warhol University.

Marty, who is mostly a jovial sort, stuck with the comedy and acting thing longer than I did, which meant he did bartending, which eventually led to becoming an expert in Scotch and the job he has now.

We lost touch for a time, after an attempt to be roommates never got off the ground. I went on to pursue a career in what is fast becoming a dying industry. Smarter Marty picked a steadier path: People will always drink, and until they figure out how to get booze for free over the Internet will gladly pay to do so.

My reporting services are a devalued commodity. In fact I'm trying to find a college kid in India to do my job for me for $20 a week, giving me time to attend accountancy classes - or maybe to visit Marty in Ireland.

Or maybe I'd just hang out at the zoo, like I did a week ago Sunday. Note to dads: If you're going to wear nylon gym shorts, where underwear beneath so we don't all have to see the little mouse in your pants bouncing back and forth as you push the stroller. Or maybe you were smuggling out a naked mole rat. Either way, it sets a bad example.

Brookfield Zoo is a good place to go when you're feeling nostalgic. They still sell those wax statues of animals where you put your money in pneumatic injection mold machines. If you are 35 or older you can't call yourself a Chicagoan if you didn't have your parents get you one of these as a kid. These days, it's the parents who are excited to get them - like me, only I'm a barren bachelor farmer.

I picked up a white polar bear and a red giraffe with baby giraffe which I happily put on my desk at work. No one even asked.

I should have left them in the car until they melted - provided it ever gets warm around here. But that's being way too literal with the metaphors.

Play ball: Confession of a Sox Fan, Part 1

2008-03-30T22:56:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I am a White Sox fan. Though I am pretty sure it's not a genetic condition- like being bald or having a full head of hair, or being straight like George Clooney or gay like Elton John - it's close. No not close to being Elton John, Cubs' fans. Besides you guys are the ones who idolize a guy with funny glasses.

While not in your blood, maybe the team you root for is imprinting, like a baby duck that sees some goofy ass grad student instead of Mama Duck and winds up getting a degree in biology instead of being killed by a hunter in Wisconsin, which would be its true fate.

But fate had me go to my first game at old Comiskey Park - and seeing that grass for the first time through the tunnel - it had me hooked. And it might be why I live in the suburbs and have a lawn that one day I swear I will cut to have cool geometric patterns in it.

Actually fate had it that my Lithuanian immigrant grandfather took to baseball, and as a very young boy I would sit in the back room of his grocery store in Roseland listening to radio broadcasts with him while eating smoked fish, sweet rolls and sour cream. Yes, I should weigh 300 pounds by now.

Which reminds: one of my favorite players was Wilbur Wood, the rotund knuckleball pitcher who, of course, went by the nickname of Woody, and who would amble to the mound to the sounds of the theme from the Woody Woodpecker cartoon. Actually, Wood probably wasn't any fatter than I am right now when he was pitching - he just seemed that way - and, like many Americans, wound up chubby.

He also was a workhorse, one season going 24-20, which is a lot of throwing toward mediocrity, especially by today's standards. And I'll be honest - I just looked that stuff up. I am not a stats geek. I have no cards stashed away in a safety deposit box.

I was as much a Sox fan for bat day and other freebies as I was of Tommy John and Tommy Agee. And I loved bobble-head dolls, the old fashioned ones with the round faces, NOT the new kind that are supposed to look like a player but seem like some type of quasi-Satanic ritual item.

I was the little nerd who brought a painting to the park I made on cardboard with Tempura paint of Woody Woodpecker wearing Wilbur Wood's uniform in the hopes of getting on TV or that Wood would notice me. Neither happened - and to this day I am surprised I didn't get teased more as a kid doing stuff like that. And I even made a groovy painting of slugger Dick Allen that I have somewhere in my basement to this day, which I must have had on earth shoes when I created it.

It is the only vestige of my support for the Pale Hose, being raised to think that toys were to be played with then discarded, not stored away as investments. Silly parents. They even let me play outside, by myself - a lot.

Thus, without an ancient scorecard to my name I just have my vague memories of when the good guys wore red or royal blue, then, egads, clam-diggers.

And though South Side by birth, I harbored no ill will toward the Cubs. One of the meaner nuns was a Cubs fan, which did make me wary of liking them. Plus, they just seemed farther away as we migrated to the south suburbs.

Now the Cubs still seem that way, distant to me and my Sox-uality.

My day trip to Gary: I really know how to vacate, don't i?

2008-03-27T18:20:00.002-05:00

I just finished a three month shift working in downtown Chicago, and now I am heading back to my old job in the suburbs.
I started just before Christmas and finished up on Good Friday, which gives the gig more Biblical significance than it had - even if it did snow the last day.

While the below ain't necessarily so, since I have an advanced degree in self-pity, at my worst, here is how I feel about it:

A) I am being sent back to the minors.
B) The potential parents didn't take to me, so they are returning me to the orphanage.
C) I flunked out and have to move in with my folks. Again.

So I took a week off to readjust, but didn't really go anywhere - unless you count Gary, Indiana as a where.

That was mean, and you shouldn't pick on those who are lacking luck. And about the only luck you can find in Gary is at the casinos there amongst the steel mills, refineries and the crumbling buildings. Yes, Gary looks like what a hangover feels like.

I have lived in the Chicago area most of my life and had never visited this downtrodden town. But a buddy of mine took a photojournalism job there and offered to give me a drive-through. Even the paper where he works disassociated itself from Gary, taking the town's name out of its name for what the marketing department probably would say is branding it a "regional" paper.

But hey, we all need oil, gas, and steel, and it ain't pretty how it gets made, even if the view back to Chicago is grand and the dunes are just a stone's skip away. Which it to say, we should all kiss Gary's smelly ass for doing the the dirty work that keeps the Chicago area humming along.

We should help restore areas such as Marktown, where European immigrants built houses like back home. And we should try to find a way to talk about race, because Gary is one of the blackest cities in America and one of the poorest and consistently has one of the highest crime rates and way too much of it looks like the worst of New Orleans, but at least New Orleans can blame hurricanes. (Sorry - just got done writing editorials.)

Which reminds - I was in New Orleans for the first time in my life just about a year ago. It's been an odd year, a rough one by the standards of my bland life - so I guess a trip to Gary was a good metaphorical visit, bringing things to a sort of circle.

And I did get to see the crew in Crown Point working on a movie about John Dillinger starring Johnny Depp, the crowds deep hoping to catch a glimpse of the actor. Scenes like that amuse me, because making movies is a lot duller than making steel. But somehow taking a full day for a 2-minute segment that may not even make the final print is considered glamourous.

But what do I know about glamour? I mean, I only wear makeup when I have to. Or do laundry, for that matter.

I'm all Irished out and it ain't even March 17

2008-03-16T22:03:00.001-05:00

So I am standing at an Internet jukebox in a semi-Irish bar, surfing for Pogues music and a Van Morrison song or two. Suddenly I am standing next to Elton John - if Elton John were a drunk middle aged woman in shamrock shaped sunglasses, which, come to think of it... Anyway, she wants me to spend my money on playing "Fat Bottom Girls," by Queen.

I tell her there is no way in hell I will pay for her request. First, it is a horrible song, stupid in that 70s way. And I bet you don't even get the irony of it, I, through my Smithwick's glaze, tell her. I mean, come on! Freddy Mercury was gay and here he is professing his love for chubby women. And, besides, it's not an Irish song.

(And besides, I had my transcendent Celtic musical moment earlier that Saturday evening: while crawling through local watering holes, at one usually frequented by AARP drinkers, there was a classic rock cover band with a bearish, red-bearded, kilt-wearing guitarist shredding out Black Sabbath's "Paranoid.")

Huh? She is confused and walks away. Why won't I play her song? Why should I want to hear Celtic music?

Next to her is a guy, by himself, with long hair and out of style glasses. He could be a drug dealer or a cult member there for finding a drunk for a thrill kill. You know the type.

Yes, it is St. Patrick's Day weekend in Chicago, that special time where people passed out on sidewalks are helped to cabs by concerned bartenders. I wore no green - but a shirt Saturday, that said Hurling, which really is a sport.

Actually it started on March 9 on the South Side, because March 17 falls during Easter Week this year. Saints cannot compete with the Passion of Christ, so the South Side parade, typically the Sunday before the Irish day, got pushed way up to a cold day.

Still, the mooks lined the streets, drinking "Pepsi." They may be junior alcoholics, but they are smart enough to know cops only make you pour out drinks that look like booze. If you tell them it's a soft drink, and you aren't stumbling or punching anyone, they let you imbibe.

Can't blame the cops. They had fights to break up, like the one I saw where a bull of a young guy got his pickup truck stuck in an alley. Idiots started kicking the truck, so the guy got out and went after a couple of the kickers. Then there was a moose walking about, proud of the blood trickling off his forehead.

That part of the parade is like some stupid movie from the 80s, like Bachelor Party, or some other cocaine-inspired work of comedic genius. You can avoid it if you have friends who live nearby and once you get passed thinking that public drunkenness is awesome, dude! that is why you go. That's to say, it's an Irish American Thanksgiving, where you meet up with old friends, swap stories, and meet new people.

I got to talk with a Scotch master from Bushmills, sample some fine labels, and even learned that Plainfield, Illinois, of all places, is where they make Gordon's Gin and Schmirnoff Vodka. I always knew there was something about that town - the most honestly named place in this state, by the way, at least until they started putting up $500,000 vinyl sided not-quite mansions.

Those are still cheaper than the median house price in Dublin, Ireland, which is about $367,000 Euros, and with the shrinking dollar, propably more that $700,000 as I write this.

I learned that last week as I asked around about how Ireland is like America. They also can't smoke in the pubs anymore - and they recently changed their DUI laws so all it takes is about one pint in you to be get arrested!

I have a friend heading there to teach the bartenders to make mixed drinks. And you're just as likely to find Bud and Miller product as Guinness there now, too. Just like you find those schmatzy Irish balladeer specials playing endlessly on PBS this time of year for pledge drive - Ireland gets our mass produced suds, and we get their sudsy music.

I didn't ask about green beer being available in IRL, which would be wrong - unless it has asparagus in it, which would make you pee green or smell, which would be sort of cool.

The St. Pat's parade in Dublin is different - more artsy fartsy than the revelry here - but changing a bit with the influx of American tourists who want to drink.

Ireland also has immigration issues similar to here, albeit Poles and Africans instead of Mexicans. And the aforementioned overpriced housing market is undergoing a correction of its own, too.

My own Irish friends were busy this weekend selling their wares at holiday related events. I joined them for a bit Friday night, in part to sober up from drinking too much Heineken at an Irish gathering on Navy Pier. It was a beautiful night out on the lake, the water dead calm, the sunset misty and pastel, the dome of the Grand Ballroom resplendent and worth staring at because you can't hear anything when the band's sound bounces about the hall.

So I left for the Hilton by Kitty O'Shea's. Some lady tourists from Washington, D.C., took my picture with them - and me in a goofy hat with pony tales which made me look like a biker in drag working in a Wendy's commercial. The other highlight was two local politicians' wives buying $20 leprechaun costumes, which they implied they were going to make their husbands wear later that night, which made me laugh and shudder at the same time.

I actually took a break from all the Irishness Saturday afternoon, hanging out with a buddy, going music shopping (yeah, people still do that - amazing as it sounds); hitting a Polish grocery store; and getting some gelatto at a place called Bellezza, which was heaven in a cone on Harlem Avenue.

Heading back to my car from my pal's place, an elderly couple was unloading groceries from their SUV. The woman was using a walker, slowly moving into the building so I offered to bring in the bags. The husband at first said he didn't need help, but I did it anyway, bringing the plastic bags into the hallway, where I saw that the woman had to sort of crawl up the stairs to their second floor dwelling.

That really has nothing to do with partying for St. Patrick's Day or being idiot Irish for more than a week - and you're not supposed to brag about doing good deeds, either, being lapsed Catholic and all. Still, something about that moment at least offered a karmic, "My Name Is Earl" chance for me to counter some of the silliness done in the name of Ireland.

Heritage is thicker than Guinness.

I am wonked out: the short version of a long week in local poltics

2008-03-02T22:33:00.003-06:00

Mix Kafka with the Three Stooges and you begin to get the idea what the Cook County Board is like.

Last week I was there to witness the witless, the board's battle to balance its budget. If you are not familiar with this feudal war, go ahead an Google "Cook County Board" and "budget"" to get the background.

Rumor has it Barack Obama considered running for Cook County Board at the start of his political life - he came to a meeting and quickly changed his mind.

If you don't know Chicago politics, basically the city is ruled by chieftains who have inherited their power. In the case of the city proper, the current mayor and son of the legendary Boss of all Bosses, knows enough to make sure the streets get plowed, the garbage gets collected and and the downtown looks pretty for the tourists - and it does. In the case of the county, our young Prince Hal, Todd Stroger, reluctantly took the throne after his dad had a stroke.

They kept how bad his dad John was under wraps, and the doctor who did this wound up being named the interim head of the county's hospital system. Todd has a lot of family in his administration. They don't serve him well.

Case in point: this budget balancing act: Stroger proposed one in October and it took him and the board until the very last minute before the court would have stepped in to mandate the budget be balanced, to actually do this.

Todd wanted some taxes including a raise in sales tax that would have eventually given the county government a $900 million surplus. When that didn't work, early last week he cut his request to a rate that would give him a slightly smaller war chest. Yes, he took that long to even hint at dealing.

Meantime, the media kept uncovering a relative on the payroll with a six-figure salary here, a well-paid friend there, job titles like "management analyst" that actually was a chauffeur, a hospital billing department that was not billing people to the tune of about $250 million.

Everything came to a head last week, with the board at a 9-8 vote against any sales tax increase. So the commissioners played a game of chicken where they spent endless hours going over amendments to the budget trying to whittle down a $283 million gap (that had been quoted at $238 million, but accounting seems to be either Hollywood shrewd or just plain incompetent) between revenues and what Stroger proposed.

Stroger supporters showed up acting as if the opposition wanted the hospital closed - including a guy who put a Santeria curse on Stroger's foes.

The low point came when commissioners voted down an amendment that would have cut $60,000 from each of their to-be-increased office budgets to increase funding the depleted mammogram program at the county hospital. A couple of the commissioners reasoned that no one should dictate how they spend money earmarked for them.

One even admitted the even though "I have more offices than staff," she still voted against it.

The final act of this portion of the saga played out for four days. There were shouting matches and lots of wasted paper and politicians who kept covering the same ground, and who asked the dumbest of dumb questions, in many cases apparently just to hear the sound of their own voices.

Speaking of, the poor woman who works finance has a voice like Minnie Mouse on helium. If Stroger wanted to play really nasty politics he could have had her filibuster, which would have driven the room into submission. Instead he gave the illusion it would be fine with him if this would have headed to the courts - and a court appointed guardian might not have been a bad thing for this dysfunctional bunch.

