Light My Fire

I realized in the van today that I prefer the radio edit "Light My Fire."

Hey Ray Manzarek.

We've all got things to do.

Sexting

Parents who are too embarrassed to use the word "sexting" when talking to their children about sexually suggestive texts should use the word "suggexting."

Teeth and Lasers 2007

Since 1984 I hadn't been to the dentist. It seems the last 23 years I've just been really busy with homework and girls. So I decided I should go back there and see what it's like.

The waiting area reminded me of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
Cracked, checkered tiles.
Plastic laundromat chairs.
Telenovelas screaming from the TV.
The only difference was that everyone had all of their legs.

My dentist was from Iran and spoke in a soothing but mumbling cadence, like drool-warm Persian decaf on the ears. I was told I needed a new filling and this sort of thing. We made a conversation while the local anesthetic considered my mouth.

"So what do you do?"
"I'm a dentist. What do you do?"

I told him I had been a courier for the last 6 years, but it sounded like "curator."

"Oh, for the museum?"

I had to correct him and that was a drag. He thought I was a distinguished museum curator, with a fanciful home full of groovy artifacts, and German key parties and a fax machine. In reality I'm a bike messenger with a messy apartment full of weird props, and scars from spills, and a Kinko's nearby. To compensate for this dip in status, I told him I also teach.

"What do you teach?"
"Comedy."

Really, I teach improv. But that might require an explanation so it's easier to say "comedy."
Or is it?
My dentist begins to tell me a joke involving Sofia Loren, Madonna and the Sahara Pipeline. It was hard to tell when the joke had finished but I managed a courtesy laugh, though I laughed hardest at the first mention of Sofia Loren.

"You have to be on top of current events to do comedy," my dentist informed me. "Did you hear about the massacre in Virginia?"

Yesterday a student at Virginia Tech opened fire and killed 32 people before killing himself. I told him I had heard about it and waited, unsure if he wanted me to make a joke about it. I thought I'd play it safe and bust out an old space shuttle Challenger one-liner but he continued.

"I was in the Iran revolution in 1979. Since they elected that asshole one of my students committed suicide."

Whoa. This was getting angry and sad. And we hadn't even begun drilling. I started to drift.

"Is my talking putting you to sleep? Don't fall asleep."

Drills, suction, probes, and lasers* obscured my dentist's words during the procedure. Which is too bad. I could have gotten some fresh material for the jokes that I say during the improv.

"Improvisation. You have to be ready for anything," my dentist informed me.
As per his request, I handed him cash for his work. But hadn't I seen his assistant wandering the premises?
"No, she's busy."

He came back with my change and asked if I would be performing soon. I mentioned that I had a ridiculous dancing audition for Hallmark in the afternoon.

"You have a lot of Jewish people in your business, right?"
I said I had a lot of Jewish friends, yes, and there are also a lot of Catholics in Chicago who do comedy.

"Are you Catholic?"
"No. I'm from Iran. Are you Catholic?"

I told him I had been raised that way but now I am "nothing." I should have said Agnostic or Atheist or something. That I was nothing seemed to upset him.

"You must have a relationship with your Creator. Whoever that may be." My dentist pointed skyward.
I made the case that I was in charge of my own destiny and pointed a big thumb at my chest.
Then I said, "Right?"

"We'll see you on the 23rd."

Yes, the 23rd year from now.
No, I'll be back. He has to chop up my enamel next week or something. Maybe by then I'll figure out who my Curator is. I mean Creator.



*Yeah, man. Lasers!!!

drawings by Joanna Buese

A 26th Birthday

Before we broke up, Joanna and I used to date. We were together for almost 4 years, like in the Olympics. We decided to spend my last pre-9/11 birthday by going on a road trip. We had both never been to Louisville, Kentucky. And so we left Chicago on a Saturday morning with 2 goals: bluegrass and bourbon.

It was a Best Western or a Super 8 or something. Maybe we didn't even unpack. We got right to it. After all it was a weekend getaway.

Things got heavier and that's when the goddamn front door opened. What?! The afternoon light cut into our afternoon delight and cast a jagged spotlight on me. Somehow I leapt from my ass to the floor, where the bed shielded me from our uninvited guest.
Was it a murderer..with lots of keys? A clueless peeping tom? One of those weird men that collect TV Guides?

She was a woman in her mid-50's and she used two words.
"Aw shit."
Then she closed the door.
We laughed.

The scatter-brained desk clerk was quick to apologize. He had accidentally given this woman our room key.
Turns out the woman wasn't even supposed to be in Louisville. She and her husband were passing through when he had a heart attack at the wheel. He was going to be in the hospital overnight and she wasn't sure if he was going to make it.
We laughed again and continued drinking our giant Kir Royal.
No we didn't.

Well, off to find some authentic bluegrass on a Saturday night in Louisville!
We searched the dailies, the free lefty rags, and inquired of the locals. But there was no bluegrass to be had in Louisville that night.
Oh. Well, we just thought Louisvillebluegrassmumblebrumblebrumble.
In lieu of authenticity we found a karoake bar and got loaded. I did Cher's "Do You Believe." Joanna gave it a big thumbs down.

My birthday fell on Easter Sunday that year. Easter is my least favorite day. Easter is a bunny-shaped, bunny-shit-flavored assault on the soul. It's like being in a badly ventilated juice bar where a Jesus impersonator invades your space with disgusting pick up lines.
"How 'bout a different kinda stigmata: my bone piercing your punani..heh heh."
That's what Easter is.

