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February 25, 2004

:: we heart vick's ::

First off, belated (but no less heartfelt for the delay) thanks and congratulations to those who came out for the reading on Saturday and to my fellow readers, respectively. I've got a lot more blogs to follow now - there's some great writing out there, and I'll tell you right now: I'd get up on the same stage with Shasta McNasty any day. I started recapping everyone's triumphs, but then realized that the highlights were too numerous to mention without dragging on forever, so suffice it to say I'm glad to have been a part of it. So much so, in fact, that I might even do another one. I'll keep you posted.

And now for something completely different.

The sinus infection I got rid of a few weeks back has returned with a vengeance, so I'm spending the day camped out on my sofa, popping Dayquil and ostensibly working on designs. What I'm really doing is watching movies and daytime TV, though, because my attention span seems to have collapsed down to roughly 22.6 seconds. I keep flashing back to Denis Leary's bit on Nyquil being more hard core than most stuff you can get on the street, but this stuff is supposed to be mild, right? I mean, I've heard tell of people taking Dayquil and going to work, even. I can just imagine myself standing at a white board with a marker in my hand in my current state, although the standing part might be a little tricky. I'd start off drawing a Venn diagram and wind up with cartoon dialogue and little fluffy clouds or something. Seriously, how do people function on this shit? My hands feel like they're halfway across the room, and about a third of what I hear seems to be coming at me from somewhere underwater, or maybe through a train tunnel. My mouth is as arid as the great gobi desert, and I'm even more easily distracted by shiny things than usual, which is more than a little alarming. Even more alarming is the fact that I'm actually starting to enjoy the trip. Maybe i should just thank the gods for my low tolerance for over the counter pharma. It sure makes television a lot more fun. Hell, I've been stuck on the TV Guide channel now for almost an hour...

Also, since I can't make it, I exhort those of you who are fans to get your asses to Delilah's tonight for Johnny Cash's birthday celebration, featuring something involving DJ John Langford of the Waco Brothers. Cheap beer, cheap bourbon, and a tribute to the Man in Black. What more could you ask for? Me, I'm asking for a new head. Preferably, one that doesn't outweigh my body by a factor of three.

February 19, 2004

:: come see us blather ::

What are we all doing Saturday night? Why, we're going to the SPEC/Gaper's Block Reading at Uncle Fun, of course! That's right, several local bloggers (including yours truly) will be reading bits and pieces of our work - and you can drink while we do! And if I'm not enough of a draw for you (in which case I will cry), you've gotta love Sour Bob and Mimi Smartypants. Not to mention the ever-lovely Lacey and... well, for a longer list of who's reading, and all those other pesky details that I'm too lazy to type up here, see the Gapers' Block posting on the event.

On a completely different note, this is the first conversation I had this morning, with Phineas:

P: There you are.

L: where?

P: Right there. In the wheelbarrow.

L: that explains the crick in my neck.

P: But it doesn't explain the jodhpurs or the turban or the nature of your relationship with that marmoset.

L: shh. there are some things you're better off not knowing.

February 17, 2004

:: Tragic Blind Date #459 ::

I've been meaning to do some kind of post about Valentine's Day (aka "singles' awareness day"), something pithy and fun, mentioning dubious and useless statistics such as the fact that more people break up on V-day than any other day of the year. I even had a party that night, which usually makes for good stories, but this one was pretty tame, so aside from the killer mojitos and Phineas in a fijian sarong and hawaiian shirt (how is it possible that I do not have pictures of this?!), there's not really much to tell. Instead, in keeping with the romantic theme at least, I give you this - yet another example of online dating gone wrong, or at least very very strange, from a month or so ago. Yes, I do exist to make you all feel better about your lives...

We met at the original Bar Louie. He suggested it and I agreed, figuring this would be a nice, neutral location where we could anonymously swill some booze and see if we got along. He arrived at 9:30. I decided to overlook the doofy hat, since it was in all fairness really really cold out, and for all I knew his dead grandmother had knitted it for him.

