I napped in a small bit of park space accross the street from the Washington Libary. The sun burned me and the bugs had any part of my ankles that they wanted. So decadent; the Earth is our enemy and we should rightfully hate the dirt on our knees and the breeze on our skin. If I could get the woman with the dog to lie down next to me she would be at ease. She would have no objections to whatever.
I abhore nature, as much as I ever did. The thought of a universal human nature disgusts me as much as it ever did. I still belive that if there is such a thing, then it is a tyranny imposed upon us; driving us against all reason to create more damned and pathetic slaves of genocidal biology.
Still she's cute though.
Dé Máirt, Lúnasa 25, 2009
I've Been Going on About Myself Way too God Damned Much Lately
Oh well. Hopefully the readership is confined to those who either already know me or read about my latest doings without having any interest or impression of me.
I've been thinking of Bill Withers lately; "Lean on Me", "Use Me Up", "Ain't no Sunshine" just about everyone knows and loves his songs but they often don't know the man. I've been forming a revisionist interpretation on "Use me Up" lately. I think he's actually trying to pawn off a difficult woman to some gullible friend, Tom Sawyer style. If that is indeed the correct interpretation of the song it would be just about the most brillent piece of music of the past hundred years.
I've been thinking of Bill Withers lately; "Lean on Me", "Use Me Up", "Ain't no Sunshine" just about everyone knows and loves his songs but they often don't know the man. I've been forming a revisionist interpretation on "Use me Up" lately. I think he's actually trying to pawn off a difficult woman to some gullible friend, Tom Sawyer style. If that is indeed the correct interpretation of the song it would be just about the most brillent piece of music of the past hundred years.
Déardaoin, Lúnasa 20, 2009
My Uncle Tom
I spent last Friday with him and his Philipine wife and in-laws. He is the most succesful member of my moms generation; ex-marine, world traveller, mid-level executive for Sprint, inveterate fratboy but a good guy all the same. Fully convinced of the superiority of the suburban life; semi-conciously derisive of the small town and the inner city, but warm enough. He is perfectly convinced that I tyoo shall scorn the city once I settle down, since it's self-evident that the city is only for young partiers and the sorry bastards in the ghettos too poor to leave. To be agreeible I told him that if/when I have a family I could very well live in a place like Evanston, an inner ring-suburb with enough space for free parking and medium-sized yards, and of course the presence of Northwestern gives it a very Lincoln feel. I doubt that I will ever see the ways in which a large city is inadequate for raising a family that strike him as so obvious. My children will read Wittgenstien and cower under the monkeybars at recess. Still I wasn't exactly lying. I like Evanston truly enough, that place is cute as a puppy in a schoolgirl's raincoat. Fuck yeah Evanston.
Tom picked me up on Friday afternoon in Lakeview and we meandered are way to the spot on near north Milwaukee where I had seen a couple Polish cafes once but I've forgotten exactly where they were and there was no place to park. We ended up eating at some gulag hot dog place on Milwaukee and Lake where he had a Chicago dog and I had a weak Philly steak. After lunch we made our way to the Eisenhower and rode the freeways to his in-laws place in Glendale Heights; somewhere between O'Hare and Elgin. The thirty mile drive took three hours. I was resisting the urge to weep while Tom was nonplussed. He's from D.C. which according to him has the worst traffic in the world. I told him that our Circle Interchange was the worst in America. He was still nonplussed.
We kept the conversation light and impersonal. Seventies rock and Husker football mostly. He asked where Nicole was and I said at work. He said she was free to come out if she wanted to. She texted me that evening and said she was gambling in Hammond and I texted that that and please stay there.
That evening his relatives had a barbeque of grilled chicken and lamb with hot sauces and egg roles and a shitload of rice with flan and cheesecake for desert. Aunt Elsa, Tom's wife, criticized my dress and dirtiness. She is the twin sister of Kahn from 'King of The Hill' and I had been out drinking vodka with Nicole the night before and had'nt showered. The relatives didn't mind. They spoke a tongue called Visayan to each other and I noticed it had quite a lot of Spanish in it. I asked Tom about it and he basically repeated what I had already noticed. He went on to say that the Phillipines has hundreds of different languages and dialects and that there was a good deal of dispute over what made a proper language or just a dialect.
I could smell how tirethe grass was in the daylight. I could feel my ears straining to catch the hum of cars and grinding metal they've become used to and you hear locusts and see stars at night.
The Visiyans (I didn't ask them if they were the cats who had themselves crucified on Good Friday.) are very open about homosexuality. The gay cousins ate at table in full drag. They looked like broads living out of a cheap motel room. Nicky is a broad in a cheap hotel room but she has thrift store style.
My Uncle was very eager to take me to the backyard after I was finished eating. He said it was customery at family gatherings in the Phillipines for men and women to segregate and hang with their own kind. Well alright. This is in fact what ends up happening at most gatherings everywhere. Some cultures make an official more out of it and think they're special, and that's alright. There was an impromptu singing group with an acoustic guitar playing love songs by Marvin Gaye and the Beatles and The Eagles and Journey. My uncle explained that this was traditional as well. Why thanks Tom. The only foreign culture here is suburbs, and your ways are strange indeed. There was an brother of the family who kept feeding me Bud Lights. The in-laws were terribly kind to me the whole time. I took some barbecue home and ate it with a 40 of Mickey's and it was delicious.
Tom picked me up on Friday afternoon in Lakeview and we meandered are way to the spot on near north Milwaukee where I had seen a couple Polish cafes once but I've forgotten exactly where they were and there was no place to park. We ended up eating at some gulag hot dog place on Milwaukee and Lake where he had a Chicago dog and I had a weak Philly steak. After lunch we made our way to the Eisenhower and rode the freeways to his in-laws place in Glendale Heights; somewhere between O'Hare and Elgin. The thirty mile drive took three hours. I was resisting the urge to weep while Tom was nonplussed. He's from D.C. which according to him has the worst traffic in the world. I told him that our Circle Interchange was the worst in America. He was still nonplussed.
We kept the conversation light and impersonal. Seventies rock and Husker football mostly. He asked where Nicole was and I said at work. He said she was free to come out if she wanted to. She texted me that evening and said she was gambling in Hammond and I texted that that and please stay there.
That evening his relatives had a barbeque of grilled chicken and lamb with hot sauces and egg roles and a shitload of rice with flan and cheesecake for desert. Aunt Elsa, Tom's wife, criticized my dress and dirtiness. She is the twin sister of Kahn from 'King of The Hill' and I had been out drinking vodka with Nicole the night before and had'nt showered. The relatives didn't mind. They spoke a tongue called Visayan to each other and I noticed it had quite a lot of Spanish in it. I asked Tom about it and he basically repeated what I had already noticed. He went on to say that the Phillipines has hundreds of different languages and dialects and that there was a good deal of dispute over what made a proper language or just a dialect.
I could smell how tirethe grass was in the daylight. I could feel my ears straining to catch the hum of cars and grinding metal they've become used to and you hear locusts and see stars at night.
The Visiyans (I didn't ask them if they were the cats who had themselves crucified on Good Friday.) are very open about homosexuality. The gay cousins ate at table in full drag. They looked like broads living out of a cheap motel room. Nicky is a broad in a cheap hotel room but she has thrift store style.
My Uncle was very eager to take me to the backyard after I was finished eating. He said it was customery at family gatherings in the Phillipines for men and women to segregate and hang with their own kind. Well alright. This is in fact what ends up happening at most gatherings everywhere. Some cultures make an official more out of it and think they're special, and that's alright. There was an impromptu singing group with an acoustic guitar playing love songs by Marvin Gaye and the Beatles and The Eagles and Journey. My uncle explained that this was traditional as well. Why thanks Tom. The only foreign culture here is suburbs, and your ways are strange indeed. There was an brother of the family who kept feeding me Bud Lights. The in-laws were terribly kind to me the whole time. I took some barbecue home and ate it with a 40 of Mickey's and it was delicious.
Déardaoin, Lúnasa 13, 2009
Oh The Cheap Irony of the Red Line
"Redlining" is a socioeconomic term that refers to the practice of financial and real estate institutions working in formal or informal collusion with local governments to more or less create racial ghettos. The 'wrong kind of people' (Blacks being the most famous and typical example in this country, though there are other groups who who have suffered the same nonsense both here and just about everywhere else.) are herded into the same substandard housing in neighborhoods that are astutely ignored by civil services. Banks will not loan them the money to move out. Real estate companies will not give you a house even if you do somehow get the money. Businesses which offer jobs that pay enough to move out won't offer them to the wrong people, which hardly matters since they would never be able to get to these jobs anyway by attempting to navigate the abysmal local infrastructure.