Oh yeah, but we were going to take a country drive into eastern Kentucky and stay in a cottage. The drive was indeed calming. And we did indeed find a cottage.
"We'll settle in for the night, drinking bourbon on the porch overlooking this peaceful majesty! 26 and the rest of 2001 is going to be the best year ever!" is what I probably thought.

We went to the market and couldn't find any booze.
The clerk said it was a dry county.
But I had seen a sign in the window advertising Corona.
"Corona? Oh, that's for Corona cigarettes."
I had never heard of Corona cigarettes until that moment.
I have never seen a pack of Corona cigarettes since then.

We looked at a map and noticed we were only 25 miles from West Virginia.
So we put on our funglasses and drove away from the sun.
In West Virginia you bet they had booze...only the liquor was roped off.
No liquor on Sunday.

We looked at the map.
We noticed we were only 25 miles from Ohio.
In Ohio, where they have Cleveland, they must have booze!
And at the drive-in liquor store you can get liquor!!
You can even get authentic Kentucky bourbon!!!
Just not on Sunday.
Especially Easter Sunday.
Not in this county.
You faggots.

We snuck a 6-pack of beer into the cottage. Joanna watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
I tried to get her to videotape my account of the events. She kept panning over to the TV in the middle of my anecdote, and I mistakenly didn't see the humor in this.
We bickered.
The red light was on.
It's on a tape somewhere.

Earlier that day in the men's room, the rental car keys accidentally fell from my hoodie into the urinal I was about to use. After finishing up in a different urinal, I searched for a way to pull the keys out of the deep water without touching it. I had found a toilet paper roll and little else when an old man stepped up to the urinal with the keys in it and took a big old man piss right on the keys.
Yes, he was humming a song.
No, it wasn't "Happy Birthday."

And then 9/11 happened. So, y'know.
Can't win 'em all.

drawings by Joanna Buese

Pricey.com

When I first got the internet my friends and I used to play a game.

It's pretty simple.

Pick a word.

See if that word has its own website.

If the website pertains to the word, you lose.

For instance: Scissors.

www.scissors.com will take you to hairproducts.com.

So you lose.

If the website is nothing, you lose.

For example: Kerfuffle.

www.kerfuffle.com is nothing, you loser.

But if the word takes you to a strange place that has nothing to do with the meaning of the word, you win.

Por ejemplo: Open Sores

www.opensores.com takes you to a site that sells supplies for reptiles.

With open sores you win!

So I decided to revive the game.

I chose the word pricey.

The word has a website that features a photograph of two dogs.

They are resting on a dalmatian-print mattress.

The larger dog has a haircut.

Kind of like Heather Locklear's.

The smaller dog does not have a haircut.

Above the dogs is the name of the website.

To the left is the word Home.

When you click on the word Home it takes you to where you are already are.

This is Pricey.com.

It was the only thing I won today.

Pickles

If I wanted to put pickles on my hamburger I would've just severed the blackened toes from that hobo corpse and dipped them in a beggar's cup filled with the diseased urine of his mourning, coughing rail buddy.

Mustard

If I wanted to put mustard on my sandwich I would've just squeezed the pus from that jaundiced drifter's infected, gangrenous foot.

Vinegar

If I wanted to put vinegar on my fries I would’ve just had that street vagrant take off his socks and press his scaly, festering feet to my meal.

Splits & Flips

Recently my girlfriend and I were watching Splits & Flips on the television. It's a dance contest show on the FOX network. If you haven't seen it yet, here's the premise: dramatic people with a desperate need for attention and adoration audition for the title of World's Best American Dancer. To show how good they are at dancing they do aerial splits and tons of flips. Lots of crying is involved, along with serious importance and other heightened emotions. It could be considered of interest to some.

One of the judges is a dancewoman from Ohio named Mary Murphy. She is weird. She's weird.

Mary screams when she talks. It's quite high-pitched. And often long. It has become necessary to turn the volume down whenever it's Mary Murphy's turn to screech and howl gushingly about a particular routine, for fear of her piercing the tube on our TV.

Lauren informed me that Mary Murphy had been "molested or something" in the past.

I considered this.

"Maybe if she got molested again, she'd go back to normal."

During a commercial break we looked her up on the internet.

It turns out she wasn't molested. She was a victim of domestic abuse.

I thought about this.

"Yeah, I can see that."

My girlfriend and I continued eating dinner and enjoyed Splits & Flips in mutual harmony.

Trick or Treating 1987

My innocence clung defiantly to my hairless weakling’s frame. It seemed I was refusing to grow up.

Each morning my smart ass spiked hairdo would come alive with a car wash of hairspray. I used so much hairspray that magic sores began to live underneath the spikes on my scalp. In homeroom I picked at the scalp sores with my too-long-for-boys fingernails.

Each day I put on the same beige jacket, a Marshall’s knock-off of a Member’s Only number, and pushed the sleeves up just past my elbows. The sleeves created girly Renaissance poofs out of my nonexistent biceps and remained on my bony torso for the entirety of the school day.

Each Sunday I scoured the coupon section of the Chicago Tribune for corporate logos. Kraft, Aunt Jemima, Speigel’s. I would clip the logos out and set them aside for the week. Each day before school I would take a piece of transparent tape (our family didn’t go for the shiny kind) and apply a corporate logo to the breast pocket flap of my famous beige jacket. I thought it a funny concept to be a 7^th grader sponsored by a corporation.

Halloween rolled around and I decided it would be weird to dress as Judge Bork, a funny looking judge who had been nominated for a Supreme Court justice. It was indeed weird. I got a black robe and taped a grey square of construction paper on my chin to emulate Bork’s ridiculed billy goat beard. None of my classmates knew who Judge Bork was. The few teachers that followed current events got it and laughed and later shed a tear for me in private.