The drink of choice was bourbon, for both of us. A good sign. Drink #1 was spent joking about work, the pros and cons of having a 'real' job vs. working in the arts (which he does, and I used to) and so forth. So far, so good. Halfway through drink #1, though, he was already on drink #2, and sucking it down like a thirsty camel about to head out into the Sahara. Oh well, I thought. Nerves. It happens. We briefly touched on Chicago neighborhoods and how mine is altogether too milquetoast these days, but quickly abandoned that topic when he told me he's actually not opposed to the whole Lincoln Park trixie phenomenon. This probably should have been my first clue. I took the opportunity afforded by the resulting awkward pause to down the rest of my drink and order another. This brought us around to film, television and music. My tastes are fairly broad, so (at least on the first date) unless you've got an abiding fondness for Britney Spears or are looking forward to The Littlest Groom, this is a pretty safe subject. Not this time. Somehow, anything I said I liked was either boring or dumb or otherwise worthy of some combination of raised eyebrow and snort of contempt. Which is a little strange from someone who doesn't really have a problem with the fact that "reality" television has gotten way out of hand. Anyway, in what I can only assume was an attempt to get the conversation back on track, he asked me who my favorite comic actor is.

Best comic actor, ever? I studied theatre and film, so this is kind of a long list for me, but I gamely began to whittle it down. Can I have more than one? Sure. Buster Keaton was pretty amazing, I said. Snort of contempt. Katharine Hepburn. Shaking of head. Rosalind Russell? Jack Lemmon? Thelma Ritter? Now he's looking at me like I'm retarded. Maybe I should just stick to contemporary actors, I thought. How about, say, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller? They've got good chemistry. He hated The Royal Tenenbaums. Bill Murray has done some great work, though, right? Nada. The only actor we could agree on, in fact, was Jack Black. Not that he's not really great, but still. So what response was my date looking for? Jim Carrey. King of over-the-top, and while there's no doubt he can get the laughs, arguably one of the most irritating humans (?) on the planet. This should definitely have been the part where I began to plot my escape. Nevertheless, I told myself not to be too critical, and persevered. That'll teach me.

After drink #3, things didn't really seem very promising, so we decided to get out of there. Out on the sidewalk, he looked at me. "Where to?"

I was momentarily stunned. Surely he didn't want to carry on? But somehow I wound up saying, "It's your neighborhood. Where's good these days?"

He thought about it for a few seconds. Then: "Let's go to your place."

Hunh?! I'm amazed I didn't do a visible double-take, although I'm pretty sure I stared at him for a good five seconds before I was able to reply. Befuddled, I tried to think this through. My place? Bizarre choice. But my roommate's at home, I've got some wine, it's not too much of a mess... And at least this way, I'll already be at home when the inevitable train wreck happens. "Uh, I guess we could do that," I said, reluctantly. So he hailed a cab and in we got.

Somewhere around LaSalle and Division, my date spoke up again. "I don't know if I can do this."

"Do what?" I wondered aloud. What the hell were we doing, anyway? And why had I agreed to go to my place? He had no answer. It occurred to me that bringing this man to my apartment was really probably not the best idea I'd heard that day, so I suggested we stop off at another bar nearby and have a bit of a chat. He agreed.

Having directed the cabbie to the Old Town Ale House, a grungy little joint on North Avenue, we exited the taxi and I started toward the door. As I was reaching for the door handle, I noticed my date was still standing six feet away on the corner. I walked back over to him.

"I think I'm done," he said.

Now I'm completely baffled. On the one hand, I thought, I'd just as soon not have another hour of strained conversation, but on the other hand, what the fuck is going on? So I asked, "You're not coming in?"

"No."

"You're... going home?" I ventured.

"Yeah."

"Ummmm, ok..."

And he turned on his heel and walked away. No handshake, no nice-having-met-you. Nothing. And I was left standing in front of the Old Town Ale House at 10:30 on a Monday night. Alone. Now I really needed a drink.

Now don't go feeling all terrible for me or anything - the way I see it, this was an easy escape from what would surely have been a disaster at some point or other, and arguably already was. I called a friend or two, went down to the local and told the story, and we all had a good laugh about the looney. Wound up being a pretty great night, actually. The only thing that I still find a little worrisome is how I could have mistaken him for sane in the first place.

The moral of this story, for all of you who spent V-day dateless and therefore feeling like some kind of a leper: sometimes being single is much, much more appealing than the alternative.

February 13, 2004

:: irony is dead. long live irony! ::

The other day I was IMing with a friend and we were discussing one of his recent ridiculous eBay purchases - a hideous cheap watch from Hong Kong with David Beckham's face on, well, the face. He got it for a penny. A penny plus ten dollars in shipping, but still, that's a bargain. Anyway, ever since he sent me a link to a picture of the thing, I've wanted it desperately, because of my deep and abiding love for all things hideous and silly. I promised to wear it always. I got the sense I had a shot at it.