Chicago, like other cities, bestows the honorary title of "Red Line" on the aorta of its train system. Symbolically linking Wrigley Field to the Cell, the Red connects the well-heeled northern lakefront with the Loop and the South. In the South, it runs along the median of the Dan Ryan expressway, an expressway which was routed where it was specifically to seal off the "Black Belt" from the old "White Ethnic" enclaves, particularly Daley Sr.'s own Bridgeport. The northern terminus of the Red Line is Howard Avenue, also the northern end of the city, with other El lines connecting to the nearest-in suburbs of Skokie and Evanston. (In fairness, the Caribbean enclave surrounding the Howard station is noticeably black and noticeably rough.) The south end of the Red Line is 95th Street, barely more than halfway between 0 block and the south city limits.
95th is the main east/west street on the South Side, dividing the far south from the merely south. The Chicago South Side is of course considered to be one of the great ghettos of the Western World. This is unfair for several reasons. To label a place as a ghetto is to attach to it the morbid fascination of a ghetto, a fascination that typically involves mocking the people that live there. This is unjust when one recognizes that the south half of Chicago is exactly what one hundred years of very deliberate planning by the forces ruling this city have made it into. Those who are poor and stuck in the bad neighborhoods of the South were designed to be. Add to this the fact that it's simply ignorant to dismiss the whole of the South Side as a uniform ghetto, ignoring the complexity of both the South and the city as a whole. There is Englewood and "Murdertown" along the Dan Ryan in the fifties, but just a block toward the lake from there is Hyde Park. The South has good neighborhoods, the North has bad neighborhoods. The Cubs have Black fans, The Sox have gay fans.
But in the Far South, past where the train ends, one does see the large realms of uniform bleakness that outsiders envision south Chicago to be. This is where the factories are. (Or used to be, for the most part.) While the city as a whole is too big and economically diverse to suffer the total meltdown felt by Detroit and Cleveland, the Far South is reeling from the same collapse of American heavy industry that's fucking up the rest of the Great Lakes.
But anyway, after years, years, years, and years of talking bout doing so, the transit authority has voted to extend the Red Line south to 130th street. Also to be extended are the Orange Line from Midway to a shopping mall nearby, and the Yellow Line (aka the 'Skokie Swift' or, if I'm hungover and feeling very evil 'the Jewish boxcar'.)to a shopping mall in that town. The total cost of these projects is around two billion dollars and is expected to take several (more) years to complete. The money is a big concern of course. If only there were someone from the South Side who had any sort of influence in Washington.
According to the Tribune residents who sit in the path of the extended Red Line are screaming for it, which is natural. Skokie residents who live in the path of the extension are complaining about it, which is also quite natural. Even in progressive metropolis such as this; where forced proximity to ethnic groups you didn't even know existed leaves people little choice but to get along, public transportation is still associated with the "wrong element" by the well-heeled. And of course Skokie does have a history of unwanted outsiders just marching through the place.
In the end I think that all of these projects are worthwhile and I'm optimistic that they will go through. The expressways are jammed and there's no room to make them any wider. While we're at it the entire El system could use an overhaul as well as an extension. Trains and tracks are both getting a little bit creaky, and if OUR president is as much as a corrupt Chicago pol as the nutcases say he is, than surely he has some idea of how we truly need a big bundle of billions in kickbacks, for both transportation and other infrastructure. It will go how it goes. I'm sure it will get ugly and stupid sometime soon, but I'm ok with that mostly. The Olympic bid got ugly and stupid very quickly but I still think that's a cool idea.
Chicago, like other cities, bestows the honorary title of "Red Line" on the aorta of its train system. Symbolically linking Wrigley Field to the Cell, the Red connects the well-heeled northern lakefront with the Loop and the South. In the South, it runs along the median of the Dan Ryan expressway, an expressway which was routed where it was specifically to seal off the "Black Belt" from the old "White Ethnic" enclaves, particularly Daley Sr.'s own Bridgeport. The northern terminus of the Red Line is Howard Avenue, also the northern end of the city, with other El lines connecting to the nearest-in suburbs of Skokie and Evanston. (In fairness, the Caribbean enclave surrounding the Howard station is noticeably black and noticeably rough.) The south end of the Red Line is 95th Street, barely more than halfway between 0 block and the south city limits.
95th is the main east/west street on the South Side, dividing the far south from the merely south. The Chicago South Side is of course considered to be one of the great ghettos of the Western World. This is unfair for several reasons. To label a place as a ghetto is to attach to it the morbid fascination of a ghetto, a fascination that typically involves mocking the people that live there. This is unjust when one recognizes that the south half of Chicago is exactly what one hundred years of very deliberate planning by the forces ruling this city have made it into. Those who are poor and stuck in the bad neighborhoods of the South were designed to be. Add to this the fact that it's simply ignorant to dismiss the whole of the South Side as a uniform ghetto, ignoring the complexity of both the South and the city as a whole. There is Englewood and "Murdertown" along the Dan Ryan in the fifties, but just a block toward the lake from there is Hyde Park. The South has good neighborhoods, the North has bad neighborhoods. The Cubs have Black fans, The Sox have gay fans.
But in the Far South, past where the train ends, one does see the large realms of uniform bleakness that outsiders envision south Chicago to be. This is where the factories are. (Or used to be, for the most part.) While the city as a whole is too big and economically diverse to suffer the total meltdown felt by Detroit and Cleveland, the Far South is reeling from the same collapse of American heavy industry that's fucking up the rest of the Great Lakes.
But anyway, after years, years, years, and years of talking bout doing so, the transit authority has voted to extend the Red Line south to 130th street. Also to be extended are the Orange Line from Midway to a shopping mall nearby, and the Yellow Line (aka the 'Skokie Swift' or, if I'm hungover and feeling very evil 'the Jewish boxcar'.)to a shopping mall in that town. The total cost of these projects is around two billion dollars and is expected to take several (more) years to complete. The money is a big concern of course. If only there were someone from the South Side who had any sort of influence in Washington.
According to the Tribune residents who sit in the path of the extended Red Line are screaming for it, which is natural. Skokie residents who live in the path of the extension are complaining about it, which is also quite natural. Even in progressive metropolis such as this; where forced proximity to ethnic groups you didn't even know existed leaves people little choice but to get along, public transportation is still associated with the "wrong element" by the well-heeled. And of course Skokie does have a history of unwanted outsiders just marching through the place.
In the end I think that all of these projects are worthwhile and I'm optimistic that they will go through. The expressways are jammed and there's no room to make them any wider. While we're at it the entire El system could use an overhaul as well as an extension. Trains and tracks are both getting a little bit creaky, and if OUR president is as much as a corrupt Chicago pol as the nutcases say he is, than surely he has some idea of how we truly need a big bundle of billions in kickbacks, for both transportation and other infrastructure. It will go how it goes. I'm sure it will get ugly and stupid sometime soon, but I'm ok with that mostly. The Olympic bid got ugly and stupid very quickly but I still think that's a cool idea.
You Got a Problem Buddy?
Ben Joravsky's incessant vitriol that maligns, vilifies and demonizes Mayor Daley is bombastic and only resonates with nihilists, atheists and anarchists. Conversely, articles in National Geographic, Time magazine and Vanity Fair that have lauded Daley for being a green mayor have resonated with ecologists, environmentalists, conservationists, nature stewards, horticulturists and botanists. Being green is more constructive than venting spleen. —Brien Comerford- Letter to the Chicago Reader 6/12
Speaking as a proud nihilist, atheist, and anarchist, fuck you Brien Comerford. Fuck you, fuck the venal vindictive feudalistic racist Mick fuck running this town and fuck his bicycle.
Speaking as a proud nihilist, atheist, and anarchist, fuck you Brien Comerford. Fuck you, fuck the venal vindictive feudalistic racist Mick fuck running this town and fuck his bicycle.
Dé Céadaoin, Iúil 29, 2009
The Black Juggalo of The Red Line
ICP tattooed in bubble font across his right fingers, that "guy with meat cleaver" symbol on his left arm. Yup, there he is, a Black Juggalo. I thought the black guys listening to "Freebird" in the computer lab was strange, the black guy in the Hank Williams Jr. T-shirt with three Confederate flags on it? Thrift shop maybe, take what you can get. But an honest-to-God black Juggalo. Wow. Wow.
Dé Luain, Iúil 27, 2009
Odds And Ends.
I make love every time I enter the State. Street subway on the inbound redline. Every time I come back out I am born again. My most fervent wish right now is to be insane so that I can see demons screaming at me on the subway walls. I should have joined the Marines, gone to Iraq, and acidentially killed a pregnant teenager when I had the chance.
In North Platte there was this share-a-bike program. People would donate their old bikes to the program and they would be left in various racks around time. I used them a couple of times, terrible bikes mostly. The idea was based on similar programs in Boulder, Portaland, some Bay Area suburbs, etc. There were of course cases of permenent borrowing in these places and it was expected that the same would happen in North Platte. Well, you can say whatever you want to say about Boulder and Portland; they don't have the meth problem that North Platte does. There were never more than two bikes availible at any of the ten or so program racks set up around town. Share-a-bike lasted three weeks. Mind that these were the most bent-spoked, rusted-powder blue, brakeless recumbent tandem pieces of shit imaginible that people were stealing. The smooth talking ones got two eight balls.
