April 23 - Chicago Sucks Tiny Mayor-Cock

It was bound to happen.

I had a pick to up a signal radio part for a communications company from the folks at Metra. I parked in a loading zone marked METRA LOADING DOCK DELIVERIES ONLY. I asked the woman at the dock if it was okay to park there.

"Yes."

I rang a bell that would allow security to grant me access to the lobby. I put my hand on the doorknob to anticipate the click that would open it. I waited with my hand on the doorknob for 30 seconds. I looked at the security camera above me and took my hand off of the doorknob. It immediately clicked, granting me access to the lobby.

In the lobby, the security guard wouldn't let me up to the 11th floor without a contact name. A twenty minute ordeal of making calls, getting transferred, grating hold music, and waiting for a call back ensued. The person who placed the order at the COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY had left and did not leave any information about it. Eventually, someone called me back from the COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY to give me a random Metra employee name.

Meanwhile a changing of guards had occurred. The new security guard said, "They usually just let you up. I don't know why he wanted you to get a contact name."

On the 11th floor, the woman in the mailroom had no idea what I was supposed to be picking up. After five minutes and a phone call to the contact, I was told to walk over to the random Metra employee's office.

The random Metra employee seemed annoyed.

"Can I help you?" she asked as me, the complete idiot.

I gave her all the information, the contract number, a piece of paper certifying a transaction.

She had no idea what I was supposed to be picking up.

"I don't use messengers."

She said it like I was fresh, wet cat shit.

One more set of phone calls and I left Metra empty handed.

When I returned to the loading zone, the van was gone.

Wow.

So it's going to be like this today.

I went to see the woman at the dock, the woman who told me I could park in the loading zone. She seemed surprised and gave me her information. Then I went back to lobby security. Mike the maintenance guy happened to be strolling by and very matter of factly said, "You can't park on the west side of Canal on Fridays," offering a lowercase "sorry."

Sure enough, there was one single sign fifteen feet behind where the van had been.

STREET CLEANING

NO PARKING FRIDAYS 9AM-1PM

APR 1 - NOV 15

TOW ZONE

Because I had backed into the spot, I hadn't seen it.

So now I had to walk to the auto pound over at 400 E Lower Lower Lower Wacker.

It was a nice walk actually.

On the way there I saw seven city tow truck operators being beaten to death with homemade hammers by heroic citizens. The tow truck operators' lifeless corpses were thrown into a vat labeled CHARITY, where they will provide nourishment to needy, hungry AIDS dogs from impoverished countries.

Then at The Daley Center, 329 obese, entitled, all-knowing, never-working city workers all had one large simultaneous fatal heart attack. It was like Jonestown, only nicer. One dum-dum meter maid accidentally slapped the bodies with parking tickets, mistaking their hideous, bloated remains for SUVs. It was a riot. But in actuality, I heard that the blubber from the city workers would be rendered down into oil this winter and used to warm the city's top homeless shelters. I also read that the city workers' brains would be used as practice pucks at Chicago Blackhawks tryouts.

Finally, by Chicago's essential Bean I saw our one and only mayor, King Richard Daley II. It was strange. He was being brutally and anally raped with a serrated, rolled up TOW ZONE sign by several valiant townsfolk. Oddly, his blood was liquid black and when it hit the earth it burst into flames of shit. I waved "hi" but he couldn't see me. Maybe it was the weird funhouse reflection of The Bean or maybe it was because his eyes were yellow, pink, and pusy, and when he opened his mouth a bunch of black bile spilled out, followed by his sickly grey internal organs plopping to the ground with comic thuds. I don't know, but it seemed very out of character for The Mayor.

But all good walks must come to an end, and so I headed on over to the auto pound.

In the dark weird trailer a baby cried constantly. I thought it might be the waiting room music, but when I got inside there was a real baby crying. I think its stroller got towed.

The man behind the counter wore what looked like green janitor coveralls decorated with City of Chicago patches. He liked to talk and take his time. When a woman cut in line in front of me they had an exchange:

JANITOR OF AUTHORITY: Oh, you're gonna have to wait in line.

