u s e y o u r h a n d s

Passing by the McDonald’s, I saw a woman exit holding a small grease-stained bag which, presumably, contained a single hashed brown. She had many, many layers of clothes on and they did not match. Plus, atop her crazy, raging ‘do, she wore a single pair of crisp white bikini-cut panties which were surely not her size.

true. all true.

And the day was sunny/
A choking kind of freedom

The arbitrary deadline loomed just a few days away, but the last week started out like genius. A sunny day, could you believe it? Secretly, was it trite? Maybe but who gives a shit because it’s sun. Though it wasn’t a porch day, the drive in was better for this last sun. If she could get a last thunderstorm, a last snow, a last blistering heat, more’s the better.

One of her favorite activities on a warm summer day was to lie in the grass on her tum. She’d pick out a triangle of grass to see beneath it. The smell of the dirt was an intoxicant in its own right, but she grew drunk on the tiny roots, insects, and heaving life below. She’d lay there until the grass itching her legs was not to be ignored.

And in the last good week, that’s what everything was like.

“Dance of the Seven Veils” will be exhibit a when Liz Phair is put on trial for suddenly sucking.

Billy Ray Cyrus - Life Size Cut out, & More

ed. note #1: “and more”?

We have a number of pieces of Billy Ray Cyrus stuff, including t-shirts, plastic mugs, CDs, videos, and a life size, stand-up cardboard cut-out. Stands about 6″ tall when unfolded. (new in the box but with a tiny bit of shipping damage). How’d you like to wake up to that every morning………….

ed. note #2: every morning indeed

Items from $1.00 - $50.00 Negotiable.

Saturday March 27, 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. ONLY, other times by appointment.

This is a private showroom, not a retail store.
1941 West Augusta Blvd. We are located on the corner of Augusta Blvd. (south of Division, North of Chicago) and Winchester (1 block east of Damen and 3 or 4 blocks west of Ashland).

I am going to LA to see Morrissey. On a plane!

MORRISSEY!

And with that, I leave you with one of my favorite Morrissey songs: “Interesting Drug.”

There are some bad people on the rise
There are some bad people on the rise
They’re saving their own skins by
Ruining other people’s lives
Bad, bad people on the rise
Young married couple in debt
- ever felt had ?
Young married couple in debt
- ever felt had ?

On a government scheme
Designed to kill your dream
Oh mum, oh dad
Once poor, always poor
La la la la la
Interesting drug
The one that you took
Tell the truth - it really helped you!
An interesting drug
The one that you took
God, it really really helped you
You wonder why we’re only half-ashamed ?

Because enough is too much!
And look around
Can you blame us?
Can you blame us?

On a government scheme
Designed to kill your dream
Oh mum, oh dad
Once poor, always poor
La la la la la
Interesting drug
The one that you took
Tell the truth - it really helped you!
An interesting drug
The one that you took
God, it really really helped you
You wonder why we’re only half-ashamed ?

Because enough is too much!
And look around
Can you blame us?
Can you blame us?

Wait, one more: “Trouble Loves Me”

Trouble loves me
Trouble needs me
Two things
More than you do
Or would attempt to
So, console me
Otherwise, hold me
Just when it seems like
Everything’s evened out
And the balance
Seems serene

Trouble loves me
Walks beside me
To chide me
Not to guide me
It’s still much more
Than you’ll do
So, console me
Otherwise, hold me
Just when it seems like
Everything’s evened out
And the balance seems serene
See the fool I’ll be
Still running ’round
On the flesh rampage
Still running ’round

Ready with ready-wit
Still running ’round
On the flesh rampage
- At your age !
Go to Soho, oh
Go to waste in
The wrong arms
Still running ’round

(editor’s note: the stanza above is my most perfect song stanza ever. it is so depressing, so yearning, so Morrissy. This, in a nutshell, is Morrissey. And, really, this yearning, woeful bit explains volumes about those kids in high school who fucking loved the man.)

