April 16 - Chicago Felony Franks, Tucson In-N-Out

Hungry while delivering something, I spotted Felony Franks.

It's a hot dog stand nestled in the dying ghetto that clings to Jackson and Western.

A smiling buggy-eyed weiner shackled to a ball and chain gave a thumbs up.

The menu included the Misdemeanor Weiner, "The Cellmate" (a double dog), and an assortment of Probation Burgers. I ordered a Felony Frank and a grape soda from the woman behind the glass, who spoke to you through a trebly microphone. She was nice.

While waiting, I looked out from the barred windows and listened to the angry corner kids congregated on a beautiful day. Then a group of about twelve loud white people stormed in, and took over the room like a stale cigar. They announced that they were law students, and chose to be obnoxious, making it very difficult for anyone to like them.

"YOU GOTTA GET THE RED HOT! DIS IS CHICAAAH-GO!"

I had to get out of there. But this proved to be a challenge, as the law students were blocking the door. One law student moved three inches so that I could squeeze out. That was nice of that douchebag-in-training to do that.

Out in the world, one of the corner kids took notice of me snapping photos.

"Motherfucker takin' fuckin' pictures," he alerted his pals.

They didn't seem to mind.

I squeezed back in to pick up my order. The law students were still loud and annoying, and still blocking the exit. On the way out I pulled open the door and pressed it against a particularly arrogant and entitled douchebag cum laude.

When I cut through a circle of corner kids, the same one protested.

"That motherfucker takin' fuckin' pictures."

Again, no one seemed to care.

I took the meal home and ate it. It was good.

I wonder if the corner kids and the law students will meet again under different circumstances.

After a frustrating rush hour of cancelled orders and Cubs traffic, I parked the van by the Blue Line and took the train to O'Hare. My flight was to Tucson, Arizona, but more importantly, Lauren. She's been performing in a Second City show tailored to Arizona for two weeks. She will remain in The Grand Canyon State until May.

I decided to book this flight after a long, frazzled day of deliveries, while wolfing down a quick dinner before teaching an improv class. I decided to use Priceline, a service that provides decent non-refundable discounts. I decided to book the flight for Friday and leave on Sunday, a nice weekend getaway.

Priceline decided that my visit with Lauren would start at 11pm on Friday and end at 4am on Sunday, lasting all of 29 hours. I saved lots of $30's.

Well, actually.

Just one $30.

To say I was livid at the time of booking this would be an understated underestimate.

But it was my fault, and I had a mouthful of leftovers and a class to teach.

Lauren picked me up after her show. She got a new hairdoo that makes her look very 60's and sexy. She looks great and mine! Starving, we purchased drive thru from In-n-Out, every real American's favorite fast food burger chain. While the scent of fresh carnal anticipation lingered in the car, Lauren got us lost in the desert, not having driven in Tucson yet. This way we could wait longer to eat and things.

Eventually, we found the nutty two-story loft that she is calling home for a few weeks. It's located near downtown by a sedan riddled with bullet holes.

The In-n-Out was wonderful and much needed. Lauren gave me a birthday card the size of a mudflap that depicted two oil-painted Native Americans locked deeply in an impassioned love trance. Inside the card were clues to a scavenger hunt of gifts, including kooky socks and a drum tuner.

Let's call it the best.

Verdict: Win

April 15 - 35

I'm 35 now.

I better be!

I was born 35 years ago.

So this better be the right age.

I went in early to work for an order that ended up being cancelled.

So I lied down in the vack (back of the van) for a celebratory birthday nap.

It was a lovely day, dipping into the 80's.

Everyone wore hypercolor T-shirts and did Howard Cosell impersonations.

Spuds McKenzie totally zooked on my Trapper Keeper. Grody!

I woke up to discover it was the afternoon.

I had some work that went somewhere I don't remember.

I do remember yelling at motorists, because they are all so stupid and not as smart as me.

I remember thinking that I was spending my birthday either sleeping in a van or yelling at people.

And I remember resisting the urge to get bummed out about it.

At 5pm I drove to the south side looking for beer and Mexican food.

I bought a 12 pack of Becks at the Jewel on Archer.

I purchased a burrito from a market with a baqueria (taqueria in the back) on 47th Street.

I returned to the van, used my two wheeler to open a beer, and enjoyed a solo birthday dinner.

This was my choice.

Afterward I fell into a 30 minute food coma.

Groggy, sweaty and 6:30, I realized I had spent the majority of my birthday asleep or alone.

