the ocean

Treasures of the Past

In all the glitz and glamour of my real estate purchase, I forgot to share a few delightful nuggets.

First, I met the world's most ridiculous realtor. She showed us an interesting crackhouse in Lakeview without ever putting down her breakfast burrito. Her boyfriend followed us around mutely the whole time we were looking at the place, to the point that I seriously feared he might follow us home. And she had the most splendidly hopeful explanations for things. She termed the zig-zag-shaped second bedroom "distinctive." She solved the unit's complete lack of storage space by suggesting we put a cabinet in the building stairway. And she ushered us out onto the postage-stamp back porch in subzero weather to show us a "beautiful view" of the parking lot and alley that was "definitely worth braving the cold."

I want her to bear my children.

Then, another realtor called us after the showing to accuse us of stealing prescription drugs from the condo. Yes, in the ten minutes we looked at the Malaysian-sweatshop-posing-as-loft, we were alleged to have somehow pocketed painkillers hidden in the depths of the owner's sock drawer. But as much bad-decorating-induced pain as I was in, I don't think a trip through a middle-aged couples' long johns would have solved any of my problems.

Oh, and several places had strange tiny cubbies in them, which I can only think are designed for the storage of the sentient serving robots our society is sure to develop. Because Small Wonder doesn't need a bedroom to call her own.

Home Decorating 101

Yesterday I came home to discover that Roommate Liz had created a gorgeous mural on my bedroom door. I thought I'd put on my "O Magazine" hat for a moment and share it with you.

Here, Nicole Richie eats something! This is the one instance in which I was actually surprised by Us Magazine's evidence that a celebrity is "just like us."
Apparently, the teenaged Angelina Jolie wasn't quite the looker we've come to know and feel vaguely indifferent towards.
Neither was this girl. Of course, she has a fictional demonic possession to blame. Man, high school can be so rough.
You can't really see it in this photo, but there's a little speech bubble on The Kwan's face that says, simply, "I'm sorry, America." It's about time.

The overall effect. And all you need to spice up your own home is a couple of cheap magazines (I don't recommend The Economist) and a pair of scissors (get the safety kind, just in case). Happy decorating!

On the Love of Sport

Is it wrong that I kept pausing the Olympics last night to watch the ice skaters fall in slow motion? It's just so much more comic when it's slow, and you can pinpoint the exact moment when they register the destruction of all their hopes and dreams. Of course, the crying afterwards has to be watched in real time, or it just looks absurd. Thank God for technology.

With all the falling that went on, I'm guessing The Kwan really wishes she'd stayed in the mix. Two falls and a silver medal? The Kwan falls that many times on her way to get breakfast in the morning. I also like to imagine that she sleeps in the little gold Vera Wang dress. And brushes her teeth with a fine diamond-based cream.

It's actually pretty hard for me to believe the Olympics are ending, probably since I've barely noticed their existence this time around. It seems like just yesterday that Katie Couric was standing out in the palazzo in Tornio (can we go back to calling it Turin now?) being shat on by a legion of pigeons in anticipation of the pomp and pageantry of Olympic competition. But before I could watch even a single curling match (are they matches? games? smackdowns?), it's all over, except for the Wheaties boxes and uncomfortable Leno appearances.

At least AAO got a medal.

Upon Further Inspection

It turns out that condo inspections are really boring. I kind of pictured us like discovering secret rooms and walled-up corpses, but I just ended up sitting there for two hours while a guy in a bad hat flipped light switches and peered at vents. I had to make small talk with the woman selling me the place, and we could only come up with three basic topics: 1) dogs, and the ownership thereof, 2) neighborhoods in Chicago and how they're fun to live in, and 3) how we don't really like moving. Eventually, I just ended up pretending that I was responding to important work-related emails on my Treo, when in fact I was discussing ways to maybe make an inspection fun with my friend Bethany. (The top contenders? Doing it naked and/or occasionally throwing out completely unnecessary and wholly inappropriate racial epithets.) And no one ever even offered me something to drink. I really feel like this should have been a mocktails occasion.

But the good news is that my new place isn't going to fall down any time soon. The guy explained everything to me, which I didn't for the most part understand, but my realtor confirmed that none of it was anything to really worry about. One of the doors sticks a little bit and the furnace cover doesn't come all the way off. Since I've lived in places with missing windows and honest to God vermin in my bedroom, I think I can cope.

The whole process remains weird, however. I can't help but feel like I'm spending all the money that I will ever have and that I'm going to have to furnish my living room with the cardboard boxes my belongings will arrive in. Or worse yet, IKEA. I suppose everyone goes through some sticker shock, though. This is just like that time I bought the Miata.

