where you been?

I've neglected making any bold statements or blanket generalizations on this page for awhile now.

Why?

The easy answer is that I've been busy as all fuck with this job of mine the past two or three weeks. The annual meeting has come and past, and this last weekend I finally got my weekend off. I actually had to work Saturday AND Sunday of last week. It was a bitch.

To answer your obvious question of how bad it was, let me put it this way: last Sunday I had to be at the hotel at 8:30 in the morning to sit through the "Finance and Governance Reference Committee hearings"... scheduled to go until 12:30 p.m., this went a little longer. This one ended just after the five hour mark. I sat through the whole fuckin thing too. I turned it into an endurance challenge: no smoke breaks, no 45 minutes of wandering around, no newspaper. FIVE HOURS OF FINANCE AND GOVERNANCE.

Next, on Monday morning, I had to track down two employees serving as secretaries of that particular reference committee and figure out which 4 topics should be covered in my 200 word story. Next, I had to actually write the shit in legalese (note: everything is vague and ambiguous with words and sentence structures that make no sense). Next I had to get the two secretaries to sign off on it, then I had to get the reference chair to sign off on it, then I had to submit it for slight copy edits prior to publication. I hated every fucking second of it... this part of it was true work.

This past weekend was good. My friend Chris was in town from Los Angeles, so we met over at our friend Carney's place and grilled out, then Carney’s wife got even more annoying, so we went to the Irish Heritage Center for some drinks.

Chris is an actor who seems to have more success getting commercial work than actual acting roles. He's basically a large oaf of heartwarming violence. Think John Goodman or James Belushi. Those guys have got to die or something soon because Chris needs work! Chris had a good line. He said that people out of "the industry" ask him all the time "how much did you make on that commercial?" or "how much does TV work pay?" so he likes to answer "it's funny that you brought that up because I was going to ask you how much you make."

Carney is a yuppie who recently bought a bungalow with his spoiled cold hearted wife and the screams of his 18 month daughter. Carney loves company because he's not allowed to go anywhere. The three of us went to college and lived together on Clark street from 1998 to 2000.

Chris kept commenting on how everything has changed so much in the past few years: he got married and finally moved west to be an out of work actor in Los Angeles, Carney got married and had a kid and started to buy real estate. And there's nothing different about me: still working through a string of girlfriends, writing jobs and general and complete asskicking in everything I touch or gently massage.

Chris must've forgotten to mention that both he and Carney are showing signs of grey, whereas single Tim is in shape, gets smiled at by (hot) women on the street, and had five women ranging in age between 22 and 28 guess that I'm 26 years old in the past couple weeks (I'm 31).

Ha! Fuck you two, I win! Return to your Land of Lame, Rule Followers!

Saturday my friend Dan and his wife Susan rode their bikes over to my place and we rode down to Wired magazine's Next Fest at Navy Pier. It was intriguing and cool in a Sharper Image catalog kind of way. Actually I was very impressed with the event's layout and lighting scheme. They were able to recreate the look and feel of the magazine's layout note perfect.

The shit that bugged me was the whole corporate marketing thing going on with giants like GM and Pfizer. GM had four totally efficient and reasonable hydrogen-run cars and minivans on display. Now, if they wanted to mass-produce these vehicles, people would buy them. But they won't. AND, GM was handing out these pieces of paper with wildflower seeds embedded inside the paper for me to toss out the car window at 80 mph on I-94 to spread the growth of wildflowers. Yeah, so this was GM's marketing platform that they're a corporation that actively cares about damage to the environment. Right.

Pfizer was even scarier. They had this fucking cat that they cloned into an identical cat inside of this plastic box. The signage said that they were going to begin cloning dogs next. Doesn't anyone else see the danger in allowing one of the world's largest pharmaceuticals to begin cloning life? What could happen here? Maybe I'm alarmed by this because I naturally assume that the human element of selfish irresponsibility will turn this cloning-thing for the worst... I mean, look how responsible they were with nuclear research and weaponry.

In short, we're doomed.

After the fest we smoked and went to catch Batman. That movie rocks. After that we went to Rossi's for a few. Rossi's was typical chaotic on the edge of absurdity that that place always is. We had to give Susan a look. It was time to go when some fucked up cubs fans (all fat single sunburned dickheads with Prior jerseys and goatees) dropped a dollar in the jukebox and starting to shout along to John Melloncamp. Fucking lame, dickheads... John Melloncamp is fucking lame (I shouldn’t have to tell you this)... and you're fucking lame. Point to this part of the story: Rossi's has no door policy.

We biked over to Tuman’s to meet up with my pal Tim and Todd and their crew. It was a slow moving easy Saturday night for drinking on the sidewalk and making fun of Bishop – Tim’s 12 year old husky – to his face because he gets into the garbage and likes to lick his own ass and sometimes eats drunk puke. Bishop knew we were ripping on him and just layed on the pavement in self loathing shame.

We smoked in the alley like lowlifes and then went over to Todd’s place to watch edited footage of this year’s south side irish parade… shots of Greg walking around the Cork and Kerry with a cigarette and drink holding a rolled up blanket like it was a baby… on camera interviews with the drunk and the mentally ill…

Sunday was fucking hot. Biking from the north side to the loop I caught a flat and had to walk pista about a mile to a bike store, where they pulled an office-sized staple from the side of the back wheel. I must’ve picked it up while cutting a corner. Anyways, I got down to the ESPN Zone to collect Rick and Andy, and then took them to my gym’s outdoor 7th floor pool. It rocked: hot black girls, hot thai girls, hot blondes and a humid late June afternoon plus bud and a 12 pack of coronas. We picked up some dinner at Heaven on Seven, then I rode north to my crib, smoked and kicked back to some Yesterday’s New Quintet and drew for an hour.