The actual trick or treating took place on a Saturday. It was a sunny, brisk day. I found two friends to explore the great suburban landscape of townhomes, swingsets, and cement canals.

One of the first homes we hit was a ranch style townhouse not far from mine, but in a part of the neighborhood I had never been. A white guy in his late 20’s or early 30’s answered the door. He seemed nice and gave us candy. I don’t really remember much about him. I don’t remember much about the candy either.

All I can remember clearly is the man lying on the floor, just past the candy bowl. He, too, was in his late 20’s or early 30’s. Only he stared at the ceiling and held his head. He moaned. And then he wailed. It was the first time I had seen anyone on drugs.

“That was weird,” one of us said.

I don’t remember much else about trick or treating that day. My tape and construction paper beard ultimately failed, I know that much.

That guy on drugs freaked me out for some reason. At the time I didn’t know why. But looking back, maybe I knew that if I didn’t want to grow up, I would end up being that guy on his back. Trying to recapture my childhood imagination only to have it turn horribly into a burning, screaming ceiling.

The weird thing is the guy wailing at the walls would probably have enjoyed my conceptual corporate logo humor.

Mummenschanz

My friend Tom from our still-untitled band that we belong to wrote a song without lyrics.

Like a hero I gave the song lyrics.

It's about Mummenschanz, the Swiss/German performing arts troupe. I saw them first on television, probably The Muppet Show, and later when Chris Elliot lampooned them on the old Letterman show as Mummensquad.

With some clay and sticky notes

We'll change the face without our throats

Magic marker oughta coax

German laughs from silent jokes

The world was born without words

Then we built walls

So mask theater nerds

Could speak in bubbles and ping pong balls

Velcro slabs make him prance and smile

To the claves and an old Kurzweil

A vibroslap just made her frown

She felt the whistle sliding down

And then a young balding comedy heir

Lampooned them on the late night air

He used a spoon, a fork, and a hot dog

To get some laughs from the frat boy fog

The world was born without words

Then we built walls

So a comedy nerd

Could reinforce them with Dave and Paul

Inside a briefcase lies a mind

If you can see you will never be blind

Is that a mouth or is it a chair?

Mummenschanz is everywhere

3 x 11 is 33 years

Using their shapes to make laughter and tears

Dorky and goony they paved and paid their dues

Long before men shaved and then painted themselves blue

The world was born without any words

Power to the Swiss mask nerds

Halloween Costumes

I spent all my money this year on travel, music, food and alchohol. Halloween happens soon. I'm considering some budget conscious costume concepts.

When someone asks, "What are you supposed to be?"

I'll respond, "I'm..."

On the phone

Melancholy

Thinking about doing a 5K

Checking my email on your computer

Riddled

An introvert

Staring at you for masturbatory purposes

A person with 'Pancho & Lefty' stuck in his head

Suffering from a wet hacking cough

Asleep at your boring party

Just kidding. I'm rich and I love parties. I bought a booty-liscous Kim Kardashian costume that's going to win me lots of prize monies at all the great Halloween parties and clubs I go to every day.

Some Day The Rivers Will Win - Part One

Lloyd sat in the back of the van watching the clouds threaten the river town. It had been raining all week for no reason. He inhaled the fresh smell of loud, burnt sulfur. The back of his leg itched from sitting on the crushed side of the fender, the result of a late night hit and run he hadn't attended. It reminded him of that frustrating morning when he lived in the city and discovered it before his coffee. He moved to the other side of the fender to relieve his itch and avoid reliving frustrations past, though his future wasn't exactly looking rosy.

The threat of rain became reality, so Lloyd scooped up the remaining firecrackers and put them back in a weathered, brown paper bag. He put the paper bag into a plastic Taco Bell bag. The Taco Bell bag had handles and was sort of waterproof. He made the three minute trip across the river to Illinois and the broken town he decided was home.

Cairo looked like it had called in sick to work long ago and never quite recovered. It was once a competing force at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Its strategically placed exchange ports, thriving night life, and traveling carnivals full of sideshow freaks ensured a loud, proud quality of life. But as the highway replaced the river in the commerce world, Cairo suddenly seemed out of the way. One by one, the businesses began closing, their workers choosing an early retirement on the porch. The mayor tried half-heartedly to woo tourists with a replica of the Sphinx, complete with a nose. One sign proudly proclaimed, "THE SPHINX WITH A NOSE FOR FUN! ONLY IN CAIRO...ILLINOIS!" But most of the town tired of cheap strangers invading the town while mispronouncing its name.

"Is there anything else to do in Cairo?"

"It's Care-o, not Cairo."

"If this ain't Cairo then why do y'all have a Sphinx?"

Schoolchildren began referring to it as "The Sphinx that stinks." When these schoolchildren entered adolescence, tourism had diminished to a handful of lost mouth-breathers. The Sphinx became the target of many high school pranks. Over the years he had been toilet-papered, painted to look like a whore, and covered in some unfortunate animal's blood. One year his nose had been sawed off and was rumored to have graced the hood of hot shot Danny Mose's GTO. The nearly bankrupt town hired local weirdo Wilson Woods to construct a new nose for the Sphinx. Wilson lost some of his tongue and most of his mind in the Korean War, and gave the Sphinx a new nose out of the kindness of his heart and a case of Michelob. The result was a wobbly, pock-marked beak that the town called a "broken Jew nose."