And the county board really does have back room offices behind its cramped board room where reporters corralled to a side pen would wander to talk with sources as the babbling babbled on and on and on and on and on. If you think it is glamorous to be a reporter, this would quickly dispel that myth.

All of this reminds that way too much of adult life is like high school. And that whatever level you might be at in your career, the next level is just an amplified version of all the crap you put up with on your way up the ladder. It doesn't really get better, just louder. If you're lucky the pay is better.

Anyway, before this gets too wonkish, it all came down to Stroger finally getting Commissioner Larry Suffredin to agree to a sales tax increase that will make Chicago's and Schaumburg's the highest on goods in the country. In exchange, Stroger agreed to support that the county's hospital will have independent oversight. Of course, those overseers will be appointed by the board so independence is a relative term.

And if you don't have a headache yet, you are a better person than I am.

Yet, I was also oddly captivated by this comedy of errors. My guess is Stroger will probably still be elected again in two years, because that's how Chicago is. And that's not really funny, but sometimes all you can do is laugh.

Cabin fever sets in

2008-02-10T21:58:00.000-06:00

I was helping a buddy put together his resume today, reducing his life experiences to two pages. I need to update mine, too.

My career objective (on a subzero day): I want a job where I can work from my lake home in a mythical Michigan where it's always 80 degrees in summer. Guests will be welcome on weekends and evenings for bottomless barbecues and beer. I will sit on the pier with whomever would like to join me to watch the cotton candy colored sunset, our feet dangling in the calm water.

Yeah, as if you can't tell from above, it's February in Chicago, and judging by the traffic I see in the mornings there are probably a 2.75 million other people right now feeling the same way.

My fever for a summer cabin comes from 2.5 hour commutes in snowstorms and digging out the car from the train station lot to head home on treacherous pothole riddled streets. It grew out of 13 hour days, four of those spent in a Camry.

It owes its appetite to eating too many solo lunches at a sandwich shop chain where the workers are unnaturally chipper about taking your order, as if they have been brainwashed by a deli-loving cult. No one should get that happy about tuna salad and soup.

There were layoffs where veterans were escorted out of the building and union members get a phone call the night before telling them their services are no longer required. There was a boss who quit, then three hours later said she changed her mind (sort of like a James Brown concert, where he can't go on anymore, but once they put the cape on him, he gets back up to sing some more), then quit again a week later.

It's not just weather and work. That's life in Chicago.

But this winter included attending my aunt's wake where there was a snow tornado on the way home (OK, it was just a whiteout, on a day where the temperature dropped 50 degrees in less than 10 hours), then a funeral on a frozen day.

Since then I've occasionally had that middle aged feeling, like the Grim Reaper sneaking up behind you saying boo, that sends an electric shock up your spine to your brain - that zap that everyone you know one day will die including yourself. The jolt comes from missing friends you haven't seen, lost loves, the dead gone before you.

How things played out at the wake and funeral are why I want my cabin.

While folks were sad, the mood was also uplifting in the sense there was no drama, but catching up - a reunion with some tears, but laughs and stories and photos and hugs and meals and drinks, too.

And there were Knights of Columbus guarding my aunt's casket, resplendent in their tuxedoes, capes and plumed hats, upright swords resting on their burly Midwestern shoulders. It reminded me of The Flintstones or The Honeymooners, which isn't such a bad thing.

In fact though my Catholicism is more lapsed than my Blockbuster membership, I want these guys at my wake whenever it might be that I die. And I want a bagpipe player and the music in my iPod (or whatever device holds my music when fate ends me) or a disc jockey. Drinks will be served, dancing encouraged.

Bur right now, I want that home by a lake where we can gather without having to have a funeral as an excuse. Life's too short and too lonely not to have one if only in my dreams.

Good night, Irene: A death in the family

2008-01-27T21:15:00.000-06:00

The following note is the last one sent by my cousin Tracy, who has been updating friends and family about her mom's battles with getting a new heart.

She got the heart this past fall, after being on a wait list for about a year. Things seemed to be going well, but took a turn for the worst after Christmas.

She died over the weekend.

Here is the note:

Always as I prepared myself to send an "Irene" update to family and friends, I would come before my computer and allow myself to share the daily experiences I had with Ma. I would, to the best of my ability, try to convey appropriately what she was facing, what was being done for her with medicine, and even share small personal things about her and our family.

This past Thursday evening, we had received some discouraging news about her legs due to the lack of circulation as a result of the pressor medications she was on. Obviously, things weren't looking ideal for a healthy recovery. Several times I had thought about sharing this news, but I couldn't embrace what was happening. Maybe I was thinking things would turn around -- as they often have.

Friday morning came and we had a family conference with the heart failure team. They gave us encouragement based on labwork and adding some new things to her treatment. For a short while, maybe some of us were optimistic, but our optimism was short lived because Ma was ceasing to communicate and her responses to us were weak if at all. Her pulse gradually slowed during the day.

Shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, Irene coded, but with the support of medical personnel was brought back. With a blood pressure and pulse, we met again as a family more realistic and talked about our options.

Just after 8:30 a.m. this morning, surrounded by her family -- Irene left us. She was without pain and at peace. She clearly waged the most ultimate of battles to fight, to live, to be with my Dad and us... her children. It seems; however, the Lord had another plan.

As I struggle to understand her great suffering these last couple of months since transplant, I am also comforted by the fact that her rewards will be great for all of eternity. Oh, how lucky Heaven is today.

I had never really thought that her story would end this way. We have been given SO much and she had fought back from so much, I became too comfortable expecting miracles. But her tale of strength and will is a beautiful story -- a profound legacy.

As far as her cruising along hoping to gain altitude, I think this is what may have happened. Sweet Irene charged the cockpit door and took over the controls. She pulled that plane straight up and has disappeared into the heavens leaving her spirit indelibly marked in our hearts.

Our deep gratitude for ALL the thoughts, sentiments and prayers for this one-of-a-kind woman. She was and always will be THE most amazing woman I know. It has been my privilege and honor to love her, care for her, share her story... and be called her daughter.

Irene Bernardi Danahey
September 24, 1939 - January 26, 2008

With deep love and regards,

Tracy

My life as a commuter - the first 640 miles

2008-01-06T20:26:00.000-06:00

I am pretty sure Al Gore wouldn't approve of my current lifestyle. Yes, I am a real gas-hole, and, I sort of enjoy it.

I'm working downtown for three months and because of how inadequate public transportation is, I drive about 40 miles a day back and forth to work. I could take the train, if I wanted to leave my house at 7:30 for a shift that starts at 10, then hope I get out of the office around 6 which still wouldn't get me back out here until after 7 and back in my place around 7:30. All big ifs.

So I drive, and to be honest, I don't really mind. It's oddly meditative, if you can meditate while moving through traffic and braking for traffic jams. But I can catch up on the news on the radio or listen to music. I pass the offices of a couple friends along the route, to which I wave. I make cell calls until I get to the Chicago border, of course, because I am a strict law-abiding citizen. On the way home I have an hour or so to collect my thoughts and gather my mental notes from a day at work.

And work is an unusual and not exactly happy place these days. Friday they announced there will be staff cuts, and 40 people will be out of work in about a month.

Yeah, being a writer is not a valued commodity. Why should anyone want to pay us for stuff they can get for free from bloggers, or write themselves or get from the Daily Show? Anyone can write these days, right? Every man a journalist.

And if you are leaving your home at 6 and getting home at 6, who has time to read anymore anyway? Which reminds: Why the hell do most of us have to go into an office anymore, anyway? We all are electronically tied to an office anyway, so what difference does it make most days if we put on pants or not?

So all I can do is enjoy the experience of working in a big city in the Merchandise Mart, where I head to the food court everyday (at least with the weather being cold) if just to people watch. I haven't been in any of the shops yet but am intrigued by A&G Clothing, with its "3 For $350" suits and $48 Chicago Bears jacket, and by the Kohler store with its designer bathroom fixtures.

I have a yuppie-ish buddy in the burbs who put in French Doors because an in-law gets his family a 25-foot tall Christmas tree every year - I am guessing the Kohler store is for such people. I'm more an American Standard kind of guy.

I don't take much time for lunch - my job involves meeting in the morning where a panel divvies out work, two topics a day, editorial themes. If you're assigned one for the next day you have about three or four hours to write.

Thus far I have opined on snow shoveling ordinances (the paper was against them); the Blackhawks (they should have male bimbos on ice, too, for the ladies, as they have them for the guys); restoring funding to Fermilab; and Pakistan (it was a good move to for Bhutto's son to be named the figurehead leader of her party - a romantic, cinematic moment for Pakistan, my boss said.)

I didn't know much about Pakistan but learned what I could in an afternoon. It's politics are like Chicago's but way more violent. there are four main parties, one which is radical, the other three more traditionally corrupt. The Bhutto's PPP has a wing trying to reform, and the other side with his feudal and kleptocratic more than democratic. South Central Asian Shakespearean more than romantic, really.

Still, I think that in many case we could make some of our editorials even shorter - one or two sentences even. I'll provide examples:

Drew Peterson: This guy is a mook, so you shouldn't be surprised when he says stupid shit nor should it shock you if he killed his wife - which must really be bringing the property values down in newly yuppie-fied Bolingrbook.

The Petersons and the Stebics: Have you been to Plainfield and Bolingbrook lately? God used to punish people here with tornadoes. Everyone knows there was evil in these cornfields, now there are big, expensive houses with cheating husbands.

Wives who runaway: If you are going to dump your husband, don't leave your car running by a river. Take a cab and call a friend or leave a note so the rest of us don't have to hear your family's dirty laundry on TV.

Shoveling: Shovel your damn sidewalk. It's pretty sad that the local government even has to consider telling you to do this.

Pakistan: What a mess! Your democracy makes Lousiana's politicians look like there really are saints in New Orleans. And where the fuck is Osama?

Bush: What an idiot frat boy you turned out to be!

Romney: We demand to know the truth about magic underpants!

Giuliani: Could you shut up for minute about 9-11?

Obama: Promise us you won't appoint Oprah to anything if you win.

Huckabee: Are you really just a smarter Ned Flanders?

Iowa caucuses: There is not a lot to do in this state in winter is there? So every four years you have coffee klatches that have way too much attention paid to them. Why can't you just vote like a normal state primary?

See what I mean?

Anyway, iI'm also going to be involved in the endorsement process, which could mean meeting some of the presidential candidates. Imagine me and Hillary Clinton in the same room. Who'd a thunk it?

Another duty is pulling phone calls off a computer e-mail program (reader rant call-ins). I take them off a Windows machine where I first convert them to WAV files, then put them on a memory stick. From there it is to a Mac, where the file must go into iTunes to be converted to a AAC file, then put into Garage Band to be edited, then put back into iTunes as a AIF file, then sent as an attachment to the Web editor.

That seems metaphorical, but for what I will let you decide.

Fun things I did on my birthday

2007-12-25T12:02:00.000-06:00

So I started my new job on Christmas Eve, a rotation shaping the opinions of Chicago. For purposes of good, I suppose, which is why December 24 wasn't such a bad day to begin.

Regardless of how things may go, one thing to enjoy is that the parking lot is by a confectioner, so I will begin and end each day inhaling the sweet smells emitting from the Blommer's Chocolate factory. For a former and probably future fat boy, that's Nirvana.

I hope to get out of the office a lot, and on my first day I went to Macy's (AKA Marshall Field's) on an assignment: I had to ask shoppers for their tips on recycling Christmas junk and for their tips for making 2007 a more environmentally friendly year. And, no, I am not working for a TV station, though those do seem like local News at 5 questions.

They didn't use any of the material I gathered, but Phillip Smith of Chicago told me, "I try to save wrapping paper and reuse it."
 "I keep the bows, fold some used paper back up, and recycle the rest," said Flora Reagan, a kindly grandma from St. Louis I found among the Frango mints.

What a coincidence that the first two people I chatted with reuse wrapping paper, which fascinated me. Hey, to be honest, I am so enviro-friendly I don't even wrap most of the gifts I give. Ok, sometimes there is a fine line between doing what's best for Mother Earth and being downright lazy.

What made the walk to the big old store worth it was holiday moments you get in a big city, like two burly construction worker/hunter types in Carhart gear shopping together at the Estee Lauder counter. I so wanted to ask if the items were going to be for each other or for their "wives," but who wants to get hit in the face on Christmas Eve which also happens to be my birthday?

Outside the store I chatted with two friendly Salvation Army ministers in training, bell ringers Kristina Sjorgren and Jayne Wubben. They told me their husbands were working the kettle just down the storefront from them. Lo and behold, there was this tall, doughy guy with one of those faces so Midwest wholesome you just want to pinch his chubby cheeks and his thinner buddy - both using faux Muppets to entertain the crowd into donating money. Only thing is they had the critters lip synching to Alvin and the Chipmunks, which could have been construed as a plug for the new movie, if I were more cynical.

But it was just funny in a way that made me want to rub my shaved head the way Curly of the Three Stooges used to do.
I wish I has brought my own camera with because those images are exactly why I wanted to work downtown in the first place.

 

Shopping with a 9 year old - and other holiday lessons

2007-12-22T20:24:00.000-06:00

It's good to see that at 9 years old my niece Julia is learning about Justice. That's the name of her favorite store and one of the highlights of my pre-holiday trip was taking her and my mother shopping for a full day two Sundays before Christmas in Reno.

At her young age, my sweet niece has shopping down to a science, and I figured out her methodology. She circles the store once, scanning for items. On the second pass she narrows her choices. And on third inspection she chooses what to try on, or in the case of buying for someone else, what she wants.

My sister hopes the technique soon encompasses looking for sale items. However she has put a cap on the number of things to be bought in any one trip - though I did give in for an extra top, a pack of gum, some lip balm and some ice cream on the way home.

A full day of this just made my old mother cranky. She's more of an impulse buyer and I remember the family fights about credit card bills that prove this.

As for Julia, she's partial to pastels and spaghetti straps which Justice serves along with chirpy girl power music playing in the background. I told Julia that since she lives in the mountains and probably weighs 50 pounds, tops, she should really buy heavier clothing than this place stocks. But I guess she layers.

Still too young for a Blackberry, Julia had a hand-written list with her which included a gift card for her grandparents from Target, dog treats, and a question mark for her twin brother. For her dad it was a trip to the Apple store for an iPod dock, sold to us by one of those Apple dudes who seems way too purposely nerdy hipster to not be an actor. Mom loves lotions, I learned, and I left Bed, Bath and Body Works smelling like a Christmas cookie.

And I was warned about flirting with the sales lady at J Jill.

"I don't like it when you do that," Julia scolded.

"Well, you are the one who told me I need a girlfriend," I reminded.

We had to shop for a friend of hers, too - at the Gap for Kids, because: A) the clothes at Justice fit too tight for her pal and B) friends can't wear clothes from the same store.

Being a good uncle, the only guy thing I made the ladies do was go to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch, which is hardly a tea party at the American Girl Store, but at least they had Mac and Cheese.