"The Man who Stole from Tom Osborne."
I met Lynn Finney. He tried his "car broken down on the way to Columbus" hustle on me, told me he had been a Husker and all that. Added some flavors to it, like how he had walked to campus from Shoemaker's. He asked me for seventy five dollars as cooly as one asks a stranger for the time. Twice, once in December of 06 and again around October of 07. A couple months after that he tried to hit me up while I was in a moving car, my own, accelerating for the green light at 16th and R. Whether he even vaguely recognized my face I don't know. Dying of cancer and still can't quit the rock? Horribly pathetic. I really did like that guy.
In North Platte there was this share-a-bike program. People would donate their old bikes to the program and they would be left in various racks around time. I used them a couple of times, terrible bikes mostly. The idea was based on similar programs in Boulder, Portaland, some Bay Area suburbs, etc. There were of course cases of permenent borrowing in these places and it was expected that the same would happen in North Platte. Well, you can say whatever you want to say about Boulder and Portland; they don't have the meth problem that North Platte does. There were never more than two bikes availible at any of the ten or so program racks set up around town. Share-a-bike lasted three weeks. Mind that these were the most bent-spoked, rusted-powder blue, brakeless recumbent tandem pieces of shit imaginible that people were stealing. The smooth talking ones got two eight balls.
"The Man who Stole from Tom Osborne."
I met Lynn Finney. He tried his "car broken down on the way to Columbus" hustle on me, told me he had been a Husker and all that. Added some flavors to it, like how he had walked to campus from Shoemaker's. He asked me for seventy five dollars as cooly as one asks a stranger for the time. Twice, once in December of 06 and again around October of 07. A couple months after that he tried to hit me up while I was in a moving car, my own, accelerating for the green light at 16th and R. Whether he even vaguely recognized my face I don't know. Dying of cancer and still can't quit the rock? Horribly pathetic. I really did like that guy.
Déardaoin, Iúil 23, 2009
Odds & Ends
Papa Manic is currently in jail for possession of two bags of weed within a thousand feet of a park, which is to say in a park, not that it makes any difference. In a city of this density one won't find many spots that aren't a thousand feet from a school or a park. The law seems designed specifically to allow for gang bangers on south Harlem to leisure their afternoons in vacant lots. They figure two weeks for Papa. Keep the children clean. How hard would the cops have come down on my blue eyed pretty white ass? The Latina cop who popped me for taking a leak under the el. She said she was surprised to hear that I was twenty eight, that I still look young. Bless her.
Mama Rainy, the wife, the black mama, is lonely. Last night she again asked why I was so quiet and I again told her that it was just the way I am. She asked me if I was sexually frustrated. I answered that I've been worse as far as that goes, and in fact was growing a bit weary from company, but if she needed any help. Why not? She's done me favors, looked out for me, and she looks good for fifty one, whatever that means. She's not untouchibly ugly by any means, and the difference in race would prevent the surrogate mother factor from getting too nasty. She said she would take a rain check.
Mama Dee, the white gay-spawn one, was robbed of twenty dollars and her prescription to adderal by a sixteen-year-old transgendered hooker named Tiffany. Dee took to smoking again until her son wired her the money to shop Walgreen's so maybe she'll stop now. Tiffany was the victor in one of several scrapes between the working drag queens who gather at Belmont and Clark across from the twenty four hour Starbucks. She wondered in there fillthy and covered with a few spots of blood hear and there, railing to Mama Rainy about the same incoherent nonsense about "respect" that usually comes with these things. Rainy futilely tried to speak sense to her while Dee glowered. Dee and Tiffany don't get along of course. But Mama Rainy is Mama and refuses to let the girl fall to the fate she has chosen for herself, refuses to allow Dee to knock her teeth out and give her a hospital bed to get clean in for a few days. So now this situation keeps festering among people who sleep in three hour snatches once every two or three days. Barbecue Friday night.
Mama Rainy, the wife, the black mama, is lonely. Last night she again asked why I was so quiet and I again told her that it was just the way I am. She asked me if I was sexually frustrated. I answered that I've been worse as far as that goes, and in fact was growing a bit weary from company, but if she needed any help. Why not? She's done me favors, looked out for me, and she looks good for fifty one, whatever that means. She's not untouchibly ugly by any means, and the difference in race would prevent the surrogate mother factor from getting too nasty. She said she would take a rain check.
Mama Dee, the white gay-spawn one, was robbed of twenty dollars and her prescription to adderal by a sixteen-year-old transgendered hooker named Tiffany. Dee took to smoking again until her son wired her the money to shop Walgreen's so maybe she'll stop now. Tiffany was the victor in one of several scrapes between the working drag queens who gather at Belmont and Clark across from the twenty four hour Starbucks. She wondered in there fillthy and covered with a few spots of blood hear and there, railing to Mama Rainy about the same incoherent nonsense about "respect" that usually comes with these things. Rainy futilely tried to speak sense to her while Dee glowered. Dee and Tiffany don't get along of course. But Mama Rainy is Mama and refuses to let the girl fall to the fate she has chosen for herself, refuses to allow Dee to knock her teeth out and give her a hospital bed to get clean in for a few days. So now this situation keeps festering among people who sleep in three hour snatches once every two or three days. Barbecue Friday night.
Dé Céadaoin, Iúil 22, 2009
I Want You So Bad
The woman being refereed to in "She's so Heavy"?
Yes, that's right, Ayn Rand, subject of no fewer than seven out of ten love songs in all of popular music. If there was ever a true doubt in your mind, than you are a moral slave worthy only to wax my Lamborghini.
By the way, "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is about the joys of using lethal force to defend one's inanimate property. What did you think he was talking about anyway?
Yes, that's right, Ayn Rand, subject of no fewer than seven out of ten love songs in all of popular music. If there was ever a true doubt in your mind, than you are a moral slave worthy only to wax my Lamborghini.
By the way, "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is about the joys of using lethal force to defend one's inanimate property. What did you think he was talking about anyway?
Dé Máirt, Iúil 21, 2009
A Man Asked Me for A cigarette Here Last Week
I told him I was smoking my last one. He asked me if he could have half of it and got violently mad when I said no. It is impossible to smoke in public without getting hit up anywhere in this city. I myself have gone without food for twelve hours instead of aking strangers for help. I'm not putting myself on a cross that's just how it is. There are neighborhoods where I try to explain that my parents don't have a swimming pool and brand new Escalade waiting for me back home and I know that I'm wasting my time.
Dé hAoine, Iúil 17, 2009
Elton John and Billy Joel from Waveland Avenue.
I have some metal friends who may still be unable to admit to themselves that Elton John kicks ass, and that's a shame. The way the man puts his warm, empathetic voice to use really is magical, to the point that even Bernie Taupin's most absurd lyrics come out sounding like a healing lullaby to the tragedies of human life. Yes Elton, space is a terrible place to raise a kid. Won't the parents ever stop climbing the corporate ladder and think about what they're doing to Junior?
But then again it is no secret that John is an absolute whore, so for the past few years he's been touring with 'the human gin & tonic hangover', Billy Joel. With the exception of 'Piano Man' and 'Pressure', Joel is known for the sort of hack work that Elton avoided until he hit middle age. He is also yet another father figure in my life that I scorn to the point of hating my own masculinity, but more on that later. John and Joel came to Chicago last night, and of course they played at Wriggly field, home of the entire white population of Cook County.
The concert was scheduled to start at seven. I met Liz at the Addison El station about twenty after six and we had dinner at Taco Bell. (Yeah that's right. What?) It was a great atmosphere, the streets were full of pseudo-tanned suburbanites drinking champagne in the parking lots and hustlers trading bibles for cigarettes. When we made eventually made our way around to Waveland (Where the rooftop stands our) it really was postcard romantic. All the beautiful young people grilling, drinking beer, enjoying the hard work their parents did for their pristine real estate. The night was as soft and mild as a woman who believed your story about working for Vanity Fair. "This, darling, I will remember." "Oh yeah. Fucking Billy Joel man!" There was a flourish at about 7:20 and the show began with, what? Elton John is the opener?
John and Joel "dualed pianos" for awhile. Elton opened with "You're Song" as per tradition and Joel followed with "Just the Way You Are" the classic love song for his long-divorced wife. John countered with "Levon" one of his weaker old-school jams before Joel came back with the dishwater "My Life."
Elton had the stage to himself for the next hour and change and kept it seventies. "Yellow Brick road" (Should have stayed on the Farm, should of listened to my mom.) "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" and, oddly, the eleven minute, Kubrick invoking "Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding." It's an epic tune and all, but popular mainly with Elton fans and not really known to the general public anymore. I don't know whether to be thrilled or disappointed that EJ whored out to the baby boomers this hard. It's not if he doesn't he hasn't had any hits in the past twenty years. "Songs From the West Coast" has several good songs on it. Why not play "This Train Don't Stop..."? Or something from the Lion King, Fuck it.