Lloyd passed the Sphinx as the lone town skater cut class and practiced his rudimentary ollies under the nose.

He had always been attracted to damaged places. "Broken is beautiful" he once young-drunkenly scrawled on a bathroom stall in Paris. Lloyd didn't get Paris. He dislikened it to the new hot girl in school who became immediately popular but presumably would never speak to him. Therefore Lloyd had no interest in Paris. And that is why he got loaded on beer instead of champagne that afternoon and got into a shoving match with a waiter.

He felt like a beer. But it was 11am and he had learned that there was no real reason to start drinking before noon anymore. So he pulled into the craggy, weed-infested parking lot of what was once Style City, a high fashion clothing store. Probably around 1980 Style City was a chance for the women of Cairo to look like out-of-towners; perhaps too convincingly because by 1990 all of Style City's customers had moved out of Cairo. The parking lot was curious in its layout of the spaces. Cars seemed to face each other in acute triangles, like the wings of a peacock. Or something. Lloyd couldn't figure it out. He estimated from the architecture and the tall gas station-like sign that Style City had once been a car hop; probably frequented by Danny Mose and his GTO.

Instead of a beer he reached for a guitar and searched his palate of chords with the rain as a calmly frenetic rhythm section. He was too aware of the cliche of the sensitive singer-songwriter with a guitar and attempted to dissuade it by painting the guitar an unnatural hot pink. The day-glo gleam gave the guitar a crummy dime-store sound that defeated the cliche in Lloyd's mind. He improvised some lyrics about Style City, focusing on the generic skyline depicted on the sign, probably the skyline to the town where all the customers had flocked. While the rain continued to punish the beaten parking lot he sang about the difficulties of being a roller-skate waitress under such conditions. He jotted down a few chord progressions along with the word "roller-skateress" before heading to work.

In retrospect he should have gone to the laundromat. His stained cotton/polyester uniform was on its third day. He considered smoking out the thick stench of stale sweat with a few firecrackers but he wouldn't have time to go to back to Kentucky. And he was tired of being suspicious in Illinois. So he ambled into Taco Bell #8568 to begin the afternoon shift as a Food Service Shift Leader.

Ken, the Food Service General Manager, greeted him with a cheerful hello that sounded more like "hi-lo." Lloyd had about four years on Ken, and only ten minutes to look presentable. He pushed open the men's room door with a relaxation often mistaken for aimlessness, made a lather of the pink push soap, and blotted his armpits under the wretched shirt. The bathroom was a mess of toilet paper streams that looked to Lloyd like frozen bottle rocket trails. The paper towel dispenser had emptied a jackpot of crumpled kleenex, cascading its filth-encrusted riches onto the gummy floor. In the melee of garbage he saw what appeared to be a small treasure: a travel-size bottle of Brut cologne, seemingly empty save for a drop or two.

He sniffed the bottle to make sure it was Brut and not some horrid homemade radiator gin. Then he applied one drop to the front of the putrid shirt and the last drop on his back, smeared his hands all over his body, and rubbed the remaining imagined particles of male essence on his pulse points, like he had seen his Uncle Bobby do while he watched the Vikings game.

He looked in the mirror. While examining his divorce wrinkles he realized he hadn't shaved, and that his graying hair resembled a matted owl's nest.

"What a mess," he lamented.

"Yeah, this place is a fucking dump," an anonymous voice reverberated from the stall. It startled Lloyd but he didn't show it. Instead he grabbed a visor in lieu of a comb and clocked in.

The shift went by. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Lunch rush, after-school rush, drive thru dinner rush, clean up. None of the rushes exceeded five consecutive orders. Because of his shirt Lloyd spent most of the shift in the back with Mofles and Pablo. Together they magically turned the same five ingredients into fourteen varieties of Mexican food, like a couple of fast food Jesuses.

Mofles and Pablo worked quickly and efficiently with a grace that Lloyd hadn't mastered. They made his burritos look like grade school craft projects. Conversation between the two was exclusively in Spanish, a rapid kitchen Spanish that slowed down to check out women and often exploded with jagged homophobic laughter. Or so Lloyd guessed. His conversations with Mofles and Pablo rarely veered outside of their idea of him as a pothead, which he was not. They called him "Yoyd" because his name began with two L's.

"Yoyd, man. Fuma mucha mota?"

He supposed the pothead image was easier to deal with than a homosexual image, which he was also not. He didn't think he was much of anything these days.

Lloyd, sore from standing, clocked out and went to the laundromat. To his name he had two pairs of jeans, one pair of work slacks, five T-shirts, one vintage button down long sleeve shirt, two Taco Bell shirts, ten pairs of socks, six pairs of boxers, and a pair of jogging shorts. He could get it all done in one load.

Ken had given him shit that day about ringing a "no sale" on the register to get change. When Lloyd explained it was for laundry quarters Ken let it go.

"You oughta wash that visor, too."

Lloyd remembered to leave the visor at work. He sat in a row of orange, plastic bowling alley chairs reading the newspaper with one hand while massaging the back of his neck with the other. The morning had found Lloyd unwittingly using a pair of vice-grip pliers as a pillow. Halfway through the massage he realized the newspaper was over a week old. Now with both hands devoted to soothing the chronic sting he noticed a woman pulling his sopping clothes out from the washer and setting them aside. He approached the woman at the same pace and with the same smirk he carried into Taco Bell.

"Excuse me. Those are my clothes."

"I want to use this machine," snapped the woman. She was wearing an over-sized #1 Grandma shirt that he assumed she had purchased or won.

"There are plenty of other machines."

