the ocean

Culture Wars

Some friends and I went to Ravinia Friday night for a CSO concert. Strange as it may seem to travel forty minutes into the suburbs to hear one of the world's finest symphonies with the accompaniment of insanely loud crickets and some random lady's story about her colostomy, it actually is kind of a treat. It provides an excuse to drink jug wine and buy a plate of sandwich wraps and some taco dip from Jewel, and somehow lying on your back and staring up at a tree makes Shostokovich and Tchaikovsky even more enjoyable. Plus, it's great people watching -- I saw a teenaged nerd with a laptop and several folks with highwaisted jean shorts in the first twenty minutes. Normally you have to find tourists for such severe crimes against fashion!

But this particular Ravinia trip was not without a certain amount of peril. First, the return train was about half an hour late, leading a number of people to decide it was socially acceptable to remove their tops at the symphony. It also led to an exceedingly amusing telephone exchange I overheard between an older lady and the Metra office, in which she repeatedly declaimed that all of us who were waiting were "like sheep" and had somehow thwarted her valiant attempts to singlehandedly bring about the arrival of the train. I half expected her to launch into a segment on how teenagers dress like sluts these days and television stopped being funny in 1967. Then, when we got back to the city, cabs were nowhere to be found, causing us to walk several blocks without any idea of where we were going and have a rather unpleasant conversation with an exceedingly inebriated one-armed man before finally tracking down a taxi at the Citgo.

Culture doesn't come without its price, you know.

Notes from the Sensory Deprivation Tank

I spent the past two days in a small, windowless room staring at powerpoints created to demonstrate to attorneys the wonders of accounting. Aside from a couple of five-minute pee breaks and an hour at lunch, I was fully committed to the world of profit and loss sheets, amortization, and bad jokes about Enron. I watched people do math for twenty minutes at a time. I listened to amazing stories about missing footnotes and discount rates that are off by one tenth of a percent. I got annual reports as souvenirs. It was possibly the most compelling two days in the history of human lives.

We did decide that the two organizers of the class were having a torrid affair, which was kind of fun. They kept stealing these lingering glances over the podium and making all kinds of awkward jokes about one another. They even had pictures of each other dropped into their powerpoints. Things took a little bit of an awkward turn when the gentleman offhandedly mentioned his children during his presentation, but I will always imagine our wonderful organizers discussing Enron over breakfast in bed, or perhaps in the shower.

Other things that kept me going? The impressively lifelike drawings I did of the Accounting Standards Board, the passive-aggressive requests attendees made that people raise the volume of their voices, the man in the back row who kept going "hmmm" loudly during the presentations. It's almost too bad I've now graduated from accounting school.

Towards a Systematic Approach to the Evaluation of Panhandlers

When you live in a city, you pass people who are asking you for money all the time. When I first moved to Chicago, this confused me. I was used to only being asked for money by children with candy bars and the Catholic church. Once, in Champaign, a man approached me in the street and asked me for money so he could "buy tires" and "drive his baby to the hospital," but I really thought that was legit. So when I first encountered the urban panhandler, I though it was very likely that he was carrying a knife and would leap violently upon me at any second.

Now I'm pretty used to just not making eye contact. A year or so ago, an angry old man even got right up in my face and stayed that way for a block and a half and I didn't so much as blink. Of course, my many cosmetic procedures have rendered blinking impossible for me, but that's not the point. The point is that living in an urban wasteland has finally made me dead inside! So now I can help the homeless help themselves by offering a few "selling tips."

First of all, know your strengths. If you've got some sort of wound, particularly one obtained in a popular war, get it right out there for everyone to see. If you can play some sort of instrument, preferably something from the pop or jazz idiom, do it! And don't get inventive with your song selection -- America the Beautiful is just fine, thank you. If you're funny, throw out a few jokes. People love to laugh on their way to the Chick-fil-a.

Second, try not to repeat yourself. The first time I hear your story about Ann Landers stealing your brain waves, it's believable. The second time, not so much.