Then again, I was off to the porta-potties as soon as he played something that I didn't recognize. The bastard started playing "Tiny Dancer" just as I was stepping out and I had to run back the length of a block to rejoin the crowd and find Liz. I eventually saw her with only three or four other people between us, and she waved at me to go to her, but Elton was already halfway through the second verse and I didn't have the time to jostle anymore, so I waved back and finished singing the song with perfect strangers. You're a big girl darling.
After that it was "Philadelphia Freedom" (meh.) a couple other tunes and than "Crocodile Rock" for the pseudo-finish. (Sing along! Yay!)
Billy Joel opened his stand-alone set with "Angry Young Man" and "Moving Out" (manmanmanamn. Oh Bill, you're so saucy.) After pathetically trying to keep it real with the supposedly impoverished Great Lakes audience, (It's not true that New Yorkers view everything to the west as monotonous desert. They can tell the difference between Chicago and LA just fine. They just don't know the difference between Chicago and Akron.) his band busted out into "Allentown", the absolute worst excuse of an ode to white blue-collar poverty ever written.
After this it was a few more pieces of trilling trite nonsense until the moment I had been dreading finally came. When I was ten years old I was riding in the car with my mother when "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me" came on the radio. I said that it sucked and this made my Mom start giggling and saying I should have more respect for it. I asked her what she meant. She grinned and sneered and snorted and, eventually, she told me that I had been, I had been conceived, to this song, to Billy Joel. I exist because my mother, she was seduced, by Billy Joel. I stood in the crowd last night, doing all I could to hold back the Taco Bell vomit and the tears, I turned to see my girlfriend dancing ecstatically to this song,this fleshly prayer of my blasphemous physical being, and the girlfriend, she likes it too. She probably has it on the her ipod somewhere, blissfully unaware of how many times I've wished myself dead to deny Billy Joel the satisfaction. I hope you were really drunk mom.
After this came "We Didn't Start The Fire" a song that is both Joel's most shameless piece of work and the ultimate demonstration of Baby Boomers' historically ignorant sense of self-importance. The crowd loved it of course. Liz loved it of course. Bouncing up and down and exhorting me to join her. I should have broken up with her right then. Or maybe it would be better if I killed her tonight. Joel closed with the mercifully tolerable "Only the good Die Young" and it was on to the encores.
Elton started things with "I guess that's why They Call it the Blues" and Joel followed with "You May Be Right." "After this came "The Bitch is Back" and, at last "Bennie and the Jets" from EJ. Liz once again wanted to cuddle while we sang along together, and didn't have the slightest clue why I was being cold and unsubtly angry towards her. She took to grinding against the "Billy Cub" mascot who had joined the crowd for the climax of the show shilling for tips and rocking a glow stick. I think it was a humorous attempt to make me jealous. Give yourself to the rats for all I care you filthy evil Joel-whore.
Still, "Bennie and the Jets" is a beautiful experience when played in front of a hundred thousand receptive ears, and would have made the perfect closer to Slton John's night. But he decided to show his famous sanctimonious side and close with "Candle in the Wind" instead. Which is fine I guess. One could easily make the case that it's his best song. It shows how the sisterly love that gay men feel for dead female celebrities is perfectly sincere and often quite moving. Still it's a rather grim song to end the night on. I mean it is summer and all and we would like to have some fun.
Finally of course there was Joel's "Piano Man", which is far more transcendent then it has any right to be but never mind. I was at piece again after half an hour of agony. Liz came up behind me to wrap her arms around my waist and I accepted her and we sang along. "They're sharing a drink we call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone!!" She asked me if I was going home with her and I said no. She asked why and I said I'd explain to her some other time. "Piano Man" is great but not great enough to forgive Billy or Liz or mom or any woman.
Dé Luain, Iúil 13, 2009
And They All Believe in Jesus
The women at the welfare office, the twenty-six year-old, Sonya if I remember right, the one from one of the rougher ends of uptown who managed to get an associate's degree and a job as a dental assistant, never needed a dime of government aid until the recession hit. She was assured that the suffering was all a test, and that the suffering was the point, to see if she's worthy to go home, and that the test never ends. The white and the rich go to church to learn why Jesus loves them better than other people. The brown and poor go to church to learn the the test never ends, and that this is how it should be, so stay calm. The neighbors who have been on food stamps their whole lives ask Sonya why she doesn't have children yet.
Papa Manic believes in Jesus. He says that he fought the war "fifteen years ago I was in that war you know." This would have been Iraq I, in which Bush the elder freed Christian Kuwait from the Moorish hordes. Manic was just past thirty then, so maybe or maybe not. He's not conciously lying at any rate. The passion of a believer tells him he was in the Gulf War. "You gotta fucking kill evil, if you ain't willing to kill evil when God tells you it's time than get the fuck out!! I'm for real on that shit. I assured him that I was for real on that shit, and that I wasn't just camping out with the black homeless for amusement.
Purvis too; gay, alcoholic, crack-addled, estranged from his elderly mother, firmly believes. His sisters have assured him that they'll let him know when his mother goes home to the Lord, assuming that she gets there first, before his eyes get any yellower.
Sarah, the one who stood in the middle of the bike path at Lincoln Park while begging me for a cigarette, telling the bikers who nearly bit the dust avoiding her to eat her ass. Sarah rode the bus from a South side shelter to Lakeview looking for work. She was being paid for 'giving some company' to an Iraq II veteran who came back with a missing arm and a mental twitch, likes to torment her with a knife apparently. When she asked me if I believed in Jesus I said I was a skeptic. She spent ten minutes asking me how I couldn't be afraid of hell and I told her I was afraid of death gin general sure. "How do you know there ain't no hell? How do you know, how do you know?" "I don't know. That's what a skeptic is. One who doesn't know what he doesn't know." Finally she asked me if I came from a Christian family and I said I was Catholic. She took this as a no and went into the old Calvinist spiel of how "the Bible is a guidebook that comes straight from God and the Catholic church and the Baptist church and all of these churches are fucking up the roadmap right, think of it as a roadmap. now imagine you're lost right, and you need a map; now are you going to trust the person who wrote the map or are you going to call some motherfucker who's just guessing? You know most people think you go to heaven for being good but not one of us is good we are all sinners and we have all fucked up........" She left me with a God bless and a Chick tract, the one where Satan dresses up like the Great Pumpkin and goes Freddy Kruger on some town.
Walter wanted to know if I had a problem with black people. I said no, I just didn't talk very much. This assumption by those who enjoy conversation for its own sake is universal and that those who don't partake with them simply must be stuck up is my greatest pet pieve. I remember my parents chiding me for growing noticibly anxious during extended family talks over dogs and priests that had been dead for twenty years. My natural introversion became militant and I came to distrust the smiling and effervescent, so here I am. But I listen as well as a wiretap. What could I possibly add to your passion to kill for Jesus anyway?
But there was no convincing Walter that silence wasn't tantamount to derision. He exhorted me to go to the Washington library and look at all the records of how many white people had secret white blood and vice-versa. "Adam and Eve were black." "Jesus looked like us." "I believe in the Bible. Some people are athiest and I believe in God, that's just my preference." "Races have always been mixing. The history of Italy, Italy is real close to Africa, the Moors." "Who is the purest race anyway?" "Caucasion, or Caucoid." "white people believe in this fallacy about race. You know what a fallacy is right? I said fallacy." "Thomas Jefferson." Barack Obama." "I have the same intellect as you. I just want to make sure that you fucking know that."
Liz was raised Muslic and has no religious preferences. "But I believe in god with all my heart and I know he's wqatching after you and I know he gives me the strength to stay clean." She gives me a God bless every night, either in person or via text. I do sleep better for it, so who cares if it does any real good or not? She sleeps better when I tell her I'm keeping safe. Mom sleeps better when I tell her I'm safe.
Papa Manic believes in Jesus. He says that he fought the war "fifteen years ago I was in that war you know." This would have been Iraq I, in which Bush the elder freed Christian Kuwait from the Moorish hordes. Manic was just past thirty then, so maybe or maybe not. He's not conciously lying at any rate. The passion of a believer tells him he was in the Gulf War. "You gotta fucking kill evil, if you ain't willing to kill evil when God tells you it's time than get the fuck out!! I'm for real on that shit. I assured him that I was for real on that shit, and that I wasn't just camping out with the black homeless for amusement.
Purvis too; gay, alcoholic, crack-addled, estranged from his elderly mother, firmly believes. His sisters have assured him that they'll let him know when his mother goes home to the Lord, assuming that she gets there first, before his eyes get any yellower.