Shopping wasn't the only thing I learned on my trip. I took a ski lesson, too. It turned into a private one because the home schooled high school girls grouped with me were way better at it than I am and probably ever will be. I over think most everything in my life, am as stiff as a drink from a bartender looking for good tips, and am over 40 - all of which are not good things for heading down a mountain.

However, a couple months ago I went to a ski show and met people in various ski clubs, most of whom appeared older and fatter than me. It was inspirational.

My instructor George E (which seems like an Internet name if you ask me) was/is in his 50s, too. He asked me, in a good way, why I was taking a lesson.

Well, my book of regrets is getting to be a multi-volume set, I wanted to say. So I am making up for it before I get my AARP card in ways I don't even understand. Instead I offered that it would give my niece and nephew something to talk about, and that in my job I like that I get to try new things, both of which are also true.

Well, despite George's best efforts, once I got off the bunny hill and onto an actual slope, my old habits appeared, meaning I couldn't relax, and got freaked out by speed, meaning I wiped out twice and started to pant like a scared rabbit.

But hey, my brother in law won't go on roller coasters. And my nephew cries at Disney cartoons. So what if they can rip down a cliff.

I went back to the kiddy run for the rest of the day, my sister kindly tagging along with her klutzy relative.

Tired, some old habits surfaced at dinner that night, too. With Christmas music playing and married couples and kids around me, I got a case of lonely. In my media-driven mind the holiday archetype is an imaginary post-World War II America (maybe the 50s, no later than when Kennedy's assassination) with Sinatra singing carols in the background. Uncles wear cloth topcoats and slacks, aunts wear cocktail dresses and the kids play in another room while the adults get drunk on Manhattans.

I've seen the photos of my parents back in the day when people first fell for those Norman Rockwell paintings. I have the baby picture of me in the black shorts, red vest and tie, and baby blues. Yes, once I was cute and cuddly, too, and born on Christmas Eve to boot.

It doesn't help that when I was a freshman in high school my dad disappeared a month or so before Christmas, returning occasionally and for good sometime my sophomore year. He's never really said where he went, never really offered an apology or explanation.

Which brings up something else I learned on vacation. When he argues with my brother and mother - an arguing is embedded in the family genes - my brother claims my dad sometimes still says, "I never should have come back."

Flashing forward to later in my trip, hearing that made me sad. Of course, I had been drinking Guinness at a Cajun restaurant NOLA (not to be confused with Kelly's Cajun at the mall, which is neither Irish or Cajun, but Asian) in the hotbed of IPO Internet capitalism, Palo Alto. I got to hear guys from Yahoo tout the merits of Ron Paul. What could be more libertarian than the Web, I thought, so it sort of made sense they liked this guy, the Dennis Kucinich of the GOP.

A history professor talked about a cheating scandal at his junior college where people bought A's for $4,000 or traded fixed grades for sexual favors. Some went on to earn degrees at Stanford and Cal that are going to be rescinded. He said that George W. Bush is the worst president. Ever. Hey, when you are drinking discussions tend to veer.

Yeah, my dad should never have come back home. He's got two kids living in two of the prettiest places in the country, one with an apartment two blocks from the ocean, one with a bright family of her own living near Lake Tahoe. They have some interesting friends and associates like the ones I met at my bro in law's work party. He gets to spend his Golden Years with them.

And shopping one day my sister and I bumped into a former neighbor of hers my dad should meet. In the last 18 months, she got a divorce which probably involved infidelity on the part of one or both; she had cervical and skin cancer; and her daughter by her first husband found that dude in a drunken stupor and had to get her old man checked into a rehab clinic.

This lady appeared to be making a go of it, not just sitting on her ass - which is a lesson I know all too well from my own last year or so: Keep moving. Fight the tendency toward inertia. Sometimes that's the best you can do, maybe all you can do.

Still, I tend to fall into old family ways myself on my visits West. Old dynamics die hard. I wish I had more to talk about with my brother. He worked late the one day I spent with just him. We went Christmas shopping at a bookstore. It was barely 8:30 when we finished. I offered to buy him a drink but he wanted to get home to do a load of laundry as he was leaving for my sister's after dropping me at the airport (3 hours early so he could get a ride from a friend).

I am afraid to tease him about things like that. I am a smart ass, and he is not, so we spend a lot of quiet time on those occasions when we hang out. I catch my breath, which sounds like a sigh, which doesn't help. But words would only be worse.

So I headed home before Christmas, as I usually do. Don't get me wrong. It was a nice visit, just not falling on the one day where there are too many ghosts, most of them of my own making.

I spent a relatively peaceful time with my whole nuclear family with nary an atomic explosion, not even any radioactive fallout. Sure I am being melodramatic - and what I mostly avoided, which isn't such a bad thing. Oh, I also came home with a digital camera and a cool pair of sunglasses so I have my gifts in advance.

Snow plow king of the bunny hill

2007-12-16T21:51:00.001-06:00

Vacation chronicles I: A shaken waitress, a lost goose

2007-12-12T11:07:00.001-06:00

So we're at lunch today, a diner by the airport in Half Moon Bay, and it gets crowded. The waitress is a ditz but has a nice smile which makes up for the fact she is in way over her head.

She is waiting tables by herself, and she can't keep up. Two pain in the ass guys give her a hassle because they didn't get their coffee in a timely manner. They bust her chops and she busts right back, explaining the situation. After saying her piece, she comes to our table to offer my dad more coffee, her hand trembling as she pours it.

Then we go for a walk by along the hills by the ocean beach. My dad seems unsure of himself with his footing. As if he's afraid he's going to tumble to the sea, he walks on the plants instead of the path, breaking some sort of California law, I am sure.

My mom stays in the car.

Down below, the water is pretty calm, considering the wind and the season. The gulls are sunning themselves, nonchalantly walking about a few corpses of their brethren. There seems to be a lost Canada Goose among them - smart bird, I thought. Most of your kind have grown fat and stupid, choosing to stay along semi frozen rivers in the Midwest instead of seeking warmer weather.

There are supposed to be surfers galore, but my folks don't really know where, and I forgot to look it up online.

A shaken waitress, a misplaced goose, no signs of rubber suits.

The things you can see or not see living the retired life.

My folks spend their days between my brother's apartment along the Northern California coast and my sister and her family's digs near Lake Tahoe. They spend a lot of time reading crime novels and watching TV (CNN, Wheel of Fortune). They don't seem to have made any friends since moving out here 15 months ago.

It kind of makes me sad, for them and for me.

The self-pity meter starts spinning when I visit because I realize, as of now at least, I don't really have ANY retirement options.

Perhaps my niece and nephew will take pity on me. Or maybe I should start forming a commune of sorts for the legion of soloists just like me where we can look out for each other. Barren, we used to be called. Or bachelor farmers. Now it's just another lifestyle choice, though in my case it's not like I sat down and planned this as some cause or grand statement.

Some married folks look upon us single folks with envy, but sometimes it's like being that waitress and that goose.

Would you do Drew? - and other suggested headlines

2007-12-05T16:54:00.000-06:00

Drew Peterson has become what many Americans can only dream of being: a celebrity.

Sure, the former Bolingbrook cop who looks like the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz" may have killed two wives.

He’s sort of a real-life WWE wrestler, a probably bad guy who makes us feel superior about ourselvesf because: he looks guilty; has done shady things; and doesn’t seem to care for the unwritten rules, like the one that if you marry a women young enough to be your daughter, you are sort of creepy.

All his notoriety landed him on the cover of People magazine and on The Today Show. And part of the media has taken to calling him by his first name, just like they do for Cher, Britney, Paris, Brad and Angelina.

So here are some suggest headlines for upcoming stories about the southwest suburban cad.

A reader’s poll: Would you do Drew?

A tie-in with a soft drink company: Do the Drew!

The product tie-in if Peterson takes a ski trip: Mountain Drew

If Peterson flees to New Orleans: VooDrew

For the holidays: A Drew Christmas Without You

If a dog solves the case of his missing wife: Scooby Drew

If Peterson takes to singing Sinatra songs: Do bi do bi Drew

If he meets a new lover: You Drew something to me

If Peterson flips off the media: Drew you!

If he finds God: What would Jesus Drew?

When he is arrested: What did you Drew?

Play along at home. Any suggestions?

The Bend before Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T21:46:00.000-06:00

A black burglar style stocking cap, a black ski coat, and a $1,000 pair of sunglasses complimented the goatee nicely. I looked like a cold biker, which means I looked like an out of place Oakland Raiders fan.

"Why do you want to look so mean?" my cousin's 10-year-old daughter Blair asked.

"Because it's fun to be mean," I told her with a big grin. One day she will understand.

Besides, I've decided menacing (even if just to children) is the new sexy. And I need all the help I can get in that department, especially when hanging out with my cousin Kevin. I actually heard a grown woman call him gorgeous - even though he was drinking a freaking girlie peach bellini at the time. Maybe she meant fabulous.

Then again, I accessorized by borrowing Blair's long pink scarf. I should have called myself Good N Plenty - but I just thought of that now. We collectively decided if anyone mocked me I would hurl the ball right back in their court claiming I was showing support for breast cancer research.

That's the kind of fun I have with my cousins when I visit South Bend for a football weekend. The towns around Notre Dame become a playground for our bits.

Kevin is an optometrist, which is a job I would recommend as a side career for journalists in that you meet a lot of interesting people, people who can get him trendy Chrome Heart shades at deep discounts or know how to get good tickets to football games and access to the NBC VIP tent, for instance.

Once in that tent, I was shocked and appalled that the Ohio State - Michigan game was playing on the TVs. The game was on ABC. So, as Kevin gathered grilled meats from the spread, I went up to him and demanded that he tell corporate come Monday to let them know NBC programming was not prominently featured given that the network pretty much pays owns Notre Dame football (a deal I am sure they are glad they made, as everyone enjoys watching a team that should change its name to the Passive Aggressive Irish).

A couple people in line heard, and in that polite Midwestern way said to each other, "Well, it is an important game."

Which is more than we all could say for spending an afternoon watching the Irish play Duke, two 1-9 teams battle it out. But I am not complaining. It shouldn't always be about winning - I tell myself that a good many mornings as I head off to my job.

Nay, championship season or not, a day in South Bend is about the comedy, too - and a bad team supplies plenty of material, even if much of it involves way to easy fat jokes about head coach Charlie Weiss.

For instance, I was disappointed that the student section didn't change that ooooooooh kickoff chant to doooooooo-nut, then toss the doughy treats unto the sidelines at the feet of the portly coach. Or how about chanting One and Nine, One and Nine?

Couldn't someone have arranged geese to fly over in formation? And maybe at half time any player with a Jamaican 'do could have donated his hair to cancer patients in a Dreadlocks of Love promotion, as the band played Bob Marley.

The game itself lasted almost four hours, thanks to TV timeouts, penalty calls, and incomplete passes. It was tied at 0-0 well into the second quarter (which forebode a possible overtime) before ND broke the game open.

In celebration, and as it was my cousin's birthday, we headed out for dinner at a branch of a fancy Chicago steak place. Yes, even Indiana is becoming like Naperville.

Fancy sunglasses perched on my chrome dome (courtesy of Kevin getting discounted pairs from a sales rep), I noticed once again that way too many guys have adopted the shaved head thing, which is fine by me. It makes more sense than a comb-over and, as I have mentioned before, makes it easier for me should I decide to rob a bank. More suspects.

My other cousin Dan, a plastic/reconstructive surgeon, joined us for after dinner drinks. Yeah, I am the underachiever in the family. Also, not too many people are impressed when you try to explain your attempt at a writing career - but if you work on eyes and faces, in a looks-obsessed culture, people pay attention.

This is not necessarily a good thing. In some cases their ears perk up because they want their ears to perk up, and their chins and wrinkles to disappear. Some expect you to work on the barter system, trading vanity surgery or laser eye work, for, say, drinks and slabs of beef.

As Men's Health might put it, Kevin radiates menergy. If he were devious he could be a roving spokesmodel fro Dan. Pulling out a picture of me, he could tell potential clients that is what he looked like before Dan did his magic.

But they were both raised good Catholic boys. Instead they listened politely when two petite young bartenders asked about their looks. What do you say to such questions?

And it wasn't like these two were the sisters of the Elephant Man. Sure, they were hobbit sized. One sounded like she ingested helium. The other was sort of mousey. I don't think they wanted to know that. They wanted to know how to be more beautiful.

It almost made me want to gain weight and wear thick glasses.

To that end, after the steak place closed, we followed some staff to TGIFriday's where my thin cousin Dan ordered some Mexican food, while the bartenders came by again to inquire more about looks issues. In fact, one of them told us she wants to BE a plastic surgeon - Physician, heal thyself, I guess.

I know the ultimate way to end vanity discussions, but it's atomic. You tell a woman she looks like she's gained some weight and needs to go on a diet. With my mean sunglasses in the car, though, I didn't say that.

Instead we went to Linebackers, an archetype for college football party bar, which is to say it was packed with drunks, smelling of cigarettes and the hunt for desperate coed sex, and the floor was sticky with a day's worth of spilled booze. Oh, the kids all knew the words to every rap song played, and to Avril Lavigne tunes, too. How much is tuition to Notre Dame? Money well spent.

There was a $5 cover charge at 2 a.m. It got you the beer of your choice in a Big Gulp sized plastic cub, which turns out to be the best way to enjoy a Smithwick's.

Scoping the room, I noticed some portly middle aged guys who were in the NBC tent earlier in the day, which brought everything full circle.

And it's the full circle time of year, another 11 months gone in a nano, ending with my usual ritual of a couple college football games, then Thanksgiving dinner, a vacation out west, Christmas and figuring out how to spend New Year's Eve.

For several private reasons I won't really miss 2007. It started out with my car catching fire.

But a good Thanksgiving dinner with friends, a weekend in South Bend - those are wistful ways to get through another 365.

Photographer captures Naked Ambition

2007-11-13T21:46:00.000-06:00

When it comes to writing about the sex-ertainment industry, it’s hard not to use puns. See, I’ve made three already. Maybe you can count along while you read this.

For today’s topic is photographer Michael Grecco’s new book, Naked Ambition: An R-rated Look at an X-rated Industry (Rock Out Books). Ain’t it nice that it’s out just in time for Xmas?

On Thursday, November 15, Grecco will be at Studio 415, 415 West Huron Street, Chicago, giving an oral presentation at 6:30 p.m. followed by a book signing.

My copy is somewhere on a delivery truck, but the press release says the book takes readers to the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, where Grecco went backstage to shoot not-what-you-might-think style portraits of porn people including Jenna Jameson, Tera Patrick and the Hedgehog himself, Ron Jeremy. He also takes still life shots of porno props of all sorts.

Grecco said he first became intrigued by these goings-on in 2002 and wanted to document this Fellini-esque subculture. He returned in 2006, shooting close to 10,000 pictures, then returned in 2007 to finish up the project by taking portraits of couples involved in the business.