Anyway, so the watch showed up last week and my friend was now telling me that he's going to keep it after all. He's sweetening the pot with an old Tom Lehrer record, but still, I am deeply disappointed. I had already begun building outfits around my new David Beckham watch! But no, he tells me he's grown accustomed to asking David the time, and that while it's pretty bad he likes it. (I have now seen this monstrosity first-hand, and it is every bit as bad as - perhaps even slightly worse than - I had imagined. Already, I'm plotting how to get my mitts on it. He keeps it on Hong Kong time.) And then he says the part that makes me cock my head and furrow my brow: in a totally un-ironic way. Huh?

This launches a conversation about how my friend and his roommate are campaigning to "hasten the death of irony". Now, I find the hipsters as ridiculous and irritatingly pretentious as anyone, and I'm all for killing them all and letting the baby jesus sort them out, but this is not irony's fault, people. This is irony's fault exactly as much as Mickey Rourke is the fault of booze and boxing. Now, boxing is not my thing, but booze certainly is, and I would never hold such a train wreck of a human against the fine whiskey family. Likewise, just because an entire segment of the urban population sees the unbelievably tiresome work of Dave Eggers as the apotheosis of irony and wit doesn't mean that irony is a bad thing. It's abuse that's the problem. And rather like the drug of your choice, when irony is abused, bad things happen to - or at least near - good people.

That said, I really would like to know what the fuck is up with some of these getups I've been seeing around town lately. I mean, people. Seriously. I know I've been guilty of some interesting (ahem) fashion choices in my time - the pepto-bismol-pink shirt with the angels on and the big hole cut in the front springs to mind - but this is just out of hand. Last weekend, a few of us wound up at Rodan, which is of course chock full o' hipsters, but the music's good and they've got lots of tasty liquor, so we like it anyway. There we were, at the bar, me in mid-paragraph about the impact of Journey on modern Unitarianism or some random thing, when this dude walks by. I was so floored that I actually stopped not only in mid-sentence but in mid-word and openly gawped at him as he passed. Even Sam did a double take. Let me describe this individual as best I can:

- bad haircut. I mean seriously bad haircut. Not the run-of the-mill bid to look like whatshisname from That 70s Show or a member of the Strokes or whatever, but just plain awful. (While I'm on this topic, can someone please explain to me how it is possible to have an "ironic" haircut? Do you have to, like, pin a sign to your shirt? Is there an irony headband or something? I don't get it.)

- gigantic square tinted coke-bottle-bottom eyeglasses. Again, as someone with a long and well-documented fondness for what I like to call 'pimpdaddy' sunglasses, I can go halfway with this dude. But these? Well beyond. And really, coke-bottle-bottom. Eye distortion, the whole 9 yards.

- hideous sweater. Can't even describe it. Cosby sweater meets 70s rec room sofa sort of a thing.

- too-short corduroy trousers. Tan, of course. He probably had a white belt on, too, under that god-awful sweater thing.

I either didn't see the shoes or have blocked them out. I'm sure they were beat-to-hell trainers or white patent disco loafers or something. The long and short of it is, this was one of the worst dressed humans I've ever seen, and I've been to suburban shopping malls in the 80s. And he walked out the door looking like that. Presumably after looking in a mirror, even, which means it was on purpose. I was standing there trying to figure it out when it occurred to me: he might in fact be retarded.

Mimi and I were discussing this last night over gallons of champagne *. People, I ask you: what is the world coming to when you can't even tell anymore who's hip and who's just plain retarded? Does the short bus stop at Rainbo?

February 10, 2004

:: more pictures ::

The Thailand and Indonesia (Bali/Lombok/Gili Islands) photo galleries are now completely uploaded. Unfortunately, if you look at the photos in slide show mode, you won't be able to see the locations and descriptions I've so laboriously typed up for them - you've got to view the shots individually to see those. Just sayin'. Up next: Laos and Vietnam...

In other news, Sour Bob, the lovely Lacey, Mimi Smartypants and I, together with several others, will be reading some of our writing this Saturday, February 21 at Uncle Fun's upstairs gallery. You should come and see us. Hey, what better way to kick off a Saturday night of hard drinking? It's $5 at the door, and BYOB (there's a liquor store on the corner, never fear). See you all there!

February 5, 2004

:: see what i see ::

I'm almost ashamed to say it, they're so late, but at long long last I have posted some of the photos I took while travelling... I'll be doing batch uploads daily regularly-ish until everything's up from the trip, and then adding other galleries. There may still be some drunken blurry shots here, but they're drunken blurry shots from other countries, which qualifies them as art, right? Right?

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