Sarah, the one who stood in the middle of the bike path at Lincoln Park while begging me for a cigarette, telling the bikers who nearly bit the dust avoiding her to eat her ass. Sarah rode the bus from a South side shelter to Lakeview looking for work. She was being paid for 'giving some company' to an Iraq II veteran who came back with a missing arm and a mental twitch, likes to torment her with a knife apparently. When she asked me if I believed in Jesus I said I was a skeptic. She spent ten minutes asking me how I couldn't be afraid of hell and I told her I was afraid of death gin general sure. "How do you know there ain't no hell? How do you know, how do you know?" "I don't know. That's what a skeptic is. One who doesn't know what he doesn't know." Finally she asked me if I came from a Christian family and I said I was Catholic. She took this as a no and went into the old Calvinist spiel of how "the Bible is a guidebook that comes straight from God and the Catholic church and the Baptist church and all of these churches are fucking up the roadmap right, think of it as a roadmap. now imagine you're lost right, and you need a map; now are you going to trust the person who wrote the map or are you going to call some motherfucker who's just guessing? You know most people think you go to heaven for being good but not one of us is good we are all sinners and we have all fucked up........" She left me with a God bless and a Chick tract, the one where Satan dresses up like the Great Pumpkin and goes Freddy Kruger on some town.
Walter wanted to know if I had a problem with black people. I said no, I just didn't talk very much. This assumption by those who enjoy conversation for its own sake is universal and that those who don't partake with them simply must be stuck up is my greatest pet pieve. I remember my parents chiding me for growing noticibly anxious during extended family talks over dogs and priests that had been dead for twenty years. My natural introversion became militant and I came to distrust the smiling and effervescent, so here I am. But I listen as well as a wiretap. What could I possibly add to your passion to kill for Jesus anyway?
But there was no convincing Walter that silence wasn't tantamount to derision. He exhorted me to go to the Washington library and look at all the records of how many white people had secret white blood and vice-versa. "Adam and Eve were black." "Jesus looked like us." "I believe in the Bible. Some people are athiest and I believe in God, that's just my preference." "Races have always been mixing. The history of Italy, Italy is real close to Africa, the Moors." "Who is the purest race anyway?" "Caucasion, or Caucoid." "white people believe in this fallacy about race. You know what a fallacy is right? I said fallacy." "Thomas Jefferson." Barack Obama." "I have the same intellect as you. I just want to make sure that you fucking know that."
Liz was raised Muslic and has no religious preferences. "But I believe in god with all my heart and I know he's wqatching after you and I know he gives me the strength to stay clean." She gives me a God bless every night, either in person or via text. I do sleep better for it, so who cares if it does any real good or not? She sleeps better when I tell her I'm keeping safe. Mom sleeps better when I tell her I'm safe.
Déardaoin, Iúil 09, 2009
Grant Park Fireworks Show Quotes
"Quite a show fucking ay?"- Sgt. Gonzales, CPD.
"Hey!! Get your fuckin asses on the sidewaullk!!"- Some other CPD officer, blonde, female, maybe about 5'2.
"The whole world is watching!"-Me
"Josh, it's cute that you know your history and all, but this is the CPD honey and they don't play. Just be quite and keep walking baby."-Liz.
"That butch cop was hot wasn't she?"-Me
"Shut up baby."-Liz
"Hey!! Get your fuckin asses on the sidewaullk!!"- Some other CPD officer, blonde, female, maybe about 5'2.
"The whole world is watching!"-Me
"Josh, it's cute that you know your history and all, but this is the CPD honey and they don't play. Just be quite and keep walking baby."-Liz.
"That butch cop was hot wasn't she?"-Me
"Shut up baby."-Liz
Dé Domhnaigh, Iúil 05, 2009
Mama & Papa
This is where the spoiled north side homeless sleep. 'Mama' Patty with her portable grill and her husband 'Papa' who calls himself Manic and insists that this is the legal name his mother gave him. Other pillars of this community are Purvis, a gay blond black man in his fifties, struggling with cocaine and attention whoring, and Mama Dee, divorcee and formally abused wife in Muscatine Iowa; half of her eight children our gay and she has been elevated to a saint in the Halstead bars. The recession dried up her maid business and forced her onto the street. She owns an ipod that one of her children bought her two Christmesses ago, and also a $2500 laptop that she keeps hidden at the bottom of her basket. She's fifty one, same age as my mother, told me that she has a son named Josh in New York, tall blue eyed and long blond; she trusted me with the secret of the Dell almost as soon as I met her. She told me Purvis likes blond white boys, don't give an inch and he won't take a mile.
Mama and Papa regularly get their hands on grillible meat, charrities and such, so it's usually barbeque chicken for the ones who can't afford gas station pizza or can't stay sober long enough to get portable food from a pantry. The couple has been uptown for a long time and will often attract the housed to their barbeques as well. Last night a group of about ten of us, homeless and otherwise, Liz and I among them, martched with Mama and Papa to a spot along the lake in Lincoln Park.
I'm spending my days with Liz at her recovery home in Cicero, ran out of rent money for my hotel room. Hers is a reletively liberal place that lets significant others stay nights over the holidays. Tonight is not a holiday. I must find my own way tonight. Last night I could have stayed but I told her it was the fourth and we must go out. She said she would have to be back by ten, no weekend passes on the holidays, temptations to great. Come with me until than darling, I'll see you in the morning. Mama and Papa had a stereo with Patti LaBelle and Aretha, and we danced until she had to ride back to the suburbs with a friend.
Mama kept giving me chicken three or four times after I refused the next piece, until I stopped looking at the chicken on the grill. The fireworks from downtown were powerful enough to be seen from around the meandering shoreline. There was a party a few feet away from us who was getting reckless with their explosives. One shell went off barely six feet in the air covering us in a black cloud. The girl named Briona would grab me whenever a boom went off. I gave her my jacket when she complained of being cold. (Freakishely cold for the fourth, rained nearly until dark)She has a boyfriend and I have a girlfriend. We winked at each other is all, strictly "Lost in Translation" and innocent. I said it was cute how she was afrsid of fireworks and she said she loved to fuck white men. I told her she smelled nice and she asked me what makes pussy good to me anyway?
And that is a damned fine question. It disturbs and amazes me how much I lack self-reflection in these matters. What does make pussy good to me, besides willingness? Can't honestly say, it's a question I should be able to answer without this sort of trouble. Why do fish need to swim? No. No. Why am I so much more attractive here than I was in Nebraska with stable housing and a reletively stable income? They keep mentioning the eyes and the curl of my hair; maybe you could add my slow hinterland accent and relative bashfulness regarding sex to that. There seems to be something of a Tom Petty fetish among some women here and it will do by me. I can work on my 'evenin mams' and drawl out my diction even more and have a fine old time for as long as the eyes stay blue. Briona came from the Carabian when she was seven. She has a Jamaican accent that she'll stratigicaly drop in with her standard Midwestern black. As I walked her home she was talking to her kid sister in Creole over the phone and could see me smiling and leering.
I couple hours later Mama Dee bought me a Starbucks and showed me where I could charge my phone anytime as long as I had the money for coffee.
Mama and Papa regularly get their hands on grillible meat, charrities and such, so it's usually barbeque chicken for the ones who can't afford gas station pizza or can't stay sober long enough to get portable food from a pantry. The couple has been uptown for a long time and will often attract the housed to their barbeques as well. Last night a group of about ten of us, homeless and otherwise, Liz and I among them, martched with Mama and Papa to a spot along the lake in Lincoln Park.
I'm spending my days with Liz at her recovery home in Cicero, ran out of rent money for my hotel room. Hers is a reletively liberal place that lets significant others stay nights over the holidays. Tonight is not a holiday. I must find my own way tonight. Last night I could have stayed but I told her it was the fourth and we must go out. She said she would have to be back by ten, no weekend passes on the holidays, temptations to great. Come with me until than darling, I'll see you in the morning. Mama and Papa had a stereo with Patti LaBelle and Aretha, and we danced until she had to ride back to the suburbs with a friend.
Mama kept giving me chicken three or four times after I refused the next piece, until I stopped looking at the chicken on the grill. The fireworks from downtown were powerful enough to be seen from around the meandering shoreline. There was a party a few feet away from us who was getting reckless with their explosives. One shell went off barely six feet in the air covering us in a black cloud. The girl named Briona would grab me whenever a boom went off. I gave her my jacket when she complained of being cold. (Freakishely cold for the fourth, rained nearly until dark)She has a boyfriend and I have a girlfriend. We winked at each other is all, strictly "Lost in Translation" and innocent. I said it was cute how she was afrsid of fireworks and she said she loved to fuck white men. I told her she smelled nice and she asked me what makes pussy good to me anyway?