ASSHOLE WOMAN: I already filled out that paperwork that he got! I'm about to tear this place up!

JANITOR OF AUTHORITY: Still. Once you leave you have to go to the end of the line.

ASSHOLE WOMAN: I'm just so mad! I've got things to do!

JANITOR OF AUTHORITY: Oh, me too. After this I'm going to my other job.

ASSHOLE WOMAN: Where's that?

They proceeded to have a little chit chat while the rest of us listened. It was really great and friendly. The more she talked, the more he stopped everything he was doing to answer her questions and demands. It was like watching raw footage of a reality TV show that would never air anywhere. I'm glad I got to see this rare behind-the-scenes sneak peak into the fascinating lives of people who tow and get towed. And like all great reality TV, it was a wonderful waste of everyone's time.

I was less fascinating.

I only used one word.

The word was "what."

I couldn't understand the cashier behind the glass, who had the eloquence of an angry K-Town crackhead. He was so good at sounding proudly ignorant that I almost ordered a hamburger from him. It's good that the city employs people who know people with rudimentary customer service skills who know people who knew someone who once went to school once.

No, but in all seriousness, The City of Chicago is great and I think Our Mayor And Saviour is doing a terrific job keeping things good and nice and good for the people. I'll just have to send the city a little note about today's misunderstanding. Good thing they stamped my receipt with the necessary information.

Later today on the street an Amish or Mennonite teenager approached me in full garb.

"Excuse me. Are you Jewish?"

"What?"

"Are you Jewish?" he repeated.

"Noo.."

His smiled broadened, revealing braces.

"Have a good day."

I sat in the van with no work for the next four hours.

It was a really slow week.

After gas and towing expenses I spent over $300 this week on work.

I made about $300.

This means, I lost money by going to work this week.

I would have saved more money had I taken the entire week off.

Verdict: Loss

April 22 - Filming With Chris

Lower North-South Wacker is under construction and has become a peaceful little ghost town. I thought it would be hell, but now you’ve got the whole thing to yourself, and you can make those U-turns without the fear of nudging your nose out into 50mph oncoming traffic. Let’s hope it stays under construction forever.

My friend Chris asked me to be in his film. Today was the first day of shooting.

I’ve known Chris since the late 90’s when we worked together as tour guides for the Chicago Trolley Company. In 2000, he persuaded me to pick up playing the drums again, something I had abandoned for sketch comedy. When The Annoyance closed for what would turn out to be six years, I eventually gave in and we formed a band with the unfortunate moniker Los Shut Up.

We started out playing dumps like The Big Horse, The Underground Lounge and Phyllis’. One mismatched bill had us following local metal powerhouse Yakuza. They played for over an hour on a Wednesday to a raucous group of fans who banged their heads, while our four friends waited patiently until midnight to hear our gropes at quirky broken indie rock. At one point in the set, I introduced one of our songs in a metal bear voice, which lead to one of the Yakuza guys charging the stage. Thankfully, two out of three of the people that stuck around held him back, and I was saved a lesson in brutality and ultimate evil.

Eventually Los Shut Up played places like Empty Bottle and Schuba’s, once opening for Neil Hamburger. Our stage show was goofy, and we incorporated comedy into the act. Chris pitched a tent on stage and emerged from it like a pigeon. I made a dummy of Jay Leno and smashed his face with a snow shovel filled with Doritos, covering the stage in tortilla chips. Joanna put on a long white wig and portrayed “Old Hickory,” Andrew Jackson. Yeah, I don’t know what we were.

Sometimes Chris’ quirks would drive me crazy. At our rehearsal space, he stored his guitar in a garbage can neck-first. One time we got pulled over in his crazy, cluttered van. The cops called it a dumpster on wheels. And I will still never forget (read: forgive) when Chris couldn’t afford to buy guitar strings because he had spent all his money ordering Beavis and Butthead DVDs off of the television. By 2004, Los Shut Up was no more.