In one of those you couldn’t make this up scenarios, the porn convention happens at the same time, in the same place, as the Consumer Electronics Show. Insert your own geeks and freaks joke here. As Grecco put it, “It’s brilliant in a way.”

Grecco went into his work with preconceptions that he might meet a lot of broken people.

“What I learned was this is a segment of the regular population. The overriding thing for most of the women was that they do it for the adulation. And everyone involved enjoys sex.”

And some like Alexis Sky found her niche thanks to her naughty movie career. Sky is very tall and found it hard to get a date. With a Web site and movies, she found there is a niche market for her attributes.

The challenge for Grecco was to make this work serious fun but not necessarily salacious. A tough task given “most of the women wanted to take off their clothes and stick out their tongue,” which wasn’t what Grecco had in mind.

Grecco claimed that a plan to market his book was to have billboards with intriguing taglines and R-rated risqué images in Waco, Salt Lake and Peoria, but no one would sell his publisher space. He said the same was true in Chicago and Boston where they wanted prime space – as anyone who has driven down the interstate can tell you there are big billboards for adult bookstores and Hooters Girls to be seen.

Which reminds that porn is a big business. As Grecco pointed out, you can order it on your cable or satellite system now without anyone seeing you scurry out of a video store.

At the same time, the mere word “porn” polarizes people, Grecco said.

Of course, all you have to do is be online, like you are now, to know that porn – or whatever you like to call images of people having all sorts of sex – is readily available, and a whole bunch of it is free. In fact, there are gobs of homemade clips to be found on sites like Xtube. Regular people of all shapes, sizes and predilections (and no fear of losing their day jobs or having a neighbor or boss notice) can be seen in their birthday suits sharing bodily fluids, cavorting and contorting by themselves, with others or with unusual gift items. People can set up Web cameras and have virtual sex with complete strangers in far off places.

But Grecco doesn’t think this will do to the porn business what Craig’s List has done to newspapers.

“People still want to see glamorized situations,” he said.

We shall see. Some like it nice, some like it naughty. And some think, why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free.

Pie face: My winning streak continues

2007-11-12T16:53:00.000-06:00

I’m not proud of the fact that my only two discernible talents are having a mind filled with vast amounts of trivial information, mostly about pop culture, and the ability to eat really, really fast.

Sure, it depresses me that my chrome dome doesn’t hold fast facts about physics or accounting but can tell you that Bernie Worrell of P-Funk toured with TalkingHeads during David Byrne’s Big White Suit Days, AKA the "Stop Making Sense" tour, a movie of which was directed by Jonathan Demme, who went on to wind a Best Director Academy Award for "Silence of the Lambs."

And be careful if you invite me to a holiday meal. If I don’t watch my manners, I can be on my third plateful shortly after Grace has been said.

Still, I try to use my so-called skills for good – sort of like Superman, had he been granted these abilities instead of the better ones he has.

That’s to say, I don’t like entering competitions. With trivia, I feel like Rain Man. And it only reinforces my feeling that I should have done more with my potentially beautiful mind.

I did take part in a Pub Quiz shortly after 9-11, which my team won. We decided to give the $600 to a firefighters’ fund.

And last weekend, for the first time ever, I took part in an eating contest. The latent Catholic in me disapproves of such events. Gluttony, after all, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins – not to mention all those starving kids around the globe who go hungry while that Japanese guy snarfs down hot dogs.

But I don’t think the undernourished should be eating what I did Friday – a pie crust filled with uncooked canned cherries, topped with a big dollop of whipped cream.

The cause this time was a corporate challenge that raised money to help poor families in Elgin afford recreation programming. And the pie pigging was part of a series of games that also include two swim contests where some fat guys almost lost their suits, which would have been far more embarrassing, given You Tube, than having filling on your face.

Anyway, reluctant though I was, I turned out to be a natural. I even had a strategy.

We had to dump the alleged pie onto a plate and chow it down using our hands only to hold up the plate. So I buried my face into the mix, mushing it up with my forehead and nose to make it easier to swallow.

You don’t really want to chew anything, just lick and suck with all your heart. Yeah, if that reminds you of something naughty, well… Don’t worry. I don’t think I will be entering a contest for that anytime soon. Unless is for a good cause, of course.

Which is to say, I really got into it my mess, pausing only for a few seconds to remind myself: this wasn’t a frolic in the hay, that food is not my one true friend, and that this was all sort of gross.

Then I thought, the hell with it. If they wanted a display of piggishness, well, I am the guy. I slurped and made like a human Dirt Devil. I even licked the crumbs off the plastic table cloth.

I finished with a flourish, getting up from the table, slamming my plate down on it, then looking up madly with pinkish food product all over my face, even in my eyebrows. My Mom will be so proud, I thought.

I left the room to wash off, only to be congratulated by a couple portly gentlemen in awe of my dubious accomplishment.

This was a team thing, and I apparently gave my partner who had to eat a crust with Cookies and Cream filling a very substantial lead.

To my surprise (but not really) I didn’t get sick – despite that at lunch I had a rib eye sandwich, and about half a combo appetizer platter.

I even took part in a three-person, make as many basketball shots as you can contest, which we handily won, too.

And I had two plates of pasta afterward, just because I could.

This was like some sort of practice for Thanksgiving Dinner. Oddly, I don’t seem to have gained any weight over the weekend.

Of course, earlier this fall I was battling blood clots and a couple other things.

Now I am wondering what my lucky streak holds next. First it was bingo in New Orleans, then pie-eating in Elgin – a true champion, a real winner, eh?

When you're smiling...

2007-11-05T22:53:00.000-06:00

My pre-Halloween adventures in New Orleans

2007-10-31T13:33:00.000-05:00

My blood is too thick. Before I left for New Orleans it was too thin. So it goes with balancing warfarin in your system. One week you’re high, the next week you’re low.

Since I had to limit my drinking, perhaps the sludge is due to what I ate while on my short vacation: a couple po' boys, a foot-long sausage sandwich, a pound or so of tater tots, a bacon cheeseburger, gravy tater tots, an Italian Hoagie, New Orleans style French Toast, ham and eggs, a small pizza, a chili dog, tuna sandwich, more ham and eggs, barbecue brisket, ice cream, and, just because it exists, a deep fried burger.

That heart attack on a bun is served at Tuckers on Magazine, near the World War II Museum. Story goes, the bar was owned by the last official murder before Hurricane Katrina hit. The evidence and paperwork disappeared during the storm. Go figure.

Maybe it will turn up in the shotgun shack on Magazine I saw with junk piled out in front. It seemed abandoned and ready for a match but for the fact there was an old lady out in front trying to get a cat to go back inside.

Back at Tucker’s I ate the half-pound, stuffed with cheese delicacy after a two-hour walk on my last day in town down Magazine to Decatur to the French Quarter. And yes, the Fats Domino song, Walkin’ in New Orleans, was playing on the iPod in my head.

I intended to return to Second Skin there to see if anything was on sale, but, as you might expect for a leather shop, it didn’t open until noon. Before the weekend, me and my buddy Maitri went there to look for a whip for her lion tamer costume for the Halloween party at the Howlin’ Woof.

Second Skin had them – starting at $70. I learned it’s pretty damn expensive to be a leather boy. Shorts are $300. Harnesses for your well oiled chest are at least $150. And you should see the size of some of the apparatuses people stuff up their orifices.

So Maitri found an $11 model at a shop that sells naughty cakes, penis shaped candies, and an assortment of vibrators. I suppose you could use the vibrator to stir the batter, so to speak.

Coincidentally, we saw Joe Gannascoli, the actor who played gay mobster Vito Spatafore on The Sopranos, in front of a French Quarter cigar shop. Vito was outed after being spotted all leathered up at gay bar. Hmm.

We did see a guy at the party who might have bought his outfit at Second Skin. He seemed to be in his 40s, and I would describe him as not fat, but husky and hairy. Perhaps you will have luck finding him somewhere in the Craig’s List personals.

The thing is, nobody should go bare-assed in chaps and a cod piece, no matter how fat or skinny. It’s just not sanitary for yourself or for those who might sit where you sat, especially given the recent outbreak of staph infections – not to mention you have to be extra good at wiping.

Mr. Funny Pants was not as disturbing to me as a woman with a hookah taped to her head. She was dressed as Medusa and walking around offering pot hits to strangers - accompanied by an odd little man painted statue white who was really furry so it looked like some sort of moss was growing on him.

Full disclosure: I did wear a kilt to the Saturday bash. Since I was in the Big Sleazy I wore a pair of “body armor” shorts with boxers over them underneath. I know it breaks tradition, but nobody needs to see what I have to offer unless it is by mutual agreement. Still I was disappointed that only one person, a woman in a Boston Red Sox hat (which explains a lot), asked if I was shortless under the tartan.

I was supposed to be a blood clot – make that a bloody Scot, which is a long way to go for a joke. And in front of Fahy’s Saturday, I posed for a photo with a guy dressed as a Hassidic Jew, and my pal Derick who was Huey P Lion (the Kingfisher)(tamed by his wife), which does seem like a the start of a joke my dad would tell.

Derick had a good costume, good enough to excite a plushy or two – though I thought his mane looked way too Rod Stewart from the back.

Fahy’s is owned by a former Chicago cop, which made me feel at home. Over the weekend, middle aged women there found me attractive enough that two of them accosted me, one sitting on my lap and patting my bald head, the other grabbing my leg in a frisky way. It’s nice to feel wanted, even if it involves others wearing beer goggles and me being in a kilt.

Perhaps the ladies recognized me from my brush with fame Friday night. At the Voodoo Music Fest in City Park where I won bingo during the New Orleans Bingo Show set and was taped and probably will wind up another object of ridicule on You Tube. That’s to say, I signed a waiver.

The New Orleans Bingo Show is a Tom Waits sort of post modern burlesque carnival act, all done up in red and black and brought to you by Citi. The band has a cult following in its hometown. They actually play bingo during the set.

One dopey Asian guy from New Hampshire called “bingo” first, but he didn't have all the right numbers and an actor in a fez put a dunce cap on the kid’s confused head. So wouldn't you know it, I was the next chump. I tried to pass my card to a pal, who, instead called out that I had the right numbers.

Standing at the lip of the stage I reluctantly hoisted my 210 pounds up and into the action. I copped a Chicago attitude when they called out the numbers. I wanted to tell the short black host wearing white face that in my hometown when somebody says he wins, he wins. Know what I am saying?

I think he got the hint anyway, so I played along with the shtick, even put my aviator sunglasses on for effect. The guy in the fez came up to me with the dunce cap. I shot him a cop after a rough shift look, promptly took the prop away from him and tossed it upstage.

When they confirmed I had the right numbers, I took the sash and beads with which they adorned my Notre Dame hoodie and tossed them into the crowd. Then I threatened to remove my shirt. Knowing that the glare off my belly would blind half the crowd, I tactfully refrained.

Despite a dearth of booze in my system, when they asked me join the cast in a victory dance, I purposely moved like a drunk fat white man at a wedding reception, which is sort of like Dancing Bear on Captain Kangaroo meets the gopher from Caddy Shack with a little Fred Flintstone thrown in for good measure.

Channeling Homer Simpson, I gave a half moon (to go along with the full one outside the tent) as a tease, because pasty Irish ass can drive an audience to unnecessary adulation, if not riots.

Ask Bono. He’s an Irish ass.

What can I say? I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was residual stoopid from seeing Lez Zeppelin, the all girl cover band performing the cock rock classics to a crowd with silly dads and kids young enough to be Robert Plant's illegitimate grandchildren.

Either way, it was sort of fun being a slightly menacing doofus. And it balanced my good deed for the trip which was helping a teacher from New Hampshire check homework papers from her three 6th grade classes on the plane ride south.

The song goes that everybody plays the fool, but I played along on my terms, thank you, even getting a chance to do a spit take with actual Irish whisky which is the dream of every Celtic immigrant, really.

Speaking of immigrants (nice segue, eh?) on the way back to the airport, the cab driver was from Algeria by way of France, where he had been a teacher.

He gave it up because the students were way bigger jerks now than when he started. So he came to the states, was driving cross country truck routes for a chemical company and living with his family near Detroit. On a run about five years ago the semi broke down outside New Orleans, and he liked the area so much he told his wife to bring the kids south and took up cab driving.

Me, I boarded a plane back to Chicago where I am still spinning my wheels.

Falling in Autumn

2007-10-22T23:51:00.000-05:00

Sunday night I borrowed a kilt from the village president of the next town over from where I live. As I, for lack of a better word, am a journalist, I hope this doesn't violate some code of conduct. But is it really wrong for a writer to wear another man's clothes? That's what we writers do metaphorically anyway, right - and why you have to be careful of us. You never can tell if you will turn up in a story.

Beisdes, the kilt is for a trip to New Orleans where I will be attending a costume party, and for a guy who doesn't like to play dress up I've been doing a bit of it lately.It's bee than kind of year.

Speaking of, Saturday I saw stragglers from yet another early Halloween party for adults at a place called the R Bar, which would be a good name for a pirate hangout.

That some were dressed at if they were in the cast of Grease only confirmed my feeling that it is one of the scariest movies ever made - 30 year olds in high school, singing. I shudder.

This infatuation we've developed for Halloween - it's probably just another excuse for a party, to let loose from the stressed out lives we have, to have an alter ego for a night aside from the masks we have in our jobs and the screen names we set up on the Internet. And poor beer companies need all the help they can to sell suds to a temperate nation.

On the other hand Halloween is tied to the change of seasons, to the dying of the light. We don't really deal well with death, and in our culture it's drummed into us that we should all be ageless. A costume might fool the grim reaper for a night, but we already have ghosts of our own to deal with. The leaves fall, the frost comes. Global warming aside, there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Loss seems magnified this time of year. It is for me at least. I have an aunt dealing with a heart transplant. I talked to a friend tonight who lost a cousin in a car accident. Another friend's mom died. I might have come close to losing my life from pulmonary embolisms.

I have some friends who are having to change career paths in their 50s, with kids in school still. I probably lost as a friend someone I cared for a great deal because of issues going on in his life he won't deal with. To say anymore would betray what might be left of that friendship.

And Saturday night I took a my best friend at work out for the last time as my best friend from work. That's to say he has a new job - and that I work at a place where even taking a job in Gary, Indiana is a step up (sorry, easy joke). I have been at this place for 10 years now, and did a body count: I'm up to more than 70 people who've come and gone from the newsroom. It's like working at a minor league baseball team, or being on ER too long.

So we headed out to meet up with some friends he made from a story that touched him - and with some cops out for a pub crawl.

First we wound up at the home of a former police chief, where his old pals were sitting on the deck with a few of them playing guitars and singing songs. We were offered desserts, and who can turn down pumpkin mousse or pretzel balls or klotchkis?

Not this former 240-pounder and not my big lug buddy. Actually he got all effusive about the cream puffs and the pretzel balls, the latter of which he thinks he would like to try making, including versions infused with cheese.