Land

So I bought a condo today.

I hadn't really planned on moving so quickly, but when I saw this place, I just kind of knew that it was right. It was fate, like when Star Jones met Al Reynolds or Jennifer Lopez met any of her 17.5 husbands. And just as in most healthy relationships, money exchanged hands. I wrote the first in what will be a horrifyingly long series of the biggest checks I've ever written. Generally, amounts this large come on huge cardboard checks being handed out by Bob Barker. But I felt okay about it. Well, aside from the nausea.

There was also some bidding involved, which went predictably poorly for me. I'm only the World's Greatest Liar when it comes to unimportant topics like why I came home so late last night or whether you look good in that shirt. But ask me to pretend to be non-committal about a condo that, honest to God, has the most beautiful countertops I have ever seen (museum quality, if they had museums of granite) and a heated floor in the master bathroom, and I fall to pieces. I'm lucky they didn't charge me double.

But it all worked out well, at least so far. Come April, I'll be living the life with a huge storage space and a double oven I will never, ever use. Ah, the glitz, the glamour.

It's kind of weird to be a landowner. I think I'm going to plant some sorghum, maybe hire some sharecroppers. Then I'll just sit back and wait to be invited to a cotillion of some sort.

The Cold War

It is so cold outside that I am considering freezing to death just to prove a point. I can't even walk more than a few blocks without feeling like my face will fall off and ducking into the nearest 7-11 to warm myself up while pretending to be interested in buying expired tuna at an outrageous markup. As I was walking home on Friday night, I found myself involuntarily talking to myself about how cold it was; I believe some philosophical questions about the existence of a higher power were also involved.

Under such circumstances, my general strategy is to barricade myself into my home and watch terrible television. I believe this is the entire reason for my familiarity with the cinematic works of one Jennifer Love Hewitt. This morning I flipped back and forth between an MTV documentary (two words that really don't seem to belong together) about fat camp and the classic film "Blast From the Past" starring Brendan Fraser as a naive bomb shelter resident and Alicia Silverstone as someone who doesn't yet know that her fifteen minutes are up. I honestly believe the shame for America I felt made me warmer.

My sister was also in town, which for some people might mean crazy times, but since the two of us share the same genetic code, we simply decided to play Dr. Mario and Yoshi's Cookie (perhaps the two nerdiest Nintendo games, as they involve logic rather than mushroom consumption) for several hours. The good news is that I am still the best Dr. Mario player of all time; I feel like I should be awarded some sort of honorary degree for this. If you ever get the red, yellow, or blue virus, I'm the man with your cure.

Fashion Police

Fridays here at the firm are jeans days, and that's one of the things about this place that I love, along with the sassy switchboard lady and hamburger/hot dog night at the dinner buffet. This means that even if Thursday night has rendered me essentially unable to dress myself, I can throw a fresh coat of Febreeze on whatever I ended up crashing in and head in for some quality billable hours. It's awkward when I occasionally wear in someone else's clothes, but sort of part for the course with whoredom, I suppose.

For others around here, however, casual Friday obviously creates some severe dilemmas. Should they wear their acid-washed jeans tapered or tight rolled? What color fanny pack goes best with a hot pink Garfield t-shirt? This is, after all, a place where the dress code has to explicitly warn people that mesh tops and bicycle pants are not acceptable attire for the office. Personally, I don't think they're acceptable attire for living on this planet.

Some of the senior partners choose simply to ignore the whole thing, wearing the same obscenely expensive yet slightly rumpled suits that their personal shoppers at Nordstrom's gravely instructed them to put on each day. Others pull out the carefully ironed jeans they wore to their Senior Ditch Day in 1974. Of course, whatever they do, they look amazing, because partners at large law firms don't have to follow the same rules as the rest of us. As long as they stop short of the Buffalo Bill skin suit, they can wear whatever they want.

Me, I'm thinking about wearing my swimsuit next week. Just in case a monsoon comes in.

Love and Death

I think I'm becoming one of those annoying people who constantly talks about real estate. I got more listings yesterday and I keep finding myself randomly telling people about the steam showers and subzeros I have known. If they're looking or already own, they immediately get into their own zone and fire back with something about mortgage points or comparables, but since a lot of my friends are 22 or live with their parents or both, I'm getting a lot of blank stares. Blank stares that communicate a desire to kill.

Speaking of which, our Vice President shot someone. Isn't that kind of weird? I mean, Al Gore was boring, but at least he didn't have a body count. And I'm not really sure I understand where the challenge is in quail hunting. I kind of feel like I could take a quail with my bare hands.