Trouble loves me
Seeks and finds me
To charlatanize me
Which is only
As it should be
Oh, please fulfill me
Otherwise, kill me

Show me a barrel and watch me scrape it
Faced with the music, as always I’ll face it
In the half-light
So English, frowning
Then at midnight I
Can’t get you out of my head
A disenchanted taste
Still running ’round
A disenchanted taste
Still running ’round

For ten minutes after her alarm rang, Lee visualized her day. It was a rehearsal of sorts, how to deal with that meeting, the drive to work, food to make, outfits to wear. Even activities she had done every day for years, like making the morning coffee, Lee examined yet again. She felt that this helped her actualize her goals and avoid potential pitfalls. Lee made sure she did this, even — perhaps especially — on her most hectic days. Reflecting at a day’s end, Lee judged whether or not she had strayed markedly from how she’d imagined they day. And more often than not, she had not.

But today was the most dramatically different. In fact, after today, she never rehearsed again.

She never imagined that just after she got out of bed, that she’d stumble across the cat’s body. Lee scooped it up and rushed to the vet’s where she was told the cat’s neck was broken. Later, she remembered a thud in the night and wondered if that was when it happened, but still couldn’t figure out how.

On her quick drive to work, after leaving the vet to cremate the cat, she hurriedly swung into a Dunkin’ Donuts for her morning coffee. Lee had grown accustomed to her own brew, and had forgotten just how positively delicious Dunkin’ Donuts coffee could be.

She concentrated on that thud in the middle of the night and the cat’s broken neck. Lee visualized the room where she’d found the cat dead and thought about the ledge. The cat often slept on a plant ledge eight feet up. It must have fallen, she decided, chasing a mouse he would never catch.

That afternoon, she picked up the cat at the vet’s. Lee didn’t know what to do with the flowered tin they gave her. She ended up setting in on a doily-topped table in the living room, as if it were filled with candy and not ashes. She flipped on the television and saw that How to Marry a Millionaire was on AMC. This was Lee’s favorite movie and for a few moments, she felt grateful to be home to watch it. And then the tears came.

Her husband crawled in bed next to her. He curled his body to Lee’s form and drew her close to his body, his cheek on hers. Peter had expressed little fondness for their cat, she felt his tears slip down her face to the pillow below. She stroked his arm, baffled at this unexpected emotion.

Lee didn’t compare anything at the end of that day. It just was, and now it was over.

“What are the differences between Barilla and Creamette pasta?” she wondered, holding a box of each in her hand. In the end, Claudette went with Creamette, because even though Barilla sounded more Italian, the Price is Right always had Creamette products, and she still felt a fondness for the show even though Bob Barker sexually harassed the models. Claudette tossed the box into her cart and heard the undeniable sound of noodles breaking.

She took utter delight in the sound her heels made on the supermarket’s tile floor. Claudette altered her gait so instead of the one click, she produced two per stride. It took little effort to make her trips to the store enjoyable; Claudette often found herself staring at piles of green peppers when the day got too tough. It was a place just for her and Claudette almost seemed surprised when she encountered other carts during her late-night shopping treks.

The aisle was wide open ahead of her. Claudette progressed slowly, taking in each cereal box. Inevitably, she chose her usual box of Wheat Chex, nestling it next to the Creamette and her glass-containered milk. Sugar cereals were carefully lined up on the shelf beneath the healthy cereals. And between the Trix rabbitt and the Lucky Charms leprechaun, there, peering, judging, was Cap’n Crunch.

Earlier in the day, Claudette had had a run-in with a disturbed panhandler who chased her from her bus stop. More unnerving than his throwing a boot at her were his livid red eyes, round as half-dollars with tiny pupils. And now, looking into the Cap’n’s visage, it all came back to her, this thing she’d been trying to push out of her mind. Just like the panhandler, the Cap’n wanted something from her and she would not give it. And though she ran from the panhandler, Claudette stared back at the Cap’n.