But it was Chris who gave me the confidence, permission and license to write music. Any other band at the time would be wary of letting the drummer contribute songs. Los Shut Up wasn’t. So at 25 I taught myself piano chords on looknohands.com, and began writing little songs like “1993” and “Nothing.” I still write songs and I have Chris to thank for that.

Filming commenced in the back room of a bar on Damen. A small crew of three unpacked the brand new equipment and set up the shot. They were taking things out of boxes and their shipping contents! After some glitches (no headphones for the boom operator, the owner of the bar is kind of a dick, why are there guys loudly sawing bricks right now?) we got down several takes from several angles.

The character is Sandy. He’s kind of a douche. I think my performance was competent. I don’t particularly enjoy being on camera. It puts me in my head. Two more days of shooting.

My plan was to see Nicole’s band Unicycle Loves You. They played a free show at The Cubby Bear, opening for The Raveonettes. I even RSVP’ed to the Red Eye using the subject line “Bud Light.” Unfortunately, the cheese from my sandwich gave me a six hour spell of nausea, and being in Wrigleyville with a piercing bellyache wasn’t part of the plan.

So I stayed in and watched Coal Miner’s Daughter. This might be the best biopic I have ever seen, unless you count Mommie Dearest. As soon as it was over I phoned a Hollywood producer.

Verdict: Win

April 21 - Carrots As Weapons

Lots of ups and downs today.

I delivered six cartons of programs to a funeral home on Cottage Grove and 79th. Greater Grand Crossing is overwhelmed with flower shops, fast food, and beauty salons (including Le Chateau Cut-Ups). Thanks to Chicago's rigid, unwritten segregation laws, my pale skin stood out in the neighborhood. A teenage girl held up traffic so a man and a stroller could safely cross 79th. She danced really big and really goofy, almost anti-dancing. When she spotted me, she danced even more outrageously, flapping her arms and sticking her ass out. It marked one of the few times in history where someone holding up traffic put a smile on my face. Maybe that was the owner of Le Chateau Cut-Ups.

Assessment: Win

Unfortunately, that spirit toward being held up in traffic didn't last. At 4pm I had to deliver some fucking stupid worthless shit to a print shop in Des Plaines. Traffic became a two hour bore of horror filled with hi-octane acceleration and abrupt braking. It seemed every lane I picked contained someone turning left, driving under the speed limit, stalled, or being a complete asshole fucking cocksucker. I got caught in the trap of road rage when a guy who's ass I was riding vigorously gave me the finger, swerved so I could not pass him, and repeatedly slammed on his breaks so that I would hit him.

What I wanted to do: Strangle his blueberry-sized penis with rusty barbed wire, run over his fingers with a tank, and make him buy a ticket to his parents getting raped at his favorite restaurant.

What I did do: Grabbed a handful of carrot tops and took off my seatbelt. I was going to exit the car and hurl them at his shitty, shitty face. But then I realized that this would attract police nonsense, and that would lead to problems leaving the country in a few weeks.

So I put the carrots down and absorbed my fatigued hatred like a pathetic ShamWow.

Assessment: Loss

I got home with thirty minutes to engorge myself as fast as possible with a frozen pizza.

Assessment: Loss

Tonight was the first Bitter Tears rehearsal with Reid Coker, who will join us on keyboards in Europe. Reid's a cool guy, and really picked up the songs quickly, so Europe looks to be fun. God, I can't wait for Europe.

Assessment: Win

I think I might take up smoking regularly while Lauren is gone. I'm going fucking crazy.

Assessment: Loss

Verdict: Loss

April 20 - Of Mice And Zen

For the second morning in a row, I awoke on the couch, my eyes sticky and blurry from having left in my contacts. My neck felt like it had a screwdriver lodged in it.

Another slow day at work. A ten foot tall canvas of a Disney poster went to a frame shop in Highland Park. That was about it. Oh yeah, while doing a bank deposit for a client I overstuffed the transaction capsule and accidentally clogged the suction tube machine. It shut down the only lane of teller traffic. Whoops.

At home I made steak tacos. My caramelized peppers were more along the lines of charred grasshoppers.