Speaking of which, this Valentine's Day I got the gift of porn. Who says that romance is dead?

How Are We Spending Our Valentine's Day?

20% -- Rearranging candles on personal shrine to Tom Selleck.
17% -- Appearing at court hearing to have restraining order lifted.
13% -- Rereading yellowed Ann Landers "How We Met" column taped to fridge.
11% -- Sobbing openly.
10% -- Bingeing, purging, and bingeing again; not really feeling up to second purge.
9% -- Recreating famous love stories with collection of Hummel figurines.
7% -- Feasting on the souls of the wicked.
5% -- Wishing that 13 Going on 30 were on Encore 24 hours a day instead of just the 17.
4% -- Fantasizing about how "boring" life must be for all those attractive people in stable relationships.
3% -- Marrying Jennifer Lopez.
1% -- Wearing the novelty Valentine's Day sweatshirt from Walgreen's.

The Darkest Day in American History

Michelle Kwan is out of the Olympics, people. There will be no extended psychodrama of insanely high expectations followed by initial promise before an eventual and inevitable psychologically-induced defeat. A true entertainer, she's given us her whole tragic routine in tightly concentrated one-day form. Sure, a groin pull isn't quite as compelling as getting smacked with a tire iron and screeching "why?" through your giant horse teeth, but we couldn't expect the Giloolification of ice skating to last forever. The Kwan will definitely be missed. In fact, I'm fairly sure Bob Costas will throw himself out of a window over at NBC Olympic headquarters. Hopefully he'll find some way to take Katie Couric with him.

And as though that's not bad enough, AAO took a bit of a spill. It was horrifying. His mullet was flying all over the place. And this was his premiere event, probably even the one he's pictured participating in on the McDonald's bag. It really feels as though America is the one that went sprawling all over the ice today. I'm not sure how we'll manage to recuperate. Which makes me think I really need to have a project assistant research the issue.

Hunting Trip

Actually looked at some condos this morning. Six of them. Well, five, since the realtor who was supposed to show us the first one ran late and then couldn't find the right keys, but five and what seemed like a really nice lobby. I have never seen such stunning mailboxes.

A couple of the places I really liked. It turns out that I'm kind of a whore for crown moldings and rounded drywall, etc. I also enjoy large closets with lots of little organizers in them and have an appreciation for fine window furnishings. Plus it was fun to look at the rooms and imagine how I would make them so much more awesome just by living there. My Paula Abdul poster really classes up any place I live.

But it's also weird because every place sort of has its drawbacks. It'll have an amazing master bedroom, but be across from a hog rendering plant. It will be the perfect distance from the train, but have plumbing from the 1950s. It will have the perfect floor plan, but Ann Coulter will be your next door neighbor. You don't want to end up having to pay a fortune in exorcism costs, you know?

In the end I suppose I'm cautiously optimistic. After all, I chose my current apartment after looking at a total of four properties, and it's ended up being a fairly amazing place to live (so long as you don't mind a pidgin-speaking maintenance crew and the occasional laundry room smash-up). I can only hope that I will devote the same minimal amount of attention to this search and end up with a similarly undeserved happy ending.

On the Redistribution of Wealth

It occurred to me today that I have too much money.

I was walking past the cute little Dr.-Ruth-looking old lady with the indefinable European accent who dusts the credenzas and re-cakes the urinals around our office, and for the first time I realized that she was probably not dealing with stains of suspicious origin for fun. No, at the age of seventy-whatever, she was mopping up a toner cartridge some idiot spilled all over six cubicles because she needed the money. I tried to tell myself that maybe she just does it because she likes the fancy support hose or because she has an expensive meth habit to fund, but I eventually had to conclude that it was more essential items (i.e. housedresses and Hot Pockets) that had her working for the weekend.

And suddenly I felt a little ashamed. Because while I waste money on, say, a can of EZ-E Cheese I will never actually finish or an Ashlee Simpson album with only one good song on it, other people are struggling just to make ends meet. While I worry about whether I can afford the condo with the jacuzzi tub AND the steam shower (which I don't even really understand and sort of fear), other people are wishing their public housing had working door locks or a full ceiling. And while I bitch because catering has made another disastrous attempt at seafood at my office, other people actually prepare the food I eat for a living. Yeah, I'm kind of an ass.

I think I'm going to go give like a billion dollars to charity. But not to anything that Bono supports. I just think his eyewear is way too provocative.