Next, don't take it over the top. "Help the homeless" is short and catchy. "Won't anyone please have mercy?" is just a downer. Try writing your pleas out in advance and going through them with a red pencil.

Finally, don't be ungrateful. Sure, you're never going to eat that Nutri-Grain bar some commuter in bright white tennis shoes and a suit just dropped in your lap, but that still doesn't make it right to shove it up her self-satisfied little ass.

I think I've helped enough people for one day.

Over the Hill

I have decided that I am officially getting old.

To begin with, I can no longer relate to anyone on MTV. The girls on My Super Sweet Sixteen make me want to put the children I don't yet have up for adoption now, and the casts of Laguna Beach and The Hills cause me to think the revolution should be televised, in the middle of Lauren's big photo shoot. I don't even understand the simpleminded rules of the new Real World/Road Rules Challenge; all I know is that all the cast members around my age seem like they need oxygen during some of the events. I'm not even sure if TRL is on any more, although I pray it's not. Maybe that's why Carson Daly's turned all manorexic.

Also, I now find myself thinking in terms of what's "responsible." I think about my mortgage payments frequently. I've been planning for the purchase of a new dining table for about two months now. And only about half of that is laziness. I'm actually shopping around!

The other day I used the phrase "when I was your age."

And much of the time now I feel like I'd rather stay home and sleep or watch a movie than go out and drink seven Long Islands for no reason. Last night I reviewed documents for work and watched part of The Sixth Sense. I don't even like that movie that much. It was just inertia.

And did I mention that I go to bed at 11:30 on Sundays? Yeah, that's right, I'm out of here.

Office Space

I have been working pretty much around the clock lately. This is not as hilarious as you might think. For one thing, I've noticed that my chair becomes rather damp and uncomfortable after hours of sitting. Also, I may have to get one of those dorky monitor shades to prevent eyestrain. (Or maybe I should just change my contacts; it has been like seven years.) I am wholly out of post-its and little plastic tape flags, which is quite frankly an unacceptable state of affairs. Oh, and I haven't seen the outside world during daylight hours since Sunday. There's that.

For someone who is accustomed to working four-day weeks and spending hours on his roof treating his skin like bacon during the summer months, this is an odd state of affairs.

Last night I think I sort of started to lose my mind. I was working on approximately the ten thousandth revision of a brief I have to file and suddenly the words started dancing around on the page and I couldn't read any more. Then I thought I heard someone calling my name, but the entire floor was empty, except for the word processing department (for some reason we have one), and they never leave their cave. This was when I decided I was probably entitled to a Snickers break. Hallucination equals candy.

I don't really want to overstate the importance of all this, but I think it's pretty fair to say that the Guantanamo detainees have got nothing on me.

The Bad Touch

Yesterday I had a checkup with my doctor. Everything was going as usual -- hourlong wait, awkward small talk, two finger typing -- when my doctor asked if a medical student could observe our visit. This, of course, was no big deal. A tiny, quiet girl who sort of reminded me of TV's Felicity came in and listened to us chat about why my knees sometimes feel like they're going to fall off and how I really probably shouldn't eat that precooked bacon they sell at Jewel. She appeared to be taking notes on a clipboard, which made me worry a little bit about the possibility of her writing an unauthorized biography of me, but since no one was prodding me with any needles or asking me to pee into anything, I felt pretty content.

Then my doctor asked me to take my clothes off so he could feel my balls.

Now, I understand that testicular cancer is a big deal and I definitely believe in getting examined. What I don't necessarily believe in, however, is having an audience. But I tried to be professional about it, and simply stared straight ahead as physician and sidekick took the guided tour of my unmentionables. I even started to feel a little bit flattered when words like "normal" and "healthy" started coming out of his mouth. As you can imagine, I don't hear those words often.

Then my doctor asked if his student could feel my balls as well.