And that is a damned fine question. It disturbs and amazes me how much I lack self-reflection in these matters. What does make pussy good to me, besides willingness? Can't honestly say, it's a question I should be able to answer without this sort of trouble. Why do fish need to swim? No. No. Why am I so much more attractive here than I was in Nebraska with stable housing and a reletively stable income? They keep mentioning the eyes and the curl of my hair; maybe you could add my slow hinterland accent and relative bashfulness regarding sex to that. There seems to be something of a Tom Petty fetish among some women here and it will do by me. I can work on my 'evenin mams' and drawl out my diction even more and have a fine old time for as long as the eyes stay blue. Briona came from the Carabian when she was seven. She has a Jamaican accent that she'll stratigicaly drop in with her standard Midwestern black. As I walked her home she was talking to her kid sister in Creole over the phone and could see me smiling and leering.
I couple hours later Mama Dee bought me a Starbucks and showed me where I could charge my phone anytime as long as I had the money for coffee.
Dé Céadaoin, Iúil 01, 2009
Could Stand for A Drink
I told her about New Orleans and and she asked where WE were going to live there. She seems perfectly confident. If she talked even half as much it would be better. If she stopped sending me the sort of chain texts that you could just as easily find on a bumper sticker or a shot glass it would be a lot better. If I gave her a copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" and made it an eighth of the way through I would be much heartened. Dad after all still hasn't touched "The Stranger" since I bought it for him for Christmas.
Or maybe she could just keep telling me how pretty my eyes are and that will do. When leaving the airport I asked a nice Scottish girl for a cigarette, wondered my way to the el station, called her, and told her to tell me how handsome I was. Just a man after all.
I walked Addison from the Kennedy all the way to Halstead yesterday. A solid three miles, never once felt tired. Maybe I could hoof it from my place to the loop or back at least one way.
Or maybe she could just keep telling me how pretty my eyes are and that will do. When leaving the airport I asked a nice Scottish girl for a cigarette, wondered my way to the el station, called her, and told her to tell me how handsome I was. Just a man after all.
I walked Addison from the Kennedy all the way to Halstead yesterday. A solid three miles, never once felt tired. Maybe I could hoof it from my place to the loop or back at least one way.
Dé Luain, Meitheamh 29, 2009
This Weekend
Went to see the vigil at the former Jackson house in Gary on Friday, the saddest sack of shit this side of Pine Ridge. The town with a literal facade. Two blocks of nice looking convention center facing the South Shore line and the Indiana Tollway. Step into the downtown and you'll quickly notice the lack of a shop that isn't boarded up for six blocks. Liz told me to be careful via text and I promised her I would be back to the city by dark. This was a half truth. Crumbling apartment buildings, vacant lots that haven't been mowed in years, some with footpaths tempting the suicidal into the brush.
A man named Big Sweat drove me the last mile or so to the place in exchange for seven dollars and than twelve. I think it was the mild hustle that innoculated me from getting more seriously jacked. I had three hundred dollars in my pocket. Don't ask me why. It's okay to let the world know now.
All the marquees and electronic sings proclaimed Gary's love for Mike Jack. The Jackson family got the hell out of course as soon as the Motown checks allowed them to, and they are of course the only people from the place to ever strike it rich in any way. Sad doesn't begin to describe. They still have the signs up celebrating the town's 2006 centenial. Mayor Rudy Clay sprays his name and acheivements about the place more shamelessly than a Kim, and of course the city still boasts loudly about being of the fuck-ugly U.S. steel plant along the lakefront. The same U.S. steel that went moribund and took the town with it. Gary takes daddy's beatings as obediently as Micheal and LaToya did.
And it's abundently clear that the Jackson's are a tribe of Black crypto-Catholics. It may even be that Micheal's famous color change reveals betrays them as Sicilians trying to pass as African. The abuse they suffered is apperent in the entire clan's social and sexual stundedness. I'm confident that it was no mere occasional slap from drunken daddy's belt that they suffered. They have the sort of hangups that can only come from ritual sadomasichism of the Papist school. The house where they lived in is obscenely too small for seven kids and their folks. It could of been built for migrent grape pickers. I could go on and on with this.
Every network news van in the metro was there. On the corner facing the house was a man selling ice cream and on the other was a man selling vienna beef dogs. The mourners were busy cramming themselves in front of hand held cameras and singing "I'll Be There" for Youtube. There was a stack of filthy used teddy bears and roses by the front door and some wag left a cardboard tribute to the actual Billie Jean 'Jackson'. I'm afraid that none of it gets to me anymore. How absurd I guess. Yawn.
I took a side street back towards the South Shore that started in what was a clean-enough looking neighborhood before quickly changing back to Bogata once I crossed a set of frieght tracks. I stopped by a liqour store and bought a 40 of "Wildcat" which wasn't at all distinctive. I reached the station to find I had just missed a train by ten minutes and would have to wait an hour and a half to catch the last one inbound for the day. I texted Liz to tell her I was safe and asked her to send me a pic of her legs. I napped mostly until I got back to Millenium Station and met her there.
Saturday we slept until three and watched the FOD's below my window celebrate Pridefest 09. I live just off of Broadway and Halstead and was unsure of just who's ethnic enclave this was until I got here. We lounged until five until the unmistakable strains of "Shake Your Love" reached my room.
My sister was thriteen when Debbie Gibson was hot. I'm familar, and it was pitiful to see her face stretched and dried out by cocaine or surgery or both. Still she put on a hell of a show. Drag queens were rushing the stage like rapists at an ICP concert. After her came Crystal Waters, (La da de,la de da.) The gay night scene is every bit as much of a time warp as any Motley Crew bumping dive in the Nebraska sticks. Thursday night at this place called Bobby Love's they played a newish video from old Gibson rival Tiffany, catering to the glass dick and Eurotrash set now. It was several minites of delirium before I could finally believe that it was THAT Tiffany. My sister dug her too.
I missed the actual pride parade on Sunday as I was in a vein search for a TV showing the USA/Brazil soccer match, which we naturally lost in the most calculatingly painful way imaginable. I called Liz to ask her is she could skip work on Tuesday. She said no and asked why. I said it was nothing and I'll let you know on the when.
A man named Big Sweat drove me the last mile or so to the place in exchange for seven dollars and than twelve. I think it was the mild hustle that innoculated me from getting more seriously jacked. I had three hundred dollars in my pocket. Don't ask me why. It's okay to let the world know now.
All the marquees and electronic sings proclaimed Gary's love for Mike Jack. The Jackson family got the hell out of course as soon as the Motown checks allowed them to, and they are of course the only people from the place to ever strike it rich in any way. Sad doesn't begin to describe. They still have the signs up celebrating the town's 2006 centenial. Mayor Rudy Clay sprays his name and acheivements about the place more shamelessly than a Kim, and of course the city still boasts loudly about being of the fuck-ugly U.S. steel plant along the lakefront. The same U.S. steel that went moribund and took the town with it. Gary takes daddy's beatings as obediently as Micheal and LaToya did.
And it's abundently clear that the Jackson's are a tribe of Black crypto-Catholics. It may even be that Micheal's famous color change reveals betrays them as Sicilians trying to pass as African. The abuse they suffered is apperent in the entire clan's social and sexual stundedness. I'm confident that it was no mere occasional slap from drunken daddy's belt that they suffered. They have the sort of hangups that can only come from ritual sadomasichism of the Papist school. The house where they lived in is obscenely too small for seven kids and their folks. It could of been built for migrent grape pickers. I could go on and on with this.
Every network news van in the metro was there. On the corner facing the house was a man selling ice cream and on the other was a man selling vienna beef dogs. The mourners were busy cramming themselves in front of hand held cameras and singing "I'll Be There" for Youtube. There was a stack of filthy used teddy bears and roses by the front door and some wag left a cardboard tribute to the actual Billie Jean 'Jackson'. I'm afraid that none of it gets to me anymore. How absurd I guess. Yawn.
I took a side street back towards the South Shore that started in what was a clean-enough looking neighborhood before quickly changing back to Bogata once I crossed a set of frieght tracks. I stopped by a liqour store and bought a 40 of "Wildcat" which wasn't at all distinctive. I reached the station to find I had just missed a train by ten minutes and would have to wait an hour and a half to catch the last one inbound for the day. I texted Liz to tell her I was safe and asked her to send me a pic of her legs. I napped mostly until I got back to Millenium Station and met her there.
Saturday we slept until three and watched the FOD's below my window celebrate Pridefest 09. I live just off of Broadway and Halstead and was unsure of just who's ethnic enclave this was until I got here. We lounged until five until the unmistakable strains of "Shake Your Love" reached my room.
My sister was thriteen when Debbie Gibson was hot. I'm familar, and it was pitiful to see her face stretched and dried out by cocaine or surgery or both. Still she put on a hell of a show. Drag queens were rushing the stage like rapists at an ICP concert. After her came Crystal Waters, (La da de,la de da.) The gay night scene is every bit as much of a time warp as any Motley Crew bumping dive in the Nebraska sticks. Thursday night at this place called Bobby Love's they played a newish video from old Gibson rival Tiffany, catering to the glass dick and Eurotrash set now. It was several minites of delirium before I could finally believe that it was THAT Tiffany. My sister dug her too.