Yeah, my 6' 3' 260 pound pal likes to bake. That's part of why I love him. Food is the way to my heart.

He also likes Yorkies and wound up talking to the hostess about her dogs - which was a side I had not really seen. There's just something intrinsically funny about a big boy with Elvis sideburns chatting about small dogs.

Yeah, my buddy knows he has a dork side. He's a photographer. They all do.

But having Scott as a friend is like having a St. Bernard, not a lap dog, show up to work with you. And I mean that as a compliment.

Why we were there was Scott had befriended the top cop's son working on a story about the son. That's one of the things about being in journalism - sure you're supposed to remain outside and objective, but you're also human and can't help being drawn to people. In this case, Scott came close to being having a second set of parents.

In Scott's assignment that led to this, Jake, the subject that became his friend used to be a caretaker for an old man who lived all by himself until the state decided he needed to be in a home. The old man, Doc, essentially lived most of his life alone, with few friends and no family. He was no day at the beach, or even a day along the shores of the Fox River.

Me being single and maybe past the eligible bachelor stage, stories about such people scare the crap out of me. I've had too much me-time in my life already, and thoughts of being alone in my so-called golden years have no appeal.

But Jake wound up bonding with Doc, and Scott was there documenting this for months, this unlikely love story, but a story that isn't mine to tell, at least not tonight, beyond what I have already said - and that it reminded me of Tuesday With Maurie without the syrup, a story about how bonds can form between unlikely pairs, between flawed people who somehow connect - which is 99.99 percent of us, including it appears, Mother Theresa, who had big doubts of her own.

But there is no super glue for human bonds. Time and death see to that, of course, but so does they way we live our busy lives where lonely is an occupational hazard along just about any career path.

Like I said, I've felt a lot of loss lately, and I am going to miss my friend, if just for the weekly lunches at Buffalo Wild Wings (an unofficial sponsor of this blog).

I'm hoping that we keep in touch, thinking that will probably happen, and will make the effort, but you never know.

On that last boys' night out, when I got home I looked up and couldn't believe how the sky was so clear you could see most of the seasonal constellations and stars. I was not impressed, depressed or pressed of any sort by my own insignificance at that moment. But I did think, how sobering, all that empty space on such a beautiful night.

My rockin' weekend on blood thinners

2007-10-15T16:45:00.000-05:00

I had a pretend rock and roll weekend, and my drug of choice, of course, was blood thinners.

Saturday night I went out for the first time since my stint in the hospital for blood clots on the lungs. That sort of sounds like a rock and roll disease, doesn’t it? It’s something potentially dangerous even if in my case the drama (luckily) was more Billy Joel than Bruce Springsteen.

Anyway, a pal invited me to a party in Batavia. It is thrown by the boss of one of his lady roomies every year, a rock star party, where the guests play dress-up.

Not a big dress up guy here, and all my leather is at the cleaners, so I went as opposite of outlandish as I could come up with – that’s to say, I was Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish, in flannel shirt with golf shirt under it, and carrying a golf club.

I wanted someone to say, Isn’t the guy from Hootie black? To which I would say, No way. I’ve heard his music.

It was probably a good thing I can’t have alcohol while on my meds as I would have probably would have said something stupid drinking gives you the cover to do.

See, there was a guy there who was pretending to be Neil Young, replete with his own case of harmonicas and guitar. He rode his bicycle to the party, which made him PeeWee Young.

There was a local politician who thought he looked like Joaquin Phoenix, which mean he: A) died his hair and B) fancied himself Johnny Cash.

There were quite a few women who shopped at Lover’s Lane or Frederick’s for their outfits, including one who gave a very groupie-like beaver shot, albeit one in pantyhose.

A group of five all made their faces pasty white - Zombies I guess, or just about any English New Wave act from 25 years ago.

One guy could have either been Joey Ramone or Cher. There were a couple Blues Brothers, a bouncer who looked like Ali G, a Rob Zombie, a Slash, a Rob Halford from Judas Priest, a Joe Perry from Aerosmith (or Captain from Captain and Tennille) a Billy Idol (I think) and even somebody who was passing himself off as that American Idol cheeseball Daughtry. Come on! If you are going to be a rock star, why lower your standards so?

The host confused me. In his leather pants and blouse, was he Robert Smith of the Cure, Jim Morrison, Yanni or Kenny G?

Winner of the best effort was certainly the fake Amy Winehouse, who even bothered to have fake tattoos applied with Sharpie by her roommate and based on the body art on Winehouse spotted on the Internet. A good effort, but for the fact this woman was not anorexic and way to clean and sober to be dear old Amy.

I adapted my outfit as the night went on, removing the cap, putting the club in the car, and buttoning just the top button of my flannel to become a member of the 90s rap outfit Cypress Hill. If I had been drinking and it was warmer, the shirts would have come off to a sleeveless T, I would have donned a do-rag and been Tupac. I was in a black and proud mood.

Come to think of it, I should have worn a pink Polo and a Rolex and been Kanye. Then I could have said stupid shit all night, but laid it down with cool beats and samples.

The following evening, I attended the official Chicago opening of Jersey Boys, a musical based on the life stories of the guys in the Four Seasons.

Now I’ve always found Frankie Valli’s voice kind of grating, that wannabe black falsetto unnerving. And I never considered them rock heroes or icons.

I will grant that I Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You is a cool song, but they should never be forgiven for Oh What a Night, one of the cheesiest disco records ever made. And Valli sang the theme song for Grease, one of the scariest movies of all time, with 30 year olds still in high school.

Still, the musical was an entertaining evening, with all the necessary Jersey references in place – the bad clothing, the chops-busting humor, the f-bombs, the mobsters, the tarts, the gambling, the Italian arguments, the pre-Springsteen working class angst. Joe Pesci even plays a role in the story.

And the work inspired me to start a project for which I hope to find backers – Keep On Lovin’ You – the REO Speedwagon musical. I’ve seen the VH1 Behind the Music and the drama is there, man: how guitar hero Gary Richrath hated Kevin Cronin for turning the band from a rockin’ bar act into millionaire power ballad wussies; how good old Gary wound up on the hootch; and that the band eventually wound up working cruise ships, in true Spinal Tap fashion.

You could even throw in a rivalry with Steve Perry and Journey for good measure, but I think I want to save their story for Don’t Stop Believin’, which would end with no one singing along to that song at the Chicago White Sox World Series Victory Rally in 2005, much to the dismay of Perry.

Now I’ve done it – made my self nostalgic for a simpler time. No not the early 80s, but two years ago when the Sox paraded their trophy throughout the city.

Now the Colorado Rockies are poised to play for baseball’s championship, and they are baseball’s first openly faith-based team. Maybe it’s balance. If AJ Pierzynski can get a ring, it’s only fair that the other side gets a chance.

Cheating death, eating rat poison

2007-10-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

So I went for a mall walk last night, feeling like a senior citizen as I tried to find one of those Medic Alert tags. I've been to Target, I've been to Walgreens, I've been a miner for a hear of gold. Oh, I tried Things Remembered on my jaunt, and they don't have them either.

I need one since I am on blood thinners and, until further notice, am a de facto hemophiliac. I am taking warfarin, a drug I read was once used as rat poison. No wonder I've been craving cheese and wanting to crawl through tight spaces.

It's weird to joke about this, as the worst I felt was what I imagine it's like to have asthma - or to have Brian Urlacher squeeze your lungs. But friends of mine have told me about people who have died from pulmonary embolisms, and there is ample proof of this on the Internet.

So right now I feel lucky and stupid at the same time. The stupid part comes from not going to the doctor sooner and for flying home, which actually could have killed me. Google "pulmonary embolism" (blood clots that decide to to travel from the legs or elsewhere, through the heart and to the lungs) and you'll find that they can be caused by sitting in the same, cramped position for several hours, say, like flying on a modern commercial airliner, where the seats and spacing are designed for the comfort of thin, 10-year-old girls, not beefy Midwesterners.

The doctors still aren't totally sure what caused me to have four such clots, two a couple weeks before the bad ones, the latter ones on my trip to Tahoe. My legs, pelvis, lungs, and even a genetic test have all been negative. I like to think, too, that exercise may have helped keep me from winding up in a morgue, but I am not sure what, if anything, I did that led to what happened.

Being raised Catholic, I do think it must be something I did, that I must have some responsibility for my ailment. But I don't smoke, have lost weight, work out and my only bad habit really is having more than two or three beers when I go out on a weekend. That has to end now, as the warfarin I am on is processed by the liver, as is booze and is Tylenol, the only pain killer I can take now. So now I am the designated driver by default, I guess.

I probably should have had more water on the plane and stretched more, but reading stories people in far better shape then me have had blood clots form on their lungs. A cousin of a friend recently died in her apartment from one, and she was a marathon runner.

The trick now is how to live within restrictions while at the same time having been given the lesson that life can end at any moment. How do you balance caution with savoring moments?

Already I have bowed out of going to meet friends at bars on two occasions, once to watch a football game, once to see a Celtic rock band. I am still sort of tired, not quite sure I want to be around smokers, and haven't had a beer in two weeks.

One nice thing, though, is a lot of buddies called or e-mailed. Not that I am going to parlay this "popularity" into a run for office, but it is a Mr. Rogers-like feeling to find out you how good your friends really are, that you matter to people. It makes me want to put on a cardigan and take a trolley to the land of make believe - or maybe that is a side effect of the drug.

I do feel hungry a lot, have a bit of cottonmouth, and have to shave with an electric razor. I bought a $70 one, which seems to take forever to do its job. Why anyone would willingly use of of these things is beyond me.

I did try to convince my doctor to give me a note claiming that my medication causes me to swear without control, but she wouldn't go for it. That could have come in handy while readjusting to the daily routine, the same old things.

Instead, I'm being even more of a smart ass lately, as things just seem slightly more absurd right now, from taking rat poison, to having that dulled sense of taste, to having my work computer writing system down for three days, to reading that metrosexuality has been replaced by menergy in the world of male fashion.

Menergy sounds like the name of a gay bar, but some idiot New York writer uses the term to mean guys who are guys, as guyish guys with facial hair, like George Clooney with a beard, are in right now, while guys who gel too much and shop at Abercrombie & Fitch are out, so to speak.

People actually care about stuff like that? What the...

I must be getting better.

Do blood clots count as vacation souvenirs?

2007-10-03T21:31:00.000-05:00

I need someone to take my urine. And could you bring some wipes, please?

Ah, the things you hear at dinner time when you're tethered to a blood thinning drip waiting for the clots on your lungs to clear up or do whatever it is clots do when they get medicated.

I can't complain. The guy next to me has the unenviable combo of cancer AND heart disease. He's heading to the Mayo Clinic as soon as doctors think he is ready to roll.

Me, my trouble began, like a lot of people's troubles, with a vacation.

A couple weeks before I noticed a shortness of breath. And though I am not quite the cuddly lard ass I once was, I haven't been doing as much aerobic exercise as I should have been during the past summer.

So I shrugged it off to being slightly out of shape and all that fun stuff that accompanies getting older.

Then I went to Lake Tahoe to visit family. I left Chicago, it was 85 or so. On the way from Reno to the house, it flurried. Once it cleared, my twin niece and nephew wanted me to play with them on their backyard trampoline, quite possibly for the chance to see me fall on my face. And nothing is funnier at 9 than adults being clowns. It's how those Home Alone movies made all that money.

Only thing is, in less than two minutes I was winded, which isn't quite as entertaining as falling down and twisting an ankle.

No big deal, I thought. It's cold. I'm tired. I had beer. And I am a wuss.

Next day, though, the breathing thing is still an issue. Climbing stairs is an ordeal. And if you have ever been among the upper demographics of Lake Tahoe, let's just say the wooden palaces don't exactly meet Americans With Disabilities Standards for accessibility. It's all so mountain, that climbing is part of the culture, even home life.

As I was getting a cold, thanks to the OSHA violation of an office where I work, I thought this was just part of that. And there is Altitude Sickness, which makes some people light headed or breathing like porn stars in heat when they travel to places where the oxygen is thinner than a Hollywood actress. It didn't help that it was winter cold up there at night already. Or that my sister and her husband keep their spacious home at a temperature perfect for serving better wines and beers.

In hindsight, I should have called a doctor out there or gone to an ER. Then again, I am in an HMO. I could have eventually wound up in a Michael Moore movie, I thought.

Besides, it probably was ONLY bronchitis or pneumonia. And I was on a mission, invited to attend a 2-day bash at "Burly Bear's Decadent Den", which sounds like a name for a woodsy gay bar but in reality is a compound of sorts being built in a middle of nowhere by a jovial rich guy from Southern California.

It's 17 miles outside of Truckee, California, off a timberline road, which serves as a cross country and snow mobile trail in winter. Burly Bear's property can only be accessed by a Sno Cat certain times of the year, so the house he is building has a garage big enough to hold what essentially is a modified truck.

The house is going up in Coppins Meadow on a marsh. There is a small cabin the prior owner had. There is no cell phone reception. The satellite phone wasn't working too well either.

This is not Gatsby's kind of rich. Or Puff Daddy's. This is the work of West Coast types who like 70s music a lot and doing outdoor activities that eventually give them all arthritis. I heard The Best of Lynyrd Skynrd and Steve Miller Band four times each they afternoon I was on site.

Either way, it's still one of those "I am doing this because I can" things the wealthy do. Which begs the question. If you had the bucks, what would you do just because you could? Doing good doesn't count in this game. Neither does opening a bed and breakfast. Too much work.

I contemplated like a gold-bellied Buddha as I dazed off on a leather sofa in a propane heated tent, the sun beating down on it on the chilly afternoon. The furniture was brought up from one of the Burly Bear family's recently sold homes. They found migrant workers to help unload it in the middle of nowhere.

My nap gave me time to reflect on the night before, too, Part One of the Bash, a Rat Pack-themed night at the Cal-Neva Resort that Frank Sinatra once ran as his "because I can" kind of place.

We were all supposed to dress up like it was 1957, since the guest of honor was turning 50. I hate playing dress up but obliged, finding some wing tips, a pork pie hat and a gangster style golf shirt. I didn't really mind the look. Better that than say 1977 or 1982. But at least a quarter of the guests didn't oblige. I say, if you agree to go to a dress-up party, you play by the rules. You don't wear a freaking flannel shirt and boot cut jeans, just because you have our boarder dude cred to uphold with your other young friends who should NOT listen to the Grateful Dead again, EVER! Kapish?

I guess I was in a Sinatra mood.

Back to our story. The Cal-Neva resort reminds me of Floyd's, this old bar in the town where I live that gave way to a Chase, Jamba Juice, Chinese restaurant and a US Cellular outlet - at least until any or all of the above are gobbled up by AT& T.

Floyd's, I am sure wanted to be the Cal-Neva of Chicago's Northwest suburbs, back in its glory days, which were past those of of Frank Sinatra, the Kennedy Boys and Marilyn Monroe, but when people of a certain aged still wished those were the days.