And what could I say? Humiliated though I was, I allowed the group grope to ensue. The student reached out her hand as though she was about to dip it in acid and, just in case I didn't quite understand how mortified she was, made what I recognized from grade school as the "Mr. Yuck" face.

I guess the good news is I got a clean bill of health.

Fun Things I've Just Discovered I Own

Every time I engage in my bi-weekly ritual of cleaning the condo so I'm not embarrassed when the cleaning lady arrives, I find some treasures I didn't realize I was lucky enough to have. Photo evidence follows.

These gloves are perfect for those many, many situations in which my hands must escape detection.
Did you even know the Harlem Globetrotters had their own Nintendo game? The box says it "combines awesome basketball skills with high hilarity."

Neither I nor anyone I have ever lived with has any connection to K State. Maybe my Corolla ordered this on its own?
Of course, I think the Internet is just a fad, anyway. But I'm willing to read about how to use it, assuming there are amusing cover graphics involved.

A Collection of Handy Conversation-Ending Phrases

-- Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?
-- Of course, things haven't been quite the same since I had that Thighmaster accident.
-- You know, Jane Pauley is kind of a cunt.
-- In some ways, I think people are probably too rough on Hitler.
-- Hey, who wants to take a crap on me?
-- I really admire the later works of Chevy Chase.
-- That whole Middle East situation is kind of a laugh, don't you think?
-- Hi, I'm Elton John.
-- I hope you're not one of those people who's all hung up on people not dating after they get married.
-- Do you want to see my collection of Precious Moments figurines?
-- I've memorized over four thousand fun facts about American history!
-- I mean, who hasn't been indicted on a drug conspiracy these days?
-- You know, I actually wrote something about that on my blog!

The Feel Good Hit of the Summer

For some time, I have been meaning to fill you all in on a great little TV show called Honey, We're Killing the Kids. It follows the exploits of an insanely condescending, fun-loathing "medical nutritionist" who travels across the country projecting her own lack-of-prom-date-related issues on to unsuspecting parents and talking with her hands. Forcing three-year-olds to eat asparagus and convincing soccer moms that they're bad people if their children use the wrong forks at the dinner table, she furrows her brow and purses her lips to the stunning emotional effect of a soap opera actress (let's say Deidre Hall) fresh off a weeklong botox jag. It's a tour de force performance of the type that would clearly win Hilary Swank (who, remember, is not a man) several Oscars.

But the best part of the show is where they use "advanced computer technology" (i.e. Photoshop) to show parents how their kids will look at forty if they don't somehow miraculously stop eating Gummi Worms and playing X-Box all day in the intervening thirty years. The answer, essentially, is like Dennis Franz. Every kid ends up with thirty or forty extra pounds, a completely unconvincing combover, and inexplicable facial hair. I also love that the computer apparently can discern that the child, once grown, will only wear soiled white t-shirts and will never, ever smile.

"He looks so unhappy," the parents invariably say.

Of course, they mock up the best case scenario, too, for those parents who agree to completely subjugate their own wills to that of the good doctor. Those kids at least smile and have recognizable facial features, although they still apparently shop at Chess King.

I need to steal me some children so I can be on this show.

Major Malfunctions

ComEd appears to have taken up permanent residence in the alley behind my condo. A couple of hours ago there were two guys riding up and down in those mechanical baskets; mainly they appeared to be playing chicken with each other, although they did succeed in setting one of the lines on fire at one point. Now there is a truck with a huge spool of cable on the back, which I can only assume is for craft-making purposes, as there continues to be nothing wrong with our power service. Don't get me wrong, though; it's nice to have people swearing and banging metal objects together outside my window at 11 PM. I feel a sudden urge to travel back to 1999 and go see Stomp.

In other major mechanical failures, I managed to singlehandedly ruin my secretary's retirement party on Friday. Apparently, despite the lack of any mention of a surprise in the painstakingly-illustrated email invitation, the cake and two liters were meant to be subjected to the utmost secrecy. I sort of caught on to this when my secretary stared at me blankly after I told her I would definitely be at her party. I think she was still surprised by the callous indifference gifted to her my a supermajority of my coworkers, however. And that's the gift that keeps on giving.