While working on a demo, a mouse appeared in the kitchen. I stopped working on music.

Lauren and I were going to watch American Idol together on Skype, but the timing didn’t work out. Siobhan did a great job of singing, but challenged the judges’ observations for the third week in a row. Now it’s become a pattern, and it seems like she’s not listening to constructive criticism. Bummer. I tried to vote for her anyway, but the lines were busy.

An email told me that a Bitter Tears gig in Brussels has been cancelled.

Around 11 I gave up and found a real life bed.

Verdict: Loss

April 19 - Rest or Improv?

Luckily work was slow. I snuck home at 3pm and watched The T.A.M.I. Show, with one eye on a legendary James Brown performance, the hook-handed drumming of The Barbarians, and the cutting up of hosts Jan and Dean, while the other eye watched my eyelid.

Foggy, I rode my bike to class. It would be an early night: teach and go home for some much needed rest. While locking my bike I saw my friend Mick, founder of The Annoyance. Why was he here on a Monday? The one day the theater is dark? Apparently a kickoff party for the Chicago Improv Festival was happening tonight at The Annoyance. It would not be an early night.

I got surly in class, making generous use of the word “fuck” as an adjective. I do like my class, but sometimes group mind goofiness drives me a little crazy.

After that the students and I made merry at the theater and the CIF festivities. Apparently Tim Meadows was there. For many years he lived on a planet called Saturday Night Live. I mostly hung out at the bar and chatted with my class. Since I had left all my IDs and moneys at home, the students purchased my drinks, obligating me to talk about improv. But we also got to talk about travel, and the Beatle tribute band show I’m directing this summer.

I didn’t get any rest but being at an improv party was like being asleep.

Verdict: Loss

April 18 - No Sleep Til White Castle

My time with Lauren was over as soon as it started. But we squeezed every possible drop of quality out of the sweaty, bloody sock that was my vacation. She dropped me off at the airport in the darkness of morning. Next time I see her will be at O'Hare on June 3. I'll have to pace myself like the picante sauce.

The cowboys at security mistook my drum tuner for a time bomb.

They ran it through some tests with machines and handheld devices. Unfortunately for them, it did not explode as they had secretly hoped, and begrudgingly had to allow me to legally board the airplane.

The plane landed in Chicago at 11:20am, just in time to retrieve the van by the Blue Line and drive it immediately to Second City for Rush Limbaugh! The Musical. Between bites of Jimmy John's we ran vocal warmups for the cast and slopped through two J Geils songs and "Somebody's Baby" by Jackson Browne. The theme for warmups was 1982.

After the show I went straight to Studio Greg Studios II, where Tom and Thea had been working on The Nurse Novels record all weekend. Even with Thea's cold, they got a lot done. Guitar and Korg overdubs plus Tom's vocals. I crashed on the couch until it was time for me to play tambourine, shaker, piano, and washing machine for a few numbers. One of these items gave me several bruises on my thighs.

At 1am I decided to eat my second meal of the day: White Castle. I think I spotted some celebrities there, but maybe it was just sleep-dep.

Verdict: Win

April 17 - 15 Hours With Lauren

With 15 hours to spend as we pleased, Lauren and I got in the theater company car and drove through the desert of Tucson. Around Old Tucson, the roads got lumpy and jumpy, causing Lauren to wee like a girl. We stopped at the side of the road and took a stroll, spooking tiny

lizards around the prickly pears and those giant saguaros you only see in cartoons.

At the Tucson Desert Museum we saw listless snakes bummed out about being behind glass, gila monsters, flashy minerals, a shy mountain lion, a mangy, emotionally castrated wolf, a subterranean owl, a prairie dog, and seven slumbering javalinas. Like those pudgy, hairy hogs, we went without any cowboy or golf hats, and the desert heat had made us lethargic and leathery.

We refueled at Mi Nidito, a Tucson institution since 1952. I ordered the nopalitos con chile, a heaving portion of chopped prickly pear cactus slathered in a red saucy sauce. It was decent and came with a fresh flour tortilla that folded out like a steaming hot road map. The best things on the plate were actually the beans and rice, smooth and seasoned, heightening the obligatory side dishes to star status. It all went down with a couple of Dos Equises.