So I walked twenty yards to Greg Norman's house.

With Lauren away in Tucson, and not much else going on socially in my life, I wanted to record Nurse Novels stuff on my birthday. I've always loved recording, even in its exhausting and frustrating moments. Besides, I've never been one for parties or anything normal and healthy involving groups of people.

Tonight Thea and I laid down a basic track for her ukulele ditty "Shoo Fly." Percussion included a snare case and my lunch tupperware beaten with a mallet. Then I placed vocals onto "Sea Day" and revised some of the lines in "NIMBY," particularly the one about "organtic lemonade." Tom coached from the studio couch.

Then Greg's wife Esther dimmed the lights and surprised me with a delicious birthday cake she had made from scratch! What?! She even decorated it with money signs, my favorite symbol!

$$$

Greg gave me a bottle of Manischevitz!

Tom gave me some music mixes!

Thea gave me the sniffles.

The pressure of having to have a good day on my birthday had been greatly relieved by The Normans and The Nurse Novels.

Verdict: Win

April 14 - Nice Weather Today

I didn't shower today. When I don't shower my hair takes on the look of 80's porn performer Joey Silvera.

I should know, while Lauren's been gone (for two weeks) I've been watching lots of 80's porn.

80's porn was My First Pornography. Using it for its intended purposes doesn't make me feel sleazy as much as it does nostalgic. Seeing old friends: Nina Hartley, Peter North, Flame. It's like looking through an old photo album with your own aroused sexual organ.

Ugh, how do I segue out of this?

I took the van in for its emissions test.

The guy running it looked like Tom Byron. I checked for a trademark bulge in his pants, but I didn't see anything noticeably erect. Then again I'm not Chasey Lain.

The van passed the emissions test.

What else.

I dunno.

Nothin' really.

I'm going to get some sleep tonight.

Just like Keisha did at the end of Oh, You Beautiful Doll.

Verdict: Win

April 13 - No Energy Left For Family

Between runs today I:

Mailed taxes out (Federal gives me $86, State gets $78 from me).

Scanned and emailed my passport for British work permits to The Bitter Tears European booking agent (Those cost 117 pounds of dollars).

Renewed my driver's license and state ID ($50).

My new picture makes me look like a woman.

Maybe I can flirt my way out of tickets now ($75).

A delivery to Glen Ellyn got me thinking.

Instead of having my Mom drive all the way out to the city for my birthday dinner, I'll just stay in the western suburbs, and we can celebrate out there.

By the time I got to my Mom's house it was 4pm.

Last night's drinking and lack of sleep had caught up to me, and then lapped me.

I took a nap on the couch until 5:30.

My mom drove her groggy son to a Mexican restaurant, where he was too tired to make any real conversation. After dinner, we raced home to watch American Idol.

I watch American Idol.

I like it for some reason.

I like Simon, and I like Kara Dioguardi.

My favorite performer this year is Siobhan Magnus.

I like her flipped out hairdoos, nutty clothes, and crazy screech.

I think that screech is what shattered her teeth into those kooky fangs.

Her speech is a whole 'nother story.

When she speaks it's in slow motion.

She speaks behind the beat.

I like that before Idol she sang in punk rock bands that played crummy basements.

The last two weeks her songs haven't been the best.

Last week she did a sleepy new age version of "Across The Universe."

Tonight she sang "Suspicious Minds" with a smile, which didn't ring true to me.

But the real performances have been her rebuttals to the judges when they criticize her artistic choices.

After her Beatles tune, Simon asked her in a challenging manner to point out what specifically she had connected with in that song. Siobhan cited the lyric "nothing's gonna change my world." She got choked up, making reference to the madness of being a contestant on this insane show.

"I'm not going to change as a person, and you can't take that away from me."

This week after her Elvis tune, the judges expressed confusion about her direction. Simon said, "you've lost who you were."

She replied in her held-back cadence, "Even I can't pinpoint what or who I am. And I've always kind of taken pride in that. I'm not just one kind of singer or one kind of person. If I can't label myself I don't think it's necessary to be labeled. I just love to sing."

She's pretty fucking cool for a 20 year old goofball.

My mom, a 60 year old goofball, likes cake. She got me a tall one made out of strawberries and whipping and lady fingers. One piece put me back in a coma, and I didn't visit much with her afterward. I just laid on the couch and stared at the TV.

During a commercial break, I saw an ad for the Kindle that featured my ex-girlfriend. I hope someday that seeing her doesn't remind me of our horrible break up. For now, it still does.