"Yeah, I know that. But I wanna use this one!"

The other three patrons took their eyes off of the rattling Mexican TV game show and focused on the show that had just begun in the laundromat.

"This is my machine!" she declared. Lloyd was baptized with spittle from the woman's angry mouth, and she emphasized her point by plopping a fistful of Lloyd's underwear on the folding station, creating another blessing of droplets on his face. Lloyd turned to the small audience for sympathy but they hurriedly shot their eyes back to the blaring television. Their ears continued watching the laundromat show.

"M'kay," he said and attempted to put his clothes back into their rinse cycle.

"Oh no you don't!" she sprayed, and made an X with her arms over the machine. When Lloyd gently tried to move one of her arms, the woman let out the loudest scream he had ever heard. It felt like he had crossed polarities while jump-starting a car battery and it exploded. He immediately let go and wiped the sparks of saliva from his face.

"What the fuck is goin' on in here?" yelled an ape of a man emerging from the wood paneled door marked OFFICE. He wore a stained tank top that accentuated his Bluto biceps as well as his Bluto beer belly. The gold around his neck chimed pleasantly as he hobbled toward the unpleasant scene. Somebody turned down the volume on the television.

"You have the face of a rat!" she hissed from behind the wall of muscle that now stood towering over Lloyd.

"Why are you fucking with Gayle?"

It was apparent that Lloyd wasn't going to win this battle. So he sighed and explained the situation. During the explanation he speculated that Gayle was using the water and soap he paid for to get a free wash for herself.

"Yeah, but this is my machine!"

The ape spoke.

"21 is Gayle's machine. Now I recommend that you leave before I call the cops."

If this had happened a few years prior Lloyd would have waited for the police and pressed charges against Gayle for theft. But he had lost his desire to fight in the divorce, along with most of his possessions. No longer content to play the fool, now he simply was the fool. In a laundromat.

"Can I at least dry my clothes?"

"Did you just hear what I fuckin' said?" The ape pointed at the door with a fat, mangled finger. Lloyd suspected it wasn't mangled from playing softball. He sniffed his dripping mound of clothes. If there had been a detergent scent called "Good Enough," this would have been it.

He left Gayle and the laundromat at the same pace and with the same smirk he had approached it, while she jeered "rat-face" and other compound words using "rat" as a prefix. Somebody turned the television volume up, but not as loud as it had previously been.

Lloyd drove to Walmart. In the parking lot he ate the bean burrito he was saving for breakfast. His clothes were laid out around the van, its bucket seats wearing work shirts and its windows acting as a clothesline for the jeans. Socks and boxers were scattered neatly next to his sleeping bag. What happened at the laundromat should have made him feel something, but all he felt was the observation that an event had occurred. He was worried his soul was turning into numb polenta.

Lloyd silently acknowledged some facts: he was 31, divorced, working at Taco Bell, living out of a van and eating tomorrow's breakfast in a Walmart parking lot at midnight. Instead of a beer he reached again for his defiantly ugly guitar and improvised some ugly lyrics about the laundromat incident. Uninspired he wrote nothing down and lied down next to the frigid undergarments, his neck at an angle opposite from the previous night to even out the pain.

Loading Zone

9am

Aahhh, a loading zone

A refuge from the city in the heart of the city

I'm safe here for a while

So let's sit back and watch the parade

The talkers, the smokers, the walkers, the suits

Hmm

Not much going on

I sure wish they'd just do something

Something else

Noon

Hey, Loading Zone

It's a lucky day

Today you are my restaurant

I'll have the usual

A lunchmeat on sale sandwich

Home-chopped carrots

A pear

Lots of people walk in pairs

When they get alone they talk to a someone on a cellular phone

No one wants to be alone it seems

Neither does me!

That's why I'm here with you, LZ

2pm

Mmmmm, this loading zone

The Curbside Motel

On my back

I hear the parade milling

Their halved conversations lull me into near dreams

I brought a sleeping bag

Those fat guys want this space

Their wheezy barks bounce off our steamed windows

They want important heavy things placed inside of that building

But I'm inside a sleeping bag

We have this slumber party reserved until 4pm

That's when you turn back into a pumpkin

An expensive, illegal one

3pm

I'm dreaming in the loading zone

Dreaming a fat truck smashed into the loading zone

The truck squished my body like a grape on sale

The sleeping bag prevented my squishy remains from spilling onto the loading zone

The authorities won't find my body until next week

My blood is tingling like an electric creek

My pager chirps

It sounds underwater

But really it's underbody

My body is squishy!

Oh, but that's because I'm fat these days

My arm still wants to sleep

Time to make the gonuts

I wave goodbye to you

The prickles limp my wave

The fat guys jeer

Purses & Wallets

Hey ladies, isn't a purse just a big vagina?

And hey fellas! Isn't a wallet just a big flattened penis sliced lengthwise and folded into thirds?

A Mess vs. MS

Here's a post from my old blog called The Fresh New Dumbness.

The drawings are by Joanna Buese.

A few summers ago I decided to ride my bike for multiple sclerosis. Or against it I guess.
I had never done a long distance trip but had three years of experience as a bike messenger, so this was going to be a piece of cake. Instead of signing up for the 35 mile or 75 mile options, I chose the 100-mile ride.
"Hell, I probably ride a hundred miles a day anyway. Gimmee that pizza next to you."
The night before the ride, which I kept calling "the race," I did a late night improv show, got loaded, and was in bed by 3am.