That unholy trio is at the mythological core of a tour that was part of the night's festivities, a tour given several times over with slight variations by a guide who could pass for the wispy son of Vincent Price or the brother of Fred Schneider of the B-52s. Remember him? "When you see a big sign on the side of the road...love shack baby."

Well Fred's bro showed us some love shacks, three small cabins near the Lake Tahoe shore which made you realize that celebritries were shrimps 50 some years ago, and that big egos didn't always demand big quarters. We got to visit cabin 5, which apparently was where SInatra slept in a room he insisted be painted orange to match his orange luggage (and I am not making that up, though the guide might have been). The Kennedys took turns using Cabin 4. And they all took turns visiting Cabin 5, which is where Marilyn Monroe and her orbs frequented.

The guide claimed that the orbs are still with us, and if you remember Monroe that would be hard to dispute. Of course, since he didn't seem to have any interest in breasts, the orbs to which he referred were those super spooky ghoslty kind like you see on a Scooby Doo episode. Orbs apparently ruin film and even digital images of anyone shooting in Monroe's old haunt.

Thinking back, maybe I got an orb on my lung. I will have to ask the doctors.

Anyway, we also got to visit the tunnel system under the resort, which allowed unnoticed nocturnal visits of all sorts, and a way for mobsters to ditch out if the feds showed up. What a pian in the ass it must be to be a goombah - running like a rat through tunnels, And they had to sit off the catwalk in the theater from which they would make their way to a helipad on the roof (cuz nobody is going to spot a helicopter). And they had to put up with Sinatra and his orange luggage. And help drag drunk, passed out Dean Martin out of an upstairs dressing room on an unhinged door.

Yeah, Fred's brother had some doozies. He saved his most dramatic for last, telling us of a BBC documentary being taped in the resort's theater, where spirits told a psychic in the language of the Washoe Indians, "Whitey, get your pale asses off our sacred land." I took this to mean that someone saw Poltergeist.

If that weren't enough to make you crap your flat front trousers, there was the time an accountant working late one night felt an eerie presence. So he takes a walk to the stage and feels a spirit pass through him, which sounds pretty kinky by CPA standards. Luckily the guy had his cell cam with him and snapped off some photos.

Apparently is wasn't a spirit but a disease of some sort as the guy died a few days later. But Vincent Junior had the photographic evidence to show us, blurry photos of a marshmallowy Sasquatch, who may have been upset after once hearing the night's entertainment, the Dean-aholics, a tribute band featuring a faux Dean Martin who looked nothing like Dean, a Sinatra who looked like the son of the son of Frank Sinatra, Jr. and who sang that many generations out of phase with the music, a Sammy Davis who looked like Nipsey Russell or Huggy Bear, and a woman in a cocktail dress, replete with a giant martini olive on her cleavage.

Still shaking from all of this (or was it that the place is damn drafty and that it snowed), after the tour, a woman notice a black and white photo of cheesy comic Joey Bishop and started telling everyone who would listen (AKA me) the Bishop forced her into her first French kiss. She was in her teens at show in Vegas with her parents. Bishop spotted her, came over to the table and puts his tongue in her mouth. Google photos of Joey Bishop. Now go to the bathroom and vomit.

Keeping with the fright night theme, a guy at the party's bar told of what happened on his drive up from Southern California. He noticed an odd noise coming from his wheel well somewhere near Sacramento, pulled over, checked his tires and learned he and his family drove all the way with just one lug nut holding on one of the tires and the nuts on the others stripped.

Then, in the middle of this tale, he looks at my spangly-dressed sister and goes, "My God! You're beautiful!"

Which brings us back to me napping at the compound. I planned to mill about and collect stories, like frozen butterflies. I met a guy whom I later learned made his multi-millions inventing the glare screen for computers. He was all excited and wanted to bring in in more earth moving equipment, because that's his rich guy "because I can" thing I guessed - and to turn the marsh into a lake.

The caterers were called Twin Peaks. There were dirt bikers and theater people and kids with really shitty long haircuts. A really quiet guy mentioned he just got out of the Marines and had a tour of duty in Iraq. There were theater people who liked the aforementioned 70s music, for which I derided them.

Then the caterers finally got around to serving a myriad course dinner in a propane heated tent. Then it got really fucking cold. I swear because that happens when you try to make your way to the bathroom in the frost-breath air. Those are the words that crystalize the moment.

And I was leaning up against a tree like a wounded puppy when one of the prettiest women at the soiree, one of those wholesome, blonde, big eyed, baby-faced mom types, came up and offered breathing lessons. Mr. Smart Ass here couldn't find anything funny to say. Hyperventilating doesn't lend itself to one-liners, but a sort of vague embarassment.

I drove back to my sister's house, pretty much almost proving my own point about one of the big drawbacks of hanging out at a place where there is no communication available with the outside world. Unless, of course, the guy with the helicopter the next lot over happened to be home.

Anyway, that's when I was pretty much sure this might be more than a really bad cold, maybe even a rare fungus picked up on flights filled with people wearing no socks, flip flops and tank tops, or having no sense of personal space.

The lungs didn't work any better at sea level, as we drove to the Bay Area in a rented RV on Sunday so the kids could spring break with Mom and Dad in Big Sur. I flew home - in West Coast family tradition just getting to the gate in time for boarding (which is really fun when wheezing).

Tuesday I headed to the doctor, got some tests (apparently including one to see how much of The Maury Povich Show you can tolerate while waiting for lab results), and wound up being told not to leave, to check into the health hotel.

I should this print this out, because I've been asked the same questions over and over. It's like they are trying to see if I change my story, that I will break down and confess to smoking 27 packs of cigarettes a day while working behind a desk in a garage.

You'd think they would all have Macs for Docs or some sort of PDA by now and could drill beyond the basics like on the cool med shows, trying to outdo each other like on House or to screw each other like on Grey's Anatomy.

Instead, a woman who said she was my case manager woke me up before 8 a.m. today to ask if I lived independently and if I used a cane. That's all she wanted to know.

I'm hoping she had the wrong room. Do I look that old? Could being single and walking on my own be the keys to understanding my ailment, the cause of blood clots, two for each lung, a set of big new ones, a tiny set of old ones?

Stay tuned.

Leaving on a jet plane (and donn't we all miss John Denver?)

2007-09-24T20:44:00.000-05:00

So here I am trying to use my new Mac Book on a booked solid Southwest Airlines flight to Reno. Good thing I lost 30 pounds as I need the extra space so that my arms can at least approximate the dexterity of an alligator.

I am going there in part to attend a 50th birthday party of a friend of my brother in law who has a lot of money - enough cash to be building a log cabin on a small lake near Lake Tahoe that you have to take an Arctic Cat to in winter and an ATV of some sort in summer.

He wanted his privacy. Privacy has never really been as issue for me. People pretty much leave me alone unless I call them. Repeatedly is some cases.

The party will be catered, which seems funny to me - funny until it turns out that one of the servers is a SERIAL KILLER.

Hey, I've seen the movies. Good thing the guests are all are way past our teens. I just hope a black guy was not invited - for his own good. And nobody should fornicate with somebody they just met, which shouldn't be an issue for me.

Part of the party involves an evening at the Cal-Neva, where Sinatra and Roseanne Barr hung out , but not at the same time. So I practiced last night by heading to Dave and Buster's where a buddy had his wife's birthday party.

I came down with adult ADHD just visiting. In case you haven't gone, D & B's (as the faux AC/DC t-shirt available for umpteen redemption coupons calls it) is a sort of kiddie Vegas, a place some folks feel comfortable bringing their kids to play video games, games of chance and basketball pop a shot in return for winning the aforementioned coupons and trading them in for the valuable prizes like the aforementioned black shirt.

It is very noisy, people are smoking and drinking, but it is well worth keeping junior up past his bedtime if you can win disco balls and toy poodle purses.

They don't count your coupons when you turn them in - they weigh them. It's nice to see math at work, but I wonder if cheaters have ever tried to slightly wet the tickets in order to get a better prize, say an Elvis souvenir.

The two most out of place people: an old woman at the bar who looked like Bette Davis, smoking a cigarette, sipping a mixed drink; and a guy who looked like Harry Dean Stanton but skinnier, which is to say clinically dead.

Scarier still: A guy who kept playing pop a shot, each toss a perfect swish, his only enemy the clock. There was no joy on his face as the machine spit out tickest, just the look of a man on a mission, sort of like that operant conditioned chicken from the Psych 101 video, but in a sleeveless t-shirt.

I played that game until he showed up, because, quite frankly, it was uncomfortable being near him in the way you don't want to be working out next to the guy at the gym who grunts.

While I had fun, I had to drag my ass out of bed in the morning for my uncle's, where I left my car, and then Midway Airport.

Good thing I stuffed my suitcases the day before. I pack worse than a teenage girl from Napervillle. Let's just say it's a good thing I don't have a need for hair care products. And that unlike a pal of mine I didn't have to remember the Clinique skin and sun products, No clerk is that cute.

But it's fall, I am going to the mountains and that means I need a coat, sweatshirts, a flannel, a couple pairs of shoes, shorts, a swimsuit, workout clothes, enough underwear for a week, t-shirts, socks, a hat. It adds up.

And I had to shower, and exfoliate, and check the locks, and check e-mail, and surf the Internet, and double check what I packed, and load the car, and make sure I had all the cords I need to recharge batteries, and before you know it the time is 10 a.m.

Not so bad but that there was construction on Sunday morning. Rather, there was a stretch along I-355 down to one lane for a couple miles as a crew of two removed barricades. Sometimes I think they just do this to screw with people, making them late for church, much less a flight.

For therapy I pounded on the interior roof of my Camry and cursed out the State of Illinois and its corrupt bureaucracy. Oh, I also got pissed at some asshole who rode my ass, then passed me. So I followed him until my speedometer hit 110 mph. I am not making that up. This jerk was going 120, easy, and I quickly pulled back.

I was in a dark, Irish, Eugene O'Neill kind of mood by the time I got to my uncle's house.

I finally relaxed at the airport bar where the waitress swore matter of factly, like a Springer guest but without the anger. She has to card everybody, which has allowed her to develop the skill of guessing everyone's age. I told her to tell people she needed to see ID for Homeland Security purposes. If someone's on a watch list, say you are out of vodka then head to the back and call for help.

I struck up a conversation with an HR Block guy from Tampa via New Jersey who was heading to Kansas City for a training session. My bad morning paled next to his - sporting a scratched cheek and bruised ribs, he had been is a car accident on the way to the airport, missed his flight, and was stuck in Chicago for an hour or so waiting for a connection. Plus, he's a New York Jets fan, which is painful in its own right.

Then I had to wait in one of those Southwest holding lines like a 210 pound cow and got one of the last sets on the plane. Why can't they just give out beepers like at Bennigan's and page you to get on board?

Office party rules so Monday is less stressful

2007-09-18T20:48:00.000-05:00

With apologies to Bill Maher, here are some rules to follow if you get decide to attend a work-related party.

Always leave yourself an out. If you’re married, here’s where having kids comes in handy. Otherwise say you have church in the morning. Actually go and thank God for being an excuse.

Always lock the bathroom door behind you.

Dress appropriately for you age, height and weight, even if it is a costume party.

Be wary of parties with themes. Themes sometimes mean you will be asked to by product you will never use, might have to wear a costume, or be forced to sing karaoke.

Karaoke is only funny when everyone is really drunk. And if you decide to sing it means it’s time to look for a ride home, especially if you sing Wind Beneath My Wings.

If you are serving tacos, make sure the person bringing the taco shells lives closer than 45 minutes away. Assign the foods by distance to your door.

It is not a good idea to ask a coworker his or her sexual preference or with whom he or she is having sex.

If the above happens, you are allowed to say you are now into alpacas. They are trendier than sheep.

If no one else gets in the pool, stay out of the pool.

Hang out with people you don’t know and may never see again. It’s safer. Besides, they haven’t heard your stories and jokes.

If asked who the hottest woman in the office is, do not, REPEAT, do not answer. Of course, that means you might be asked if you are gay. See above.

Do not show off you tattoos or piercings.

Tequila doesn’t count as a dish to bring.

Do no show off your photos and music collection. Leave the iPod or iPhone at home.

Remember that cell phones have video cameras. You can wind up on You Tube. Or X-Tube Which reminds: cell phones with cameras should be checked at the door.

Board games should only be played if your parents are at the party.

Don’t serve red wine if you have a beige carpet - or any food that may come back up in pretty colors.

Never bring a book to a party. Or a pornographic magazine.

As the Romans put it, Semper Ubi Sub Ubi.

When all else fails, just shut up, eat, then go home.

9-11: What it really means to never forget

2007-09-11T04:07:00.000-05:00

Joan King reluctantly made her way to the footbridge, not far from her home’s back door, to have her picture taken.

“I don’t want this to be about me,” she said, as she slowly walked toward the golf course.

But she let the amiable if tattooed young woman from the newspaper talk her into posing. As if all of this all wasn't uncomfortable enough, Joan took a fall along the path., drawing the attention and aid of by some concerned golfers.

Still, Joan brushed herself off and kept her word.

This, after all, was about her son, Andrew. And the bridge on the Geneva Golf Club course, built to look like the fabled one the 18th hole at St. Andrew's in Scotland, was designed by Joan's ex-husband. It's there in memory of Andrew.

The last time Joan saw her handsome son was when he dropped her off at the airport in Philadelphia. Inside the terminal, he joked about buying her a crown, one of those cardboard ones from a fast-food restaurant.

"I should have taken him up on the offer," said King.

That was six unsettling years ago.

Andrew King turned 42 the summer of 2001. He had just made partner at with Cantor Fitzgerald, which had its headquaters in the World Trade Center. Then came September 11. That's all you have to say anymore. And the sad fact of the matter is that as someone working on Wall Street, King was one of the intended targets, a symbol reduced to rubble for the sake of somebody's cause.

Life had been pretty damn good for King, a fair-haired guy with Kennedy-like looks. He grew up in upscale St. Charles, Illinois, prepped at Elgin Academy, a school for rich kids, albeit one in a blue collar neighborhood. He graduated from North Carolina and was there close to the time Michael Jordan played basketball.

Back then Andrew had a reputation as a free spirit, and "he's up in a tree in his yearbook picture. The kids called him Sky King," said Fred Fletcher, who coached Andrew on the tennis team and who was his math teacher back in high school.

King, was indeed the prom king for the Class of 1977: "He liked to have a good time. But he would follow through with things he promised to do, which is rare for a teenager," said Carolyn Selke. Selke is a mother and certified public accountant now in the Chicago suburbs and was the prom queen.

Andrew came back to the Chicago area after college and landed a job at the Board of Trade. Like many young men, Andrew wanted to be a pro athlete at one point, recalled Joan, whose son loved golf and was "a gorgeous skier He learned at a resort his father, Wesley, an architect, designed up in Michigan."