Jay's Super Bowl Highlights 2006

1) That commercial where the guy throws his phone at the other guy and knocks him down. The first rule of comedy: falling down = funny.

2) The three slices of blondie brownie snicker pie I ate. On Super Bowl Sunday, even mere mortals are allowed to eat like Delta Burke.

3) The "The Flavor of Love" marathon on VH1. Because a chance to date Flavor Flav is definitely worth being nicknamed "Pumkin" and getting into a screaming fight with a woman with implants bigger than her head.

4) The Puppy Bowl. Puppies are cute, deal with it. People like them. Maybe even more than Reese Witherspoon. That's a tough pill to swallow, I know.

5) Repeatedly saying "If the Seahawks don't win, I'll just die," in the most unenthusiastic tone possible.

6) The suspense of wondering if the Rolling Stones would in fact live through the halftime show.

7) Wearing flannel pants and house slippers that make me look like a forty-seven-year-old insurance salesman.

8) Going to bed at 9:30.

The Great American Birthday

Yesterday was the big event. I turned 28 without international incident, unless you count that diplomat I slept with. We held a small gathering of Chicago's literati at the apartment to commemorate the occasion.

Despite the fact that this photograph is carefully posed, I manage to look surprised. Note that we have yet to take down our Christmas Tree, or as I call it, Birthday Bush. Of course there was hugging and smiling involved. Angel and I now have a near-decade-long string of cheerful photos in which we're holding beers. That's got to be worth something, although probably not money.
Friend Amy shows off the delicious homemade cookie cake she generously brought to the fete. Roommate Liz also made a blondie brownie snicker pie, which can probably kill you with a single slice, though you probably wouldn't complain. There was also an amazing party tray of smoked, cured meats and my patented (file number 432-24-2459) chili cheese dip.

If there's a better way to mark another year of living, I can't think of it.

AAO

Have you ever espoused an interest or opinion just because you think it's funny? And have you then gotten so caught up in the pretending that you find you can't stop?

I'm not talking about "comically" pretending to be a neo-Nazi or a Robin Williams fan here; these positions are too incredible to be believed. I'm talking about picking out an unusual subject or person, say macrame or James Earl Jones (or both -- so hot!), and acting as though it is the most important thing in the world to you, outfitting entire rooms of your home in your delightful knotted creations or writing JRS hearts JEJ all over your memo pad during the quarterly meeting. I fully admit this is weird, but I do maintain that it happens, even to people other than me.

The reason I bring this all up is that the other day my coworker and I decided that we were going to pretend that we loved Apolo Anton Ohno, the United States speeds skater perhaps best known for having a mullet and falling down a lot. We jokingly scheduled a soiree in AAO's honor for the night of what will surely be his gold medal skate, and instructed our project assistant to research potential venues and start cutting out photos for an honorary collage. We told said project assistant to get out the glitter pens and make a posted comparing the pros and cons of, say, Chili's and Bennigan's as hosts for our party. We also told him that he must communicate with us about the project solely by email, as we are both incredibly busy and important and cannot be bothered with phone calls. We asked him, for that matter, to please never make direct eye contact with either of us.

It's a good thing he understood we were kidding.

But see what I mean about getting caught up in the fun lie? I hear that's what happened to Tom Cruise.

Police Blotter

Monday night someone broke into the laundry room in our building. Well, not "broke in" exactly, since both the back gate and the laundry room door were conveniently left wide open. (We were going to put out a sign that said "Intruders Welcome," but we ran out of puffy paint.) But regardless of whether he entered by force or was offered a guided tour and a plate of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, our visitor's manners could have used a little improving. He flipped over our washing machine and broke open the coin boxes on both machines, causing me to wonder if in fact our intruder was an arcade-crazed preteen all hepped up on Slushie. Of course, the only other options for theft in that room were several old cans of paint and a broken rowing machine, so I guess the quarters seemed like a windfall. It may not be exactly correct to say that crime didn't pay, but it certainly didn't pay very well. Our thief probably would have made out better spending that time one of your finer Malaysian sweat shops.

But the strangest thing about this occurrence is the way it has frankly sort of freaked me out. I hardly batted an eye when the girls in the apartment below us got robbed; I guess I just kind of figured that they were sort of mean and definitely shouldn't have left their back window open. And that was during the day, when there are no shadows that people could conceivably jump me from ninja style. Now, though, I'm doing the thing where I quickly whip around corners to look for intruders and wield my keys like a weapon. Yesterday I almost shanked Roommate Liz.

Maybe I should join the neighborhood watch. They make you do things for that, though, don't they?