The ride started early the next morning in rural Illinois. The route consisted of farm roads through small towns before ending in Dekalb at Northern Illinois University. I showed up right before the cut-off time and wolfed down a complimentary Power Bar. I hadn't eaten anything yet.

But I was ready to kick some MS ass.

With competition as my mistress, I hovered around 20mph. I skipped the first two rest stops and didn't let anyone pass me.
I was so awesome.
When passing through downtown Sandwich, IL I pulled out my messengering tricks and blew through traffic signals and stop signs while those other chumps obeyed the rules.
What a bunch of suckers.

In Sandwich, they indeed provided as many sandwiches as you'd like. I dug into my ham and swiss and beef and cheddar in the crowded cafeteria, and noticed how many people were in groups. Or "teeeams."
I hate that word.
It makes me think of community theater.
Harmless but annoying.
I had already grown tired of these team people each squawking "CAR!" down my back as a car approached.
Yeah, no shit there's a car coming. Just shut up. Or say it differently.
You sound like a grating, overly cautious Christian in reverse echo.

I was getting grumpy.
The teams were all smiles and ready to keep riding their brand new carbon Treks with Campy components, whereas me and my early 90's Cannondale with used Shimano everything needed a nap.
On the way out of the cafeteria there was a handwritten sign on a door that read:
PLEASE OBEY THE RULES OF THE ROAD. WE HAVE GOTTEN COMPLAINTS FROM THE RESIDENTS. FAILURE TO COMPLY TO THE RULES WILL RESULT IN DISQUALIFICATION.

I continued passing more people, mumbling "on your left" in a laconic whisper when I got a flat tire on the rear wheel. I watched as all those "suckers" I had left in the dust were now blowing past me. Luckilly, I had my messenger bag with me and all my tools and I was back up in a few minutes.

I didn't realize how heavy my bag was until the afternoon. The other cyclists had little lightweight nylon knapsacks that were filled with water and little else. I had my large Timbuk2 bag filled with water and everything else: sneakers, change of clothes, tent, tools, U-lock.
One guy I passed cracked, "Whaddaya got in there? A boombox?"

The only thing I didn't pack was sun block.
Woops.
It was late June. There was no shade.
By 3 o'clock I was beginning to get fatigued.
My shoulders ached, I was losing circulation in my fingers, and my ass felt like it had been anesthetized by a 14th century barber.

To entertain myself on a lone strip of prarie land, I opened my water bottle and let the wind blow music out of it. I found that I could control the pitch by moving the bottle. I tried to learn a song, a long one like "Hey Jude," when an elderly man on a 3-wheeler and an official-looking helmet pulled along side me.
"Do you need water?"
I was no longer awesome.

By the time I got to Dekalb, I was dehydrated and focused on only one thing: getting to the finish line, setting up my tent, and eating the free dinner. And getting sunblock.
And aloe.
I blew through a few tumbleweed traffic signals and was in the home stretch when I heard an amplified voice behind me. It was a cop.
"OBEY THE RULES OF THE ROAD, BUDDY. UNLESS YOU WANT A CITATION."
Ugh. Isn't there anything better to do in...nevermind.

I crossed the finish line and lost the pesty cop.
I also the lost "the race."
In fact I was one of the last to finish.
Who cares, I needed to get out of the stupid sun.
So while hundreds of people were in the beer tent mingling to a Van Halen cover band, I was surveying my lobstery soreness alone in a tent.
And I vowed not to leave the tent until that asshole sun went away.

The piece of shit sun did eventually let up and that's when I headed to the food tent.
"Sorry. We stopped serving food at 8."
"What!?"

I was now really very fucking hungry and really very fucking angry. I'm glad I had masturbated in the tent to take the edge off. Then again if I hadn't masturbated I might've
gotten to the tent in time to eat.

I zombied around the campus until I found a gyros joint, and ate a big, sloppy burger that tasted like heat exhaustion. After staring at an empty cardboard french fry dish in yummy numbness for fifteen minutes, I went in search of aloe and sunblock.

The only thing I could find resembling a supermarket was a liquor store in a strip mall. I walked up to the counter but got shouted at by the doorguy.
Oh yeah. This is a shitty college town.
I gave the fucking rap-metal doorguy my ID and he let me walk to the counter, where a fat rap-metal kid was being obese by the register. I asked if they carried any sunblock.
His face contorted into that of a rich girl at a mall in the 80's.
"Here?"
I wanted to punch him and his horrible taste in music in the fucking brain.
I guess I raised my voice when I said,
"I don't know, MAN. I'm not FROM here."

I ended up getting aloe and sunblock at a gas station and retreated back to the tent, where I slept like an asshole.

So here are some tips if you are planning to do the 100-mile MS ride:
*DON'T get between 3-4 hours of sleep
*DON'T be hungover
*DON'T not eat breakfast
*DON'T be competitive
*DON'T skip rest stops
*DON'T get a flat
*DON'T wear an unnecessarily heavy bag
*DON'T not wear sunblock
*DON'T blow through traffic signals in front of college town cops
*DON'T masturbate in the tent before they cut off the free dinner
*DON'T go to a liquor store for sunblock
*DON'T be an asshole

But let's not forget who the real asshole is: MS.

Yamaha Portasound PSS-380

When the Annoyance Theater closed on Clark in the summer of 2000, a clearing house of props, wigs, and various madness was left to rummage through by its company members. One of my prized acquisitions from this dark day is a Yamaha Portasound PSS-380 portable keyboard. Used in the 90’s for performances of Tippi: Portrait of a Virgin and That Darned Antichrist to name two, the Yamaha would keep me company while I waited six years for The Annoyance to reopen.