I missed the actual pride parade on Sunday as I was in a vein search for a TV showing the USA/Brazil soccer match, which we naturally lost in the most calculatingly painful way imaginable. I called Liz to ask her is she could skip work on Tuesday. She said no and asked why. I said it was nothing and I'll let you know on the when.
Dé hAoine, Meitheamh 26, 2009
The Object of Attacking is Attacking
President Obama is being criticized for having ice cream with his daughters on Father's Day. No, really.
"How in the tank is the mainstream media when we have people dying for the right to be free in a country like Iran that has been such a thorn in the side of America and the spread of democracy in the Middle East and the media thinks that covering Obama and his daughters having ice cream is news?! WTF!
This was, by the way, the day of the famous "Nedia" incident, in which an Iranian election protester with that name was shot dead by revolutionary guards. It is indeed enraging to see the woman lying on the ground, her eyes clouding and tearing as she sees the void and knows; a comrade forlornly trying to staunch the bleeding from a hole half the size of her chest. It is brutally effective propaganda for the democracy movement in Iran. Or you could use it to shit on the president for having ice cream. Whatever.
To the credit of the GOP, this trope has not caught on among that party's leaders. The top brass, at least, is not that stupid, knowing that attacking a man for having ice cream with his elementery-aged girls will win no votes. Still it does reveal a section of the far right that is consciously and deliberatly trying to be outraged by anything the president does. They are seriously going to go there. 'How dare the president have ice cream with his little girls.' If they really are that bothered by it, then I suggest they have some friendly congressman introduce the following resolution.
The president is hereby forbidden from engaging in recreational activities while there is somebody suffering/and or dying somewhwere.
Then again, considering the very noticible emphasis on "having been such a thorn in the side of America." Perhaps the resolution could be reworded like this.
Being that their are millions of human beings suffering and/or dying at every moment of every day. It is certainly too much to expect the president to personally address the pain of all of them. Nonetheless, the president is still forbidin from engaging in any recreational activities when their are people suffering at the hands of forces with unkind things to say about the United States, thus making their suffering trully important.
If middle aged-white men want to play the childish game of showing that they are not afraid of President Other, that they are perfectly willing to criticize him for quite literally everything he does and invent drama out of thin air when need be, fine. So long as they aren't downing a case of Keystone Ice and rolling to the Unitarian Church with their AK's, than we on the left are most profoundly unafraid of them. It would be easy to say that their behavior is that of a bully, but that wouldn't be right. Bullies tend to straighten out after getting smacked in the mouth once or twice, as conservatism certainly has been. Bullies are not religiously commited to believing themselves martyrs. Sara Robision at Orcinus does a fine job of explaing what's going on here on her 'blame the parents' blog post..
"... you learn that you're not entitled to have any physical or emotional boundries. The authorities have an unlimited right to intrude on you're thoughts, feelings, personal space, and even your body perimeter at any time, for any reason. You are not your own; you're entire being is at the mercy of those set by God to rule over you. You must trust that whatever they do, they do for you're own good, even if the reasons arn't clear to you right now, and in fact may never be explained to you. They know best. Just go with that.
.
.
.
.
On yet other fronts, they learn that they do have boundries, but only to the extent that they're personally able to fight and defend them. The far-right affection for pugnacious rhetoric and a strong defense comes straight out of this---
It is the soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial
It is the soldier, no the politician, who has given us the right to vote
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
- Charles Provience.
That was a little ditty I saw taped to the old Nebraska U. credit union next to ads for used cars and bastard puppies. It always did piss me off something fierce. Apparently there is no such thing as civil society. Saul Bellow would have never written a word on his own don't you see? His Russian-Jewish heratage, study of Hebrew, comprehensive education, time in the Merchant Marine, and stint of living in Paris would have never inspired him to create a thing. No, it was not until some specific set number of Nazis were killed, say 298,123, that his talent magically came to him.
There is a place for self-defense, both personal and national, and I can agree that part of national self-defense is defending the free thought and culture of a nation. But in order to defend a nation's culture the military must neccessarily be the servant of that culture, and they had damned-well never forget it.
There is nothing neccesarily wrong with a solid, tangible brain that shuns abstractions. I could not float away on this blog if some sharp and caffinated brain had not invented the microchip. Still it is understandible that the tangible mind would have trouble with grasping the etherial human liberties; freedom of speech, expression, belief, etc; freedoms that, at some level, exist independently of the person exercising them. It has of course long been noticed that one can record some controversial belief that one later dies for, and that after death somebody else can hear or read the idea and maybe agree. Many are inspired by this fact, others may be disturbed by such negation, unable to accept freedom beyond my freedom, will beyond my will. So among the far right, which loudly and proudly loathes the abstract and intangible, there are two methods for attempting to make the ideal of liberty into a physical thing.
1. The emphisis on property rights. Property is the primary, and perhaps even the only means, of determining a persons freedom and dignity.
2. The exercise of liberty is the violent defense of it, and nothing more. Freedom cannot exist unless it is imperiled. any violent crime commited anywhere absolutely must be a personal threat. Whatever the tax rate happens to be, it must be outragously high, any dispute with or threatining gesture from a foreign country absolutely must be the equivelant of the World Wars.
This mindset is mostly just irritating and amusing until taken to its absolute extreme, where the desire for tangibility reaches the point to where one convinces himself that the truth of his political opinions are as obvious to everyone as the color of the sky. There isn't really any such thing as disagreement. There are only those who pretend to disagree for reasons either foolish or evil, preferibly evil. It is this mindset that brings truckbombs.
"How in the tank is the mainstream media when we have people dying for the right to be free in a country like Iran that has been such a thorn in the side of America and the spread of democracy in the Middle East and the media thinks that covering Obama and his daughters having ice cream is news?! WTF!
This was, by the way, the day of the famous "Nedia" incident, in which an Iranian election protester with that name was shot dead by revolutionary guards. It is indeed enraging to see the woman lying on the ground, her eyes clouding and tearing as she sees the void and knows; a comrade forlornly trying to staunch the bleeding from a hole half the size of her chest. It is brutally effective propaganda for the democracy movement in Iran. Or you could use it to shit on the president for having ice cream. Whatever.
To the credit of the GOP, this trope has not caught on among that party's leaders. The top brass, at least, is not that stupid, knowing that attacking a man for having ice cream with his elementery-aged girls will win no votes. Still it does reveal a section of the far right that is consciously and deliberatly trying to be outraged by anything the president does. They are seriously going to go there. 'How dare the president have ice cream with his little girls.' If they really are that bothered by it, then I suggest they have some friendly congressman introduce the following resolution.
The president is hereby forbidden from engaging in recreational activities while there is somebody suffering/and or dying somewhwere.
Then again, considering the very noticible emphasis on "having been such a thorn in the side of America." Perhaps the resolution could be reworded like this.
Being that their are millions of human beings suffering and/or dying at every moment of every day. It is certainly too much to expect the president to personally address the pain of all of them. Nonetheless, the president is still forbidin from engaging in any recreational activities when their are people suffering at the hands of forces with unkind things to say about the United States, thus making their suffering trully important.
If middle aged-white men want to play the childish game of showing that they are not afraid of President Other, that they are perfectly willing to criticize him for quite literally everything he does and invent drama out of thin air when need be, fine. So long as they aren't downing a case of Keystone Ice and rolling to the Unitarian Church with their AK's, than we on the left are most profoundly unafraid of them. It would be easy to say that their behavior is that of a bully, but that wouldn't be right. Bullies tend to straighten out after getting smacked in the mouth once or twice, as conservatism certainly has been. Bullies are not religiously commited to believing themselves martyrs. Sara Robision at Orcinus does a fine job of explaing what's going on here on her 'blame the parents' blog post..
"... you learn that you're not entitled to have any physical or emotional boundries. The authorities have an unlimited right to intrude on you're thoughts, feelings, personal space, and even your body perimeter at any time, for any reason. You are not your own; you're entire being is at the mercy of those set by God to rule over you. You must trust that whatever they do, they do for you're own good, even if the reasons arn't clear to you right now, and in fact may never be explained to you. They know best. Just go with that.
.
.
.
.
On yet other fronts, they learn that they do have boundries, but only to the extent that they're personally able to fight and defend them. The far-right affection for pugnacious rhetoric and a strong defense comes straight out of this---
It is the soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial
It is the soldier, no the politician, who has given us the right to vote
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
- Charles Provience.
That was a little ditty I saw taped to the old Nebraska U. credit union next to ads for used cars and bastard puppies. It always did piss me off something fierce. Apparently there is no such thing as civil society. Saul Bellow would have never written a word on his own don't you see? His Russian-Jewish heratage, study of Hebrew, comprehensive education, time in the Merchant Marine, and stint of living in Paris would have never inspired him to create a thing. No, it was not until some specific set number of Nazis were killed, say 298,123, that his talent magically came to him.
