Comments are back up and running, or should be. If not, please lemme know.

And friends in the UK: just because it’s difficult to leave Chicago doesn’t mean I’m not pleased as all get-out to be close to you, at long last. Just so we’re clear.

There was a cryptic line in that last post (“…more than just my vacation at stake…”) – well, cryptic if you haven’t spoken to me lately, at any rate. But I was trying to keep things under wraps so as not to jinx myself before I went. Apparently that worked, because I can now make the following announcement:

I got a job with the BBC.

It all happened lighting-quick: got a call from an old acquaintance during the last week of August. Was I interested in being considered for a position with the BBC? Um, yes. Yes I was. A few weeks later, a phone interview was scheduled. A few days after that, I got a call inviting me to London for a second interview. I spent most of the following week in a semi-daze. Partly, I just didn’t want to jinx myself by imagining all sorts of scenarios (largely revolving around me walking out onto a London street from my flat, getting on a train to White City to go to my job at the motherfucking BBC) – it just seemed like a fairy tale whenever I thought about it. It’s a huge cliché, but when and where could I ever have another chance to work with this level of content – both quantity and quality – and this kind of reach? It’s a real opportunity to make a difference for the public good, to use media to connect people with ideas. That’s what I wanted to do when I started out in the theatre all those years ago. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine it as a reality.

And now it is.

Woohoooooooooo!

So what are the details, I can hear you asking (talk louder, I can barely hear you over the crickets)? I’ll probably start work the 6th of December, which means I’ll be out of here at the end of November. I may or may not be back for Christmas and/or New Year’s. I’m planning trips to NYC/Boston and Memphis to say goodbye to some people and see some others get married. I’m doing a lot of celebrating, which could also be seen as training for my London lifestyle – I don’t know many people over there anymore, but all the people I know drink.

[People who are inclined to be irritated/sickened by sappy shit, you would do well to stop reading right about here. I take no responsibility for nausea or seizure caused by the uncharacteristically high sugar content of the following paragraph(s).]

So that’s the good news, and the bad news as well. I’m so thrilled this is happening that it still doesn’t seem quite real to me, but it’s going to be hard to leave Chicago. I’ve been here longer than I’ve ever been anywhere (10 years!), and my friends, at the risk of sounding all saccharine and kick-worthy, are truly some of the best people in the whole entire world. Who else would call me at 8 a.m. London time (2 a.m. in Chicago) to tell me they were doing shots at the bar to wish me luck? Who else would send texts every 6 hours or so, offering encouragement and support? Who else would offer me such award-worthy UK-specific interviewing tips? How can I leave the place where my life is chock full of these people? I’ll have to figure it out as I go. And bully y’all into coming to visit. Tickets are cheap in January and February, you know…

Thanks so much to all you fabulous folk. I owe you, big.

4:41 a.m. wednesday [ed. note: yes, this post is back-dated. i wrote it while sitting at the gate waiting for my flight, and then forgot all about it until today. apparently i didn’t feel like capitalizing anything that morning, either. cope.]

people, the next time the airline tells you to be at the airport 2 hours before an international flight, think twice before believing them.

having nearly missed a number of flights by ignoring this protocol in the past, and considering the fact that it was more than just my vacation at stake if i missed this flight, i was extra-conscientious. out the door by 3, on the train at 3:30, hiking through the airport by 4:05. ass o’clock in the morning? why, yes. yes, it was, thanks. check-in, as expected, was a breeze, if a bit cranky and a whole lot cheerless. what do you expect from people who’ve been up all night in a (mostly) empty airport? then i wandered over to security. where there was nobody. not nobody as in no passengers; nobody as in no staff. nobody manning the posts. no blinky lights, no bleeping, no bad jokes about tweezers and underwire bras. nothing. after a few minutes, they began to file in. my fellow ass-o’clock-in-the-morning passengers and i watched as the entire cadre of security and terminal staff (homeland security, tsa, starbucks, etc.) filed in and were themselves checked for armaments and explosives. some twenty minutes later, without any of the airport staff having cracked so much as a smile, let alone given us a heads-up or an eta, we were finally allowed to empty our pockets and proceed. which we did. thankfully my gate was just a short stagger from the metal detector.

since i had, after passing security, about a million years (which, in airport time, is roughly equivalent to an hour) until my flight boarded, i gravitated to starbucks, the sole source of caffeine – or anything consumable – at this hour. how the starbucks employees got through security in time to set up their posts is a mystery to me. perhaps they sleep in the cupboards under the espresso machine. anyway, i have another piece of advice for all of you gentle readers: steer clear of the starbuck’s “lowfat” lemon muffins. not because they’re lowfat (although that’s usually a deterrent for me). no, this morning i just happened to find lemon a more appealing flavor than blueberry or banana, so i ignored the lowfat part and ordered away. having sampled this heretofore mysterious and poppyseeded delicacy, i can now state with relative certainty that it is flavored mostly, if not entirely, with furniture polish. not only is it hard as a rock and sticky; not only does it require more chewing than a muffin really should, lowfat or not; not only does it smell exactly like your great-aunt’s house just after she’s polished the dining room set, but it tastes exactly like it smells. overwhelmingly, unnaturally lemony. unbelievably sweet, with that aftertaste of chemical bitterness that one expects from a good spritz of furniture polish, but not from one’s morning nutrition. it’s true: starbucks lowfat lemon muffins are made with lemon pledge. just say no, kids. just say no.

i’ll say it again: thank god for business class upgrades.

