the ocean

I don't think it's a secret that Chicago winters tend to be a bit brutal. Why, acclaimed actress cum queer woman Sophia Bush even cited the deleterious effects of the season as one of her reasons for leaving her classic role as Erin Lindsay on the hit NBC TV series Chicago P.D. But each year as the fine, warm days of June linger on, it's easy to forget the horrors that will definitely await one sooner than one thinks. And then, in the bitter, sunless days of January, one notices that one is, in fact, building a cocoon out of one's bedsheets and spending three straight days half watching, half hallucinating old episodes of Criminal Minds. In short, madness that way lies, with a certainty and severity that cannot be overstated.

All in all, this year's case has been relatively mild, thanks to the intervention of some low-grade pharmaceuticals and a new season of The Traitors. But I have found myself a little lower than usual on motivation and enthusiasm, even for things I normally love like Murder, She Wrote and vacuuming up dog hair. So I've been trying to give myself a little bit of grace, as people on social media seem to be saying, by not chastising myself to severely for my failures to, say, turn out the Great American Novel or develop my Khloe Kardashian revenge body. Also my failure to say much of anything of interest on here, I might add. If you want entertainment, watch people dance in thirty second bursts on TikTok as the Chinese expect of you, please.

Anyway, I'm here and frankly have little reason to really complain. Which is not to say that I won't do so. This is still America, after all. 

As there is literally no escaping knowing in the U.S., it was Super Bowl Sunday last weekend. There was a time when that would have meant me awkwardly staring at a giant TV at someone's house, pretending to understand the basic premise of football and hoping to find someone who would prefer to go into the other room and talk about The Real Housewives. (Also me eating my weight in dips, naturally.) But in recent years, Ian and I have abandoned the pretense of wanting to be part of this particular social custom, and our friends seem to be able to live without our glazed-over expressions and frequent trips to refresh our booze. So instead we spend Super Bowl Sunday as just another Sunday, doing whatever we need to do or feel like doing. It turns out it is a fine day to stock up on light bulbs at the Home Depot or place your extra complicated order at the Mariano's deli. It is also a great day to go to the movies, if like us you hate crowds and can't silence the voice in your head that says someone might shoot you during Madame Web.

As though I needed another reminder that I am an adult man who makes snarky remarks about pop culture on a website that no one reads, I turned 47 this week. It was a gala affair that consisted, as per usual, of overpriced takeout and games devised by my niece and nephew to allow themselves to win. The former took the form of tacos and the latter of a forty-year-old Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur that now lacks the energy to do much damage to any enterprising cavemen. The upshot that I formally became another year older and yet no less childish. Such is life, one supposes.

So I'm going to be performing another show this April. This time it will be stories and songs about my experiences in the 1980s, everyone's favorite decade of legwarmers and an AIDS crisis the president refused to even acknowledge for many years. I was a child for all of this decade, so obviously my insights will be significant. Oh, and I'm keeping it honest by ensuring that every single song I'm parodying came out in the 1980s, even though frankly a lot of the music from that era is the hottest of trash. Should be exciting!