The PSS-380 has 100 voices and 100 rhythms. Some of the preset sounds it offers: ICE BLOCK, INSECT, and GOLF. It features a digital synthesizer so you can manipulate each voice's SPECTRUM, MODULATION, ATTACK, DECAY, RELEASE and VIBRATIO. You can create some truly idiotic sounds with this little machine. Think 1912 ICE CREAM TRUCK, DARTH VADER'S DOORBELL, and SEX FROGS.

It is covered in a paint-like blood from an unknown triumph during Annoyance's salad days. Over the course of this decade it has acquired foam pads from a bike helmet, a Hamburglar sticker, and an old building pass from 980 N Michigan dated January 18, 2001. I use duct tape to keep the batteries from falling out, though sometimes this does not always work.

In 2001 a website taught me how to play piano. I used the half-sized keys of the Yamaha to clunk out broken chords. A lot of my earliest stabs at songwriting occurred on this thing, with titles like “Larfy,” “The Unexpected Death of The Performance Art Couple,” and “I'm Going To Kill You.” It would be used on the recordings of “Earthquake,” “Hatchet,” and “Misery Tomb” by Let’s Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop. The built-in demonstration song gave birth to the awful “Baseball Cards Are Going to Make Me Rich.” It was also used in the worst sketch comedy show I have been a part of, Teenage Sports Parade Goes To College, where the CIRCUS BAND rhythm provided the basis for a showtune entitled "The Mayor of Jizz Heights."

The Yamaha has accompanied me on several road trips and bike rides in the US. It has even been to Canada and Mexico. On a sub-zero night in Chicago I was riding my bike down Logan Boulevard with the keyboard in my bag. I hit a patch of ice and wiped out. When I got up the RHYTHM&BLUES 1 beat was playing out of my bag. I let it play the for rest of the cold, bruised ride home.

I also used this keyboard to perform improvised songs with Rod Ben Zeev on the underground CTA stops in the Loop. We had three types of songs: rock, ballad, and weird. Rod would get a suggestion from the people waiting for their train (something like "spatula" or "doctor/patient" but usually along the lines of "You guys aren't funny" and "You suck"), and we would sing about that. The songs lasted about 60 seconds and we would repeat the suggestion in unison for a hilarious climax. At the end of the rock songs I would throw the keyboard in the air and catch it. For the ballads, Rod performed a sultry rap that received puzzled giggles. If things were going poorly we improvised a "weird" song, which consisted of the strange SAFARI beat that was impossible to sing to. Rod would shout out words randomly until the train came. If we were lucky we made enough money to cover the fare we had already paid.

One afternoon at the Jackson Blue Line stop a lady in a purple jogging suit approached us with a dollar.

"Can you guys sing a song for mother? She passed recently."

Oh no. I didn't think this was a good idea. We were doing a version of comedy, and I'm not sure this subject would be right for-

"Sure!" said Rod with his trademark enormous smile.

So I pushed POP BALLAD 2 and reluctantly went into a ballad. Rod shouted the woman's dead mother's name several times. Then he went into his slow jams rap, and mentioned how beautiful the dead woman was and how he wanted to get with her dead mother.

The woman walked up to us during the song.

"If I had known you were going to do that I wouldn't have given you my dollar."

It was the last time the Yamaha would be used on CTA property.

This keyboard is a workhorse. One of the speakers seems to have melted, affecting the sound in no way. 3 of the keys (lowest A, lower E, upper G) are broken but can work if you play them up between the black keys. The last time it was used on stage I threw it in the air and chose not to catch it. It acts like nothing happened.

The Yamaha Portasound PSS-380 now resides in the van, and I play it when work does not call. Most recently “Prom Sniffles” was composed and demo’ed using this keyboard. It’s a little piece of stupid magic this thing.

Deliveries: A Week In Review

Monday
It’s always funny being back. The first day on the job after a fun or grueling five week tour of Europe with The Bitter Tears. It’s Windex for the perspective that place. When you leave this town for a while, you forget how important everything in Chicago is.
Then you hear the whininess in the accent, see the city workers getting paid to gather dust, and realize that you are supposed to know everything. It’s grey, someone drives like an asshole, and you hit a pothole. And then you remember how important Chicago is.
I'm in a decent mood. I'm glad to be working. I still feel outside of the local, miserable importance. I still have some Europe inside of me. I know this is a fleeting feeling. I will relish it for as long I can.

Tuesday
Saw lots of butts in buildings. Because they are so enormous. You don't know what else to do with them. So you just look at them. I think if you spend too much time in one of those buildings you start to look like food. Around State and Monroe my two-wheeler and I weaved through some waddling ham sandwiches and pickles to get to the elevator. A man with wig-white hair noticed my two-wheeler.
"It looks like you've got one of those things that people ride around in."
Oh, a segway.

He laughed and told me how he's always wanted to do one of those segway tours and wondered how people stay on those things anyway.
I played along, because I still had some Europe in me.
"Yeah, they're unwieldy."

Wednesday
Got sent to the Sherwood Forest up in the north burbs. Decent property resting on Lancelot Avenue, Robin Hood Place, Little John Court. Landscapers cut grass and trimmed hedges all over these streets. I wonder if they ever get any ideas.

Delivering lots of garment bags for the Fashion Office this week. And little else. One of the clothing designers lives just down the street, which allowed for lunch at home with Lauren.

When there's no work I find a loading zone where I can read, write, work on music, or sleep. A woman who works for the Episcopal Church on Erie enjoys kicking me out of its loading zone. I'm trying to figure it out. She works for a church. Her faith is an accepting one, big on equal rights. But she won't accept a minivan parked in a loading zone.