There is a place for self-defense, both personal and national, and I can agree that part of national self-defense is defending the free thought and culture of a nation. But in order to defend a nation's culture the military must neccessarily be the servant of that culture, and they had damned-well never forget it.
There is nothing neccesarily wrong with a solid, tangible brain that shuns abstractions. I could not float away on this blog if some sharp and caffinated brain had not invented the microchip. Still it is understandible that the tangible mind would have trouble with grasping the etherial human liberties; freedom of speech, expression, belief, etc; freedoms that, at some level, exist independently of the person exercising them. It has of course long been noticed that one can record some controversial belief that one later dies for, and that after death somebody else can hear or read the idea and maybe agree. Many are inspired by this fact, others may be disturbed by such negation, unable to accept freedom beyond my freedom, will beyond my will. So among the far right, which loudly and proudly loathes the abstract and intangible, there are two methods for attempting to make the ideal of liberty into a physical thing.
1. The emphisis on property rights. Property is the primary, and perhaps even the only means, of determining a persons freedom and dignity.
2. The exercise of liberty is the violent defense of it, and nothing more. Freedom cannot exist unless it is imperiled. any violent crime commited anywhere absolutely must be a personal threat. Whatever the tax rate happens to be, it must be outragously high, any dispute with or threatining gesture from a foreign country absolutely must be the equivelant of the World Wars.
This mindset is mostly just irritating and amusing until taken to its absolute extreme, where the desire for tangibility reaches the point to where one convinces himself that the truth of his political opinions are as obvious to everyone as the color of the sky. There isn't really any such thing as disagreement. There are only those who pretend to disagree for reasons either foolish or evil, preferibly evil. It is this mindset that brings truckbombs.
Déardaoin, Meitheamh 25, 2009
She Seems to be Religious.
Like, seriously so. In the ghetto way you understand, the sort of religion that does what it wants but can't stand to hear impieties. I like impieties. She doesn't have Facebook I don't think. Doesn't have regular internet access, doesn't know I have this blog. Shhhhhsh.
I can do with it. She's a white girl from the South Side so she's probably Catholic, ummmm ummm.
I can do with it. She's a white girl from the South Side so she's probably Catholic, ummmm ummm.
Dé Céadaoin, Meitheamh 24, 2009
I Met a Part Irish-Englishman
Kyle is his name Touring the US over the summer. Down the west coast from Vancouver to San Diego, up to Chicago on route 66, then east to New York. Got in an argument with his travelling buddy and hit him. Travelling buddy hit him and Kyle refused to hit him back. "Talk about love but don't live love. I hate that." He says he's from Manchester. That's not what I've heard about Manchester.
Dé Máirt, Meitheamh 23, 2009
She's Been Waiting for me All Along
There was no cholora epidemic that killed a tenth of Chicago in the 1870's. Even a lot of people who live here think there was. It is an essential American trait that we need to be reminded that a hundred and thirty years ago was only a hundred and thirty years ago, that if there had been a plague that killed seventy five thousand people, there would still be quite a hell of a lot of evidence of it.
It's never been proven that Daley Sr. stole the election for JFK. He just probably did is all. Writers are sexually attracted to knowing what other people don't, and there's a reason why so many come from here. The layers of what you know and others don' what you don't yet know, and what you don't even know there is to be known, are inumerable. If any serious thinker grows tired and old here they were never a thinker at all. I know secrets you don't. I know the crack fiend who loves NPR and has a knowledge of city politics as encyclopedic as a librarians. The gays are more preternaturally kind than ascetic saints. The lesbians not so much.
When and where the buses run is a secret I still need to learn. The el station nearest Hyde Park is a mile and a half away. Vacant lots, condemned townhouses, a twelve-year old boy ruling his block with a 40-oz for a scepter. Not Hyde Park. Today the 'Sun Times' told me that the place where the Green Line stops over Garfield is the second most dangerous neighborhood in America. A man there asked me for change five times over a course of ten minutes. He followed me into the chicken shack where they put this thick hot sauce on the chicken and fries and it's delicious. I finally told him that not every white man who comes to his block is a Kennedy. But upon learning this new information that might actually be so.
Hyde Park is a jewel of a spot. You can see the South Side's downtown and the idol smokestacks of Gary from the beach. Lake Michigan is cleaner than people back home would think, cleaner than I thought, certainly better than the mudholes on the high plains. The water was so cold that I felt my blood pressure drop but it was humid and it was good. I was safe in the president's neighborhood. Thirty dollare in cash stuffed in my shoe guarded by nothing but a dirty sock. His house looks nice and unlived in.
I hope I never find out all of the secrets that women have. I hope there's always something about them that I don't know. The one right here. That one over there. That working girl last night. Yes I did.
The new one. The one who wants a straightforward thing, something solid and exclusive, without the mental S&M games. The one who came to me. The one who, I'll be damned, this one wants me right back. 'Im Liz. I like you. You got a girlfriend?" Harsh and quick. The Chicago bark. Just a hint of East Coast blending into the cadence. Just a hint, because we're not there. This is still the Midwest. Ask a stranger a question and they'll answer you with contrived annoyance condensation, but they'll still give you directions. The I-love-you's are flat and to the point, like how my Mom says it to Dad.
It's been claimed by many, Bouvier comes to mind, that men tend to equate cities with women. This is very much true, painfully obvious even. There's quite a hell of a lot of Joan Beran in you Chicago. You're a good fun broad who knows everyone and can handle grunt work just fine. Still you're stratigically soft to the ones you can trust, the ones you know you can rely upon. A city to mother me so the women don't have to. It comes so much easier now. Men and women alike are so direct that it can't help but bleed unto me. So I'm straight and real right back. The people I talk to seem to like me. I've been worse.
Here in the downtown library is a man who spends his whole afternoon looking at foot fetish porn. He's free to do so. This is a city library, and he's a citizen with a library card. He just needs to keep it softcore, and that's easy enough to do. The pussyfoot is just a myth.
It's never been proven that Daley Sr. stole the election for JFK. He just probably did is all. Writers are sexually attracted to knowing what other people don't, and there's a reason why so many come from here. The layers of what you know and others don' what you don't yet know, and what you don't even know there is to be known, are inumerable. If any serious thinker grows tired and old here they were never a thinker at all. I know secrets you don't. I know the crack fiend who loves NPR and has a knowledge of city politics as encyclopedic as a librarians. The gays are more preternaturally kind than ascetic saints. The lesbians not so much.
When and where the buses run is a secret I still need to learn. The el station nearest Hyde Park is a mile and a half away. Vacant lots, condemned townhouses, a twelve-year old boy ruling his block with a 40-oz for a scepter. Not Hyde Park. Today the 'Sun Times' told me that the place where the Green Line stops over Garfield is the second most dangerous neighborhood in America. A man there asked me for change five times over a course of ten minutes. He followed me into the chicken shack where they put this thick hot sauce on the chicken and fries and it's delicious. I finally told him that not every white man who comes to his block is a Kennedy. But upon learning this new information that might actually be so.
Hyde Park is a jewel of a spot. You can see the South Side's downtown and the idol smokestacks of Gary from the beach. Lake Michigan is cleaner than people back home would think, cleaner than I thought, certainly better than the mudholes on the high plains. The water was so cold that I felt my blood pressure drop but it was humid and it was good. I was safe in the president's neighborhood. Thirty dollare in cash stuffed in my shoe guarded by nothing but a dirty sock. His house looks nice and unlived in.
I hope I never find out all of the secrets that women have. I hope there's always something about them that I don't know. The one right here. That one over there. That working girl last night. Yes I did.
The new one. The one who wants a straightforward thing, something solid and exclusive, without the mental S&M games. The one who came to me. The one who, I'll be damned, this one wants me right back. 'Im Liz. I like you. You got a girlfriend?" Harsh and quick. The Chicago bark. Just a hint of East Coast blending into the cadence. Just a hint, because we're not there. This is still the Midwest. Ask a stranger a question and they'll answer you with contrived annoyance condensation, but they'll still give you directions. The I-love-you's are flat and to the point, like how my Mom says it to Dad.
It's been claimed by many, Bouvier comes to mind, that men tend to equate cities with women. This is very much true, painfully obvious even. There's quite a hell of a lot of Joan Beran in you Chicago. You're a good fun broad who knows everyone and can handle grunt work just fine. Still you're stratigically soft to the ones you can trust, the ones you know you can rely upon. A city to mother me so the women don't have to. It comes so much easier now. Men and women alike are so direct that it can't help but bleed unto me. So I'm straight and real right back. The people I talk to seem to like me. I've been worse.
Here in the downtown library is a man who spends his whole afternoon looking at foot fetish porn. He's free to do so. This is a city library, and he's a citizen with a library card. He just needs to keep it softcore, and that's easy enough to do. The pussyfoot is just a myth.
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