A ski trip was how Andrew met his wife. Back in 1985, Andrew and his buddy spotted a group of women, also from Chicago, getting into a limousine at the Denver airport. The guys managed to talk their way into the vehicle, and Andrew hit it off with Judy, who would become his bride and the mother of his three children.

The couple wound up in Philadelphia, then in Princeton, N.J., and Andrew landed a job in New York City. He was in the World Trade Center the first time terrorists attacked the building and tried to make his way downstairs with the golf clubs he had in his office, Joan recalled.

As if that weren't proof he was crazy about the game, in the summer of 2000 Andrew took his family and friends on a trip to the legendary Old St. Andrew's in Scotland.

Sure, he was leading a charmed life. But like many people these days, he kept really long hours,, waking up around 5:30 a.m. every working day to head into the city, where he would often stay well into the night, entertaining clients.

"He would get a car to take him home, and he would call during his ride. Sometimes we would talk for a half-hour or so," said Joan.

Andrew kept lots of friends, and her son's memorial service out East drew more than 1,000 people, she recalled.

“He was a leader,” Joan said, "but he did have a bad habit of always being late. People would start asking, 'Where is
Andrew?' But when he would walk in the door, everything would be alright."

Six years on, alright is a relative term.

"You have to live through it. The blow softens as time goes by, but I miss him every day. It's been difficult, but you go
with what's been given you. I'm hanging in there," said Joan.

And sometimes, when the mood hits, when the memories flood, "I sit on thethe bridge to have a visit with my son," said Joan.

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

2007-09-03T22:17:00.000-05:00

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.

Roller coasting and beer drinking

2007-08-27T23:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wish I had kids of my own, some young coconspirators whom I could love, laugh with and take on adventures.

Then I visited the Six Flags amusement park. My company gave us free tickets and parking passes, which is the equivalent of a day’ s salary for some of my coworkers. Other companies there had free lunches and T-shirts for their people, but not having to wear a T-shirt for my bosses is not a bad tradeoff for less sway.

Still, some of these folks got a thing called flash pass for the rides from their firms. We wound up buying one for $70 total for three people.

The pass essentially allows you, because you are willing to pay more money, not to have to wait in line. You are a cutter because you have the coin. Instead of standing around for more than an hour, we could walk right up, reserve a spot and spend about 15 minutes to get on certain rides.

I know this isn’t a that new a deal. I guess, like many borderline evil things, Disney started it.

And I am not complaining. It was nice for an afternoon to feel like I was from Naperville. The less time standing in the summer’s worth of sweaty tunnel to the Batman ride the better.

(And how more obvious can it be that Batman and Superman are gay! I mean, in the Batcave they played techno music and it looks like a dungeon. And for Superman, you don’t ride it like you are flying - you are in a doggy-style position, as if you want to sniff an ass in front of you, or ... And that’s not to mention the giant Spider-Man plushy one guy was carrying around on his back as it whispered sweet nothing in his ears.)

But it’s already more than $50 a ticket (unless you have some discount coupon or other) to get into the place. Then, if you don’t want to walk back to your car, it’s $10 for a bag of popcorn and an lemonade. A foot long hot dog was $9.

You need to be an accountant, or married to one, or both, to afford things anymore, especially if you have kids.

The day before the Six Flags trip I went to a Chicago Beer Society picnic, where for $10 I could sample about 20 craft beers, and taste chili, ribs, salsa and desserts entered in a contest.

There even were middle aged white people dancing, which always is amusing.

And the DJ, as if he knew I was there, played BB King’s The Thrill is Gone, which pretty much captures a mood I know all too well this summer for reasons that for now at least remain my own. I relate to the string section, that R & B sadness countering the lyrics about moving on.

A perfect song for the event, because such moments are why the Irish invented beer. Don’t tell me it wasn’t the Irish. If they didn’t they thought about it at least.

Anyway, I’m thinking about joining the group, but am afraid what it might do to my liver. But I met some friendly fat guys who could ski, and ski well, and drink, which inspired me, that if I put my mind to it, and had enough stout in me, I too could glide down a mountain.
And that’s the true beauty of beer.

Irish guys with Irish eyes

2007-08-21T15:03:00.000-05:00

Sunday it was still rainy and the sky the perfect shade of gray for getting into an accident with a car of that color driven by someone who refuses to turn on his lights.

Despite this, and that I called a half dozen people who had other plans, I drove up to Milwaukee by myself to attend the Irish Fest. Sometimes you have to go it alone, though I am trying to get out of what for me is a bad habit.

Actually, my Irish pals the Clarkes had their booth o’ jewelry set up at the biggest show of its sort on this continent – when the weather isn’t like a day in winter along the Irish Sea.

They are my babysitters and I am their biggest baby – minus the cell phone habits of their teenagers and already potty trained, to boot.

Speaking of babies, what I noticed being among those from the same gene pool is that quite a few Irish guys have baby faces with big bright eyes. That’s to say, there were dozens who looked like the photo my folks gave me of me when I was a toddler – albeit most of them 210 or so pounds heavier.

The look runs a spectrum from a couple forms – the ruddy chubby cheeks, button nose with the round pale blue or green eyes or the just a tad less round face, longer schnozz with deeper set eyes.

Do we need to thank the conquering Danes for this? Who knows?

What advantage this gives us among humans is a look Mommies love that prevents us from being clubbed to death for the mischief we cause. It’s more honest, too – it says, yes, we are overgrown, tubby, immature, crying, looking for attention.

Just look at the faces God gave us. Hug us. Love us. Maybe even spank us. But remember to put us to sleep on our bellies just in case we have tummy aches from too much air in our bottles.

This is the wide open look that helped the Irish conquer America.

The latter of the two types is a look that can seem like a rodent lying in wait to set off a car bomb or seem as imposing as actor Brian Dennehy.

These are the sadder eyes of lost puppies, don’t mess with me eyes, lost in drink eyes, eyes that have seen hopeless romances or useless violence or any combination thereof, eyes that were once on baby faces furrowed by wondering too often how fast time passes.

There could be no Irish theater without these eyes, no Irish music. No Celtic soul.

Until I am heavyset again (which science has proven will occur by having heavy friends) I think my own face is closer to the latter type. Or maybe an orc from Lord of the Rings.

Either way, when you’re feeling lonely, it’s nice know you are part of a tradition milling about before you, drinking beer, wearing Notre Dame hats and buying ceramic jack o lanterns with shamrock shaped eyes.

And I wonder what the guy I talked to later that night looked like. I lost a credit card sometime between buying a hat Saturday at the air show and buying a hat Sunday in Milwaukee.

So I phoned the call center when I got home, a call that no doubt went to India. The very helpful lad who tried to sell me identity theft insurance: He said his name was Alec McGhee.

Wet Top Guns: An afternoon at the Chicago Air and Water Show

2007-08-21T11:31:00.000-05:00

Illinois apparently has a monsoon season now – or maybe God is just crying mad at the politicians in the state for all their posturing about the budget. Or maybe the governor’s hair care products have done something funky to the atmosphere.

Either way, August has been as dreary as November but with mold and mosquitoes.

To look on the bright side (ouch), a cloudy sky makes for a better backdrop for an Air and Water Show. Saturday I went to the huge one along Chicago’s lakefront, an event I had never attended. When I hear 1 million people are somewhere I tend not to want to be among them.

But, in my efforts to change my mopish ways, I headed down with my new pal Tom and met his pals for a day at the soggy beach. Tom knew what he was doing: We left early enough, but not too early as I had been out drinking the night before, and had no traffic to deal with. And he knew a parking deal which I will keep a secret.

All I will say is it was just $12 and maybe a half mile walk, while if you wanted to park close – assuming space was left – the fee was $30.

We were off Fullerton, a good distance north of the main staging area, but it was a great place to see the planes. That is, there were trees and a building for cover during the intermittent showers sprinkling between the stunts.

I readily admit to knowing little about aircraft. My guy hobbies are music and sports. But it almost made me want to rent Top Gun. Almost.

Even the most vegan of liberals has to admit there is something cool about watching planes buzz above you performing seemingly death-defying stunts, running toward each other, flying straight up and dropping into a spin and making vapor trail hearts because, after all, there is a romance to flying. And I stole that line from the PA announcer.

Another radio voice would not let anyone forget how cool it was to jump out of a plane with a military unit, the Golden Knights. It almost made you wish a stiff wind would have drifted him over to Michigan.

Watching high tech military planes seemingly defy the laws of physics raises some interesting questions.

First, the people who design the planes actually do know the laws of physics, which seem like magic to the rest of us. I just throw words on a page and hope some stick.

Second, think of the long, tedious work that must go into creating such beasts and the hours of training over and over on maneuvers it takes to fly them.

Things that look effortless are not. We are programmed to forget that, to think it is all glamour, not hard work. There is grunt work behind everything well done.

Another thing: it is amazing the things these planes can do, flying straight up, seemingly stopping on a dime and heading off on a right angle, or heading out past the speed of sound.

Yet, with all this military might, here we are bogged down in Iraq. If we really were the Great Satan we would have just gone with these killing machines and carved out new boundaries and wiped out masses of people and have been done with it.

Humans that we are, we stumble and bumble, with virtual kings of sumbling and bumbling in charge at the moment. There is no technology that can eradicate the irrationality of the species.

Maybe they should be doing variations of the stunt that the Thunderbirds performed to break the will of the bad guys. The team sent all but one plane forward, then the last one snuck up from behind silently, then with a whoosh, a “boo” that sent a shockwave of shudders through the crowd.

Do that 100 times a day and see what happens.

Or just send daredevil Sean Tucker over the caves of Afghanistan. In his Oracle stunt plane, Tucker takes more G-forces than a fighter pilot. Whirling and twirling through the air, it is obvious Tucker has no stomach – or is addicted to Dramanine.

Still Tucker wasn’t the craziest attraction of the day. There was this guy with his shirt off just down the beach from where we parked out lawn chairs. It was kind of cold not to be wearing a shirt, which is what made me notice him.

Well, that and because it appeared he was sexually assaulting himself, either licking or biting his nipples.

Maybe he rented Top Gun the night before and was just acting out a Tom Cruise fantasy.

The best of my guest blogging

2007-08-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

The five prior posts originally appeared on a Typepad blog, First Draft. I guest blogged there for a buddy of mine who went on vacation.

Most of the stuff you will find there is political in nature, and as I wrote there, I have Bush fatigue at this point.

So I posted my so-called life adventures, reposted here for your reading enjoyment.

Enjoy.

Singing sand, sighing Mike (Not a Japanese movie)

2007-08-02T16:12:00.000-05:00

The story goes that the sands along the shores of Lake Michigan are silmilar to those found in only two other places - Morocco and South Africa.

If conditions are right, if that sand is packed just so, like it is first thing in the morning, when you walk along it, there is a sound from feer shuffling through it like a dog whining.

At first I thought the noise was just me, as I have a new bad habit when alone and pondering woeful, secret things of making a similar noise. Pay no attention to me at a stop light.

The sound is the same whimper my dog would sit, cock his head and give me when he wanted to go out. I miss my dog. I miss alot of things lately with the book of my regrets seeming as long as a Harry Potter volume.

Oh, the drama! Oh, the beach!

Sad but true, living in Chicago area most of my life, this was my first visit to the shores of Michigan City, Indiana. Like I’ve said before, I need to get out more, and I have been trying to do just that.

Anyway, Michigan CIty is a town, like a lot of us, that’s seen better days, but still has things to recommend it, with a nice park and zoo along the lake and a train that only takes an hour to get to Chicago, along with the coast that’s part of what some call the Michigan Riviera.

So what if there is a nuclear power plant that’s part of the view.

I think places like this used to be mostly working class getaway spots, but the cottage prices here went crazy, too, before flipping went flop.

I was there at the invitation of a relatively new buddy, novelist Don Evans who came to give a reading at the Margo Channing Theater in a beautiful park that was a little hard to find. The park project is coordinated by Don’s buddy Dana Kaufman, who owns the big place where we stayed.

Don’s book Good Money After Bad is a modern Damon Runyon like tale set in the worlld of small time North SIde Chicago gamblers. His writer pals, though, offered darker material on a sunny day: a noirish story about a guy drinking in his favorite dive after breaking up with a dame, when a mysterious stranger starts a fight; a tale of a young lady gangbanger who kils the rapist who impregnated her, then, with the help of a santeria practicing pal, cooks and eats the guys heart.

The audience for this was just Don’s pals, people around my age, a well-educated, friendlly sorts, many who have known each other at least 10 years, quite a few with kids. The cliche would be to liken it to The Big Chill, but no one was really as annoying as that stuck in the 60s crowd, thinking that they would change the world. That crowd sort of ruined it for those us who became adults in the 80s or later, but that’s another story.

Being the newbie is an interesting situation, trying to figure out where, if anyplace, you fit it. And with nobody knowing your past, your old stories are new again, no one has grown tired of them. Hell, you can make up stories. No one here is your human Google to fact check your ass. On the downside, there's no one you can ask, at least at first, to put sunscreen on your beyond pale Irish skin.

But, for the most part, I was on my best behavior and did more listening that talking. On Saturday night, the conversation faded about 1 a.m. and I went for a walk with one of Don’s pals back to the beach.

Get your mind out of the gutter. We both just thought it would be cool to see the lake lit up by the light of the full moon and to see if you could spot Chicago’s bright skyline 60 miles away.

The moonglow reminded me of when they do day for night shooting in a B-grade movie, or a head shop black light, and the beach was crawlng with teens and 20s and I am guessing a good many of them were from well off suburban Chicago homes.

One of them was kneeling by a plastic garbage can, puking. Now that’s a Michigan CIty moment for him and his buddies to remember. Or will they?

Weddings and male bonding

2007-08-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I went to a wedding reception after the memorial service I already wrote about.

The party was for my best buddy at work. In fact, someone started saying we were like a married couple, that we were each others' work wives.

I don't care. My buddy amuses me. He's still young and blustery and wants to actually do things, Sometimes those things are stupid, like when he wanted to infiltrate a dog fighting rings and take pictures. This was long before Michael Vick made the subject what it is today.

Still, a 6' 3 Lithuanian guy with way too much gel in his rockabilly hair probably isn't going to bland in the with pitbull set. And where did he intend to put his camera?

Still, at least he has ideas and energy. And we go to lunch together at least once a week to shoot the shit.

I don't know about where you all work, but there was a spell at my office where unless you brought food, finding someone to grab a meal with was pretty tough. So I appreciated his effort. And I think he could tell I have been down in the dumps the past few months so it has been nice of him to continue to ask, to put up with mopey Mike.

Well, my buddy is a bit of a worrier, just like me, and shortly before his wedding he tells me not to make any work wife comments on his fabulous day.

Mind you, at the reception part of the festivities my pal pulled a chicken out from under his bride's dress; danced to an Ozzie Osborne song with his mom; sang along to Bohemian Rhapsody while his friends circled around, then did a mosh pit to the fast part, then he wound up in the middle of the circle at which point I threw a dinner roll at him.