Oh, there's that Chicago anger I feel creeping into my blood again.

Thursday

Due to miscommunication between clients I spent 47 minutes inside the Willis Tower trying to deliver two boxes to the Metropolitan Club. Most of this time was spent waiting for the freight elevator. On the 66th floor hallway surrounded by boxes and garbage I discovered a tuned, upright piano. For seven minutes I played it. It was by far the best time I've ever had near a freight elevator in my life.

Friday

Delivered over 700 lbs of sample-size Multi-Grain Cheerios to Navy Pier for the marathon on Sunday. It took two trips and five hours. The constant autumn rain will provide cold Cheerio soup for the runners.

At an Orland Park gas station I required an afternoon coffee. I added two hazelnut creamers and dusted it with nutmeg, naively associating this with Europe and its love of nutella. What I had done in actuality was made the worst coffee in North America. It tasted like diet gasoline. This was when I knew that I was actually back. Any trace of inner-Europe had vanished like The Olympics in Chicago.

I was now eligible to talk on any subject with flat, misinformed authority, become selfishly competitive behind the wheel, and begin resembling an Italian Beef. Dipped in inferiority complex.

Friday Night Date and Delivery

It's a lean month. After five weeks off with no income coming in, I must take any work I can. So on our Friday night date, Lauren and I went to see Salem! The Musical at The Annoyance. I highly recommend it because it made everyone laugh and cheer. We wanted to stick around afterward for beers but I had agreed to deliver a package to the north suburbs in the evening. It paid well.

Lauren has a big heart so she joined me for the trek through Ferris Bueller country, where the houses are gaudy, the streets are dark, and the addresses are impossible to see. Struggling to find numbers on one of the many streets named Woodland, a man out of Friday the 13th with a dog and a flashlight could not help us. When we circled back he was gone. Lauren found the house and I left the package neatly on the important man's porch.

Dating while working. Taking multi-tasking one step further. Maybe I'm just ahead of my time.

The Quest For A Band Name

Five years ago I was passengering in a van brainstorming for album titles.  I had had a few beer drinks and blurted out "Let's Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop!"  The non-sequitur got a laugh from the van.  No album ever came out with that title, but I remembered it.

In October of 2004 I decided to name my new one-man-band side project Let's Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop.  A fun name at the time, and perfect for the clash of live half-assed prop-dependent comedy and Farf & drum indie pop.  I would tell people the name of the band and when it was over they would laugh out loud.  I thought this a good thing.

And it was.  In 2005 Thea Lux and Joanna Buese joined the group while the name garnered some press.  Certainly more than if I had named us The Beachballs or whatever.  The Onion put us on a list of "Best Worst Band Names."  We put out records and played shows around and out of town.  When Tom Vale joined the group officially in 2006 we were a capable outfit that had outgrown the goofy comedy tag I had imprisoned us in.  Most of our press still focused on the stupid band name.  By 2008 the novelty had worn off completely, and Irony made sure that we would only be seen as a novelty act.  I would tell people the name of the band and when it was over they might nod.  Nod off.
In 2009 we decided to close Let's Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop.  Ultimately it would have made a better album title.

Last week we had our first practice as a new band without a name.  Tom, Thea, myself and Nicole from Unicycle Loves You had some shy fun.  I like this band.  We all do.  So much so that we can't figure out a name for it.  Actually the word is agree.  We can't agree on a name for the band.  It's harder than naming a goddamn baby.

One of my early suggestions was The Wet Jeans.  A favorite image from my life is of a skinny kid at a graduation party playing volleyball in the rain.  His jeans were soaked and he seemed unhappy.  My friend Dan and I laughed continuously as the game and his struggle continued.  The double entendre also appealed to me: jeans moist from arousal.  I pitched The Wet Jeans hard only to remember the existence of The Pissed Jeans, who have had more than one practice.

Other suggestions that have been shot down for various reasons:
Bloood
Mashed Balloons
Jackpot of Bees
Babysitter Disaster
Prom Sniffles

There are 1,454 more.  But, like Let's Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop would make a better album title, these rejects make decent song titles.  In the course of the last month I've made demos for each of these failed band names.  Here's "Prom Sniffles" from the upcoming 7" by The Beachballs:

Prom Sniffles

Graphy & Duction

Yes, my name is Tony Mendoza.  I am an unfocused writer, musician, and comedy skunk living in Chicago.  I have written or performed and taught or comedy with The Annoyance, The Second City, Groupon, and WBEZ among others.  I have never considered myself an actor, though a few years ago I somehow booked a stupid commercial for Long John Silver.  I play drums for The Bitter Tears, Tijuana Hercules, and Up Ya Boyo, and founded and fronted a band called Let’s Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop.  I have a new band that can’t get its name shit together.  I have held lots of dumb day jobs including trolley driver, FM disc jockey, pool table salesman, and gas station clerk.  Currently I am a recovering bike messenger now making deliveries in my inherited mommyvan.  I have a wonderful girlfriend named Lauren who refuses to believe that I am an asshole.

The goal of this blog is to remain unfocused.  Some posts will read like journal entries, some will be stories from my life.  I may write about a silly object or blather on concisely about a memory tucked away in some shoebox.  I promise to try bad fiction and bad poetry.  But probably not.  When I’m suffering from writer’s block or overbooking, I may scrape material from the past: old posts from my deceased bike messenger blog, road trip memoirs, or journal entries from my radio and gas station days.  Things will probably get personal and graphic.  It all sounds a bit shitty but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.