OK, folks. Sorry about this, but I have to shut down commenting, at least for a while. Even with the blacklist filter in place, over 500 spam comments snuck through over the past week, and that’s just plain irritating. Not like you’re all squirrely over the commenting anyway, right? Right.

No excuses this time. OK, I’m lying. It’s time for excuses again. It has been nuts around here, honest, ask anyone – and what with the large stroke of bad luck followed by the potentially larger stroke of good luck, I’ve been pulled in all directions for the past several weeks. I won’t bother with the bad stuff, and I’m all paranoid about jinxing the good, but I will say this: I’m traveling to a second interview with a supercool company, for a superextramega cool job, on Wednesday. I’ll leave it at that for now. If things go well, you’ll all be hearing about it, worry not.

In other news, the Renegade Craft Fair has been right around the corner in good old Wicker Park all weekend. The lineup is pretty sweet, and I was unable to resist buying:

1. a t-shirt from the lovely Dana of Damned Dollies fame (you may remember Maude, the patron saint of the Den of Iniquity – she made her too)
2. a journal with the cover (and a few interior pages) from an abysmal young adult novel entitled “What’s So Funny About the Ninth Grade?”, courtesy of the fine folk at Ex Libris Anonymous (I was really tempted by a couple of churchy books, one of which featured a two-page-wide frontspiece with a lovely rendering of the Barry-Gibb-variety Jebus, gazing out across a vast body of water, presumably contemplating taking a walk on it – but ultimately I figured I would wind up feeling kinda dirty carrying that sort of thing around with me all the time. At least with the 9th grade book, I’ll get some good looks at the coffe shop – although now that I think about it, the reaction will very likely be the same as it would have been with a Jebus book – back away slowly from the crazy lady. I can’t remember the name of the other one I was looking at, but the reason I almost bought it was for the opening paragraph of the original text, which read: “Not all of God’s people are happy. But they should be.”)
3. a fused glass necklace from Kiku
4. a hilariously awful orange heart-shaped pendant on a blue suede thong (my colors! how could i resist?) that reads, “i slept with him anyway”, from Bigger Krissy. Brenda and I found this irresistibly appropriate.

So now, after wandering the neighborhood, foraging for sushi and crafty items, I’m thinking it’s disco nap time. I’ve got people coming over for dinner. Hungry people. With booze. I’d better go find something for them to eat.

Oh yeah, and there was a shoe in the middle of the southeast-bound lane of Milwaukee, right by the 7-11, when I was walking home. See? It’s in the new header. I also saw the same wheelchair dude I told you about a couple of weeks ago – the one in the pink suit with the matching fedora and alligator shoes? Yeah, you remember. He wasn’t wearing the suit, and he was on the sidewalk this time instead of in the middle of Wolcott Avenue, but I’m pretty sure it was the same guy, because he was doing a wheelie. All the way down Damen. I’m impressed.

What in the hell was I doing writing about politics at 4:30 in the morning? Normal people come home from the party, wolf down some junk food and pass out. Me, I rant quasi-nonsensically about the state of the nation. Help.

It’s difficult for me to avoid watching the RNC. I’ve managed to miss most of the headlining speeches, which means (based on what little I have seen) that I’ve managed to avoid wandering out on the street with a pointy stick and hurting people with it. I do understand that there are people who think W is a better guy, overall, than Kerry. Believe it or not, I can actually very nearly see this point.

Here’s the thing: I don’t love Kerry. I don’t think he’s a great leader. I don’t hate him either – he’s got plenty at his back that I respect and admire. That’s not the point. The point, at least partly, is this: I spent last Sunday afternoon watching the Chicago Air & Water Show with a few good friends and (more pertinently) several neo-conservatives. When asked why they would possibly vote for W., they said, “well, I don’t like Kerry.” But beyond that blanket statement, nobody came up with any kind of solid argument for the Republican ticket. So I had to ask: OK, if we agree that Kerry’s kind of a douchebag, and we deal with W on those terms, where does that leave us? Can we at least agree on the Veeps? Because surely Dick Cheney is a minion of Satan, and surely John Edwards is a human being…” Surprisingly (considering), there was no argument on this. In the battle of the Veeps, Edwards wins.