Not much else to say about that one, other than it lingered with me for the whole ride home.

A block from my house a girl in a bikini was hula hooping with wild abandon. She reminded me of my ex-girlfriend.

I just need some sleep.

Verdict: Loss

April 12 - Stockyards & Corn Dogs

I found myself at the gate of The Union Stockyards, where from 1865-1971 millions and zillions and fafillions of cows, pigs, and humans were turned into miserable meat. Today an erie memorial for 21 fallen firefighters greets you. They scream silently, perishing in unseen flames, their faces melting into their skulls.

It seems this spot will always represent horrific death.

A lazy day, with enough work to make it worth coming in.

And enough leisure time to talk to Lauren on the phone.

She and I enjoyed a playful conversation while I drove from the affluence of John Hughes' north shore Chicagoland.

After class I joined my students for a drink at a bar called Fat Cat. I used to really not like this bar. Based on the quality of the food, service, and the clientele, I had determined that Fat Cat was for assholes.

However since 2007, the service has improved, and there weren't that many douchebags there tonight. But the presentation of the food was still a bit stupid.

For instance, I ordered an appetizer of corn dogs (wait, who's the stupid one?).

What arrived at the table was an obnoxious Tinker Toy that stood ten inches tall, with multicolored skewers displaying the corn dog balls like a junior high double helix science project. I felt like a mild asshole eating this idiotic thing.

But let it be known that Fat Cat is not for assholes anymore. It is for dummies who think the Rat Pack was a bunch of jerks watching sports highlights and singing Green Day songs with a mouthful of bar-food novelties. Barf-ood.

Anyway, we went there and I drank too much, which lead to one of my least favorite activities: Talking about improv.

Oh well. Fuck it. It was a decent day.

Also it was David Letterman's birthday.

Verdict: Win

April 11 - The New Charlie

Four dumb hours of sleep.

Backstage before Rush, someone put down The Four Seasons and Heart.

I happen to enjoy those acts for what they're worth.

People began announcing bands they liked.

Toto was listed.

Then someone decided without irony that Huey Lewis and The News was the greatest band of the 1980's.

Finally, someone favorably mentioned Don Henley.

I hate Don Henley with a passion similar to Mel Gibson's passionately hateful love/lust for Christ.

Once upon a time in the mid-90's, I used to have to play Don Henley's wretched music on 93.7 KCLB-FM Coachella The Valley's Rock.

I grew to despise his privileged, balls-less, self-congratulatory Baby Boomer drivel.

My least favorite song ever created on the planet is "Sunset Grill."

Followed by the even worse but faster "The Boys of Summer."

The song "Dirty Laundry" makes me want to perform botched abortions on everyone.

It was all I could take.

I went off screaming, comparing rich white men with Deadhead stickers on their convertibles to the most worthless, bloody anal leakage ever posthumously defecated out of God's raped asshole.

The stage manager tried to lighten things up, announcing, "It's The Judgmental Tony Mendoza."

I fired back.

"I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE JUDGMENTAL! I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!"

When did I become The New Charles Manson?

The show went well.

At home I somnambulently dipped chicken into melted butter and garlic, then coated them in bread crumbs and roasted them to bland perfection. I also cooked black beans and burnt rice.

Then I beat off a bunch more, to the point where I'm sore.

I miss Lauren.

Verdict: Loss

April 10 - Nice Days Finish Last

Nice days call for rolled down windows.

On the way to pick up The Bitter Tears for a show in Peoria, a man standing at a traffic signal approached my window. He wanted to talk about Jesus.

"Not interested. Sorry."

He came on stronger to me about Jesus. He forced his belief in Jesus on me vehemently. He assaulted me with Jesus.

It began to feel like talk of Jesus was tainting this otherwise nice day.

"Fuck Jesus. Jesus sucks."

He told me he used to talk that way.

He assumed that I was into "the Devil."

He inferred that I thought "the Devil" was cool.

"Nope."

I tried to tell him that it was okay for people to believe whatever they wanted.

But he only wanted to talk louder than me. About Jesus.

And now God, too.

I wanted to roll up the window, but it was such a nice day.

He told me that God invented science.

"But God doesn't exist."

Actually, I don't know if God exists.

Nor does anyone else.

But I felt that point of view should be represented.

Thank God the light turned green.

I suppose most people would consider me the asshole in this exchange.

I say it was a draw.

We played Peoria.

It was a weird show.

Read about it on The Mush Behind Your Tongue In Cheek.

Verdict: Loss