I also ate a whole plate of nachos today. And watched half an episode of Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. My God, I am the lowest form of life.

Politics as Usual

So last night's cab ride home was interesting. Due to the President's visit to Chicago, huge portions of just about every important street imaginable were closed. This led my cab driver to, first, sit glowering at Lake Shore and muttering under his breath something that sounded suspiciously like "Oprah must die" for about twenty minutes. He followed this up by doing a Starsky and Hutch style U-turn in the middle of Wacker and driving the wrong way down it for three city blocks, shaking his fist and screaming obscenities at those people going the correct direction. When a natural chorus of car horns followed this acrobatic and linguistic feat, he slammed on his brakes and neatly threw me into the plastic partition. Shortly thereafter, he proceeded to tear down Michigan, scattering pedestrians like Charlie Sheen's sperm. The net result was a half hour cab trip for the bargain price of $20. I've always wondered why Six Flags doesn't have a "overmedicated cab driver" ride.

Of course, I understand the frustration. Is Bush really so tired of screwing us over as a nation that he's decided to start taking it door to door?

Happy Belated Birthday, America!

Like most Americans, I honored our great land by gorging myself on cheap, preservative-laden snack foods, drinking watery keg beer, and burning my skin to a lobstery crisp. It was a pretty memorable weekend, frankly, at least those parts of it that I remember. I watched the fireworks from my friend Meghan's sailboat, which gave me ample opportunity to ask what a mizzen mast is and which side is starboard. I tried pre-mixed mojitos, which tasted like Scope and made me believe I could see through time. And I urinated in public on more than one occasion, helping me to appreciate the great American ingenuity behind ample indoor plumbing. Fairly spectacular stuff.

Of course, there were also a couple of days of truly crappy weather, one of which I spent trapped in my condo with my cleaning lady, who turns out to be rather delightful and wee despite her excessive love of Windex. She cleans barefoot and hums what sounds a little bit like The Girl from Ipanema (though she herself is from Poland) while she meticulously irons each and every one of my shirts, including the undershirts. I felt a little awkward watching DVDs and reviewing documents on my couch while she labored away, but she did in fact resist my offers to help. She may have thought I was trying to kill her with the toilet brush, I'm not sure.

But the real news is that I took five consecutive days off from work, making this the longest break I've had since December. This morning I briefly considered changing my name and running away to Mexico, but I don't think I could live anywhere where they don't have Taco Bell.

On Holiday

Busy couple of days here. My parents came into town, so I spent Friday and Saturday consulting on such serious issues as how one uses a train card and whether $6 is too much to pay for a hamburger. We went to the Cubs/Sox game (or as I like to call it, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Chicago) and to the free exhibition at the Art Institute (since they like both art and things that are free, I thought it was a pretty good pick). We also went to an improv show and a concert in the park. Obviously, if the law thing doesn't work out I am clearly qualified to be a cruise director. I just might want to brush up on my jazzercise skills a bit.

We also saw An Inconvenient Truth, which was fairly horrifying, and not just for whatever Al Gore joke you'd like to insert here. I always thought that maybe global warming would be an okay thing, that maybe it'd just be slightly balmier here in Chicago in January and that we'd get used to it like the water in a hot tub. But it turns out that probably a lot of places would be underwater, including some of which I am somewhat fond. I tell you, when I got home I turned out all the lights I had left on to scare off potential mass murderers immediately. And I seriously tried to remember to buy those blue trash bags for recycling, although I ended up getting distracted and buying a case of taco dip instead. I'll even buy a hybrid car, if they get a little bit cuter.

But my parents are gone now, and I've still got two days off left! I'd tell you my plans for them, but you'd probably just think they're vaguely sad. Here's a hint: there's reading and furniture shopping involved.