Nobody disagreed with me, but ultimately my question was answered by a lot of blank and semi-blank looks. Fine, this is not the way we’re accustomed to thinking about the supreme office of our country. How about this: if we all agree that the presidential candidates both suck ( the understanding being that this suck exists to varying degrees, depending on whom you ask), is it not fair to allow people to align themselves with whichever administration, on a slightly broader scale, makes some sort of sense? And bearing that in mind, is it not at least a little alarming that we have, even now, in office, a more warlike president than we’ve had since… oh gracious, since perhaps the Very Beginning? Taxation without representation was the hallmark that made the USA what it is today, for better or worse, but if you go back and read the preamble to the Constitution, it ‘s a call for more action than the average bear is up for, if you see what I mean. And inasmuch as that Constitution was drafted by a bunch of guys who didn’t have to worry about their place in organized society, I’m profoundly concerned by our current (apparent) inability to cope with any belief system outside of our own. I can’t tell you how much I hate it that the World Trade Center isn’t there anymore, and I would be hard-pressed to come up with any justification for any act of terrorism, large or small, but I have my doubts about the viability of America in its current state.

There’s a lot of conflict that the US claims major play in, and a lot that we don’t. World War 2 keeps being dragged out, as does Vietnam, and the conflicts in Eastern Europe in the 90s… Shall we talk about how far things had to get for the US to become involved in the second World War, and how long it took for any responsibility to be taken for Vietnam? And I have yet to hear of any serious effort toward actually rebuilding the eastern European countries where we spent so much time and so many troops. All “imperialist” interests aside, where have we spent the majority of our idealistic time and energy, and who’s around to support those actions?

I don’t pretend to be a political pundit, and to be sure, I’m not sayin’. But I’m not blind, either. Just so we’re clear.

Yeah, I said I wasn’t going to post about politics. I lied.

Behold the new design. OK, also please forgive the glitches while I get it all worked out and disseminated throughout the site. Please don’t look at the gallery in the meantime – I intend to finally sort out just what the hell’s been wrong with it all this time. Wish me luck. Oh, and if you see anything that looks to be seriously wrong here, please drop me a line.

Almost a month since the last post, so I guess it’s time to make some more excuses. I have actually been somewhat busy, what with looking for work (yes, again. do you have some work for me?), doing makeup consulting and various other stuff for a theatrical production (chemical burns are fun!), cooking up big hunks of meat on the grill, and the usual swank parties, drinking and debauchery, I’ve been swamped.

And if that’s not enough to excuse the lapse, I’m also sick to death of this design and therefore working on a new one, along with an online portfolio of sorts that, even if it doesn’t actually help me procure paying work, will perhaps keep my brain from melting out my ears.

Add to that the fact that I’m still determined not to turn this entire blog into a big long political rant (and therefore try to stay away from political material as much as possible): if you’ve opened a newspaper or turned on the television in the past two months, you know how close to impossible that is.

So call it what you like: a frenetic lifestyle, chronic laziness, general boredom and malaise, or political hand-sitting. There, is that enough?

OK, OK. I’ll give you one little morsel that isn’t about me making myself feel better: last Sunday, I was walking back from a sun-drenched coffee-drinking-paper-reading afternoon. There, in the middle of Wolcott Avenue, was a man in a pale pink suit, matching fedora and faux-alligator shoes. In a wheelchair. An electric wheelchair. Speeding down the perfect center of the street. Doing a wheelie.

People, I’m telling you. I couldn’t make this shit up.

All you managers out there, business owners, and people with incompetent staff and co-workers: it could be worse. You could be these guys [scroll down to the requirements section].

A priceless excerpt:

We are really not interested in hearing that you need another 2 weeks to complete our 2 week project because: your mother died three times in a year (unless you really do have three mothers — and next time we hear that, we’ll ask for proof!); your unexpected house closing prevents you from working (the closing is NEVER THAT unexpected, we’ve bought houses); you have to go to a wedding at the last minute in another state; you suddenly have to move out of the area; you have unexpected friends from out of town that you need to socialize with; you forgot the deadline and thought you said 20 weeks for the project instead of 2 weeks; you did too many drugs in the 70s/80s/90s and can’t think straight anymore; you thought the deadline was just made up to make you work harder; you had ‘top secret’ classification in the military and they erased your memory when you got out and you can’t remember everything you used to be able to; you hired your buddy to do part of the work and he let you down and didn’t do it; you found out you’re losing another job and feel depressed about it so you can’t work; your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t like you working so much and needs to hold your hand while you watch TV for four hours a day so you can’t meet the deadline; your pet tarantula died and you’re too depressed to work; you’re hung over; your sister’s mother’s aunt’s niece’s daughter got picked up by the cops and you need to disappear for 2 weeks; your internet connection died but you’re still able to send ridiculously long emails explaining what happened — you’re just not able to do any work for the next week; you can’t connect to the database anymore because the hosting company upgraded to a different version and you don’t want to download the trial version upgrade because big brother could be watching you; your laptop crashed and even though you have 6 other machines on hand, you’d prefer to rebuild your laptop for the next month than to do the work that we’re paying you for; you forgot that your friends were going to have 3 beach picnics and 4 parties when you said you’d do the work and you completely forgot your aunt’s 61st birthday, your best buddy’s kegger and your husband/wife’s family reunion picnic, and you’d prefer to attend those than get the work done.) etc., etc., etc.

So, yeah. Look on the bright side.