It was funny at the time.

After the reception there was more food and a party in his parents' back yard and it was a nice time, one of those summertime moments you wish there were more of, but since there usually aren't it actually makes them even more enjoyable.

There was drinking and swimming and more food, because we are Chicago people and we love to eat, dammit. And two nice looking blond women showed up with cameras. And there was more drinking.

And when I went to say good-bye to my buddy, he tells his wife, "Oh this is Mike, the guy I tell you about. They say he's my work wife."

Awkward moment, yet inside I am laughing.

Then my buddy hugs me and tells me he loves me. And I think he hugged me one more time.

He was drunk, because sometimes, a lot of times its easier for guys to say that to their pals with the help of booze.

That phrase, "I love you," is a tough one. It can cause so much trouble. It has for me and probably for a few of you. It's become overused and underused at the same time.

But I knew what my big tipsy friend meant and I told him I felt the same. His wife just stood there, probably knowing her husband all too well. He's goofy. His best man used a prop monkey filled with candy as a metaphor for him.

Still, according to an Internet game, if I were a dog I would be a St. Bernard, so I am a goof too, I guess: just a big, loyal, drooling, overweight, attention hungry, knock things over unintentionally, run through the snow with a barrel of booze around my neck kind of guy. Better that than a dog that fits in a purse.

So I headed home. A night can't end any better than with some sloppy silly moment that makes you feel good about yourself, that makes the Sinatra songs they play at weddings run through your head while you drive into the suburban summer night.

White Castle: Bad for indigestion, so-so for memories

2007-08-02T16:10:00.000-05:00

For dinner tonight I had White Castle. No big deal. Most of my meals come served in some sort of paper product. And thanks be to Jesus the Dominick's Finer Foods by me closed. In my 100 years of solitude I used to grab their $5 pizza, sit around the house watching non-cable TV with a bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce as my buddy and have the whole pie gone by 10 p.m.

No wonder I once weighed 240.

White Castle tonight reminded me of when I was really, really young. Of when I had light blond hair and a promising future, at least by South Side standards.

My mom wasn't much for cooking, so for some reason I remember having sliders of Fridays. But that can't be, because I was raised Catholic and am old enough to know we still had meatless Fridays all year or at least until I was a bit older and we were out in the south suburbs.

And then I recalled that we would go to a White Castle-like place to get a deep fried shrimp or to another place for very greasy cheese pizza.

I remember sitting in the back of a sedan of some sort waiting for the order to be ready. I spent way too much time as a kid in the back of a boatish car, heading off on weekends to visit grandparents or dead relatives at cemeteries or to birthday parties for cousins where we would play floor hockey in the basement.

There are pictures of my folks from before I was born where they had parties of their own. I don't recall many being held at our house. The word insular comes to mind, a childhood spent among adults and their family gossip and drama and not many memories of my own of other kids.

Does anyone have friends from when they were in kindergarten anymore?

I do have a baby picture of me, a triptych of me in a vest and short pants, hand colored with the vest red, the pants black, and the eyes so blue and oddly puppy dog sad. I know it's me by the hairline.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened. Aren't most of us?

Chicken wings: Hetero gay bars?

2007-08-02T16:08:00.000-05:00

A buddy of mine here where I work likes to lunch at a chicken wings chain, Buffalo Wild Wings.

We've eaten at a handful of them, and while there are not bevies of buxomly waitresses, we have noticed that there usually are way more guys at BW-Squared than women. In fact, on some occasions its been about 95 percent men there, including wait staff and management.

I made the observation one time, as the sound system was blaring disco beats, that the place could pass for a straight man's gay bar.

So my question is, What makes chicken wings guy food?

Could it be the TV sets, too, or is there something in the sauce? Is eating messy food just a guy thing?

Do gay guys know that if they want to scope straight guys they should come to places like this, thereby bumping up the already high numbers of guys. I have this from a secret source (whom I will NOT call Deep Throat) that this might be the case.

Or do wings make you gay? I mean fat friends allegedly mean you have a good chance of being fat, so why not get some money to test this theory.

I may have worked with Clarence from "It's a Wonderful Life"

2007-08-02T16:06:00.000-05:00

There’s a quality sorely lack in these times, probably any time really, and that quality is grace.

Grace, like jazz, is hard to define, but you know it when you hear it or see it.

Hemingway’s code involved having grace under pressure, but how many heroes are there in these loud, tattle-tale times? I mean, I am sure they are out there, but if you have grace you’re probably not inclined to brag on a blog, smugly host a cable show, or yell at anyone to get attention.

I worked with someone who died recently who seemed to have this quality, which I readily admit I sorely lack. I am a mope by nature, sometimes an amusing one, other times a brooding Dane. But I am working to change that.

Steve Siracusa, though, seemed to go through his days with the grace of Gene Kelly dancing in the rain.

I didn’t know him very well, but that at first glance Steve seemed to an idiot like me to be a quaint old guy in rumpled out of fashion clothes (which he actually wore with a certain flair) who told corny jokes.

But Steve made people smile and had this joy of life about him.

Me, I am still all weepy over a broken relationship I don’t even want to talk about and whine about not being able to find a better job and don’t feel I’m in a good place for me right now, and, and, and, but, but, but…

In other words, I am a product of my bitching and moaning era, just another middle aged white guy stuck in the suburbs.

If anyone had a reason to be sour on life it would have been Steve. He served as an Army captain, and after World

War II, he was assigned as a traffic manager of sorts, directing all parties involved with the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials to their lodging.

He heard the horrible, evil stories, to see the cruel evidence: a Nazi wife who made lampshades out of Jewish skin; another Nazi who collected shrunken Polish skulls.

You’d think that kind of crap would haunt you for the rest of your life, leave you sour on sorry-ass humanity. Instead, he fell in love with Edna Skowbo, who worked for the Allies' legal team, who became his life.

And he spent most of the rest of his life as a salesman, including in his later years, here where I work. He didn’t seem to be one of those slimy types, either, but a guy who used his optimism to get you to buy something. Word is he even paid for newspaper subscriptions for a few people who told him they couldn’t afford one.

He wasn’t Willy Loman, but what good old Willy wished he could be.

After he got sick in his last few years, he volunteered at the hospital, helping others going through pain like he had.

The story goes that before he died a line of hospital staffers waited for a chance to say good-bye to the little guy with the smile and the optimism.

Not to get all Mitch Albom on you, but he said he hoped to see them all in heaven.

A warm July evening in the park with the Decemberists

2007-07-19T21:56:00.000-05:00

It’s not often you hear a pop or rock band drop words such as tryst and pachyderm with the same matter of factness rappers spray f-bombs - much less rhyme verandah with Miranda.

Such are the ways of The Decemberists. Named after a Russian revolt from the 1920s and hailing from Portland, Oregon this is what passes for orchestral pop these days - and that’s a good thing.

And while I heard they once opened for a hip-hop act at a New Year’s Eve party back home, there is no truth to the the rumor The Decemberists have a running feud with the archly literate The Junes, who prefer Southern Gothic to Euro-lit.

While still fey, the Decemberists’ thang is way more tolerable than Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer or other groups from the 70s that used cellos, spun pianos and evoked elves and fairies. It’s mopey, to be sure, and the soundtrack for mopey college kids who actually read books, not only for the joy of it, but to impress possible sex partners into bed.

The crowd was thick with such pale people Wednesday night in Millennium Park. the older brothers and sisters of the Naperville kids heading to the Harry Potter night, no doubt. The air was thick, too, but that’s Chicago in July. They should have sat the audience by how they scored on their ACT or SAT tests. The dumb ones would be in the back in their hand-me-down AC/DC t-shirts.

The band played with the Grant Park Symphony, so there was a program that treated the performance as if were REALLY IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS - like Mozart or Elvis Costello in one of his moods.

We know this because a full page listed the compositions to be played and band leader Colin Meloy listed as composer.

Meloy does have a way with a melody, though he seems to borrow a bit from “Losing My Religion” era REM with a touch of Talking Heads thrown in for good measure. And you know he wants to write an opera, or at the very least one of those bittersweet musicals like Stephen Sondheim even if he occasionally, dangerously veers into Neil Diamond "I Am I Said" territory.

This may sound mocking, but it’s not. I can mope with the best of them and this is perfect music for staying in such a mood.

Case in point, this lyric: It was ten years on when you resurfaced in a motor car. And with a wave of an arm, you were there and gone.

Now who the hell hasn’t been there? OK, the song is called “The Bagman’s Gambit” and is about some sad sack pining over a robber or spy he helped out who shot a cop and is holed up back in Russia. And your not really sure if he’s singing about a chick or a dude, because he’s all arty and singing from his nose. And who the fuck calls a car a motor car?

Now that part, while evocative ain’t necessarily a universal experience. But missing someone you really should be glad is gone is.

Alone is a crowd of smart kids, the rain falling, humid like a Russian bath. Oh God - I’m writing Decemberist lyrics.

I better cleanse the palette with some Ramones before I take up painting and start wearing thrift shop suits.

There are worse things.

Civil War Saturday or To the Sweaty Past in Short Pants

2007-07-09T20:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. Though I am hardly perfectly happy at the moment (and who really is?), I am glad to live in a time with running water, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning and for those of us who can afford it, good medical and dental coverage.

Yet, I remain fascinated by those among us who decide to spend weekends living in the past – in wool clothing in 90 degree heat, mind you.

So this past weekend my Irish buddy Shay invited me along to a Civil War reenactment on the grounds of a forest preserve in Lake County. As if forest preserves and reenacting weren’t scary enough, there was a magician doing rope tricks making jokes about the rope in his bedroom while intertwining the twine in a box.

A girl played with a wooden bear that looked more like a squirrel making it dance on a piece of wood, which was just mildly more entertaining to me than any Playstation game I’ve seen.

There were old fashioned carnival games. In one you had to toss coins through small holes or a brass frog’s mouth to win prizes, including tickets to the Ford’s Theatre. OK, that’s a lie. You could win a paper fan, a top, or a Jacob’s Ladder, which is just squares of wood tied together.

The other was “Splat the Rat” where you had to whack a toy rodent before it landed in a basket. What guy hasn’t spent a rainy Saturday splatting a rat or two?

I wonder if the entertainment was as eco-friendly at the Rock Concert for Mother Eart or whatever Al Gore's World Part was called? Save the planet - drive to a concert and drink overpriced beer in the hot sun with people not wearing shirts who should keep them on.

But, hey, I have spent a Saturday being too lazy to take a shower, but many of the guys here had me beat. Not only were they wearing the aforementioned wool outfits. Some of them explained that they never wash their wool pants. Never, as the wool is untreated, meaning it still has natural water-proofing oils.

Great, I think, the pants won’t get wet or absorb your sweat. You’ll just be standing in self-created puddles all day. And imagine how smelly and itchy body parts must get.

If I were to Civil War reenact, I’d be the one to say, hey, let’s put this cotton to good use and make some pants, some short pants even, for our days fighting pretend enemies on government-owned and operated land.

Another guy from a group from the aptly named Plainfield, a town which seems to haunt me for some reason (maybe the name – it’s so ordinary), was busy polishing his triangulated bayonet in the shade. His buddy explained that such arms were banned by the Geneva Convention as it’s much more uncivilized than, say, a depleted uranium weapon or a car bomb.

We ate lunch in the shade as myriad moths hovered through the trees, drawn to the fabrics of the past, no doubt.

On the way home my buddy stopped for cigarettes, because he didn’t find any hand-rolled ones to his liking at the campground. OK another lie. The clerk did attempt to talk his ear off about the reenactment thing, so I told Shay he should have said, “Listen, we just shot the pretend President. You forget you ever saw me or I guarantee, your name will be Mudd.”

It was the humidity talking.

Sure I make fun, but my kid’s son, who is going into 7th grade, gave good reason why we actually probably need reenactors. The boy had yet to learn who fought in the Civil War or what the war was about.

He did like the toy pistols, though. That’s a start, I guess.

Pedro the Nigerian Cabbie

2007-07-02T21:22:00.000-05:00

So we’re standing along Foster Avenue in Chicago in Albany Park Saturday evening waiting for a cab, and my friends say how lately when they hail one it turns out to be quite the experience.

Proving their point, up comes this cab driven by a big NIgerian with a deep voice and an infectious laugh. He asks us where we are headed, which is to a movie.

You made my night, he says. He’s been looking for an excuse to see Live Free or Die Hard, and since he’s gonna be there, he might as well. He talks about needing to see something where stuff blows up real good, or words to that effect.

But we tell him we are heading to see the Michael Moore opinion piece Sicko.

“Oh I love that man,” he says.

He was going to be a pharmacist, until he realized machines are and will be doing more of that work. He became cynical about Big Pharm having a drug for everything, and the side effects from those drugs.

“If you are sick and tired, they should tell you to drink some water and get some sleep,” he says.

He has the passenger side window down and includes people in cars at lights next to him in the conversation. When he drives aggressively he asks passersby if he hurt their feelings.

He gets on a roll about Bill Clinton’s use of the English language and Monica Lewinsky and it all sounds funny coming from a guy with a baritone and a thick accent.

But he loves Bill Clinton, he says, how the man had flaws but knew what he was doing. Or words to that effect.

We wind up at the theater and sure enough he heads in to join us at the Moore movie. He even insists on buying us popcorn and sodas with the $20 we just gave him as fare.

Now I’m thinking this could be really weird, mainly because I am not used to strangers being so Goddamn ebullient. I’m thinking he might act up in the show, judging by how he talks to people in elevators and in concession lines.

But I really do worry too much.

Our new buddy Pedro kicks back and watches the flick, blending in as if we have known him for years.

This is a great way to see a movie, I think, knowing your ride home is there with you. And I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

He loved it. He tells people we get in the elevator with (coincidentally, the same three we rode up to the lobby with) they should see it, too.

What he likes is the courage he says Moore has. Though I might agree with some of what he has to say, I think Moore is often full of shit,. But Pedro has a point to the point that Moore has been hammering in his last three films. That is, too much in American life is predicated on fear.

In terms of health care, Moore touches on how people now leave college with debt piled up to their ass, so they have to take a job and won’t make waves because they need to money and the health insurance.

Moore also makes France, England and Cuba look like workers paradises, which is what the right is going to be harping about. But who hasn’t had a personal experience with how dreadful the current system can be?

Anyway, Pedro tells us again how we made his night, that cab driving ain’t paying the bills, so it was a nice break.

I think he said he’s been in Chicago for at least 15 years. He came here for the architecture, or something like that. Art. For art’s sake, as he’s from the part of NIgeria that was the cradle of African culture.

He paints and sculpts and will be playing guitar from a couple hours to unwind when he gets back to his place, jazz on an acoustic guitar in fact. He tries another genre every year or so.

We try to pay him, but he won’t take the money. To be honest, there is no amount that would have done him justice. So we get his phone number instead.

If I were a religious man, I would think moments like this are why I am a writer. At the very least they are why I need to get out more.