Someone cleared their throat behind her. Claudette turned away from the Cap’n and moved her cart to clear a path for another shopper. When she turned back tot he Cap’n, she turned all of his boxes around.

Unrelated: I have “Radar Love” stuck in my head.

Carolyn fingered the thick white linen tablecloth, admiring how it stood out so dramatically against the deep red plush carpet. And the silver! How it shone and looked so rich, so regal. It was with great sadness that she drew out her plastic pill case and placed it on the table. The garish orange plastic infected her view with tackiness and suddendly the expensive restaurant looked more like a casino diner in Reno. Carolyn dumped out the contents of Tuesday into her soup spoon, snapped the case shut, and dumped it into her purse.

By the time her coffee and cheesecake arrived, Carolyn felt at home again in elegance. She took up her first pill and glass of water, but paused just before she brought the pill to her tongue. Carolyn put them both down and took up her soup spoon of pills. She stuck them in her piece of cheesecake. When she was done, it was studded with three blue circles, a red oval, two white hexagons, and two peach pentagons. The cheesecake was delicious, depite the uncharacteristic crunching.

Today is a bread day. I made bread for the first time a few weeks ago, and just fell in love with it. I wish I’d discovered earlier the sound dough makes when you punch the air out of it. After a good loaf of white bread and a batch of hot cross buns, I’m going to try my hand at challah.

Have you been to the Lee Bontecou exhibit at the MCA? Go. Post-apocalyptic space vehicles or primordial crustaceans? You make the call.

The first time I went to Disneyland, I was about six or so. I loved it, particularly this submarine ride. I remember how amazed I was, seeing all the starfish and kelp and schools of brightly colored fish. But when I returned a few years later and went on the same ride, all that excitement melted away. The scene was fake, so plasticy, Disneyland fake. The starfish were in need of replacing and the schools of fish were strung together and trussed up with wire and monofilament, like a dowager shot full of Botox and collagen. And as I sat in the submarine seat, just a few years older, I wonder what existed then that let me not see the wires and lines. I think about this all the time lately.

Just this weekend, I attended my friend Wendy’s birthday fete at the Hidden Cove, a karaoke bar on North Lincoln Avenue. I’d seen this bar before, and had wanted to go there. There was a time a few years ago when I had become a self-styled karaoke superstar. I can still sing Young MC’s “Bust a Move” at the drop of a hat, but it was only at a karaoke bar with a mic in my hand that I truly sold the song. I didn’t do it very often, but when I did, I enjoyed it with drunken, boisterous abandon.

A “good” karaoke bar, in my experience, generally plays host to a mix of people. And the Hidden Cove did as well. A dozen or so revelers crash landed at the Hidden Cove after the downtown St. Patrick’s Day parade. Whereas it’s ok for green-clad assholes to run through the streets of Chicago screaming fucking “Danny Boy,” it is decidedly a different matter to scream-sing “Love is a Battlefield” three times. But this group had competition from a warring birthday party. The birthday girl, doing her best Shakira impersonation, had obviously put on her “sexy” pants and chain-linked belt because she was shaking her bon-bon and running her fingers through her hair with wild abandon. These, too, were assholes.

It was loud. And of course nobody sang well, and even worse with all the cigarette smoke and Bud Lights. Plus, it was really, really fucking loud. I hated it more than anything else maybe ever — or at least that week. And at the same time, I wanted to participate because I know all the words to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” But I just couldn’t.

I had to stop drinking earlier in the year for myriad reasons, but the one I tell everyone (because it’s true) is that alcohol interacts badly with this medication I’m on. So, ok, fine. But I’m pretty angry about this; I feel robbed. Alcohol acts as a happy blindfold so you can ignore the obvious, unfliching stupidity of your surroundings. Without it, reality gets brighter, louder, and far more annoying.

How, I always wondered, do those AA people live through these moments, without the “ah!” relief of a martini? And now, I’m one of them.

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