The walls were decorated with coconuts dressed as shrunken heads, neon Miller Lite signs, and a wall of fame that glorified George W. Bush & Dick Cheney, various starlets of Tejano, and James Earl Ray. The menu also featured a Sirhan Sirhan-chilada, but I heard it was just tasteless.

Lauren's call for her first show, Second City Does Arizona or Close But No Saguaro, was 3pm. I fell into a two-beer coma until 4pm, when I got up to walk around the sleepy heat of Tucson.

I got lost.

Being lost pissed me off.

I saw the sands of time diminishing from my tiny vacation.

A thing called The Buffet caught my eye. It was a bar. I walked in.

When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out a ratty 6-foot pool table, some dated, graffiti-smeared banners for Miller Lite in plastic bottles, and several greasy, long-haired regulars staring at me, the new TV.

I was still a bit groggy from the nap and baked from the wayward travels, but when you walk into a bar like that you have to order a drink. The bartender was a tall woman, plain you might say.

"How are you today?"

It sounded like she meant it.

I told her I was good, and asked her how she was.

She shook her head and made a fishy face. I laughed a little bit too loud.

The tap choices were Coors and Blue Moon.

I opted for the former, and her eyebrows seemed surprised.

The coaster said:

BUFFET BAR

& CROCK POT

TUCSON'S OLDERST BAR - 1934

The tall glass was $2.

It looked like it would be a day of drinking constant beer.

The regulars were mostly watching the old TV now with mile long stares. They resembled Daniel Clowes characters, with unkempt stringy hair and large uneducated eyes, sipping personal pitchers. An elderly woman with a big platinum bouffant and a cheerful spirit tidied up. She wore large black sunglasses in the already dark bar, but you could see her eyes were youthful. I drank my beer and pretended to watch TV, and then stepped back out into the long sunset, no longer lost.

4th Avenue is the main drag in Tucson, dotted with bars, hippie crap, bike shops, and a foam and fabric place for the upholstery on your vintage ride. A bluegrass band played live blues, a street car rang its bell, and a couple of young parents pushed a stroller into a tattoo parlour. I picked up some guayaberra shirts at a quality thrift shop.

Between shows Lauren met me at The Hotel Congress, where John Dillinger was captured and the Blues Explosion recorded Controversial Negro. We enjoyed a light dinner of ceviche and tortilla soup at the bar, where I of course had another beer. Meanwhile two elderly and very drunk hippies talked about Frank Zappa, Howlin' Wolf, Pet Sounds, and confused Devo with Men Without Hats. Eventually the drunker one accidentally knocked some glassware onto the bar floor, where it shattered. He didn't even know he had done it.

I attended the second performance of The Second City Arizona show. I laughed a bunch and drank a beer. It's a good show. I'm glad Lauren got to have a hand in its creation. The crowd loved it, too, and knew more of the local references than I did. Well done, again, Second City.

Afterward we hung out at the lounge attached to the theater. Cody bought me a beer. Raised on a ranch in New Mexico where he travelled with a rodeo, Cody also travelled on the cruise ship with Lauren and I two years ago. It was good to see him in his climate of origin.

I suggested we get a Sonoran hot dog, so eight of us flocked to BK, a late night spot that specializes in this Tucson curiosity as well as carne. The hot dog wrapped in mesquite-smoked bacon and topped with tomatoes, onions, cotijo cheese, tomatillo salsa, mayonnaise, and pinto beans lives up to its fucking hype. And the carne tacos, which kicked equal amounts of taste ass, could be dressed with an assortment of vibrant salsas. Lauren pointed out a chlorophyll-colored salsa made from cilantro. You didn't even need cheese. BK fucking rules.

Alas, the evening had to come to a close at some point.

I set the alarm for 4:30am and held on to my girl tight.

Tomorrow we would have to say goodbye until June.

But not tonight.

Verdict: Win